Whittaker Chambers and "The Americans"

Whittaker Chambers and "The Americans"

(c) Copyright (2016) by Kathleen Spaltro

All Rights Reserved

A compulsively watchable television series, "The Americans" concerns two unhappily married KGB agents. They pose as an all-American couple owning a travel agency while living in suburban Washington, DC, with their genuinely American children. An American counterintelligence officer lives next door. These Soviet agents conduct covert operations at the behest of Moscow Center in Ronald Reagan's Cold-War Washington during a period of heightened US-Soviet tensions. Married as cover, they also had their two American-born children as cover.

The most interesting parts of the drama depict their conflicting feelings, within themselves and between them, about their roles as spies, spouses, and parents. This well-acted series portrays complex human feelings breaking through all the lies and deception--real feelings about each other as spouses, about their American kids, about their training to be killers and spies for their cause, about their victims and enemies.

In itself, this TV series rivets my attention. Although it is fiction, its situation apparently derived from a true story. Indeed, I always find stories about Western and Eastern intelligence and counterintelligence interesting--whether they are fictional stories, like John le Carré's George Smiley novels, or real accounts, like those about the Cambridge Spies or about Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss. The whole Chambers/Hiss saga is fascinating.

Friends, fellow American citizens, and fellow Soviet agents, according to Chambers, Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss belonged to a spy ring that operated during the New Deal years, engaged in espionage, and also  influenced federal government policymaking. Sam Tanenhaus's "Whittaker Chambers" asserts, "the Soviets assembled a massive North American espionage network that reached a peak of efficiency during the war, recruiting more than one hundred agents who penetrated the departments of State, War, Treasury, the Office of Strategic Services (the wartime precursor to the CIA), the War Production Board, even the FBI."

Chambers left the service of Moscow in the late Thirties after experiencing intense anguish created by the suppression of dissent among American communists, the show trials and executions in Russia of comrades fallen out of ideological favor, reports about the murders of people whom he knew or knew of, Soviet actions during the Spanish Civil War, and, finally, the nonaggression pact between Stalin and Hitler—the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop accord. Fearing Nazi acquisition of Soviet-acquired intelligence about the United States, Chambers alerted the United States Department of State in 1939 about some of his knowledge. The FBI did not focus on this intelligence. Several years later, after Hitler's defeat, news about another Washington-based Soviet spy ring emerged, and Chambers was then subpoenaed to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee about what he knew.

The postwar focus on spying by American citizens for our former wartime ally, the Soviet Union, made both Chambers and Hiss famous, ruined both of their lives, and jumpstarted the career of the young Congressman Richard M. Nixon (R-California). Eventually, it led to the ugliness of Senator Joseph McCarthy's (R-Wisconsin) campaign to smear political dissidents with the charge of treason. Chambers considered McCarthy's reckless demagoguery disastrous for responsible anti-communism: "for the Right to tie itself in any way to Senator McCarthy is suicide. Even if he were not what, poor man, he has become, he can't lead anybody because he can't think."

McCarthyism confused the real treason of spies with the unpopular but constitutionally protected dissent of citizens. Conversely, many who protested the McCarthyite attack on the civil liberties of blacklisted citizens and upheld the innocence of Hiss minimized or denied the real threat posed by espionage. Even today, this confusion of two very different issues distorts much discussion of the historical record.

Commenting about Chambers's autobiography, "Witness," a friend of mine asserted, "It is one of the great under-appreciated American autobiographies. There is little chance of it getting taught much, given its length and its politics, but it's a very moving book." "Witness" explains what had attracted Chambers to communism, what had led to his membership in the American Communist Party and then to his service in the Soviet underground, and what eventually had motivated his rejection of communism. His title bears many meanings—witnessing treason, testifying as a congressional committee witness, bearing witness to his Christian (Quaker) faith, being a martyr or witness in his own life—a casualty of ideological war. Neither political nor economic, the book's tone and focus are eschatological/apocalyptic and religious/spiritual, for Chambers had rejected communism, not for capitalism, but for Christianity and for freedom. He depicts communism as the struggle of one faith against another.

Indeed with its emphasis on faith against faith, "Witness" provides the most insightful of commentaries on "The Americans." Believing, both as a communist and as an anticommunist, that faithless materialism was strangling the West, Chambers remembers about his attraction to communism, "it offered me … faith and a vision, something for which to live and something for which to die. It demanded of me those things which have always stirred what is best in men—courage, poverty, self-sacrifice, discipline, intelligence, my life, and, at need, my death." Chambers admired the dedication of many of his fellow communists. He deplored the ills of Western culture, manifested—for example—in the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. But, aghast at the pitiless workings of totalitarian dictatorship, at the use of terror to enforce policy, Chambers lost faith in communism because he heard the screams of those it murdered. He lost faith in the easy justification of their deaths.

first appeared in The Woodstock Independent

Teresa Wright: Virtue Unrewarded?

Teresa Wright:  Virtue Unrewarded?

(c) Copyright (2016) by Kathleen Spaltro

All Rights Reserved

One of the most distinctive American film actresses of the 1940s, Teresa Wright created an authentic acting style that caused Wright to stand out as a more talented and intelligent version of ourselves. Film critic James Agree in 1946 applauded the genuineness of her acting:  "she has always been one of the very few women in movies who really had a face.... she has also always used this translucent face with delicate and exciting talent as an actress, and with something of a novelist's perceptiveness behind the talent."  Wright's best performances on film illuminated how the loss of innocence can result in the deliberate choice of goodness during a crisis-laden encounter with evil.

"A Girl's Got to Breathe," Donald Spoto's new biography of Wright, places Wright's achievements as a film star, as well as an actor on stage and television, into the context of a difficult personal life. Wright's childhood was scarred by her disturbed mother who turned to prostitution and even serviced her johns with her young daughter in the bed. Wright's mother's eventual disappearance from her life left Wright to the care of her loving, if often absent, father but also left Teresa vulnerable to a lifelong struggle with undeservedly low self-esteem. Wright nevertheless was notably warm and empathic towards other people throughout her long life. Her close friendship with Spoto motivated his desire to write this affectionate and very readable biography.

Driven to become an actress, Wright eventually understudied the role of Emily in a stage production of "Our Town," played the role herself on tour, did summer stock, and then snagged a role in "Life with Father." Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn, having visited Wright backstage in 1940 after her performance, pressed her to work for his studio:  "I had discovered in her from the first sight, you might say, an unaffected genuineness and appeal." Goldwyn offered to moviegoers what Spoto describes as Wright's "rare kind of direct, unstudied warmth and an appealing freshness."

Stardom came quickly, as did the respect and esteem of directors and fellow actors:  Wright became the only actress ever to receive Academy Award nominations for each of her first three film roles:  in "The Little Foxes," "Mrs. Miniver," and "Pride of the Yankees." Winning for her least distinguished performance (in "Mrs. Miniver"), Wright would not even be nominated for her two most brilliant roles in movies:  in "Shadow of a Doubt" and in "The Best Years of Our Lives."

In Alfred Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt," Charlie Oakley, on the run from the police who suspect his guilt as the "Merry Widow Murderer," decides to visit his sister, Emma Newton, in California. Emma's daughter Charlotte has always idolized her uncle and felt a special psychic bond with him. Now that he is under her roof, however, Charlotte begins to doubt his character and eventually to suspect his criminality. Anxious to protect her mother from the devastating truth, Charlotte confronts her uncle, who fails repeatedly to stage her death as an accident and eventually promises to leave. Uncle Charlie traps Charlotte on the train carrying him away and tries again to kill her.

"Shadow of a Doubt" paired Patricia Collinge, as Emma, with Wright, as Charlotte. In her classic portrayals of Aunt Birdie in "The Little Foxes" and Emma in "Shadow of a Doubt," both innocent victims of depraved men, Collinge convincingly etched portraits of helplessness. Collinge's moving portrayals of these wronged, helpless innocents set both women at the heart of these films about the intrusion of evil within a family. Birdie's despair traps her in lonely nostalgia and alcoholic oblivion. In contrast to the ineffectual Birdie, fundamentally disregarded by her husband and son, Emma competently runs the lives of her adoring family. Yet her busyness and absorption in their lives blind her both to her own hidden dissatisfaction and to the true character of her brother Charlie. Each portrayal—whether of an abused and exploited wife or of a loved but unaware mother—conveys a profound sense of these women's weakness and limitations. One aware, the other unaware—neither woman can counter the evil engulfing her family.

Niece Zan to Collinge in one film, daughter Charlotte in the other, Wright in both "The Little Foxes" and "Shadow of a Doubt" pushes back against the evil she perceives. Zan gradually realizes the true nature of her mother's family, and Charlotte's doubts about her Uncle Charlie escalate into certainty about his depravity and the need to protect her mother from being destroyed by it. So that Emma must never know that her perfect younger brother is the Merry Widow Murderer, Charlotte must absorb that knowledge in full, suffer the horror of it, and act upon it to the extent of threatening to kill Uncle Charlie if he does not leave their family haven. Zan, for her part, threatens her mother with exposure of Regina's allowing Zan's father to die for lack of his heart medicine.

Zan loves Aunt Birdie, and Charlotte adores her mother, Emma, but Zan and Charlotte reject ineffectuality and unawareness in favor of decisive action against the horror they perceive. In "Shadow of a Doubt," Charlotte does not simply experience the confirmation of her doubts about her Uncle Charlie. Enduring the shadow of her perception of his evil, she absorbs this shadow, emerging as a strong contender against wickedness. Innocence is not the same as goodness, for goodness derives from both awareness and rejection of evil. Innocence is a primal state of being; goodness is a choice.

Innocent at the beginning of "The Little Foxes," Zan endures the exposure of her mother's deep hatred for her father, as well as suspicion of its ultimate murderous expression. Zan becomes good by walking through the valley of the shadow of death. But the effectiveness of Wright's two brilliant performances in part depends on the contrast of Zan with Aunt Birdie, whom Zan could have come to resemble, and of Charlotte with her mother, Emma, whom she protects at the cost of her own peace of mind. Wright's portrayals derive some of their strength from the power of Collinge's acting and from the juxtaposition of chosen, willed goodness with mere innocence.

The interaction between the goodness portrayed by Wright when playing Charlotte and the evil embodied by Joseph Cotton's Uncle Charlie is more complex than the similar conflict between Wright as Zan and Bette Davis as her mother, Regina. The mother‐daughter relationship has no parallel to the initial twinship or psychic identification between Charlotte and her Uncle Charlie. The identification stressed so much in the earlier scenes of "Shadow of a Doubt" necessitates that Charlotte resist complicity in her uncle's evil, that she reject overtly the longstanding twinning bond with him, her "double," fight him as fiercely as she can, and emerge finally from his murderous assault victorious, but hardly unscathed.

Like Zan, Charlotte has walked through the valley of the shadow of death, but, unlike Zan, she has glimpsed the shadow of evil within herself, and she has absorbed that shadowy aspect of herself by becoming aware that it actually is part of her. She rejects her "twin," and, in doing so, she is born anew as someone else. Both Charlotte and Zan emerge from their families with an awareness of the world's evil and a determination to fight it. In each film, Collinge's character, Birdie or Emma, remains an aware or unaware victim of evil.

Sadly, Wright's brilliance as a film actress greatly respected by her directors William Wyler and Alfred Hitchcock did not ensure Wright's survival within the studio system. She adamantly refused to meet certain expectations by Goldwyn, and in 1948 he terminated her contract. Wright later saw her rebellion as a mistake; if she had talked directly to Goldwyn about her dissatisfaction, they could have worked out their conflict. Instead, she acted in films for far less money, returned to the live theatre that she loved, and took roles in television dramas.

  

Wright acted in 27 films, gaining three Oscar nominations and one win. She made 78 appearances on television, being nominated for Emmy Awards for "The Miracle Worker," "The Margaret Bourke-White Story," and "The Elders" episode of "Dolphin Cove." She played more than 40 roles on stage, winning the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance for "Morning's at Seven" and working under Elia Kazan's direction in "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs." Of Wright's stage acting in "Long Day's Journey into Night," "Death of a Salesman," and "The Glass Menagerie," her second husband, Robert Anderson, boasted to Spoto:  "Teresa has now played the three great roles for women in the American theatre:  Mary Tyrone, Linda Loman and Amanda Wingfield. And she has played them to perfection."  Her accomplishment is great. It is our loss that she did not make more films that preserve that accomplishment.

   

first published in The Woodstock Independent

  

Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey Bogart

(c) Copyright (2015) by Kathleen Spaltro 

All Rights Reserved

Humphrey Bogart's film career misfired for several years, and these undistinguished performances during the Thirties gave no clue that Bogart would eventually develop into one of the greatest film stars as well as a notable actor.  After a false start and failure in Hollywood in the early Thirties, Bogart returned to California to re-enact his stage role as the villain Duke Mantee in "The Petrified Forest" (1934).  He went on to play other gangsters, to give acting support to higher-billed Warner Brothers stars like Bette Davis, and to portray good guys like the reforming prosecutor in "Marked Woman" (1937).  But, whether gangster or good guy, Bogart as a film actor was a Johnny-One Note.  His seemingly limited range had limited impact.

All that changed with his casting as Roy Earle in "High Sierra" (1941).  Although Earle is a gangster, he is a sympathetic gangster, with a blend of good and evil that would characterize Bogart's signature roles throughout the Forties.  As Roy Earle, as Sam Spade in "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), as Rick Blaine in "Casablanca" (1942), as Harry Morgan in "To Have and Have Not" (1944), as Philip Marlowe in "The Big Sleep" (1946), and as Frank McCloud in "Key Largo" (1948)—Bogart mixes cynical, callous wariness with a latent idealism and a newfound courage that leads to commitment, whether to a woman, a principle, or a cause.

All of these Bogart characters feel deeply disenchanted by their deeply corrupt world—whether the corruption be organized crime, paid-off police or government officials, Nazism and French collaboration, or the betrayal of wartime sacrifices by political expediency.  All of these characters guard fiercely against their own basic decency, but they give in to it by film's end—expressing love to a faithful woman, breaking up a criminal gang, fighting fascism, or defending the defenceless. 

Although corrupted by cynicism, the Bogart character redeems himself through renewed commitment and sacrifice, even of his own life.  Once the actor had portrayed one such character, he portrayed that character repeatedly, even though the settings and circumstances differed from role to role.  He was no longer a Johnny-One Note because his characterizations now blended corruption with integrity instead of isolating the qualities in separate characters.

Two moments in these Forties films stand out for me.  In "The Big Sleep," Marlowe overhears a small-time crook played by Elisha Cook, Jr. endure poisoning rather than betray the whereabouts of his endangered girlfriend.  The cynical Marlowe feels very moved and impressed by Harry Jones's sacrifice.  And, in "Key Largo," the war-wearied, disillusioned veteran Major McCloud wonders if the sacrifices made by his men in Italy meant anything, yet McCloud himself challenges to the death the bullying gangster portrayed by Edward G. Robinson, Johnny Rocco.

These roles distilled the essence of the Bogart character.  The actor departed from the Bogart character in several later films.  In some of these, he failed:  in "Sabrina" (1954) and in the, for me, unwatchable "Beat the Devil" (1953), about which Bogart comfortingly explained, "Only phonies like it."  In some of these, he successfully stretched his range:  "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948), "In a Lonely Place" (1950), and "The Caine Mutiny" (1954).  And, of course, Bogart played Charlie Allnut to Katharine Hepburn's Rosie Sayer in the beloved "The African Queen" (1951). 

 

I realized when my future husband and I were still dating that "The African Queen" is our movie, all about John, the river rat, and me, the uptight missionary.  Every time we watch it, we look at each other very significantly during certain scenes.  Bogart himself commented, "We loved those two silly people on that boat."

first published in The Woodstock Independent