The Genius and the Goddess (23 page)

I want you to understand that I am not protecting the
Communists or the Communist Party. I am trying to and I will
protect my sense of myself. I could not use the name of another
person and bring trouble on him. These were writers, poets, as
far as I could see, and the life of a writer, despite what it sometimes
seems, is pretty tough. I wouldn't make it any tougher for
anybody. I ask you not to ask me that question. . . .

I will be perfectly frank with you in anything relating to my
activities. I take responsibility for everything I have ever done,
but I cannot take responsibility for another human being. . . .

My conscience will not permit me to use the name of another
person. . . . My counsel advises me that there is no relevance
between this question and the question of whether I should
have a passport.
⁶

On September 27, 1956, the FBI summarized the main charges against
Miller:"He admitted signing many appeals and protests issued by 'Red
front groups in the last decade' but denied he was ever under communist
discipline. MILLER, when asked if he signed an application to
join the CP in 1939 or 1940, stated he had signed what he thought
to be an application for a 'study course' in Marxism. He refused to
name persons he had seen at CP Writers meetings."

Despite these damaging accusations, the "pipe-smoking playwright,"
self-assured and dignified, made a good impression and was treated
with respect. One historian wrote that his "appearance was notable
for its air of sober amiability. . . . Despite a certain [deliberate] fuzziness
on a number of points, Miller had been a credible witness. He
was responsive, collected, and only moderately sententious." David
Caute added that "up to a point Miller was a cooperative witness,
wordy rather than eloquent, less at home with the spoken than the
written word." Mary McCarthy explained why he was punished for
resisting the committee: "when it came to giving names he balked,
and this balking, in the view of his questioners, amounted to a limitation
on Congress' power to investigate." The committee of course
already knew all the names, but wanted him to accept "the
principle
of betrayal as a norm of good citizenship." When he refused to do
so, on July 25, 1956 "the contempt citation against him was voted
eventually by the House of Representatives – 373 to 9."
⁷
Miller's
staunch opposition to HUAC firmly established his image as a man
of courage and integrity. Comparing the two old friends,
Victor
Navasky noted how "Kazan emerged in the folklore of the left as the
quintessential informer, and Miller was hailed as the risk-taking
conscience of the times. . . . In his life, his politics, and his art, [Kazan]
has done as much to defend the naming of names as his old colleague
Miller has done to challenge it."

Not everyone admired Miller's performance. The playwright
Lillian
Hellman, who'd also been defended by Rauh when she was summoned
by HUAC, had pleaded the Fifth Amendment and stated, "I will not
cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions." She was jealous of his
success and did not see anything
courageous about his testimony.
Alluding to
The Crucible
, he'd told
HUAC that he'd "been to hell and
back and seen the devil." Hellman wisecracked that he "must have
gone as a tourist." She meant that he had come back safely from
Washington, that he was merely self-dramatizing his appearance and
that "he was too cozy with the committee for her taste, too willing
to grant their right to ask questions in the first place." In 1964, when
Miller's autographical play
After the Fall
was being performed in New
York, Hellman (using her own name instead of Miller's) published a
wicked parody that mocked his role as noble martyr:

"Buy My Guilt" was written by Lillian Hellman and is now
being performed in the converted tiger cages of the Bronx
Zoo on a most advanced thrust-retreat stage. . . . Miss Hellman
claims the play is not autobiographical, but the editors must
point out that the events of the play follow closely on her
life. . . .

The play concerns itself . . . with Miss Hellman's appearance
before the House Un-American Activities Committee, her inner
struggles, her unselfish concern with weaker and less fortunate
friends, her final admirable admission that all of us must stand
trial for the rest of us.
⁸

By pleading the Fifth Amendment Hellman had avoided the charge
of contempt. But, as Navasky noted, Miller took a greater risk by
opposing HUAC: "Miller made a decision, in spite of an awful lot of
advice the other way. People said,'You are blowing your career.' Either
he was braver or smarter than they were or he could not be in the
company of corrupt men for too long and live well with himself."
On July 8, about three weeks after the hearings and before he was
cited for contempt, Miller described his reaction to the ordeal in a
letter to Saul Bellow: "The slightly amazing thing to me is that I
never felt scared at all. Something's snapped in me – the connections
of fear. I guess I have reached that ancient and dangerous stage when
one just doesn't give a shit."
⁹

Miller maintained that he was not subpoenaed for his left-wing views,
but "because I was engaged to
Marilyn Monroe. Had I not been,
they'd never have thought of me. They'd been through the writers
long before and they'd never touched me. Once I became famous as
her possible husband, this was a great possibility for publicity."
Congressman Francis Walter, the chairman of HUAC, hoped that
Marilyn, concerned about maintaining her popularity with the public,
would support the committee. Wanting above all to get re-elected,
he actually telephoned Joseph Rauh and (Miller said) promised "that
if Marilyn would take a photograph with him, shaking his hand, he
would call off the whole thing. It's as simple as that. Marilyn would
get them on the front pages right away."

Miller refused to allow Marilyn to kiss the frog – and then staged
his own publicity feat. In the midst of his testimony, to take the heat
off and generate sympathy, he unexpectedly announced the real purpose
of his visit to England: "The objective is double. I have a production
which is in the talking stage in England of
A View from the Bridge
,
and I will be there with the woman who will then be my wife. That
is my aim." Learning from Marilyn about how to manipulate the
media, Miller pulled off a brilliant
coup de théâtre
. Marilyn was surprised
and delighted by his public announcement. Reacting as if Miller were
the great man and she the unworthy consort, she told Norman Rosten:
"He announced it before the whole world! He told the whole world
he was marrying Marilyn Monroe. Me! Can you believe it? You know
he never really asked me. We talked about it, but it was all very vague.
I mean, really ask
me
to marry
him
!"
¹⁰

Like Miller, Marilyn was pressured by well-intentioned but
misguided friends who urged her to protect her career and stay out
of the political controversy. The Strasbergs, intervening on her behalf,
pressed Miller to be a "friendly" witness and purge his "guilt" for
Marilyn's sake. He rejected their self-serving advice, which was
prompted by their own dubious history. Miller recalled that
"Paula
had been a friendly witness. She had been named by Kazan when he
was called in 1952, and named persons who were members. Her attitude
was that of a very cooperative person and I was [also] expected
to be cooperative."

At the same time that the Strasbergs were offering their advice,
Spyros Skouras was trying to keep his biggest star out of trouble.
Marilyn, who'd shrewdly rejected the studio's advice about the nude
calendar scandal and their warning about breaking her contract to go
to New York, now ignored their instructions to dissociate herself from
Miller and remain aloof from the struggle. Thinking of Marilyn, Miller
once remarked that "whatever psychological security one has had
better come from within, because the social support for it is very
chancy." Marilyn had very little psychological security and no social
support from her friends or the studio. But, braver and smarter than
her advisers, inspired by her love for Miller, she stood by him.

The HUAC investigation put intense and unremitting pressure on
both Miller and Marilyn just before and during the first two years
of their difficult marriage. Always sympathetic to the underdog, she
was naturally influenced by his left-wing political views. When questioned,
later on, about the communists, she relied on her instincts and
said, "They're for the people, aren't they?"
¹¹
Realizing perhaps that
she'd unintentionally aroused HUAC's interest in Miller, and identifying
with him as a victim, she was absolutely determined to use all
her considerable power to defend him.

Coached and encouraged by his lawyer, she told the press, "I'm
fully confident that in the end my husband will win his case." She
also confirmed, while alluding to Skouras, that when "Miller was on
trial for contempt of Congress, a certain corporation executive said
either he named names and I got him to name names, or I was
finished. I said,'I'm proud of my husband's position, and I stand behind
him all the way.'" Marilyn's
loyalty during this crisis was their finest
hour, and they would never be as close and as happy again. Impressed
by Marilyn's performance, Miller jokingly told Rauh that she would
make a fine vice president, though the senators would not be able to
concentrate on their work.
¹²

A sympathetic newspaper article in Miller's FBI file, published after
he was indicted, suggested that his relations with Marilyn had made
things more difficult for him. His marriage, "and not his brilliant
plays, have made him 'hot copy' and fair game for any semi-literate
hick politician who wants to make a hit with the folks back home
by proving that he can push Marilyn Monroe's husband around." Yet
the opposite was also true. Miller admitted that "to marry me in my
situation was a disaster" for Marilyn. But the intensely romantic and
highly publicized marriage greatly enhanced his image and actually
took the pressure off Miller. The courts finally decided it was best
not to imprison the husband of America's most glamorous and desirable
woman.

Miller had testified on June 21; he married Marilyn eight days
later, on June 29; and they flew to London on July 13, faced with
the distinct possibility that he would be convicted and sent to jail.
The
FBI never forgave Marilyn's loyalty to Miller and kept a file on
her for the rest of her life. They recorded that she had applied for a
Soviet visa in 1955, had been taken on a tour of Brooklyn by a
communist photographer in April 1956 and "associated closely with
certain members of the American Communist Group in Mexico"
while on vacation in March 1962.
¹³

On February 18, 1957 (after their return from England) a federal
jury indicted Miller on two counts of contempt of Congress, for
twice refusing to name writers suspected of communist sympathies.
Each count was punishable for up to a year in prison and a $1,000
fine. Rauh drafted Miller's public statement, which indicated the basis
of his appeal, and argued that questions about suspected communists
had nothing to do with inquiries about the abuse of passports:

The contempt citation for which I must now stand trial was
based on my refusal, on grounds of conscience, to name certain
persons who were present at a meeting of authors nine years
ago. I answered fully all the questions regarding myself and asked
only that I not be forced to name other people whom I believed
to be innocent of wrong-doing.

I was advised by my counsel that the questions regarding the
identity of the authors were not relevant to the investigation of
passport abuses, which was the subject-matter of the investigation.
I was further advised that a refusal to answer irrelevant
questions is not punishable. I understand that this will be among
the defenses which counsel will urge on my behalf in seeking
dismissal of the indictment.

On May 14 Miller was tried, without a jury, before Judge Charles
McLaughlin in the federal district court, and on May 31 was
convicted of two counts of contempt and faced a year in prison.
On July 19 the judge reduced his conviction to one count, suspended
his one-year prison term and fined him $500. A year later, on June
28, 1958, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia,
Rauh stated that Miller, an honest and cooperative witness, had
"answered all but two of the 200 questions. The two questions he
refused to answer concerned those present at certain meetings of
Communist Party Writers he attended in 1947." In his
Paris Review
interview, Miller explained the principles that sustained Rauh's
successful appeal:

My legal defense was not on any of the Constitutional amendments
but on the contention that Congress couldn't drag people
in and question them about anything on the Congressman's
mind; they had to show that the witness was likely to have information
relevant to some legislation then at issue. The committee
had put on a show of interest in passport legislation. I had been
denied a passport a couple of years earlier. Ergo, I fitted into
their vise. A year later I was convicted after a week's trial. Then
about a year after that, the Court of Appeals threw out the whole
thing.
¹⁴

In August 1958 Rauh triumphantly announced that Miller had
followed his conscience, "refused to inform on others and won his
case" – which was reversed on a technicality. The Court of Appeals
ruled that HUAC had not given him sufficient warning of the risk
of contempt. At the same time, Miller publicly stated that he "hoped
to stop the inhuman practice of making witnesses inform on long
past friends and acquaintances." In another letter Rauh explained
how Miller's courageous example had provided a legal precedent
that fatally weakened HUAC's oppressive power: "As more people
like Arthur refuse to 'inform' and are acquitted . . . more and more
people will stand up against the committee and ultimately the principle
will receive vindication."
¹⁵