By Appointment

All it took was a handful of telegrams and 20 telephone calls to kick Actress Jean Muir off the air as a "controversial personality" (TIME, Sept. 4). Networks, ad agencies and advertisers feared to have themselves identified with anyone accused, however justly or unjustly, of Communist sympathy. Last week, crowing over their victory against Actress Muir, a little group organized themselves as a special committee to keep the air waves pure.

The committee members were old hands at the game. Among them: Rabbi Benjamin Schultz, head of the newly formed Joint Committee Against Communism; Mrs. Hester McCullough, whose defense against a libel suit brought by Dancer Paul Draper and Harmonica Player Larry Adler ended in a hung jury (TIME, June 5); Managing Editor Theodore Kirkpatrick of the anti-Communist newsletter Counterattack, who served with the FBI for three years during World War II. Their bible was a $1 book, Red Channels, put out by Counterattack as a directory of suspected Reds and party-liners in the entertainment business.

Members were obviously prepared to put the heat on advertisers who hired any of the 151 actors, writers and directors listed in Counterattack* or Red Channels --and presumably, anyone else who attracted the committee's suspicions. "We have intended no blacklist," explained Committeeman Kirkpatrick blandly, "but we have no objection to people taking action on the facts we have compiled."

Then Kirkpatrick went on to explain just what it would take to get right with the committee again. He had once been forced to apologize publicly after Actor Fredric March and his wife Florence Eldridge had convincingly denied his charges that they were Communists. But he was not prepared to accept Actress Muir's denials so easily. "Times have changed since then," he said.

From now on, the committee would make itself the final arbiter in disputed cases. To get right, anyone accused by the committee would have to prove his innocence or his reformation to the satisfaction of the self-appointed committee, or suffer the consequences.

Suggested by Kirkpatrick as ways to get the committee's absolution: testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee; proving a complete break with all suspect groups; working for a "pro-American" organization.

*Including such chatty radio gossips as Mary Margaret McBride and Martha Dean, singled out by Counterattack because, among other things, they have at one time or another advertised Polish hams.

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