[78-L] If Daddy is a Commie then you gotta turn him in..

[David Lennick]

Well, that was fun..we just watched the 1951 "I Was a Communist for the FBI" 
with Frank Lovejoy. TCM ran it last night. I remember the radio series (used to 
listen to it when I was a kid!) but hadn't seen the movie, which is much more 
subtle, to the point where the good guys and the bad guys all look like nice 
well-dressed 1951 guys in suits.

A couple of interesting things here, beginning with the score, which is 
excellent, and which is uncredited. I wondered if some blacklisted composer had 
done it, but it was Max Steiner. But a blacklisted composer's name does figure 
in the story..the visiting Commie dignitary is "Gerhart Eisler". Composer Hanns 
Eisler had been kicked out of the US a few years earlier.

And Cvetic enters a record store, and asks for "Beethoven's Emperor Concerto". 
The clerk says "The long playing version?" Cvetic replies "No, the standard Red 
label." You with me so far? What's this in code? The clerk hands Cvetic a 78 
album and says that all their listening booths are full but there's a special 
private room in the back. Cvetic takes the album, goes into the back room, 
and..the store is a front for the FBI meetings!

dl