"We can't put him in too many scenes," I was told. "Otherwise we can't cut him out for the Southern version." I asked my executive producer what he was talking about. "If we release a picture in the South, we can't have colored people in it, or the exhibitors won't show it. We write the scenes so that we can release a Southern version by cutting out all the scenes with niggers."
I was astonished. I never knew they did things like that. "Look," I said. "I've made speeches in front of the NAACP and Urban League. I was in Newsweek with Mary McLeod Bethune. I can't be seen to be a party to this."
The voice coming over the phone turned nasty. "Look at your contract, Mr. Braun. You don't have script approval."
"I don't want to approve the script. I just want a script that recognizes certain facts about my life. If I do this script, my credibility will be gone. You're fucking with my image, here!" After that it turned unpleasant. I made certain threats and the executive producer made certain threats. I got a call from my accountant telling me what would happen if the ten grand per week stopped coming, and my agent told me I had no legal right to object to any of this.
Finally I called Earl and told him what was going on. "What did you say they were paying you?" he asked.
I told him again.
"Look," he said. "What you do in Hollywood is your business. But you're new there, and you're an unknown commodity to them. You want to stand up for the right, that's good. But if you walk, you won't do me or the Urban League any good. Stay in the business and get some clout, then use it. And if you feel guilty, the NAACP can always use some of that ten grand per week."
So there it was. My agent patched up an understanding with the studio to the effect that I was to be consulted on script changes. I succeeded in getting the FBI dropped from the script, leaving the Holmes character without any set governmental affiliation, and I tried to make the Sanderson character a little more interesting.
I watched the rushes, and they were good. I liked my acting-it was relaxed, anyway, and I even got to step in front of a speeding Mercedes and watch it bounce off my chest. It was done with special effects.
The picture went into the can, and I went from a threemartini lunch into the wrap party without stopping to sober up. Three days later I woke up in Tijuana with a splitting headache and a suspicion that I'd just done something foolish. The pretty little blonde sharing the pillow told me what it was. We'd just got married. When she was in the bath I had to look at the marriage license to find out her name was Kim Wolfe.
She was a minor starlet from Georgia who'd been scuffling around Hollywood for six years.
After some aspirin and a few belts of tequila, marriage didn't seem like a half-bad idea. Maybe it was time, with my new career and all, that I settled down.
I bought Ronald Colman's old pseudo-English country house on Summit Drive in Beverly Hills, and I moved in with Kim, and our two secretaries, Kim's hairdresser, our two chauffeurs, our two live-in maids… suddenly I had all these people on salary, and I wasn't quite sure where they came from.
The next picture was The Rickenbacker Story. Victor Fleming was going to direct, with Fredric March as Pershing and June Allyson as the nurse I was supposed to fall in love with. Dewey Martin, of all people, was to play Richthofen, whose Teutonic breast I was going to shoot full of American lead-never mind that the real Richthofen was shot down by someone else. The picture was going to be filmed in Ireland, with an enormous budget and hundreds of extras. I insisted on learning how to fly, so I could do some of the stunts myself. I called Earl long-distance about that.
"Hey," I said. "I finally learned how to fly."
"Some farm boys," he said, "just take a while."
"Victor Fleming's gonna make me an ace."
"Jack." His voice was amused. "You're already an ace." Which stopped me up short, because somehow in all the activity I'd forgotten that it wasn't MGM who made me a star. "You've got a point, there," I said.
"You should come to New York a little more often," Earl said. "Figure out what's happening in the real world."
"Yeah. I'll do that. We'll talk about flying."
"We'll do that."
I stopped by New York for three days on my way to Ireland. Kim wasn't with me she'd gotten work, thanks to me, and had been loaned to Warner Brothers for a picture. She was very Southern anyway, and the one time she'd been with Earl she'd been very uncomfortable, and so I didn't mind she wasn't there.
I was in Ireland for seven months-the weather was so bad the shooting took forever. I met Kim in London twice, for a week each time, but the rest of the time I was on my own. I was faithful, after my fashion, which meant that I didn't sleep with any one girl more than twice in a row. I became a good enough pilot so that the stunt pilots actually complimented me a few times.
When I got back to California, I spent two weeks at Palm Springs with Kim. Golden Boy was going to premiere in two months. On my last day at the Springs, I'd just climbed out of the swimming pool when a congressional aide, sweating in a suit and tie, walked up to me and handed me a pink slip. It was subpoena. I was to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities bright and early on Tuesday. The very next day.
I was more annoyed than anything. I figured they obviously had the wrong Jack Braun. I called up Metro and talked to someone in the legal department. He surprised me by saying, "Oh, we thought you'd get the subpoena sometime soon."
"Wait a minute. How'd you know?"
There was a second's uncomfortable silence. "Our policy is to cooperate with the FBI. Look, we'll have one of our attorneys meet you in Washington. Just tell the committee what you know and you can be back in California next week."
"Hey," I said. "What's the FBI got to do with it? And why didn't you tell me this was coming? And what the hell does the committee think I know, anyway?"
"Something about China," the man said. "That was-what the investigators were asking us about, anyway."
I slammed the phone down and called Mr. Holmes. He and Earl and David had gotten their subpoenas earlier in the day and had been trying to reach me ever since, but couldn't get ahold of me in Palm Springs.
"They're going to try to break the Aces, farm boy," Earl said. "You'd better get the first flight east. We've got to talk." I made arrangements, and then Kim walked in, dressed in her tennis whites, just back from her lesson. She looked better in sweat than any woman I'd ever known.
"What's wrong?" she said. I Just pointed at the pink slip. Kim's reaction was fast, and it surprised me. "Don't do what the Ten did," she said quickly. "They consulted with each other and took a hard-line defense, and none of them have worked since." She reached for the phone. "Let me call the studio. We've got to get you a lawyer."
I watched her as she picked up the phone and began to dial. A chill hand touched the back of my neck.
"I wish I knew what was going on," I said.
But I knew. I knew even then, and my knowledge had a precision and a clarity that was terrifying. All I could think about was how I wished I couldn't see the choices quite so clearly.
To me, the Fear had come late. HUAC first went after Hollywood in '47, with the Hollywood Ten. Supposedly the committee was investigating Communist infiltration of the film industry-a ridiculous notion on the face of it, since no Communists were going to get any propaganda in the pictures without the express knowledge and permission of people like Mr. Mayer and the Brothers Warner. The Ten were all current or former Communists, and they and their lawyers agreed on a defense based on the First Amendment rights of free speech and association.
The committee rode over them like a herd of buffalo over a bed of daisies. The Ten were given contempt-of-Congress citations for their refusal to cooperate, and after their appeals ran out years later, they ended up in prison.