The screen writer (Apr-Oct 1948)

Iron Curtain Diary * PRECISE dates, though available, seem unimportant. Let it be enough that on a certain day in the year 1948 I was deeply involved in the problems of a New England lawyer caught up in a Haitian dilemma which neither he nor I was rinding too easy to solve. But it was an interesting problem, what with voodoo and a beautiful heroine and a fistful of exciting Negroes who seemed to think liberty was something worth fighting for, even though it meant defying Napoleon and all his power. Somehow it pleased me that I would have some part in telling an all too prejudiced world that an utterly fantastic nation of Negroes had perhaps saved the very young United States from an equally fantastic Napoleonic invasion. On a certain day I relaxed with thirty fairly satisfactory pages of screen play. Twenty-four hours later I was on my way to Ottawa, Canada. And I had an entirely new and infinitely more difficult problem to solve. It was a unique problem since it involved many factors beyond the usual, the most important of which was my own conscience. An honest man does not sell his conscience for money. An honest man does not share in Hearstian hysteria or wallow in a Peglerian pigsty. Nor does he forget his responsibilities, not only to his own country but to the world of which he is an integral part. Since I dare to' consider myself an honest man, I needed to ask myself certain questions. And since — with absolutely no studio pressure — it was entirely up to me to decide whether or not I would do the story, it was imperative that I find the right answers. My assignment was The Iron Curtain for Twentieth Century-Fox. Its source material was the communist espionage trials in Canada and a series of articles in the Cosmopolitan. My problems suddenly cleared and I knew I need to answer only one last question ... is the story true? If not, I must refuse to write it. On the way east I read Igor Gouzenko's articles in the Cosmopolitan. Since they had been ghost written, I could not decide their honesty, especially as they had appeared in a Hearst publication. None of the several other articles I read helped very much. Then finally I labored through the Report of the Royal Commission, some 733 pages of incredibly dull reading. Occasionally something would spark and I would mark it. I was beginning to wonder: true or not, was it the stuff of which an exciting movie could be made? Whatever else I did, I was determined to keep away from soap boxes and flag waving. Mr. Sol Siegel, the producer, had planned to go to Ottawa with me. Unfortunately he became ill in New York so I went on alone. There began the first phase of the birth of The Iron Curtain. And as I stepped off the plane I wondered if it would also be the last. T F nothing else, it began pleasantly. -*-My first contact was Mr. Robert Forsythe, the Deputy Minister of Justice . . . and a liberal. I had had some experience with British bureaucracy early in the war, most of it pleasant, almost all of it eventually infuriatingly profitless. Mr. Forsythe was pleasant but aloof — for about fifteen minutes. With his generous cooperation, I interviewed every single available person who had had anything to do with the case, Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers and men, Ottawa city police, editors, reporters, lawyers, ordinary civilians. I went to Gouzenko's apartment, followed the trail of his futile attempt to turn over the documents he had taken from the Soviet embassy. I even visited the Soviet embassy — from the outside. I read original Soviet documents, studied transcripts of the several trials, stacks of newspapers, pro and antiCommunist. Canadian secretaries who had done the work for the Soviet en bassy staff, Canadian instructors who had taught them English, newspaper men who had interviewed them and been to their parties — all these people created vivid pictures of the Soviet emissaries to Canada. These people were not professional witch hunters ; they were an amiable people who, it seemed to me, were more annoyed with the Russians for tricking honest Canadians into doing espionage work for Russia than for the espionage itself. The evidence was irrefutable ; I was forced to believe the story true. "But," said I to myself, "no traitor will be the hero of my story." So I asked to meet Gouzenko. Until the night before, I did not know in which of several widely separated Canadian cities we would meet. When finally I knew, I took a plane and when I left the plane I was met by an R.C.M.P. sergeant who cannot be named and taken to a place that cannot be identified. I know, however, that Gouzenko did not live there. He was, I was told, driving practically all night and would arrive at 9:30. At precisely 9:29, I was 14 The Screen Writer, September, 194 mm M