The Barbizon Paulina Bren (read along books txt) đ
- Author: Paulina Bren
Book online «The Barbizon Paulina Bren (read along books txt) đ». Author Paulina Bren
George was really only echoing the zeitgeist of the time. In 1945, the Cold War was still barely on the horizon. Three years later, in 1948, Harry Truman won the presidential election by channeling the growing anti-communist mood in America. Red-baiting became fully entrenched in everyday life, and the familyâwith wife and mother in the home, and not at the officeâwas understood to be the most effective safeguard against this new ideological threat emanating from Moscow. In 1949, the Soviet Union showed off its atomic muscle, China joined the communist camp, and Americaâs House Un-American Activities Committee warned Americans about communists, fellow travelers, subversives, and âpervertsâ (homosexuals) lurking among them.
The âRed Scareâ quickly became intertwined with a postwar fear of the feminist. Many wondered if women would be willing to relinquish their wartime âmenâs jobsâ and return to the kitchen. Those who didnât became suspect. Schoolteachers, in particular, being traditionally female, were suddenly seen as potentially dangerous and most likely to spread Soviet propaganda. One Columbia University professor theorized that âthe girlsâ schools and womenâs colleges contain some of the most loyal disciples of Russia. Teachers there are often frustrated females. They have gone through bitter struggles to attain their positions. A political dogma based on hatred expresses their personal attitudes.â And what then could one say about women-staffed womenâs magazines, these unique enclaves of female employment and empowerment? Let alone womenâs hotels?
Unsuspecting Nanette Emery had done everything she could to win a place in the 1945 guest editor program, including participate in Phyllis Lee Schwalbeâs April College Forum. But by 1949, at the same time that George Davis was lobbing accusations at Cyrilly Abels, Nanette was indirectly under suspicion too. In Counterattack: The Newsletter of Facts on Communism, Mademoiselle and its publisher, Street & Smith, were put on notice: âMemo to the top people at Street & Smith: Youâd better really take a look at your Mademoiselle forum, really find out what goes on there. Ask a few questions: Who picks the speakers? What standards are used in making the choice? Does anyone ever investigate what they really stand for?â Referring to the dime novels that Street & Smith was once famous for publishing, particularly a series called the Frank Merriwell Stories about an athletic undergraduate at Yale University who fights crime and rights wrongs, Counterattack suggested it would âsadden [Merriwell fans] to think the top men of Street & Smith, in their modern offices at 122 E 42nd St., NY, didnât have enough of the old Merriwell spirit to clean up the Mademoiselle forum and make it gleamingly virtuous.â Another Red-seeing newspaper explained that the fifty-five college girls brought over from forty-two colleges for the 1949 forum were viewed as student leaders but, if misled, would become âMISLEADERS.â
Yet George Davis was, in theory, just as suspect for his sexual preferences. Truman Capote, in his unfinished novel Answered Prayers, did not draw an attractive picture of George Davis, whom he turned into the character of Boaty: âa certain kind of queer who has Freon refrigerating his bloodstream. Diaghilev, for example. J. Edgar Hoover. Hadrian. Not to compare him with those pedestal personages, but the fellow Iâm thinking of is Turner BoatwrightâBoaty, as his courtiers called him. Mr. Boatwright was the fiction editor of a womenâs fashion magazine that published âqualityâ writers. He came to my attention, or rather I came to his, when one day he spoke to our writing class. I was sitting in the front row, and I could tell, by the way his chilly crotch-watching eyes kept gravitating toward me, what was spinning around in his pretty curly-grey head.â In 1951, Davis suddenly married the famous singer Lotte Lenya, the widow of Kurt Weill. George helped revive Weillâs remarkable Threepenny Opera, as well as Lotte Lenyaâs career. The notoriously gay editor, a Democrat, beloved by the GEs who saw him only how he wanted to be seen, had become, at the height of McCarthyism, a married man and a borderline Red-baiter. Again he could not hold back and wrote to BTB: he wanted her to know that his life was back on track through âthe inspiring support of a remarkable and dear person, my wife,â and he felt ready to confess something. He wanted to have it remain between him and BTB, although he did not mind if she shared it with her husband, âthe Colonel.â Five years earlier, he explained, back in 1948, he had been âhorrified by the color of such phrases as âwitch-huntingâ and âred-baiting,âââ and even today, in 1953, he was decidedly âopposed to what is called âMcCarthyismââŠâ
âYet.â
Yet a month earlier he hadâhe confessed nowâmade an unsolicited visit to the FBI âto tell them everything I know about the Communist infiltration of publishing. What I know is limited to the activities of one person, whom you know.â He was of course talking about Mademoiselleâs managing editor Cyrilly Abels. His story was listened to âattentivelyâ by the FBI, and when he was asked if there were any doubts as to BTBâs loyalties, he answered noâhe assured herââAs positively as you can imagine.â Yet unable to leave Abels alone, he added a postscript: âI do realize that our friend, in accordance with the party line, must now pose as a âpoor-confused liberalâ who was taken in intellectually during the Spanish Civil War, etc. etc.â BTB was no fool,
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