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190 Conclusion: A Prescient Vision It is undeniable that from about the time he began work at NBC in 1933 and throughout the Great Depression, Helffrich grew into an unapologetic progressive activist. But Helffrich’s politics at that time were more Grapes of Wrath than Communist Manifesto, more “Steinbeckian than Marxian,” more fellow traveler than hard-liner. Although a bona-fide member of the Communist Party, Helffrich was not an unyielding ideologue. Interviews with those closest to him reveal Helffrich “sentimentalized the poor, the immigrant, the Negro, and the working class”as did his heroes—popular poets of the age Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, whose songs exalted the poor and disenfranchised.1 The Popular Front era and dawning of the New Deal marked what historian Wayne Hampton calls an “unprecedented glorification” of the workingman and workingwoman in literature and art. Helffrich was as well an erstwhile poet and former college literature major; he aligned himself with the artistic, intellectual New York crowd, most of whom shared his romanticized views of the common man. Richard Crossman, former Member of the British Parliament and editor of The God That Failed—a work that traces the attraction of Communism to prominent writers of the era—wrote of the intellectual allure of Marxism in both Europe and the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. Between the time of the October Revolution and the Stalin-Hitler Pact, countless numbers of atypical converts were drawn to the consummate promise of Communism. Crossman notes that such neophytes were “people of quite unusual sensitivity [that had . . . ] a heightened perception of the sprit of the age, and felt more acutely than others both its frustrations and its hopes.” Such a cohort, observes Crossman, made for the “most abnormal [of] Communists.”2 This is not to say there were no Communist hard-liners at the core of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), for there most assuredly were. These calculating, scarlet-red ideologues schemed to undo the American political and economic system from within. However, encircling the 3RQGLOOR&RQFOXVLRQLQGG $0 191 C O N C L U S I O N CPUSA’s perimeter was the Popular Front, an impressionable, idealistic, and cerebral lot with which Helffrich closely identified. They believed that political demonstrations, songs of protest, and organizing for the good of the collective were the new patriotic expressions of America’s “radical” heritage—but as historian Richard M. Fried points out, the nation’s “anti-radical tradition [ran] at least as deep” with both sides in persistent conflict.3 It was during the early 1930s that Helffrich became involved with socialist-lawyer-turned-union-organizer Murray Berman and the American Labor Party, an offshoot of the Popular Front.4 From the Union Settlement Association in New York City and for most of the “Pink Decade,”5 Helffrich helped organize groups like the Young Communist League, the Young People’s Socialist League, and the Negro Youth League. Despite his undeniable progressive bent, this book has argued that Helffrich did not bring a “Communist agenda” to NBC-TV network censorship per se; no absolute socialist political imprimatur is apparent in his work. Rarely are politics or economic policies overtly mentioned or discussed in his Continuity Acceptance Radio/Television (CART) reports. It is nonetheless clear that upon arriving at NBC each day, Helffrich did not remove his liberal mantle and put on a conservative corporate coat. Although overtly subversive or radical political ideology cannot be detected in his CART reports, Helffrich’s writings and content decisions indicate an unambiguous and persistent progressivehumanist bent in most—but not all—areas of censorship. As was mentioned earlier, for example, Helffrich was not as kind to homosexuals as he was to other minorities, a position that appeared to change by the end of his tenure at NBC-TV. By accepting a corporate management position in network television and recanting Communism, Helffrich’s actions may be seen as a man who put aside some of his youthful political ideals and embraced the “American system” after the war—a system that appeared to be working. He had, after all, witnessed a significant change in the nation ’s social conditions from the Depression era and evidently believed that his corporate position as chief TV censor could engender further cultural transformations. For Helffrich, most stereotypes of 1950s mass culture had to be...

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