Tony Kraber had been seen on and
Off-Broadway since 1927. He was a founding member of the Group Theater,
producing such triumphs of the 1930's as the Pulitzer Prize-winning ''Men in White,''
Saroyan's ''My Heart's in the Highlands'' and Odets's ''Waiting for Lefty.''
In 1952, director Elia Kazan accused
Kraber of being a Communist at a hearing before the House Committee on
Un-American Activities. He said Kraber drafted him into the party and that they
had been in the same Communist unit. Called before the HUAC in 1955, Kraber
refused to respond to the question of being a member of the communist party.
The popular sentiment is that Kraber was
blacklisted as a result. If he was blacklisted, it wasn’t from the screen. He
barely had a career in film. In 1951, he was the narrator for a film short “Secure
the blessing.” He didn’t appear on screen again until 1974 in the TV mini-series
The American Parade. Otherwise, his film work was limited to documentaries and
there were scant few of those.
His stage work, he was almost exclusively
a stage actor, went untouched by any blacklisting. From 1935 through 1939, he
appeared on Broadway nine times. From 1940 through 1949, he appeared on the
stage once. And from 1952 through 1956 he
acted as a stage manager/actor in four
large productions as well as one 1954 stage production at White Lake Lodge in
New York state and various full dress cabaret dinner and dance performances across
the country.
He also recorded several albums
in the 1950s.
Bear in mind, Kraber was 50 years
old when he refused to testify before the HUAC, an age when roles begin to
shrink for actors on stage or screen.
Kraber was executive assistant in
the CBS networks short wave division from 1942 to 1948, when he went to the
Dumont Television Network. He returned to CBS in September of 1949, as a
producer in its television division. In December of 1949, he became assistant
director of special events for CBS Radio.
Kraber said he was fired from the
network in 1951 and accused the HUAC of
having been instrumental in getting him fired from CBS. For their part CBS said
that Kraber “resigned by mutual consent” in September of 1951, a full year
before Kazan identified him as a power in the New York communist party.