Two odd things...

I just came back from seeing Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg. It was fascinating - I'd never heard of Gertrude Berg, or The Goldbergs as either a TV or radio show. But there were a couple of odd moments.

The first thing is the insistence that Phillip Loeb wasn't a communist, and that therefor his blacklisting was a rank injustice. Yes, that's certainly true, and yet ... There's a certain feeling that if he had been a communist, it wouldn't have been so bad. Surely, that's not true? Surely we can agree that whether he was a communist should have had no bearing on his right to hold a job as an actor? That he wouldn't have deserved blacklisting if he had been one?

The other is another subtle thing. When Loeb was blacklisted, Gertrude Berg tried to find someone to help. She was told that Cardinal Spellman had helped others (such as Lena Horne and Harry Belafonte, at Ed Sullivan's request), so she went to him. He told her he probably could do something, on one condition: that she convert to Roman Catholicism.

When that line was spoken, most of the audience laughed.

I don't find that funny. I find it appalling, and for a couple of reasons. The first is that Spellman would make such a bargain - an innocent man's life (Loeb killed himself) or at least livelihood for what had to be a propaganda coup: the most famous Jewish woman in America converts! Next, that he would be willing to accept such a conversion as viable, at least for publication. You don't convert under duress and really convert. I'd thought the RCC's days of "convert or else" were over longer than half a century ago. Or is it that Spellman believee in the magic of saying the right words?