[4/12/2011] E. B. White Tonight: Part 2 of "Afternoon of an American Boy" (continued)

In 1947, Warner Bros.' Jack Warner (right) was a "friendly witness" before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) chaired by J. Parnell Thomas (left) --

thereby lending support to popular allegations of a "Red infiltration of Hollywood." Warner felt that Communists were responsible for the studio's month-long strike that occurred in the fall of 1946, and on his own initiative, he provided the names of a dozen screenwriters who were dismissed because of suspected Communist sympathies, a move that effectively destroyed their careers. Former studio employees named by Warner included Alvah Bessie, Howard Koch, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Robert Rossen, Dalton Trumbo, Clifford Odets, and Irwin Shaw. As one biographer observed, Warner "was furious when Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Paul Henreid and John Huston joined other members of the stellar Committee for the First Amendment in a flight to Washington to preach against the threat to free expression". Lester D. Friedman noted that Warner's response to the HUAC hearings was similar to other Jewish studio heads who "feared that a blanket equation of Communists with Jews would destroy them and their industry". These concerns were deepened by the anti-Semitic rhetoric of prominent HUAC member John E. Rankin.

-- from Wikipedia

ABOUT J. PARNELL THOMAS: PART 2

You'll recall that White's "Afternoon of an American Boy" appeared first in The New Yorker of Nov. 29, 1947. At the time, J. Parnell Thomas (1895-1970), chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), had made himself one of the most feared men in the country. However, as we noted last night, his fortunes were about to take a downturn. From Wikipedia:

Rumors about corrupt practices on the part of Thomas were confirmed when his secretary, Helen Campbell, sent documents to [columnist Drew] Pearson which he used to expose Thomas' corruption in an August 4, 1948, newspaper article. The fraud had begun on New Years Day of 1940, when Thomas placed Myra Midkiff on his payroll as a clerk earning roughly $1,200 a year with the arrangement that she would then kick back all her salary to the Congressman, thus supplementing his income and avoiding taxes. The arrangement lasted for four years. As a result, Thomas was summoned to answer to charges of salary fraud before a grand jury.

Thomas refused to answer questions, citing his Fifth Amendment rights, the same stance for which he had criticised accused Communists. Indicted, Thomas was tried and convicted of fraud, fined and given an 18-month prison sentence. He resigned from Congress on January 2, 1950.

In another twist, he was imprisoned in Danbury Prison with Lester Cole and Ring Lardner, Jr., both members of the "Hollywood Ten" serving time because of Thomas' inquiries into the film industry.

After his release from prison, Thomas was an editor and publisher of three weekly newspapers in Bergen County, New Jersey. President Harry S. Truman pardoned Thomas on Christmas Eve of 1952. In 1954, Thomas tried to re-enter politics, but was defeated for the Republican Party nomination for Congress.

WHEN WE LEFT OFF LAST NIGHT IN PART 1
OF "AFTERNOON OF AN AMERICAN BOY"

Young Elwyn White had actually attended the famous tea dance at the Plaza Hotel, in the company of his older sister, who was frustrated by his social backwardness. The intersection of that transforming event with his current infatuation with a pretty neighborhood girl produced a mad scheme.

Incredible as it seems to me now, I formed the idea of asking Parnell's sister Eileen to accompany me to a tea dance at the Plaza. The plan shaped up in my mind as an expedition of unparalleled worldliness, calculated to stun even the most blasé girl. The fact that I didn't know how to dance must have been a powerful deterrent, but not powerful enough to stop me. As I look back on the affair, it's hard to credit my own memory, and I sometimes wonder if, in fact, the whole business isn't some dream that has gradually gained the status of actuality.

As Part 2 begins, our hero is faced with the first obstacle: making the phone call to Eileen. Anyone who has endured this ordeal should appreciate White's account. I especially admire the determination with which the young man sticks to his two prescripted and rehearsed lines.

Afternoon of an American Boy

(from The Second Tree from the Corner)

Part 2

A boy with any sense, wishing to become better acquainted with a girl who was "of special interest," would have cut out for himself a more modest assignment to start with -- a soda date or a movie date -- something within reasonable limits. Not me. I apparently became obsessed with the notion of taking Eileen to the Plaza and not to any darned old drugstore. I had learned the location of the Plaza, and just knowing how to get to it gave me a feeling of confidence. I had learned about cinnamon toast, so I felt able to cope with the waiter when he came along. And I banked heavily on the general splendor of the surroundings and the extreme sophistication of the function to carry the day, I guess.

I was three days getting up nerve to make the phone call. Meantime, I worked out everything in the greatest detail. I heeled myself with a safe amount of money. I looked up trains. I overhauled my clothes and assembled an outfit I believed would meet the test. Then, one night at six o'clock, when Mother and Father went downstairs to dinner, I lingered upstairs and entered the big closet off my bedroom where the wall phone was. There I stood for several minutes, trembling, my hand on the receiver, which hung upside down on the hook. (In our family, the receiver always hung upside down, with the big end up.)

I had rehearsed my first line and my second line. I planned to say, "Hello, can I please speak to Eileen?" Then, when she came to the phone, I planned to say, "Hello, Eileen, this is Elwyn White." From there on, I figured I could ad-lib it.

At last, I picked up the receiver and gave the number. As I had suspected, Eileen's mother answered.

"Can I please speak to Eileen?" I asked, in a low, troubled voice.

"Just a minute," said her mother. Then, on second thought, she asked, "Who is it, please?"

"It's Elwyn," I said.

She left the phone, and after quite a while Eileen's voice said, "Hello, Elwyn." This threw my second line out of whack, but I stuck to it doggedly.

"Hello, Eileen, this is Elwyn White," I said.

In no time at all I laid the proposition before her. She seemed dazed and asked me to wait a minute. I assume she went into a huddle with her mother. Finally, she said yes, she would like to go tea-dancing with me at the Plaza, and I said fine, I would call for her at quarter past three on Thursday afternoon, or whatever afternoon it was -- I've forgotten.

I do not know now, and of course did not know then, just how great was the mental and physical torture Eileen went through that day, but the incident stacks up as a sort of unintentional un-American activity, for which I was solely responsible. It all went off as scheduled: the stately walk to the depot; the solemn train ride, during which we sat staring shyly into the seat in front of us; the difficult walk from Grand Central across Forty-second to Fifth, with pedestrians clipping us and cutting in between us; the bus ride to Fifty-ninth Street; then the Plaza itself, and the cinnamon toast, and the music, and the excitement. The thundering quality of the occasion must have delivered a mental shock to me, deadening my recollection, for I have only the dimmest memory of leading Eileen onto the dance floor to execute two or three unspeakable rounds, in which I vainly tried to adapt my violent sister-and-brother wrestling act into something graceful and appropriate. It must have been awful. And at six o'clock, emerging, I gave no thought to any further entertainment, such as dinner in town. I simply herded Eileen back all the long, dreary way to Mount Vernon and deposited her, a few minutes after seven, on an empty stomach, at her home. Even if I had attempted to dine her, I don't believe it would have been possible; the emotional strain of the afternoon had caused me to perspire uninterruptedly, and any restaurant would have been justified in rejecting me solely on the ground that I was too moist.

Over the intervening years (all thirty-five of them), I've often felt guilty about my afternoon at the Plaza, and a few years ago, during Parnell's investigation of writers, my feeling sometimes took the form of a guilt sequence in which I imagined myself on the stand, in the committee room, being questioned. It went something like this:

PARNELL: Have you ever written for the screen, Mr. White?
ME: No, sir.
PARNELL: Have you ever been, or are you now, a member of the Screen Writers' Guild?
ME: No, sir.
PARNELL: Have you ever been, or are you now, a member of the Communist Party?
ME: No, sir.

Then, in this imaginary guilt sequence of mine, Parnell digs deep and comes up with the big question, calculated to throw me.

PARNELL: Do you recall an afternoon, along about the middle of the second decade of this century, when you took my sister to the Plaza Hotel for tea under the grossly misleading and false pretext that you knew how to dance?

And as my reply comes weakly,"Yes, sir," I hear the murmur run through the committee room and see reporters bending over their notebooks, scribbling hard. In my dream, I am again seated with Eileen at the edge of the dance floor, frightened, stunned, and happy -- in my ears the intoxicating drumbeat of the dance, in my throat the dry, bittersweet taste of cinnamon.

I don't know about the guilt, really. I guess a good many girls might say that an excursion such as the one I conducted Eileen on belongs in the un-American category. But there must be millions of aging males, now slipping into their anecdotage, who recall their Willie Baxter period with affection, and who remember some similar journey into ineptitude, in that precious, brief moment in life before love's pages, through constant reference, had become dog-eared, and before its narrative, through sheer competence, had lost the first, wild sense of derring-do.


RETURN TO THE BEGINNING OF THE POST

#