On September 1, 1955, actor and director Philip
Loeb took a room at the Taft Hotel at 50th and Seventh Avenue in
Manhattan under the name “Fred Lange” which means “a long peace in German, and
ended his life with an overdose of 36 sleeping pills.
In April 1952, four years before Loeb
took his own life, director Elia Kazan named Loeb as a communist in his
testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Kazan and Lee J.
Cobb gave information on his radical political activity in the 1930s. Cobb
testified that he did not know if Loeb was a former member of the American
Communist Party but he accused him of working with Sam Jaffe to control a
left-wing caucus in the Actors Equity Association.
Supposedly Loeb was blacklisted due
to Kazan’s testimony and unable to find work. But he had actually been named as
a communist in the June 1950 edition of Red
Channels, in a section called “The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and
Television”
Loeb denied being a Communist. The
studios and the networks wanted him gone because for them, he was a trouble maker,
a strong union advocate who had fought to get rehearsal pay and better salaries
for all actors. The FBI had determined that although Loeb leaned extremely far
left, he had never been a communist.
At the time, Loeb was at the height
of his popularity starring in The Goldberg’s a TV smash hit. (Where he made $20,000 a year)
General Foods, the sponsors of The Goldberg’s, insisted that he be dropped from
the show's cast. The producer refused to
fire Loeb so CBS dropped the program which was immediately picked up by NBC,
with the condition that Loeb be replaced. Loeb resigned
on his own and left the show with a settlement of almost $400,000 at a time
when a healthy years income for a family of three was $3,300.
Loeb landed the lead role in the Broadway production of
"Time Out for Ginger". Being named a communist and leaving his TV
show with a half a million dollars didn’t cause Loeb to kill himself. He was
badly despondent of his wife’s recent death, his own health was failing rapidly,
and his adult son’s mental health was growing steadily worse. (He was delusional
and saw communist spies everywhere, all of whom intended to kill him.) His sons
hospitalization cost him $12,000 a year.
The week before he killed himself, the State
of new York sent Loeb a summons to
account for $1,000 in back taxes. Loeb
responded that he had less than $220.00 in the back, which seems highly unlikely.