Speaker 1: Pushkin. In the archives of UCLA's Library, there is a
Speaker 1: remarkable seven hour interview conducted in nineteen eighty eight with
Speaker 1: a woman named Helen Slote Leavitt, along with a separate
Speaker 1: interview with Helen's husband, Al love It, each conversation spanning
Speaker 1: an extraordinary period, the Great Depression, the Second World War,
Speaker 1: the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement. What I'd like
Speaker 1: you to start with is your biographical background went on
Speaker 1: where you were born, your parents or family, etc. Fine,
Speaker 1: my roots are solidly middle class Jewish Brooklyn, out of Poland.
Speaker 1: The interviews were conducted by the historian Larry Seplaire over
Speaker 1: the course of many months. He remembers the Levits well,
Speaker 1: particularly Helen petite, intense, alive, but in some sense wounded.
Speaker 1: It was an interesting interview because when I first approached
Speaker 1: them they said no, you know, they were justifiably, I think,
Speaker 1: wary of people coming to ask them questions, the answers
Speaker 1: to which they refused to give and give to other people.
Speaker 1: So I made a deal with them. I said I'd
Speaker 1: send them five questions through the mail and then they
Speaker 1: could look them over, and if they thought those relegitimate,
Speaker 1: we could talk on the phone. They would answer them,
Speaker 1: which they did, and they came to trust me. You
Speaker 1: know that I was wasn't someone who was, you know,
Speaker 1: going to betray them in any way. The Levits had
Speaker 1: their reasons for not trusting outsiders, as you will hear
Speaker 1: they are. You know, you know that you just termed starker.
Speaker 1: It means strong, you know, kind of tough, you don't
Speaker 1: let things bowl you over. They were starkers, Helen, probably
Speaker 1: even a bit more than all. I think Larry Sepplair's
Speaker 1: conversation with Helen levitt is a masterclass in interviewing technique. Careful, persistent, unflinching,
Speaker 1: always with the sense that there is something he's trying
Speaker 1: to uncover. I interview people for a living as well,
Speaker 1: but I could not have sat so patiently with Helen
Speaker 1: Lovett for that long. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood.
Speaker 1: In this episode, I want to do something simple. Play
Speaker 1: you selections from Helen Levitt's interview. I want you to
Speaker 1: listen to her story in her words and here as
Speaker 1: I did, about a crucial decision she and her husband
Speaker 1: made when they were young. At the end, I want
Speaker 1: you to judge her and decide whether she deserved her fate.
Speaker 1: Since we seem to be doing a fair amount of
Speaker 1: this these days, judging people for the things they say
Speaker 1: and believe. I thought it would be a useful exercise.
Speaker 1: Helen grew up in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: in a house on the corner of Carroll Street and
Speaker 1: Kingston Avenue. My paternal grandfather went to a parochial high
Speaker 1: school and then to med school and became a doctor,
Speaker 1: as did my father. Helen was a precocious child, alert, intelligent.
Speaker 1: She remembers as a kid reading a charity appeal in
Speaker 1: the New York Times New York's hundred Neediest Cases they
Speaker 1: gave in each day or each week, actual cases of poor,
Speaker 1: suffer ring people. And I never missed reading every one
Speaker 1: of those cases, and I agonized as I read them.
Speaker 1: Once she went to a birthday party for a wealthy
Speaker 1: friend of hers, held at the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum.
Speaker 1: So here are we little rich kids went to this terrible, dreary,
Speaker 1: Dickens like place, and the show was put on. All
Speaker 1: THETT orphans were brought in they could watch the show,
Speaker 1: and then all the little orphans were led away down
Speaker 1: these dark wails. There was a horror to it that
Speaker 1: never left me. She was a child of the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: when the grand experiment that was America suddenly turned bleak.
Speaker 1: Did the Depression have much of an impact on your family? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: My father was just just devastated. His medical practice suffered,
Speaker 1: patients stopped paying, his investments were wiped out, kill the
Speaker 1: prohibition was ooh, I know. He was selling liquor prescriptions
Speaker 1: to the druggist across the street. Was your father a
Speaker 1: political person at all? Yes, he was what you'd call
Speaker 1: a parlor pink. He and his friend Harry Silva would
Speaker 1: fight the revolution in our living room. They would have
Speaker 1: these vile and political discussions, and the women would sit
Speaker 1: there so disgusted because these two guys couldn't make a
Speaker 1: decent living and here they were talking about changing the world.
Speaker 1: But I realized fairly recently, in looking back, that those
Speaker 1: two guys were doing that for my benefits, because they
Speaker 1: knew that there was one person in that room who
Speaker 1: was listening, and that was me. Helen listened as a teenager.
Speaker 1: She was a junior counselor at her summer camp, and
Speaker 1: my new friend Inness came to camp. She was beautiful,
Speaker 1: and she got these incredible love letters a radical boyfriend
Speaker 1: in New York that she would let me read. They
Speaker 1: were just so romantic and political. She took me to
Speaker 1: meet him on a knight that he was just making
Speaker 1: his speech from a soapbox in Manhattan. That was where
Speaker 1: I was exposed to the Young Communists, the Young Communist League,
Speaker 1: the YCL, the youth branch of the American Communist Party.
Speaker 1: Nobody recruited Helen. She just walked up and volunteered. In
Speaker 1: the thirties, the Young Communist League of America had thousands
Speaker 1: of members. The YCL branch in New York was a
Speaker 1: world unto itself, filled with ideas and passion. They were
Speaker 1: people going hungry all over the United States, an ongoing
Speaker 1: moral catastrophe in the American South, a vicious war in
Speaker 1: Spain against fascism, not to mention Hitler's rise in Germany.
Speaker 1: Americans were looking for answers, and many found them in
Speaker 1: the world's biggest communist empire, the Soviet Union. I found
Speaker 1: it on the unfairness of life, unbearable and assume that God,
Speaker 1: if it were fixable, how wonderful. And the fact that
Speaker 1: there was a country, the Soviet Union, which was really
Speaker 1: trying to fix it, seemed quite marvelous to me. But
Speaker 1: the first time as I stepped on Soviet soil, I
Speaker 1: felt myself a full human being, a full human bee.
Speaker 1: The Black American actor and singer Paul Robson, then at
Speaker 1: the height of his fame, made a pilgrimage to the
Speaker 1: mecca of Communism and said, for the first time in
Speaker 1: my life, I walk in full human dignity. The people
Speaker 1: who were doing somethings really out there fighting the good
Speaker 1: fight with the Uncommunists. Helen was now attending Brooklyn College,
Speaker 1: volunteering in a rat infested building for the YCL, making
Speaker 1: sandwiches that the branch it sell to pay the rent.
Speaker 1: That I would get out of the kitchen. The rats
Speaker 1: would take over and I could see them. Helen met
Speaker 1: l Leavitt at summer camp. He was from the Bronx.
Speaker 1: He wanted to be a writer. He followed her into
Speaker 1: the YCL. They got married and moved to Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: had two kids, lived up in the Hollywood Hills. I'll
Speaker 1: wrote for the movies and television social parables like the
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight Technicolor film The Boy with the Green Hair.
Speaker 1: Everywhere you go people will say, they will say, there
Speaker 1: is the boy with a green hair, and then people
Speaker 1: will ask why does he have green hair? So you
Speaker 1: will tell them because I am a war orphan, and
Speaker 1: my green hair is to remind you that war is
Speaker 1: very bad for children. You must tell all the people.
Speaker 1: Helen helped found a nonprofit theater in Hollywood, volunteered rand
Speaker 1: things my whole I've been that way. It's always been
Speaker 1: somebody asked me to do something. You know, I did it,
Speaker 1: And I always did much more than as asking me.
Speaker 1: That was the story of my life. While I was
Speaker 1: listening to Helen Lovett's story of how she came to
Speaker 1: join the Communist Party, I couldn't help but think of
Speaker 1: myself at eighteen, the age that she was when she
Speaker 1: entered the movement. I just started college. It was the
Speaker 1: early eighties. I had a poster of Ronald Reagan on
Speaker 1: my wall. If you asked me what I was back then,
Speaker 1: I would have said I was an anti communist. That
Speaker 1: was my cause. The Soviet Union had just invaded Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: The Afghan defenders and the Russian attackers fought bitterly for
Speaker 1: almost four hours, and according to the Afghan source, casualties
Speaker 1: on both sides were heavy. It was holding much of
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe hostage. Poland, now under martial law, is sealed
Speaker 1: off from the outside world. Britain, America and other Western
Speaker 1: nations are watching closely. The Soviet Union Apparty wasn't involved,
Speaker 1: but from the background they approved this summer after my
Speaker 1: sophomore year, I did a journalism internship in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Where we were required to do a research project. Mine
Speaker 1: was on how many people had been killed by communism.
Speaker 1: I spent the summer in the Library of Congress trying
Speaker 1: to track down who was killed in what government manufactured
Speaker 1: famine or who died in what interment camp. I was horrified.
Speaker 1: Helen Leavitt got caught up in a communist movement at
Speaker 1: the same age I got caught up in the anti
Speaker 1: communist movement, and for the same reason, because eighteen is
Speaker 1: the age that we look for a cause bigger than ourselves.
Speaker 1: It's funny. I haven't thought about that time in my
Speaker 1: life for years, except when I listened to Helen Levitt
Speaker 1: and it all came rushing back, the brightest and the
Speaker 1: most beautiful world leading the year young radicals. I mean
Speaker 1: they were the most Muslin figures on campus. They were
Speaker 1: the most brilliant professors, no question about it. The only
Speaker 1: courses that I remember were to what by Marxist professors.
Speaker 1: I asked you at the beginning to judge her, So next,
Speaker 1: let's judge her. Do you think where will will be?
Speaker 1: Where she let? The leader of the Soviet Union from
Speaker 1: the late nineteen twenties to nineteen fifty three was Joseph Stalin.
Speaker 1: He embarked on an aggressive course of national zation. He
Speaker 1: collectivized agriculture. Millions of peasants were forced off their land.
Speaker 1: In the early thirties, agricultural areas like Ukraine were devastated
Speaker 1: by famine, caused in large part by Stalin's policies. Five
Speaker 1: to seven million people died. He established the Gulag, a
Speaker 1: network of prison camps through which eighteen million people were
Speaker 1: held at one time or another. In the years that
Speaker 1: the Young Communist League was serving sandwiches in New York City,
Speaker 1: Stalin launched something called the Great Purge. Seven hundred thousand
Speaker 1: people were murdered in August of nineteen thirty nine, Stalins
Speaker 1: signed a non aggression pact with Hitler. We have reached
Speaker 1: the serious events of the week Van Ribbon trump leaving
Speaker 1: Berlin for Moscow rushers in a new incomprehensible chapter in
Speaker 1: German diplomacy, what has happened to the principles of mine camp? Equally,
Speaker 1: what can Russia have in common with Germany? The hero
Speaker 1: of the idealists back in Brooklyn had made a deal
Speaker 1: with a monster. The historian Larry Seplayer interviewed many American
Speaker 1: Communists from those years, and he told me their unwavering
Speaker 1: support for Stalin always bothered him again and again, even
Speaker 1: from people who I thought were really incredibly intelligent people.
Speaker 1: Their main answer was, we thought the party leaders knew better,
Speaker 1: We thought they had more information, that they were a
Speaker 1: little more sophisticated in their reasoning, and so we went along.
Speaker 1: That always threw me. I mean, I'm still to this
Speaker 1: day don't really find it convincing. When the Levitts moved
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles, they joined the Hollywood branch of the
Speaker 1: Communist Party. The way Helen Levitt talks about it, she
Speaker 1: makes it sound like a glorified social club. It wasn't.
Speaker 1: They had various branches and they would get their orders,
Speaker 1: as it were, from the county, usually filters from New York.
Speaker 1: How closely was the National Party under the control law
Speaker 1: or in communication with the Silviet Union in those years,
Speaker 1: complete complete control. The Party couldn't do anything that the
Speaker 1: people in Moscow would disapprove of, and when they did,
Speaker 1: they were rapidly brought into line. Meanwhile, Stalin's policies were
Speaker 1: not exactly a secret. The purges, the famine, the pact
Speaker 1: with Hitler, the show trials, the concentration camps. There were
Speaker 1: plenty of people in the United States appalled by what
Speaker 1: was happening in the USSR, just not the members of
Speaker 1: the Hollywood branch of the Communist Party. At one point,
Speaker 1: Larry Sepplair asked Helen Levitt if she would have considered
Speaker 1: herself a Stalinist through this whole era. She said, of course.
Speaker 1: The general attitude we took in terms of any attacks
Speaker 1: against the Soviet Union was that the establishment here had
Speaker 1: so much at stake to undermine any success in the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union. But you couldn't believe anything. We justified everything.
Speaker 1: The Nazi Soviet Pact did not bother us. We really
Speaker 1: trusted Stalin, but he knew what he was doing. Stalin
Speaker 1: died in nineteen fifty three. His successor, Nikita Krushchev, famously
Speaker 1: denounced him in nineteen fifty six. After that, it was
Speaker 1: impossible to maintain the fiction that Stalin was anything except
Speaker 1: one of the twentieth century's bloodiest dictators. Only then did
Speaker 1: the Communist Party in Hollywood fade away? Why did you
Speaker 1: leave the Communist Party? It just disappeared after the krushe Whatever,
Speaker 1: the Kushef report, the secret so called secret speech, whatever
Speaker 1: I mean, the party just disappeared in Hollywood. We didn't
Speaker 1: leave form williams as saying, you know, we're leaving because
Speaker 1: there was no party. It just overnight it disappeared. Did
Speaker 1: you feel embarrassed having supported the Serviet scene? Keep in
Speaker 1: mind Larry Seplair and Helen Levitt are talking in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight, during the final chaotic years of the USSR,
Speaker 1: when many Russians felt embarrassed about having supported the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: not Helen Levitt. There's a famous picture taken at the
Speaker 1: Yalta conference in nineteen forty five, where the Allies met
Speaker 1: to plan the end of the War, Churchill, FDR, and
Speaker 1: Stalin sitting in a row. As a teenager in my
Speaker 1: anti communist phase, I was fixated on that photograph. Churchill,
Speaker 1: the greatest of all British wartime leaders, looks grumpy and indomitable. Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: who created the modern American state, is thin and drawn.
Speaker 1: He will be dead inside of a few months. Then
Speaker 1: there's Stalin on the end, in full Soviet Army dress,
Speaker 1: looking straight at the camera, with a trace of a
Speaker 1: smile below his thick mustache. All I could think was,
Speaker 1: what's so funny? Why is he smiling? How could the
Speaker 1: others put up with him? I thought of that photograph
Speaker 1: again when I listened to Helen Levitt rhapsodized about the
Speaker 1: glories of her communist past. She looked at those three men,
Speaker 1: and she cast her lot with the paranoid, homicidal jackass
Speaker 1: on the end. And why because she mistakenly thought that
Speaker 1: the way to deal with the world's injustices was to
Speaker 1: line up behind a monster. In seven hours of talking
Speaker 1: with Larry Seplair, Helen Levitt never once comes to terms
Speaker 1: with the consequences of her beliefs. No remorse, no regrets,
Speaker 1: nothing about her heavy days at Brooklyn College except nostalgia.
Speaker 1: Young people who were on the campus who did not
Speaker 1: get involved, either the young communists or the young Socialists,
Speaker 1: weren't enough because it was heavy stuff. I mean Angles
Speaker 1: and even Lenin. I mean Marx is impossible to read,
Speaker 1: but Angles was comprehensible but very well. It was a
Speaker 1: challenge to read. But I was very impressed with Angles
Speaker 1: and Lenin. They both were extraordinary minds, and Dick incredible writers.
Speaker 1: A young people who didn't get invoved either didn't have
Speaker 1: the intellectual capacity or the courage. As I listened to
Speaker 1: the interview, this is the moment that hit me, the
Speaker 1: sheer arrogance of it. But then I kept listening to
Speaker 1: the rest of her story. In nineteen forty seven, the
Speaker 1: Cold War between the USSR and US had just begun.
Speaker 1: A large chunk of Germany and Eastern Europe was under
Speaker 1: Soviet control. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sounded a warning
Speaker 1: that would instantly become famous, and I am Jerdan had
Speaker 1: descended across the continent behind that line by all the
Speaker 1: capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern New York.
Speaker 1: The hunt for communists within the United States became an obsession,
Speaker 1: starting with Hollywood. This committee, under its mandate from the
Speaker 1: House of Representatives, has the responsibility of exposing and spotlightings
Speaker 1: subversive elements wherever they may exist. In nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 1: the House Unamerican Activities Committee held hearings. It is only
Speaker 1: to be expected that communists would strive desperately to gain
Speaker 1: entry to the motion picture industry, simply because the industry
Speaker 1: offers such a tremendous weapon or education and propaganda. Screenwriters
Speaker 1: and movie stars who were suspected of once being members
Speaker 1: of the Communist Party were called to testify. Those who
Speaker 1: refused went to prison. Anyone suspected of Communist eyes were blacklisted.
Speaker 1: It was all but impossible for them to work in
Speaker 1: show business under their own names. The Levitts saw their
Speaker 1: friends get caught up in the witch hunt one by one,
Speaker 1: and then one day the witch hunt came for them.
Speaker 1: You know, things were really going along very nicely. I say,
Speaker 1: it was a kind of jolly life. It was nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty one. Helen had just had a baby, their second,
Speaker 1: a daughter. They had a housekeeper and a nurse. Her husband,
Speaker 1: Al was a rising star in Hollywood. And then when
Speaker 1: they came to the door. The subpoena was kind of
Speaker 1: a cold chill, because I knew it was all over. Now.
Speaker 1: This was a subpoena to appear publicly or was it
Speaker 1: super publicly? In Washington, both the Levitts were called to testify.
Speaker 1: They were asked about their Communist affiliations. They were forced
Speaker 1: to take the fifth al. Levitt had a statement prepared
Speaker 1: for his appearance that day. He read it decades later
Speaker 1: to Larry Supplair. Every man has the right to be unpopular,
Speaker 1: or even to be wrong, without suffering the consequence of
Speaker 1: official center, blacklist, or jail. Most peace loving people will
Speaker 1: find themselves unpopular with this committee. I do not therefore
Speaker 1: intend to enter my beliefs on my associations in a
Speaker 1: popularity contest in which the members of this committee are
Speaker 1: the judges. I shall offer no cooperation to the evil
Speaker 1: purpose of these hearings, except that which the force of
Speaker 1: law compels extraordinary a committee of Congress. And yet I
Speaker 1: was very calm, very composed, turned to my lawyers when
Speaker 1: I needed to. But I have footage of us in
Speaker 1: the hall of the Federal Building minutes after we came
Speaker 1: out of the hearing room, and I'm so pleased with it.
Speaker 1: I don't like, do we look so young, which everybody
Speaker 1: you know, it's young before they get old. But I'm laughing.
Speaker 1: You know, we're in such good spirits. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: no sense of people who were been through winter or deal,
Speaker 1: but but people who have done something difficult and you
Speaker 1: know than they did it. Had you decided what you
Speaker 1: were going to do with the rest of your lives
Speaker 1: now that Al's professional career was at an end, or
Speaker 1: that's something you've not been thinking about too much, Well,
Speaker 1: the first thing we did was far the servants. Did
Speaker 1: you have a sense um sort of a perspective that
Speaker 1: this trucial pass and oh forever forever the blacklist we
Speaker 1: thought it was forever at that point. Hell never had
Speaker 1: her tax returns those years, and a little pile on
Speaker 1: the table stock them out. So nineteen fifty two is
Speaker 1: the first full blacklist year and your income that year
Speaker 1: three thousand, nine hundred and fifty six dollars. Before landing
Speaker 1: on the blacklist, they had been making as much as
Speaker 1: twenty thousand dollars a year, very good money in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen fifties. Now they had to support their two
Speaker 1: children on a fraction of that. A'l levitt met a
Speaker 1: rich man who took pity on him and gave him
Speaker 1: a job filing. He got seven hundred and twenty two
Speaker 1: dollars for the year. Al also used a front, which
Speaker 1: was common practice during the blacklist years. The front pretended
Speaker 1: to be the writer got the credit, took half the money.
Speaker 1: The blacklisted writer did all the work. They were desperate.
Speaker 1: The next idea was correcting papers from a correspondent school.
Speaker 1: That job earned two hundred and fifty six dollars. After
Speaker 1: the kids were asleep, we would set up two typewriters
Speaker 1: in the living room and correct papers from this correspondence
Speaker 1: school thirty five cents for the first lesson and a
Speaker 1: dolf for the last lesson, which was a full shoot story.
Speaker 1: That was a terrible period. Now alive, they were broke,
Speaker 1: Their marriage was falling apart. Then Al's parents came to
Speaker 1: visit for two weeks, and we try to hide from
Speaker 1: them how terrible things were. They left. They gave us
Speaker 1: thirty five dollars for their food, and I had to
Speaker 1: take it because if I hadn't, they wouldn't have been up.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a dime in the house, because I had
Speaker 1: tried to make things seemed better than they were. Helen
Speaker 1: Levitt remembered every detail of this time. Their daughter was
Speaker 1: four and developmentally disabled. She was still drinking from a
Speaker 1: bottle and waking up two or three times a night.
Speaker 1: Helen and Al were exhausted and most of all alone.
Speaker 1: Their son Tom was expelled from his school. Everyone around
Speaker 1: them seemed to be turning their backs from the moment
Speaker 1: they appeared before Congress. The it's became parias. Our best
Speaker 1: friend called that night and the ones that we had
Speaker 1: seen every Saturday night previously in Brantwood, we went so
Speaker 1: regularly and said don't come to the party on Friday night.
Speaker 1: That was a terrible moment. Did you lose a lot
Speaker 1: of friends? Well, our friends. I know you're not a bitter,
Speaker 1: angry person, but weren't you I was originally lonely, lonely.
Speaker 1: He was so sad, you were so lonely. We would
Speaker 1: have invited out maybe once or twice a year. It
Speaker 1: was blacklist night. When we were invited, another blacklisted couple
Speaker 1: would be there. Period. We were never invited to integrated affairs.
Speaker 1: We were never invited to integrated affairs. They were utterly excluded.
Speaker 1: When faced with someone whose actions and views we disapprove of,
Speaker 1: we have many options anger, concern, persuasion. We can chastise
Speaker 1: them or try to reform them. But what was done
Speaker 1: to the Levitt's was something different. Exclusion. Exclusion is sanctioned
Speaker 1: without restraint, and while we're equipped to deal with anger
Speaker 1: and conflict, we're not equipped to be cast out of
Speaker 1: the community to which we belong. It's why solitary confinement
Speaker 1: is so excruciatingly painful, or why school suspensions have been
Speaker 1: shown again and again to be the most counterproductive of
Speaker 1: all educational interventions, and yet a third of all American
Speaker 1: children will be suspended over the course of their schooling.
Speaker 1: We can't help ourselves as I look back. That was
Speaker 1: the That was the toughest thing. The loneliness was simply dreadful.
Speaker 1: My eighteen year old self would have welcomed Helen Levitt's punishment,
Speaker 1: but now all I can think of is how carelessly
Speaker 1: and casually impose this kind of brutal social sanction on others.
Speaker 1: Exclusion is not justice, It's cruelty. The Levitts clawed their
Speaker 1: way back into show business. Both of them wrote scripts
Speaker 1: under assumed names. They called themselves the Augusts, but they
Speaker 1: never had the kind of a career as screenwriters they
Speaker 1: once imagined for themselves. Using the big screen to tackle
Speaker 1: serious issues. L Levitt wrote for TV sitcoms I'm sorry, Greg,
Speaker 1: but football is out. Like this Brady Bunch episode where Greg,
Speaker 1: one of the many Brady kids, wants to play football
Speaker 1: and his mom worries he'll get injured. Mom, a guy
Speaker 1: can get hurt right in his own home, like falling
Speaker 1: in a bathtub. Oh sure, but he doesn't have two
Speaker 1: other guys in a bathtub with him trying to knock
Speaker 1: them down. The levitz did more than sitcoms. They became
Speaker 1: active in the Writers Guild, where Helen led a mentorship
Speaker 1: program for young black screenwriters. Because it's just grotesque that
Speaker 1: they simply are not hired to write on white shows.
Speaker 1: Almost all their employment is on shows about blacks. Just
Speaker 1: to go pay you to do this, now, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: dream of taking money for teaching black riders. If you're
Speaker 1: teaching white writers, would you dream of taking I don't
Speaker 1: want to be I don't want to be a teacher
Speaker 1: for money. I mean, that's just not what I do.
Speaker 1: One cause led to another. A friend of the Levitz
Speaker 1: had a heart attack. The paramedics took forty minutes to arrive.
Speaker 1: After that, the Levitz decided that they needed to learn
Speaker 1: CPR because whatever we found myself such a circumstance, we
Speaker 1: would want to be the people who knew. Helen was
Speaker 1: in her sixties by this point, so it was very
Speaker 1: stress difficult for me because I never moved a muscle
Speaker 1: in my life, and I didn't even know then that
Speaker 1: I have had asthma all my life, and the breathing
Speaker 1: was very difficult, the compressions. I really went into training
Speaker 1: because I was determined that I was going to pass.
Speaker 1: There were eighteen of us who took the course, and
Speaker 1: on the eleven pass, and I squeaked through. Here in
Speaker 1: this country, thousands of TV and movie script writers walked
Speaker 1: off their jobs today. In nineteen eighty one, the writer's
Speaker 1: Guild called a strike. The Levitt's old leftists that they
Speaker 1: were had to support it. The other two strikes, the
Speaker 1: key stumbling block as the union's demand for a share
Speaker 1: of home video profits. I looked at each other, and
Speaker 1: we've got all this CPR skill in the guild. Now,
Speaker 1: if anybody has a heart attack on the picket line. Boy,
Speaker 1: we better really be prepared. The two of them consulted
Speaker 1: with doctors, trained people to teach CPR, organized the group
Speaker 1: of first aid workers into teams, and I remember realizing
Speaker 1: and saying at the time that the ride is skilled.
Speaker 1: Pick a Line eighty one was probably the safest place
Speaker 1: in the world to have heart attack, because at no
Speaker 1: point we more than sixty seconds away from somebody who
Speaker 1: moved CPR. And so I'm kind of like a general,
Speaker 1: you know, deploying my forces at every picket or my
Speaker 1: students from my black riot's workshop wanted to work for me,
Speaker 1: So I've got a core, very loyal young people. I
Speaker 1: had planned to stay home and write a screenplay, but
Speaker 1: maybe this is better. Helen Levitt got there in the end,
Speaker 1: not on the grand moral political stage that she had
Speaker 1: imagined for herself as a child. She wasn't very good
Speaker 1: at the grand and the political. She was better at
Speaker 1: smaller and more ordinary causes, giving a voice to black screenwriters,
Speaker 1: or on the picket line, making sure medical emergency was
Speaker 1: left unattended, caring for the neediest cases. There's another Year's
Speaker 1: expression called good to a Schuma, which kind of means
Speaker 1: good in themselves, you know, kind of just intrinsically good
Speaker 1: people who, as you say, to strive to do, strive
Speaker 1: to know what the right thing to do is and
Speaker 1: then do it, and sometimes they have detours along the way.
Speaker 1: What my younger self did not understand is that there
Speaker 1: is no perfect and easy path to conscience. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: circuitous and full of unfortunate detours. And maybe what we
Speaker 1: owe each other is faith and patience, because some of
Speaker 1: us will take longer than others to figure out where
Speaker 1: our conscience lies. Can you describe them? What do they
Speaker 1: look like? I recently called up Alan Helen's son, Tom
Speaker 1: on Zoom. I wanted to ask him about his parents.
Speaker 1: My dad looked a little bit like me. He was
Speaker 1: slightly taller. My mother was short. She was about five foot.
Speaker 1: I have pictures of him I can show you. Would
Speaker 1: you like me to do that? Oh yeah, hang on
Speaker 1: just a moment. I'll go to the other room. Tom
Speaker 1: Levitt came back with two black and white photographs in
Speaker 1: wooden frames. He held them up to the camera. Here's
Speaker 1: my dad. Oh he does look like you. Huh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's almost night, so, Kenny, that's your father. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: here's my mom. Oh, I see Helen Lovett, slender short,
Speaker 1: wearing an elegant black dress, smiling at the camera, eyes
Speaker 1: full of intelligence and compassion and life. Born in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen, Dodge in Los Angeles, nineteen ninety three. Can
Speaker 1: I judge Helen love It? I know her now and
Speaker 1: what she went through? I can't. Revisionist History is produced
Speaker 1: by Mail LaBelle, Lee Mingistu and Jacob Smith, with Eloise
Speaker 1: Linton and on a Name. Our editor is Julia Barton.
Speaker 1: Original scoring by Luis Guerra, mastering by Flawan Williams, and
Speaker 1: engineering by Martin Gonzalez. Fact checking by Amy Gaines and
Speaker 1: special thanks to the Pushkin crew. Had a fine Carli Megliori,
Speaker 1: Maya Kanig, Daniello Lacan, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, Nicole Morano,
Speaker 1: Jason Gambrel and of course Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 1: If you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries,
Speaker 1: consider becoming a Pushnik. Pushnik is a podcast subscription that
Speaker 1: offers bonus content and uninterrupted listening for four dollars and
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