WEBVTT - The Judgment of Helen Levitt 0:00:15.356 --> 0:00:23.516 Pushkin. In the archives of UCLA's Library, there is a 0:00:23.556 --> 0:00:27.236 remarkable seven hour interview conducted in nineteen eighty eight with 0:00:27.316 --> 0:00:35.076 a woman named Helen slote Leavitt, along with a separate 0:00:35.156 --> 0:00:41.196 interview with Helen's husband, Al Lovitt, each conversation spanning an 0:00:41.196 --> 0:00:45.756 extraordinary period, the Great Depression, the Second World War, the 0:00:45.756 --> 0:00:47.956 Cold War, the Civil rights movement. 0:00:49.796 --> 0:00:52.796 What I'd like you to start with is your biographical background, 0:00:52.996 --> 0:00:55.956 when and where you were born, your parents or family, 0:00:55.956 --> 0:00:56.436 et cetera. 0:00:58.436 --> 0:01:07.116 Fine, my roots are solidly middle class Jewish Brooklyn, out 0:01:07.156 --> 0:01:07.716 of Poland. 0:01:09.316 --> 0:01:13.116 The interviews were conducted by the historian Larry Sepplayer over 0:01:13.116 --> 0:01:16.196 the course of many months. He remembers the Levits well, 0:01:16.596 --> 0:01:22.756 particularly Helen, petite, intense, alive, but in some sense wounded. 0:01:24.036 --> 0:01:26.476 It was an interesting interview because when I first approached 0:01:26.476 --> 0:01:30.556 them they said no, you know, they were justifiably, I think, 0:01:30.636 --> 0:01:34.916 wary of people coming to ask them questions, the answers 0:01:34.916 --> 0:01:37.156 to which they had refused to give to other people. 0:01:38.036 --> 0:01:39.476 So I made a deal with them. I said I'd 0:01:39.516 --> 0:01:42.436 send them five questions through the mail, and then they 0:01:42.436 --> 0:01:44.396 could look them over. If they thought those were legitimate. 0:01:44.436 --> 0:01:46.836 We could talk on the phone they would answer them, 0:01:47.156 --> 0:01:50.036 which they did, and they came to trust me. You 0:01:50.036 --> 0:01:53.956 know that I wasn't someone who was going to betray 0:01:53.996 --> 0:01:54.636 them in any way. 0:01:55.636 --> 0:01:59.476 The Levitts had their reasons for not trusting outsiders, as 0:01:59.516 --> 0:02:00.036 you will hear. 0:02:01.556 --> 0:02:03.836 They are you know, you know, the just termed Starker. 0:02:04.716 --> 0:02:08.516 It means strong, you know, kind of tough, you don't 0:02:08.596 --> 0:02:12.556 let things than bowl you over. They were Starker's Helen, 0:02:12.596 --> 0:02:14.036 probably even a little bit more than al. 0:02:14.156 --> 0:02:18.636 I think Larry Seplaire's conversation with Helen levitt is a 0:02:18.636 --> 0:02:24.276 masterclass and interviewing technique. Careful, persistent, unflinching, always with the 0:02:24.356 --> 0:02:27.996 sense that there is something he's trying to uncover. I 0:02:28.076 --> 0:02:30.836 interview people for a living as well, but I could 0:02:30.876 --> 0:02:34.636 not have sat so patiently with Helen Lovitt for that long. 0:02:39.636 --> 0:02:42.876 My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, 0:02:43.156 --> 0:02:48.596 my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. In this episode, 0:02:49.156 --> 0:02:52.916 I want to do something simple. Play you selections from 0:02:52.956 --> 0:02:59.716 Helen Levitt's interview. I want you to listen to her 0:02:59.756 --> 0:03:04.076 story in her words and here as I did, about 0:03:04.116 --> 0:03:06.836 a crucial decision she and her husband made when they 0:03:06.836 --> 0:03:10.076 were young. At the end, I want you to judge 0:03:10.116 --> 0:03:14.116 her and decide whether she deserved her fate. Since we 0:03:14.196 --> 0:03:16.156 seem to be doing a fair amount of this these days, 0:03:16.716 --> 0:03:19.916 judging people for the things they say and believe, I 0:03:19.916 --> 0:03:31.636 thought it would be a useful exercise. Helen grew up 0:03:31.836 --> 0:03:34.516 in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, in a house 0:03:34.556 --> 0:03:37.356 on the corner of Carroll Street and Kingston Avenue. 0:03:37.836 --> 0:03:43.396 My paternal grandfather went to parochial high school and then 0:03:43.476 --> 0:03:48.356 to med school and became a doctor, as did my father. 0:03:48.956 --> 0:03:55.076 Helen was a precocious child, alert, intelligent. She remembers as 0:03:55.116 --> 0:03:57.476 a kid reading a charity appeal in the New York 0:03:57.476 --> 0:04:00.476 Times New York's one hundred Neediest Cases. 0:04:01.516 --> 0:04:07.116 They gave an each day or each week, actual cases 0:04:07.436 --> 0:04:13.876 of poor ring people, and I never missed reading every 0:04:13.916 --> 0:04:18.996 one of those cases, and I agonized as I read them. 0:04:19.556 --> 0:04:21.876 Once she went to a birthday party for a wealthy 0:04:21.916 --> 0:04:25.956 friend of hers, held at the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum. 0:04:26.116 --> 0:04:31.796 So here, all we little rich kids went to this terrible, dreary, 0:04:31.916 --> 0:04:35.116 Dickens like place, and the show was put on, and 0:04:35.156 --> 0:04:37.276 all of the laworphins were brought in they could watch 0:04:37.316 --> 0:04:39.516 the show, and then all of the orphans were led 0:04:39.556 --> 0:04:42.836 away down these dark walls, and there was a horror 0:04:42.876 --> 0:04:45.116 to it that never left me. 0:04:45.996 --> 0:04:48.476 She was a child of the nineteen thirties, when the 0:04:48.516 --> 0:04:51.796 grand experiment that was America suddenly turned bleak. 0:04:53.836 --> 0:04:57.356 Did the depression have much of an impact on your family? 0:04:57.436 --> 0:05:02.196 Oh? Yeah, My father was just this devastated. 0:05:02.916 --> 0:05:07.596 His medical practice suffered, patients stopped paying, his investments were 0:05:07.596 --> 0:05:08.156 wiped out. 0:05:09.116 --> 0:05:13.156 The prohibition was over. I know he was selling liquor 0:05:13.236 --> 0:05:15.196 prescriptions to the druggists across the street. 0:05:17.876 --> 0:05:19.836 Was your father a political person at all? 0:05:20.316 --> 0:05:23.156 Yes, he was what you'd call a parlor pink. He 0:05:23.196 --> 0:05:26.476 and his friend Harry Silver would fight the revolution in 0:05:26.556 --> 0:05:30.516 our living room. They would have these vile and political 0:05:30.556 --> 0:05:35.756 discussion and the women who would sit there so disgusted 0:05:35.876 --> 0:05:38.996 because these two guys couldn't make a decent living and 0:05:38.996 --> 0:05:42.876 here they were talking about changing the world. But I 0:05:42.996 --> 0:05:47.836 realized fairly recently and looking back, that those two guys 0:05:47.916 --> 0:05:50.756 were doing that for my benefit, because they knew that 0:05:50.796 --> 0:05:52.916 there was one person in that room who was listening, 0:05:53.716 --> 0:05:54.316 and that was me. 0:05:55.796 --> 0:06:00.476 Helen listened as a teenager. She was a junior counselor 0:06:00.596 --> 0:06:01.916 at her summer camp. 0:06:01.916 --> 0:06:05.836 And my new friend Ayes came to camp. She was beautiful, 0:06:06.516 --> 0:06:09.876 and she got these incredible love letters from my radical 0:06:10.476 --> 0:06:13.516 boyfriend in New York that she would let me read. 0:06:13.596 --> 0:06:17.996 They were just so romantic and political. She took me 0:06:18.156 --> 0:06:21.436 to meet him on a night that he was making 0:06:21.436 --> 0:06:25.036 a speech from a soapbox in Manhattan. That was where 0:06:25.516 --> 0:06:29.356 I was exposed to the Young Communists. 0:06:30.796 --> 0:06:34.756 The Young Communist League, the Weisiel, the youth branch of 0:06:34.796 --> 0:06:39.516 the American Communist Party. Nobody recruited Helen. She just walked 0:06:39.596 --> 0:06:44.316 up and volunteered. In the thirties, the Young Communist League 0:06:44.316 --> 0:06:48.636 of America had thousands of members. The WEISIL branch in 0:06:48.676 --> 0:06:52.196 New York was a world unto itself, filled with ideas 0:06:52.196 --> 0:06:55.276 and passion. They were people going hungry all over the 0:06:55.396 --> 0:06:58.916 United States, an ongoing moral catastrophe in the American South, 0:06:59.236 --> 0:07:02.356 a vicious war in Spain against fascism, not to mention 0:07:02.516 --> 0:07:06.636 Hitler's rise in Germany. Americans were looking for answers, and 0:07:06.756 --> 0:07:10.356 many found them in the world's biggest communist empire, the 0:07:10.396 --> 0:07:11.196 Soviet Union. 0:07:12.116 --> 0:07:17.596 I found it unfairness of life, unbearable and assumed that God, 0:07:17.636 --> 0:07:21.236 if it were fixable, how wonderful. And the fact that 0:07:21.276 --> 0:07:25.956 there was a country, the Soviet Union, which was really 0:07:25.996 --> 0:07:28.876 trying to fix it, seemed quite marvelous to me. 0:07:32.916 --> 0:07:35.156 But the first time as I stepped on Soviet soil, 0:07:35.676 --> 0:07:39.836 I felt myself a full human being, a full human being. 0:07:40.276 --> 0:07:44.076 The Black American actor and singer Paul Robson, then, at 0:07:44.116 --> 0:07:46.676 the height of his fame, made a pilgrimage to the 0:07:46.676 --> 0:07:49.836 mecca of Communism and said, for the first time in 0:07:49.876 --> 0:07:52.876 my life, I walk in full human dignity. 0:07:53.516 --> 0:07:56.796 The people who were doing things really out there fighting 0:07:57.396 --> 0:07:59.916 the good fight with the uncommunists. 0:08:00.396 --> 0:08:04.596 Helen was now attending Brooklyn College, volunteering in a rat 0:08:04.716 --> 0:08:08.956 infested building for the YCL, making sandwiches that the branch 0:08:09.236 --> 0:08:10.116 sell to pay the rent. 0:08:10.796 --> 0:08:12.676 After I would get out of the kitchen, the rats 0:08:12.716 --> 0:08:14.276 would take over and I could see them. 0:08:15.276 --> 0:08:18.356 Helen met al Levitt at summer camp. He was from 0:08:18.356 --> 0:08:21.476 the Bronx. He wanted to be a writer. He followed 0:08:21.476 --> 0:08:23.996 her into the YCL. They got married and moved to 0:08:24.036 --> 0:08:27.516 Los Angeles, had two kids, lived up in the Hollywood Hills. 0:08:28.116 --> 0:08:31.716 All wrote for the movies and television. Social parables like 0:08:31.756 --> 0:08:34.876 the nineteen forty eight Technicolor film The Boy with the 0:08:34.916 --> 0:08:35.476 Green Hair. 0:08:36.596 --> 0:08:41.196 Everywhere you go people will say, they will say, there 0:08:41.236 --> 0:08:44.796 is the boy with a green hair, and then people 0:08:44.836 --> 0:08:50.276 will ask why does he have green hair? So you 0:08:50.316 --> 0:08:55.196 will tell them because I am a war orphan, and 0:08:55.236 --> 0:08:58.516 my green hair is to remind you that war is 0:08:58.716 --> 0:09:02.676 very bad for children who must tell all the people. 0:09:03.156 --> 0:09:07.996 Helen helped found a nonprofit theater in Hollywood, volunteered ran things. 0:09:09.316 --> 0:09:12.396 Has been that way. It's always been somebody asked me 0:09:12.436 --> 0:09:16.316 to do something, you know, I did it, and I 0:09:16.356 --> 0:09:20.036 always did much more than was asked with me. That 0:09:20.236 --> 0:09:21.956 was the story of my life. 0:09:23.876 --> 0:09:26.596 While I was listening to Helen Levitt's story of how 0:09:26.636 --> 0:09:29.236 she came to join the Communist Party, I couldn't help 0:09:29.236 --> 0:09:32.156 but think of myself at eighteen, the age that she 0:09:32.356 --> 0:09:35.516 was when she entered the movement. I just started college. 0:09:35.836 --> 0:09:38.276 It was the early eighties. I had a poster of 0:09:38.356 --> 0:09:41.076 Ronald Reagan on my wall. If you asked me what 0:09:41.156 --> 0:09:44.076 I was back then, I would have said I was 0:09:44.116 --> 0:09:47.996 an anti communist. That was my cause. The Soviet Union 0:09:48.236 --> 0:09:49.956 had just invaded Afghanistan. 0:09:50.476 --> 0:09:53.676 The Afghan defenders and the Russian attackers fought bitterly for 0:09:53.716 --> 0:09:57.436 almost four hours, and according to the Afghan source, casualties 0:09:57.436 --> 0:09:58.916 on both sides were heavy. 0:09:59.316 --> 0:10:01.876 It was holding much of Eastern Europe hostage. 0:10:02.036 --> 0:10:04.716 Poland, now under martial law, is sealed off from the 0:10:04.756 --> 0:10:08.996 outside world. Britain, America and other Western nations are watching closely. 0:10:09.716 --> 0:10:12.476 The Soviet Union A party wasn't involved, but from the 0:10:12.476 --> 0:10:14.196 background they approved. 0:10:14.556 --> 0:10:17.596 This summer after my sophomore year, I did a journalism 0:10:17.636 --> 0:10:20.596 internship in Washington, d C. Where we were required to 0:10:20.636 --> 0:10:24.116 do a research project. Mine was on how many people 0:10:24.156 --> 0:10:27.796 had been killed by communism. I spent the summer in 0:10:27.836 --> 0:10:30.756 the Library of Congress trying to track down who was 0:10:30.876 --> 0:10:34.756 killed in what government manufactured famine or who died in 0:10:34.796 --> 0:10:41.836 what interment camp. I was horrified. Helen Levitt got caught 0:10:41.916 --> 0:10:44.436 up in the communist movement at the same age I 0:10:44.476 --> 0:10:47.436 got caught up in the anti communist movement, and for 0:10:47.476 --> 0:10:50.196 the same reason, because eighteen is the age that we 0:10:50.236 --> 0:10:53.836 look for a cause bigger than ourselves. It's funny. I 0:10:53.836 --> 0:10:55.876 haven't thought about that time in my life for years, 0:10:56.556 --> 0:10:59.916 except when I listened to Helen Levitt and it all 0:10:59.956 --> 0:11:00.836 came rushing back. 0:11:01.796 --> 0:11:07.316 The brightest and the most beautiful were leading the young radicals. 0:11:07.356 --> 0:11:10.716 I mean they were the most lesling figures on campus. 0:11:11.236 --> 0:11:14.596 They were the most brilliant professors, no question about it. 0:11:14.876 --> 0:11:18.796 The only courses that I remember were taught by Marxist professors. 0:11:20.716 --> 0:11:24.076 I asked you at the beginning to judge her, So next, 0:11:25.036 --> 0:11:46.676 let's judge her. 0:11:50.516 --> 0:11:52.876 An you seek, where would they be? 0:11:54.516 --> 0:11:55.236 Did she used me a. 0:11:55.156 --> 0:11:56.076 Little bit of us? 0:11:59.636 --> 0:12:02.556 The leader of the Soviet Union from the late nineteen 0:12:02.556 --> 0:12:07.116 twenties to nineteen fifty three was Joseph Stalin. He embarked 0:12:07.156 --> 0:12:12.956 on an aggressive course of nationalation. He collectivized agriculture. Millions 0:12:12.996 --> 0:12:16.716 of peasants were forced off their land. In the early thirties, 0:12:16.996 --> 0:12:21.516 agricultural areas like Ukraine were devastated by famine, caused in 0:12:21.636 --> 0:12:26.276 large part by Stalin's policies. Five to seven million people died. 0:12:27.076 --> 0:12:30.436 He established the Gulag, a network of prison camps through 0:12:30.476 --> 0:12:33.596 which eighteen million people were held at one time or another. 0:12:34.396 --> 0:12:36.756 In the years that the Young Communist League was serving 0:12:36.836 --> 0:12:39.996 sandwiches in New York City, Stalin launched something called the 0:12:39.996 --> 0:12:45.236 Great Purge. Seven hundred thousand people were murdered in August 0:12:45.316 --> 0:12:48.476 of nineteen thirty nine, Stalin signed a non aggression pact 0:12:48.476 --> 0:12:49.036 with Hitler. 0:12:49.556 --> 0:12:51.716 We have reached the serious events of the week. Van 0:12:51.796 --> 0:12:55.556 Ribentrop leaving Berlin for Moscow ushers in a new, incomprehensible 0:12:55.636 --> 0:12:58.676 chapter in German diplomacy. What has happened to the principles 0:12:58.716 --> 0:13:01.876 of Maine Camp? Equally, what can Russia have in common 0:13:01.876 --> 0:13:02.436 with Germany? 0:13:03.596 --> 0:13:06.836 The hero of the idealists back in Brooklyn had made 0:13:06.836 --> 0:13:11.356 a deal with a monster. The historian Larry Sepplier interviewed 0:13:11.396 --> 0:13:14.396 many American Communists from those years, and he told me 0:13:14.676 --> 0:13:18.476 their unwavering support for Stalin always bothered. 0:13:18.236 --> 0:13:20.956 Him again and again, even from people who I thought 0:13:20.956 --> 0:13:26.196 were really incredibly intelligent people. Their main answer was, we 0:13:26.276 --> 0:13:29.236 thought the party leaders knew better, We thought they had 0:13:29.276 --> 0:13:31.676 more information, that they were a little more sophisticated in 0:13:31.676 --> 0:13:36.276 their reasoning, and so we went along. That always threw me. 0:13:36.356 --> 0:13:40.596 I mean, I'm still to this day don't really find 0:13:40.636 --> 0:13:41.276 it convincing. 0:13:41.996 --> 0:13:44.796 When the Levitts moved to Los Angeles, they joined the 0:13:44.796 --> 0:13:48.276 Hollywood branch of the Communist Party. The way Helen Levitt 0:13:48.276 --> 0:13:50.636 talks about it, she makes it sound like a glorified 0:13:50.716 --> 0:13:52.876 social club. It wasn't. 0:13:53.716 --> 0:13:56.596 They had various branches, and they would get their orders, 0:13:56.676 --> 0:14:00.556 as it were, from the county, usually filters from New York. 0:14:01.196 --> 0:14:05.356 How closely was the National Party under the control of, 0:14:05.516 --> 0:14:08.636 or in communication with, the Soviet Union in those years. 0:14:08.556 --> 0:14:13.276 Complete complete control. The Party couldn't do anything that the 0:14:13.316 --> 0:14:16.036 people in Moscow would disapprove of, and when they did, 0:14:16.436 --> 0:14:19.076 they were rapidly brought into line. 0:14:19.916 --> 0:14:24.516 Meanwhile, Stalin's policies were not exactly a secret. The purges, 0:14:24.636 --> 0:14:27.556 the famine, the pact with Hitler, the show trials, the 0:14:27.596 --> 0:14:31.076 concentration camps. There were plenty of people in the United 0:14:31.116 --> 0:14:35.396 States appalled by what was happening in the USSR, just 0:14:35.436 --> 0:14:38.556 not the members of the Hollywood branch of the Communist Party. 0:14:39.356 --> 0:14:42.716 At one point, Larry Sepplair asked Helen Levitt if she 0:14:42.756 --> 0:14:46.316 would have considered herself a Stalinist through this whole era. 0:14:46.916 --> 0:14:48.716 She said, of course. 0:14:49.396 --> 0:14:54.036 The general attitude we took in terms of any attacks 0:14:54.076 --> 0:14:59.836 against the Soviet Union was that the establishment here had 0:14:59.916 --> 0:15:05.836 so much at stake to undermine any success in the 0:15:05.876 --> 0:15:12.636 Soviet Union that you couldn't believe anything justified everything. The 0:15:12.716 --> 0:15:18.116 Nazi Soviet fact did not bother us. We really trusted 0:15:18.196 --> 0:15:20.596 Stalin that he knew what he was doing. 0:15:21.516 --> 0:15:26.436 Stalin died in nineteen fifty three. His successor, Nikita Krushev, 0:15:26.836 --> 0:15:30.996 famously denounced him in nineteen fifty six. After that, it 0:15:31.076 --> 0:15:35.396 was impossible to maintain the fiction that Stalin was anything 0:15:35.556 --> 0:15:39.996 except one of the twentieth century's bloodiest dictators. Only then 0:15:40.396 --> 0:15:42.556 did the Communist Party in Hollywood fade away? 0:15:43.196 --> 0:15:45.636 Why did you leave the Communist Party? Was that stoudible? 0:15:45.716 --> 0:15:50.756 Oh, it just disappeared after the Khrushchiev whatever, the Krushev. 0:15:50.356 --> 0:15:53.516 Report, the secret so called secret speech, whatever. 0:15:53.756 --> 0:15:57.636 Yeah, I mean, the party just disappeared in Hollywood. We 0:15:57.716 --> 0:16:00.756 didn't leave formally as that saying, you know, we're leaving 0:16:00.836 --> 0:16:03.996 because there was no party. It just overnight it disappeared. 0:16:04.676 --> 0:16:11.516 Did you feel embarrassed having supported the Soviet We've seen no. 0:16:13.636 --> 0:16:16.916 Keep in mind Larry's Sepplayer and hell Novitt are talking 0:16:16.956 --> 0:16:20.436 in nineteen eighty eight, during the final chaotic years of 0:16:20.476 --> 0:16:24.956 the USSR, when many Russians felt embarrassed about having supported 0:16:24.996 --> 0:16:31.356 the Soviet Union, not hell Nod. There's a famous picture 0:16:31.436 --> 0:16:34.396 taken at the Yalta conference in nineteen forty five, where 0:16:34.396 --> 0:16:37.556 the Allies met to play the end of the War, Churchill, 0:16:38.076 --> 0:16:42.076 FDR and Stalin sitting in a row. As a teenager 0:16:42.196 --> 0:16:47.036 in my anti communist phase, I was fixated on that photograph. Churchill, 0:16:47.236 --> 0:16:52.396 the greatest of all British wartime leaders, looks grumpy and indomitable. Roosevelt, 0:16:52.556 --> 0:16:56.156 who created the modern American state, is thin and drawn. 0:16:56.876 --> 0:16:59.716 He will be dead instid of a few months. Then 0:17:00.316 --> 0:17:03.836 there's Stalin on the end, in full Soviet Army dress, 0:17:04.196 --> 0:17:06.876 looking straight at the camera, with a trace of a 0:17:06.916 --> 0:17:10.876 smile below his thick mustache. All I could think was, 0:17:11.436 --> 0:17:15.116 what's so funny? Why is he smiling? How could the 0:17:15.116 --> 0:17:19.636 others put up with him? I thought of that photograph 0:17:19.676 --> 0:17:22.636 again when I listened to Helen Levitt rhapsodized about the 0:17:22.676 --> 0:17:26.556 glories of her Communists past. She looked at those three men, 0:17:26.916 --> 0:17:30.596 and she cast her lot with the paranoid, homicidal jackass 0:17:30.636 --> 0:17:34.636 on the end. And why because she mistakenly thought that 0:17:34.676 --> 0:17:37.436 the way to deal with the world's injustices was to 0:17:37.516 --> 0:17:41.316 line up behind a monster. In seven hours of talking 0:17:41.356 --> 0:17:46.036 with Larry Sepplair, Helen Levitt never once comes to terms 0:17:46.036 --> 0:17:50.236 with the consequences of her beliefs. No remorse, no regrets 0:17:50.276 --> 0:17:55.876 nothing about her heavy days at Brooklyn College except nostalgia. 0:17:58.156 --> 0:18:01.476 Young people who were on the campus who did not 0:18:01.556 --> 0:18:06.996 get involved, either with the young Communists or the Young Socialists, 0:18:08.476 --> 0:18:12.596 weren't enough because it was heavy stuff. I mean Angles 0:18:13.036 --> 0:18:16.236 and even Lenin. I mean Marx is impossible to read, 0:18:16.236 --> 0:18:19.996 but Angles was comprehensible but very well. It was a 0:18:20.116 --> 0:18:23.316 challenge to read. But I was very impressed with Angles 0:18:23.356 --> 0:18:30.076 and Lenin. They both were extraordinary minds and incredible writers. 0:18:30.596 --> 0:18:32.836 A young people who didn't get in either didn't have 0:18:32.916 --> 0:18:37.796 the intellectual capacity while the courage. 0:18:40.196 --> 0:18:42.796 As I listened to the interview, this is the moment 0:18:42.836 --> 0:18:47.076 that hit me, the sheer arrogance of it. But then 0:18:47.116 --> 0:18:51.316 I kept listening to the rest of her story. In 0:18:51.396 --> 0:18:54.756 nineteen forty seven, the Cold War between the USSR and 0:18:54.996 --> 0:18:58.276 US had just begun. A large chunk of Germany and 0:18:58.316 --> 0:19:02.756 Eastern Europe was under Soviet control. British Prime Minister Winston 0:19:02.836 --> 0:19:08.156 Churchill sounded a warning that would instantly become famous. 0:19:09.156 --> 0:19:14.876 Jordan has descended across the continent behind that line by 0:19:15.036 --> 0:19:19.116 all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and 0:19:19.236 --> 0:19:20.036 Eastern Europe. 0:19:21.196 --> 0:19:24.596 The hunt for communists within the United States became an obsession, 0:19:25.236 --> 0:19:26.716 starting with Hollywood. 0:19:27.316 --> 0:19:30.596 This committee, under its mandate from the House of Representatives, 0:19:31.396 --> 0:19:36.876 has the responsibility of exposing and spotlightings diversive ailments wherever 0:19:36.916 --> 0:19:37.636 they may exist. 0:19:38.436 --> 0:19:43.516 In nineteen forty seven, the House Unamerican Activities Committee held hearings. 0:19:44.116 --> 0:19:46.996 It is only to be expected that Communists would strive 0:19:47.076 --> 0:19:51.836 desperately to gain entry to the motion picture industry, simply 0:19:51.876 --> 0:19:56.076 because the industry offers such a tremendous weapon for education 0:19:56.356 --> 0:19:57.276 and propaganda. 0:19:57.876 --> 0:20:01.276 Screenwriters and movie stars who were suspected of once being 0:20:01.356 --> 0:20:05.156 members of the Communist Party were called to testify. Those 0:20:05.196 --> 0:20:09.076 who refused went to prison. Anyone suspected of Communist time 0:20:09.156 --> 0:20:12.716 eyes were blacklisted. It was all but impossible for them 0:20:12.716 --> 0:20:15.876 to work in show business under their own names. The 0:20:15.996 --> 0:20:18.036 Levitts saw their friends get caught up in the witch 0:20:18.116 --> 0:20:21.996 hunt one by one, and then one day the witch 0:20:22.036 --> 0:20:23.796 hunt came for them. 0:20:23.996 --> 0:20:27.676 You know, things were really going along very nicely. I say, 0:20:27.676 --> 0:20:29.356 it was a kind of jolly life. 0:20:29.956 --> 0:20:32.796 It was nineteen fifty one. Helen had just had a baby, 0:20:32.876 --> 0:20:36.636 their second, a daughter. They had a housekeeper and a nurse. 0:20:37.276 --> 0:20:40.196 Her husband, Al was a rising star in Hollywood. 0:20:40.596 --> 0:20:44.916 And then when they came to the door with the subpoena. 0:20:45.036 --> 0:20:46.956 Was kind of a cold chill, because I knew it 0:20:46.996 --> 0:20:47.516 was all over. 0:20:48.676 --> 0:20:51.316 Now, was this a subpoena to appear publicly? 0:20:51.476 --> 0:20:53.436 Orcipino peer publicly? 0:20:53.476 --> 0:20:54.156 In Washington. 0:20:54.876 --> 0:20:57.996 Both the Levitts were called to testify. They were asked 0:20:58.036 --> 0:21:01.436 about their Communist affiliations. They were forced to take the 0:21:01.476 --> 0:21:04.796 fifth al Levitt had a statement prepared for his appearance 0:21:04.836 --> 0:21:08.156 that day. He read it decades later to Larry Sepplair. 0:21:09.116 --> 0:21:12.236 Every man has the right to be unpopular, or even 0:21:12.316 --> 0:21:17.876 to be wrong, without suffering the consequence of official censure, blacklist, 0:21:17.996 --> 0:21:21.676 or a jail. Most peace loving people will find themselves 0:21:21.716 --> 0:21:26.156 unpopular with this committee. I do not therefore intend to 0:21:26.276 --> 0:21:30.756 enter my beliefs or my associations in a popularity contest 0:21:31.196 --> 0:21:33.796 in which the members of this committee are the judges. 0:21:34.596 --> 0:21:37.436 I shall offer no cooperation to the evil purpose of 0:21:37.436 --> 0:21:54.876 these hearings, except that which the force of law compels. 0:21:47.716 --> 0:21:54.436 Extraordinary a committee of Congress. And yet I was very calm, 0:21:54.516 --> 0:21:58.796 very composed, turned to my lawyers when I needed to. 0:21:59.916 --> 0:22:07.196 But I have footage of us in the hall of 0:22:07.236 --> 0:22:11.116 the Federal Building minutes after we came out of the 0:22:11.156 --> 0:22:14.756 hearing room, and I'm so pleased with it. Not only 0:22:14.836 --> 0:22:17.796 do we look so young, which well, everybody you know 0:22:17.956 --> 0:22:22.396 is young before they get old. But I'm laughing. You know, 0:22:22.476 --> 0:22:25.916 we're in such good spirits. I mean, there's no sense 0:22:25.996 --> 0:22:32.116 of people who have been through an ordeal, but but 0:22:32.356 --> 0:22:35.436 people who have done something difficult and you know then 0:22:35.476 --> 0:22:35.836 they did it. 0:22:38.876 --> 0:22:40.876 Had you decided what you were going to do with 0:22:40.916 --> 0:22:43.796 the rest of your life now that Alice's professional career 0:22:43.916 --> 0:22:47.036 was an end, or that's something you've not been thinking 0:22:47.036 --> 0:22:47.876 about too much. 0:22:48.756 --> 0:22:52.756 Well, the first thing we did was fire the servants. 0:22:54.076 --> 0:22:57.196 Did you have a sense, sort of a perspective that 0:22:57.316 --> 0:23:02.956 this too shall pass? That, oh forever? 0:23:03.476 --> 0:23:06.636 The blacklist we thought was forever at that point. 0:23:07.196 --> 0:23:10.116 Hell never had her tax returns in those years in 0:23:10.156 --> 0:23:13.076 a little pile on the table. She took them out. 0:23:13.436 --> 0:23:16.196 So nineteen fifty two was the first full blacklist year, 0:23:16.196 --> 0:23:17.476 and your income that year was. 0:23:17.516 --> 0:23:20.556 Three thousand, nine hundred and fifty six dollars. 0:23:20.836 --> 0:23:23.436 Before landing on the blacklist, they had been making as 0:23:23.516 --> 0:23:26.236 much as twenty thousand dollars a year, very good money 0:23:26.276 --> 0:23:29.196 in the early nineteen fifties. Now they had to support 0:23:29.236 --> 0:23:32.796 their two children, on a fraction of that. Al Levitt 0:23:32.836 --> 0:23:34.836 met a rich man who took pity on him and 0:23:34.876 --> 0:23:38.396 gave him a job filing. He got seven hundred and 0:23:38.436 --> 0:23:41.996 twenty two dollars for the year. Al also used a front, 0:23:42.436 --> 0:23:45.796 which was common practice during the blacklist years. The front 0:23:45.876 --> 0:23:48.756 pretended to be the writer who got the credit, took 0:23:48.796 --> 0:23:51.716 half the money. The blacklisted writer did all the work. 0:23:52.516 --> 0:23:56.156 They were desperate. The next idea was correcting papers from 0:23:56.156 --> 0:24:00.076 a correspondent school. That job earned two hundred and fifty 0:24:00.076 --> 0:24:00.876 six dollars. 0:24:01.236 --> 0:24:03.396 After the kids were sleep we would set up to 0:24:03.556 --> 0:24:07.756 typewriters in the living room and correct papers from this 0:24:07.916 --> 0:24:12.396 correspondent school thirty five cents for the first lesson and 0:24:12.436 --> 0:24:14.556 a dollar for the last lesson, which was a full 0:24:14.596 --> 0:24:18.716 short story. That was a terrible period alive. 0:24:19.556 --> 0:24:23.436 They were broke, their marriage was falling apart. Then Al's 0:24:23.476 --> 0:24:25.436 parents came to visit for two weeks. 0:24:25.356 --> 0:24:28.076 And we tried to hide from them how terrible things were. 0:24:29.196 --> 0:24:31.636 When they left, they gave us thirty five dollars for 0:24:31.676 --> 0:24:34.316 their food, and I had to take it because if 0:24:34.356 --> 0:24:36.356 I hadn't, they wouldn't have been up. 0:24:36.436 --> 0:24:37.956 There wasn't a dime in the house. 0:24:38.836 --> 0:24:42.276 Because I had tried to, you know, make things seemed. 0:24:41.996 --> 0:24:42.836 Better than they were. 0:24:44.356 --> 0:24:48.436 Helen Lovett remembered every detail of this time. Their daughter 0:24:48.516 --> 0:24:52.236 was four and developmentally disabled. She was still drinking from 0:24:52.276 --> 0:24:54.836 a bottle and waking up two or three times a night. 0:24:55.356 --> 0:24:59.916 Helen and now were exhausted and most of all alone. 0:25:00.716 --> 0:25:03.876 Their son Tom was expelled from his school. Everyone around 0:25:03.916 --> 0:25:07.036 them seemed to be turning their backs from the moment 0:25:07.076 --> 0:25:10.396 they appeared before Congress. The it's became parias. 0:25:11.676 --> 0:25:16.196 Our best friend called that night and the ones that 0:25:16.236 --> 0:25:20.036 we had seen every Saturday night previously at Brantwood, we 0:25:20.316 --> 0:25:23.396 you know, went so regularly, and said don't come to 0:25:23.436 --> 0:25:28.556 the party on Friday night. That was a terrible moment. 0:25:28.836 --> 0:25:30.556 Did you lose a lot of friends? Well, a lot 0:25:30.556 --> 0:25:34.436 of friends. I know you're not a bitter or angry person, 0:25:34.516 --> 0:25:35.716 but what weren't you of. 0:25:35.876 --> 0:25:38.876 I was originally lonely, lonely. 0:25:38.956 --> 0:25:39.876 He was so sad. 0:25:40.596 --> 0:25:43.956 We were so lonely. We would have invited out maybe 0:25:43.996 --> 0:25:47.196 once or twice a year. It was blacklist night. When 0:25:47.196 --> 0:25:50.676 we were invited, another blacklisted couple would be there. 0:25:51.076 --> 0:25:51.476