Commie, Kiddie-Porn Days Gone By

Many years ago, a big kid pushed me over a littler kid who'd kneeled behind me. I remember thinking, "What a neat trick" as my head hit the rocks. Then, they kicked me, called me a "dirty commie," and said, "Go live in Russia if you don't like it here."

I'd screamed when my mother took me to my first day at Hunter College Elementary School (HCES) and I was right. I was leaving my warm little neighborhood and home. Paralyzed with fear, I refused to let go of her hand. A granite skyscraper swallowed us. An elevator lifted us to the seventh floor, another world. The twenty-story building housed an entire college taking up a whole city block. I yelled my voice away, and then my mother left.

Everyone knew HCES, a "special" school for "gifted children"—the best state school in America. They drummed it into us daily how lucky we were and that we had to "live up to our potential" or get thrown into the riffraff of the "rest" of the system. My father eased my way into that first year at school in his inimitable fashion.

After the first week, we filed into the auditorium for our first assembly. There was Daddy on the stage. The principal, Dr. B, welcomed us all and introduced him to the entire school: Jay Gorney, the composer of "Brother Can You Spare a Dime," the man who discovered Shirley Temple.

In his joy and pride at my acceptance to Hunter, Dad had done something I later learned to expect, but at five years old, I was surprised.

We're terribly proud to have with us a famous songwriter, whose son, Danny, has just entered senior kindergarten. He has written us a special song for our special school: a school song for Hunter, and he's kindly consented to help us learn it here and now. I would like you all to give Mr. Jay Gorney a rousing hand of applause to welcome him, thank him, and show how much we appreciate this most precious gift.

Dad walked jauntily to the piano, shoulders back and head high. He adjusted the microphone, sat down, and tried a few chords. Then he spoke softly about writing music, all the while running his fingers over the keys. He told a few stories to warm up his audience, and as the lights went down, a silver screen fell slowly into place behind him and an overhead projector flashed the lyrics onto the screen. Daddy glanced behind him and then hit his dominant chord, singing: "Hunter, dear Hunter/We're thankful and true," etc.

Everyone knew me after that. My daddy had given the school its song, and it was sung every morning. Hunter was my school. I was King of the Hill, that first year.

At the end of my first year at Hunter, in 1953, my father was forced to sing a different tune. I'd breezed through my kindergarten classes, but at home new words reverberated through the walls of our duplex, and fear permeated our house: "witch-hunt," "subpoena," "blacklist," "HUAC," "the committee," "the Hollywood Ten," "the Fifth Amendment." The Un-American Activities Committee had caught up with us.

My folks had given the FBI a run for its money, moving from California in 1947, just after my birth and around the time the Hollywood Ten were convicted. Moving put the FBI off for a while, but agents haunted our front stoop, clutching bits of paper. My mother repeatedly answered the door and told them that Daddy wasn't in. The subpoena had to be presented to my father in person to be legally binding. So they subpoenaed Mom. They called her the Cultural Commissar of Hollywood.¹ My folks' lawyer, Bella Abzug, worked a deal whereby the FBI withdrew the subpoena for Mom and Dad accepted his. The lawyer argued that a family with two small children shouldn't have both parents endangered in this fashion.

Conservatively dressed, Dad initially answered HUAC's questions. He explained how his father had arrived in America as...