In Chicago, ex-Stripteaser Gypsy Rose Lee, more recently a novelist (The G-String Murders), was denounced last week as "an entertainer . . . reported to be a dear and close associate of the traitors to our country." Shocked by what he had read of Gypsy in Red Channels (a printed listing of 151 alleged Communist sympathizers and sponsors of front organizations), American Legionnaire Ed Clamage wired ABC's President Robert Kintner a question: What did Kintner intend to do about What Makes You Tick? (Sat. 9 p.m.), a new ABC show starring Miss Lee? Kintner, in reply, demanded proof that Gypsy was a Communist. The only "proof" damage could offer was Red Channels.
Flatly denying everything, Gypsy cried: "Look at me—I haven't slept in four nights. I have a terrible case of laryngitis from screaming my innocence at people." To the allegations of "front" activity, she said: "Entertainers are always being asked to help causes, and they all sound innocuous. Should we wire our Congressman to investigate before we do a benefit performance? I'm not a Red and never have been."
Other radio & TV entertainers were having Red Channels trouble:
¶ Singer-Pianist Hazel Scott, wife of Harlem's left-wing Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., hurried down to Washington to tell the Un-American Activities Committee that she had never been knowingly connected with the Communist Party. She asked "protection" for herself and others "unjustly accused."
¶ In Manhattan, Ireene Wicker, radio's veteran "Singing Lady," lamented that she had lost her sponsor after her name appeared in Red Channels. Her ex-sponsor, the Kellogg Co., replied stiffly that "it was merely a matter of business."
¶ In Manhattan, the entertainment unions cast about desperately for some means of clearing the air. Actors' Equity condemned firings "without opportunity for refutation of damaging insinuations . . ." The American Federation of Radio Actors considered inviting "advertising agencies, sponsors and networks to sit down and try to arrive at some solution." One solution seemed some sort of informal "Loyalty Board." But the Authors' League of America, whose president is South Pacific's Oscar Hammerstein 2nd, denounced that solution as a "sorry plan for back-door censorship" and declared: "We do not believe in a little censorship, any more than in a large."