Leftists try to flip the script on communism in Hollywood.
The other day, as part of my constant effort to find non-political content to vary my daily cultural diet, I started listening to a new series of YouTube podcasts about the life of Lucille Ball. Produced by Turner Classic Movies, it’s narrated by Ben Mankiewicz, the late Robert Osborne’s successor as TCM host. The series was pleasantly diverting — right up until Episode 7, “Red Scare,” which, having some familiarity with Lucy’s life story, I should have seen coming.
You see, Lucy’s maternal grandfather, Fred Hunt, was a communist. In biographies, he comes off as being rather like Arthur Spooner on King of Queens — a lovable eccentric with happy memories of socialist summer camp and of Broadway agitprop by Clifford Odets. At 24, at Fred’s urging, Lucy — who knew nothing about politics — registered to vote as a communist. It was the mid-1930s; Lucy wasn’t yet famous and communism wasn’t yet taken seriously in the corridors of power.
