Everywhere he went people thought he was foreign. Somehow, being the child of immigrants gave him the look of an immigrant himself: his thick hair, gray since his twenties, made him seem world-weary and somber; his dark, droopy eyes gave him an air of mystery and exhaustion, as if he’d witnessed terrible, unmentionable things, even after a blissful night’s sleep and a weekend bodysurfing in Malibu. Even his slight, skinny frame, the one thing he’d never liked about his looks, only added, according to Variety, to his “rakish appeal.” And it wasn’t just Variety that believed in him. In the early reviews, Backstage had called him “an old soul, by turns mesmerizing and terrifying to watch.” The L.A. Mirror had called him “a virtuoso capable of embodying both the horrors of war and the optimism of the future.”
And he had believed it. Everyone had. Since the day he’d been cast as Lev, Alexi had been aware that he was getting away with something — though, he reasoned, he’d never explicitly lied about anything. He just never told the complete truth. He may have, when asked about his American accent, mentioned the pronunciation workbooks stacked on his family’s kitchen table, as if he, and not just his parents, had pored over them nightly. He may have once, a little drunk at a party, pretended to forget the English words for the pigs in a blanket being passed around. He may have, that night and possibly a few others, begun sentences with, In my country. He may have, when asked by the film’s very openly communist director one night over steaks at Musso’s what he thought about Truman, parroted back what he’d overheard at the writers’ table, that he was narrow-minded and ruthless, his doctrine a farce and an affront to civil liberties. He may have, at Stella and Jack’s invitation, attended a number of meetings in their Hancock Park living room, where there may have been some pretty detailed discussions about following their Soviet comrades down whatever path they took. He may have, on one of those evenings, filled out one of the Party membership forms being passed around, simply because everyone else was. He may have lied to Katherine about his whereabouts, inventing a rummy game with the guys. He may have, after those living room meetings, followed Stella and Jack and Julia and all the others to the Polo Lounge for drinks, where there may have been talk about making another, even more politically charged film than The Unknown Soldier, a film so important, so heartbreaking, so stirring, the director said, that he’d eat his own shoe if it weren’t an immediate classic. Alexi may have gotten an erection at the possibility of starring in said film. He may have downed his vodka martini and announced, to every bigwig in the room, that if they weren’t considering anyone else, if they hadn’t already made a casting decision, that it would be both an honor and a gift to marry his political and artistic passions in such a project, to entwine them so entirely, and they may have, every person in that room, eaten it all up completely.
Not that he’d admit to any of this, even under oath. Especially under oath. Alexi Liebman may have been a lot of things, but one thing he’d never be was a snitch. Anyway, none of that information, he knew, would have made a difference in court. He’d still gone to meetings, starred in a flagrantly political film, been a card-carrying Party member, even if he often was late paying his dues. Right after the cast and crew had been subpoenaed, Stella and Jack had mobilized everyone — there must have been twenty people — in their living room. They brought in the best lawyers they could find, sympathizers themselves, who all said, over and over, that if everyone banded together in court and invoked the Fifth Amendment, they’d not only protect the group but challenge the House Un-American Activities Committee’s right to ask such unconstitutional questions in the first place. Anyway, the lawyers said, they were certain of victory. Look how easily Howard Hughes had shouted down the congressional committee. The list went on. If everyone stuck together, the lawyers said, if they all meticulously coordinated their statements — and Alexi remembered how glaring Julia Wexler’s absence had been that evening, though they hadn’t yet learned that she’d named names, then scrambled to find work script-doctoring another film — they’d get through this relatively unscathed.
Alexi had believed them. He hadn’t known, that night at the meeting, that the group’s own refusal to give up names would get them cited for contempt of Congress, and that, when their final appeal was denied by the Supreme Court five months later, they’d all be sent to jail. No one — not Stella or Jack or the lawyers — really thought that was a possibility. Their group was one of the first brought in to testify, and at the time not even the lawyers were taking the Committee’s threats seriously. The best thing Alexi could do, they told him, both for his career and for his family, was to plead the Fifth; when the inquiry was finished — and they were all convinced it would blow over quickly — he’d want to be seen as loyal and trustworthy to his higher-ups so he could get back to work. Alexi had no choice but to listen. His career, once on the brink of massive success, was suddenly in danger of being orbited into obscurity, blacklisted before the world had a chance to know he existed. And so he did what he did to stay in the good graces of the only people who’d ever hired him. He approached the witness chair that day in Washington and handed the Committee a short statement the group had scripted: that in America there was a secret ballot, and he didn’t believe the government had any more right to inquire into his political affiliations than an election official had to walk into a voting booth and examine a ballot marked by the voter.
But as the chairman glanced at the statement, so quickly it was impossible he’d gleaned anything from it at all, Alexi had looked out at the packed caucus room, every seat filled, every newsreel camera and microphone aimed at him, and had been filled with a rush of disappointment. Because while he’d prepared himself for the spectacle — everyone knew what a PR gold mine this was for the Committee — he hadn’t been prepared for how bright the camera lights would be. He hadn’t been prepared for the way his entire body perked every time one of those bulbs flashed right at him, a thirsty, neglected plant back under the sun. And while he’d been prepared for the Committee chair’s question—Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? — he hadn’t been prepared for how deadening it would feel to give such a lackluster response during what, Alexi was realizing right then, may very well have been his final performance.
And yet he had known that, in the end, he would answer exactly as the lawyers had advised. So he’d looked right into the cameras and said, “Your question, Mr. Chairman, is both improper and illegal.” It was precisely the response he was supposed to give, vague and evasive — and, Alexi feared, completely unmemorable. He delivered it exactly as he was supposed to, in a clipped, unemotional tone — everything he’d learned not to do in acting class — and, maybe worst of all, the whole thing was over so quickly. The moment his words were out he was excused, all the cameras swiveling away from him and down the aisle to follow the next witness approaching the chair.