Roman Bohnen, actor. Bohnen’s film career started in 1937.
His death by heart attack is yet another blamed on the McCarthy era. Bohnen was
one of the founders as well as a director of the LA-based Actors' Laboratory
Theatre a “politically active” theatre company and acting school founded in
January 1941. The Actors' Lab was never denounced as a communist organization,
at least by the federal government’s HUAC or the state of California’s version
of the HUAC.
In 1948, Bohnen and at least eight other
directors of the Actors lab received subpoenas from the state of California’s
version of the House Un-American Activities Committee. The public stopped
supporting the theater when it found out that the theater's leadership had been
called in to admit or disavow their membership in the communist party.
Rightfully, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service subsequently withdrew the group's
tax exempt status, and the Veterans Administration canceled its contracts with
the group. The Lab closed in 1950.
A heavy smoker, Bohnen died of a
heart attack, on stage, in 1949. Of course, as soon as he died, in fact, the
very day he died, the story arose that the stress of being signaled out as a
communist by the government killed him. Bohnen in the year and a half that
Bohnen lived between the time he was subpoenaed, Bohnen worked regularly. He
was never blacklisted.
Just because someone’s name
appeared in Red Channels, that doesn’t mean they were blacklisted. It just
means there name appeared in Red Channels.
Just because a person said they
were blacklisted doesn’t mean they were. Many people in Hollywood have lied
about being blacklisted over the years.
If a person was actually blacklisted…and not
many were actually blacklisted….it was the studios and TV sponsors who
blacklisted them. Not the United States federal government.
If a person claims the blacklist
ruined their career, they should be able to prove they had a career before the
blacklist.