When I first set up shop here at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, one of the promises I made to myself was to make sure I included a wide range of old-time radio programs available in these discussions. I’m sure it hasn’t gone unnoticed that my OTR preferences lean a little toward comedy; in my defense, though, I need to point out that many of the previous reviews posted were done simply because I had been listening to a Radio Spirits collection called Radio Comedy Classics.
Last night, I sampled a couple of shows from a recent Round Robin purchase—and I have to tell you, this one’s a real doozy: I Was a Communist For the FBI. Based on a best-selling book by Matt Cvetic, the series starred Dana Andrews as an undercover operative (Cvetic) who infiltrated the Communist Party, reporting to the Feds on the Party’s activities.
Communist was produced during the early 1950s to capitalize on the then-current Red Scare—by a man whose last name has become virtually synonymous with both radio and television syndication. Frederic W. Ziv—the son of the inventor of the buttonhole machine—started his career in a $10-a-week-job in a Cincinnati ad agency and later advanced to owning a successful company that would produce programs sold directly to individual stations. Among the Ziv properties that became hits on radio were Boston Blackie, Philo Vance, The Cisco Kid, and Favorite Story. Later, Ziv would duplicate his radio success on the tube with successful TV transplants of Cisco and Blackie, in addition to such series as Highway Patrol, Sea Hunt, Tombstone Territory
At the time of Communist’s debut, the motion picture industry was experiencing a slight decline from both the onslaught of television and the government-enforced breakup of the industry’s production and distribution monopolies. Many film stars soon discovered that radio could provide both a lucrative salary and public exposure; among these stars were Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (Bold Venture), Joel McCrea (Tales of the Texas Rangers), Alan Ladd (Box 13), Glenn Ford (The Adventures of Christopher London) and Brian Donlevy (Dangerous Assignment). The Ziv company productions would prove to be tailor-made for these stars, particularly the Bogarts (who appeared in Ziv's Venture) and Dana Andrews; the programs were recorded in advance to accommodate movie-making schedules, and the stars could earn a hefty sum by lending their “name value” to the shows. Seventy-eight episodes of I Was a Communist For the FBI were produced between 1952-54, and the series was sold to more than 600 stations—much more saturation than any network could provide.
I Was a Communist For the FBI is definitely a candidate for a Cold War time capsule; an espionage-thriller that nicely captures the anti-Communist hysteria which at that time was at its peak. Stereotypes run rampant on this show: as Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg used corrupt union/gangster-types to represent Communists in their allegory On the Waterfront (1954); so follows Communist, which shades the show’s party members as common hoods. The Commies come across as cold, emotionless individuals completely devoid of a sense of humor; although it is unintentionally funny when they address one another as “Comrade.”
The first broadcast I listened to was “Little Red Schoolhouse” (yes, I can hear you groaning out there, they’re all that bad) originally broadcast May 7, 1952. It’s the third episode of the series (although the script was also used as the audition program for the show), and details the attempts of the Communist Party and their plans to subvert a small American college. At a meeting, Cvetic is introduced to fellow Party member Stephanie:
STEPHANIE: Comrade…Matt…Comrade Matthew…no, I like “Comrade Matt” better…it’s hard…tough…like you…
CVETIC: It’s a tough world, Comrade Stephanie…no room for softness…we’re nothing…the Party and its beliefs are everything…do you disagree with that?
STEPHANIE: Of course not, Comrade Matt…it’s only that being near you makes me feel like a woman…is that so terrible?
CVETIC: That’s dangerous talk…I’d be more careful…
STEPHANIE: I’m always careful…we’ll talk more later…
Enough of the Commie singles bar—the episode contains a good deal of taut conflict because a newly-arrived Soviet agent (and we know he’s Russian due to his Akim Tamiroff-type accent), Vassily Konastoi, apparently has spotted Cvetic meeting with his FBI contact, Ed Grayson. Or has he? The agent continues to play a game of cat-and-mouse with our hero throughout the episode:
KONASTOI: Something to drink?
CVETIC: No thanks…
(SFX: drinking sounds)
KONASTOI: Ah…my throat was dry…I have had the feeling all evening that we have met before, Comrade Cvetic…
CVETIC: Not that I can recall…
KONASTOI: Well, no matter…I’ll remember sometime…I always do…
So, not only is Cvetic sweating it out, praying that Konastoi’s memory doesn’t get better—but he’s also having to fend off the advances of Comrade Stephanie, who apparently has not enjoyed the company of male comrades (or, as Cvetic reports it to Konastoi, “bourgeois emotionalism”) in quite some time. Cvetic and his fellow Party-member-in-heat are assigned to infiltrate a local college with Commie propaganda:
KONASTOI: There is one professor at Bryson who will be your best asset, Comrade Cvetic…a Professor Walden…
CVETIC: Is he a fellow traveler?
KONASTOI: A very reluctant one…you will have to play down everything except how Communism will save the oppressed from the tyranny of Fascism…Walden is fond of helping underdogs…
CVETIC: Well, uh…can you get us a big name, Comrade Konastoi? Someone to lecture the students?
KONASTOI: I will send a wire tonight to Philip Stanley…
STEPHANIE: The singer?
KONASTOI: Yes…he has a big reputation…the kids will listen to him even if he is a pinko chump…
The propaganda campaign at the college comes off without a hitch, and, as an added bonus, a riot breaks out at a demonstration by the student body (“Our work here is done,” asserts Cvetic.). Arriving back at Party headquarters (the “little red schoolhouse” of the title), Comrade Stephanie appears to have had a crisis of faith:
STEPHANIE: I’m sick of it, Matt…I’m sick of the rottenness and the lying and cheating…let’s quit the party, you and I…we could go away together…
CVETIC: What? You must be out of your stupid mind! Talking to me this way…
STEPHANIE: What…what are you going to do?
CVETIC: What do you think I’m going to do? I’m going to report you…the party has ways of dealing with treason…
STEPHANIE: Oh no…please don’t turn me in, Matt…I’m sorry…
(SFX: door opens)
CVETIC: It’s too late…get inside…
(SFX: door closes, footsteps, door opens and closes)
KONASTOI: I heard the report on the radio…you did a good job, comrades…what’s the trouble? You look angry…
CVETIC: I am angry…this traitor just tried to make me quit the party…
KONASTOI: Oh? Did she? (he begins to chuckle, then bursts out in laughter) I told you, Comrade Stephanie…Comrade Cvetic is as solid as the Kremlin…
STEPHANIE: He sure is…
CVETIC: Wait…wait a minute…you mean I was just being tested?
STEPHANIE: Testing high-ranking party members is my job, Comrade Cvetic…I’m an agent of the M.V.D….now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to town and file my report…
Just when Cvetic thinks he’s successfully dodged that bullet, Konastoi reaches into a drawer and pulls out a gun, because he’s remembered where he saw Cvetic—chatting it up with the nice Fed. He plans to take Cvetic out and stage his suicide—fortunately, the FBI has had Cvetic under surveillance and ambush Konastoi outside his car. In his getaway, Konastoi takes a curve a little too fast—and his car plunges down an embankment below, killing him instantly.
I Was a Communist For the FBI has a high-camp content, as I have certainly demonstrated here—but I think that’s what makes the series so doggone entertaining. The whole Communists-as-gangsters motif helps out a great deal; while listening to the program I couldn’t help but be reminded of the film Donnie Brasco (1997), in which yet another Fed infiltrates the mob, only to find himself identifying a little too much with his fellow Mafia “comrades.” There is also a good deal of dramatic suspense in Communist; the follow-up episode I listened to, “Red Red Herring,” demonstrates the tightrope Cvetic walks: he has to maintain the fiction of being a Communist in order to continue his work and at the same time, gets a lot of grief from family and friends, to whom he cannot reveal his undercover work. “Herring” also details how he frames a fellow Party member as being a “mole” in order to throw off suspicion from himself; kind of a “does-the-end-justify-the-means” lesson in ethics.
Before I Was a Communist For the FBI made its radio debut, the story of Matt Cvetic had previously been told on the silver screen in a 1951 Warner Brothers film starring Frank Lovejoy (no slouch to radio himself; he was the star of the excellent NBC series Nightbeat, which ran from 1950 to 1952). I guess they got Dana Andrews to do the radio version because he was admittedly a bigger name than Lovejoy; plus having anti-Commie films like The Iron Curtain (1949) on your resume doesn’t hurt, either. Ziv also brought another undercover operative’s book to TV in 1953 with the series I Led Three Lives, starring Richard Carlson as Boston
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