H.U.A.C. with Lionel Stander, 1953 { 12 images } Created 29 Sep 2017
Lionel Stander.
House on UnAmerican Activities Committee meeting in NY, May 1953. Grilling actor Lionel Stander
Black & White contacts and negs.
One of the first Hollywood actors to be subpoenaed before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he was blacklisted from the late 1940s until the mid-1960s.
Lionel Jay Stander (January 11, 1908 – November 30, 1994) was an American actor, activist, and a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild. He had an extensive career in theatre, film, radio, and television that spanned nearly 70 years, from 1928 until 1994. He was known for his distinctive raspy voice and tough-guy demeanor, as well as for his vocal left-wing political stances.
In May 1953, he testified at a HUAC hearing in New York, where he made nationwide front-page headlines by being uproariously uncooperative, memorialized in the Eric Bentley play, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been. The New York Times headline was "Stander Lectures House Red Inquiry." In a dig at bandleader Artie Shaw, who had tearfully claimed in a Committee hearing that he had been "duped" by the Communist Party, Stander asserted:
"And I am not a dupe, or a dope, or a moe, or a schmoe, and everything I did—I was absolutely conscious of what I was doing, and I am not ashamed of everything I said in public or private".[13]
An excerpt from that statement was engraved in stone for "The First Amendment Blacklist Memorial" by Jenny Holzer at the University of Southern California.
Other quotes: "[Testifying before HUAC] is like the Spanish Inquisition. You may not be burned, but you can't help coming away a little singed."
"I don't know about the overthrow of the government. This committee has been investigating 15 years so far, and hasn't found one act of violence."
"I know of a group of fanatics who are desperately trying to undermine the Constitution of the United States by depriving artists and others of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without due process of law... I can tell names and cite instances and I am one of the first victims of it. And if you are interested in that and also a group of ex-fascists and America-Firsters and anti-Semites, people who hate everybody including Negroes, minority groups and most likely themselves... and these people are engaged in a conspiracy outside all the legal processes to undermine the very fundamental American concepts upon which our entire system of democracy exists."[14]
"...I don't want to be responsible for a whole stable of informers, stool pigeons, and psychopaths and ex-political heretics, who come in here beating their breast and say, 'I am awfully sorry; I didn't know what I was doing. Please--I want absolution; get me back into pictures.'"
"My estimation of this committee is that this committee arrogates judicial and punitive powers which it does not possess."
House on UnAmerican Activities Committee meeting in NY, May 1953. Grilling actor Lionel Stander
Black & White contacts and negs.
One of the first Hollywood actors to be subpoenaed before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he was blacklisted from the late 1940s until the mid-1960s.
Lionel Jay Stander (January 11, 1908 – November 30, 1994) was an American actor, activist, and a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild. He had an extensive career in theatre, film, radio, and television that spanned nearly 70 years, from 1928 until 1994. He was known for his distinctive raspy voice and tough-guy demeanor, as well as for his vocal left-wing political stances.
In May 1953, he testified at a HUAC hearing in New York, where he made nationwide front-page headlines by being uproariously uncooperative, memorialized in the Eric Bentley play, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been. The New York Times headline was "Stander Lectures House Red Inquiry." In a dig at bandleader Artie Shaw, who had tearfully claimed in a Committee hearing that he had been "duped" by the Communist Party, Stander asserted:
"And I am not a dupe, or a dope, or a moe, or a schmoe, and everything I did—I was absolutely conscious of what I was doing, and I am not ashamed of everything I said in public or private".[13]
An excerpt from that statement was engraved in stone for "The First Amendment Blacklist Memorial" by Jenny Holzer at the University of Southern California.
Other quotes: "[Testifying before HUAC] is like the Spanish Inquisition. You may not be burned, but you can't help coming away a little singed."
"I don't know about the overthrow of the government. This committee has been investigating 15 years so far, and hasn't found one act of violence."
"I know of a group of fanatics who are desperately trying to undermine the Constitution of the United States by depriving artists and others of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without due process of law... I can tell names and cite instances and I am one of the first victims of it. And if you are interested in that and also a group of ex-fascists and America-Firsters and anti-Semites, people who hate everybody including Negroes, minority groups and most likely themselves... and these people are engaged in a conspiracy outside all the legal processes to undermine the very fundamental American concepts upon which our entire system of democracy exists."[14]
"...I don't want to be responsible for a whole stable of informers, stool pigeons, and psychopaths and ex-political heretics, who come in here beating their breast and say, 'I am awfully sorry; I didn't know what I was doing. Please--I want absolution; get me back into pictures.'"
"My estimation of this committee is that this committee arrogates judicial and punitive powers which it does not possess."
