"That Political Thing"

After the death last month of his good friend, Actress Mady (/ Remember Mama) Christians, Playwright Elmer Rice fired off an angry letter to the New York Times, charging that she had been hounded to her grave by Red-baiters. Last week, Rice lashed out with another letter on the same theme. But this time he went further than angry words. He resigned from the Playwrights' TV Theater, a group of top dramatists (Robert Sherwood, Maxwell Anderson, Eugene O'Neill, et al.) whose works are being performed on, ABC-TV's Celanese Theater.

Rice accused Celanese and its advertising agency, Ellington & Co., of barring actors from TV for their political beliefs. Specifically, he said that the agency's attorney had refused to clear an actor* for the title role in Counsellor-at-Law "even after I pointed out that the actor in question had testified under oath before the House Committee on Un-American Activities that he is not and has never been a Communist." Said Rice: "I have repeatedly denounced the men who sit in the Kremlin for judging artists by political standards. I do not intend to acquiesce when the same procedure is followed by political commissars who sit in the offices of advertising agencies or business corporations."

Adman Jesse Ellington expressed his regrets over Rice's resignation, but insisted that Celanese Theater would nevertheless go ahead with Counsellor-at-Law, starring Alfred Drake and Ruth Hussey. Explained Ellington: "We've tried to lean over backward to live up to the best traditions of the theater and to avoid any of that political thing in casting. But when you get somebody who may cause a lot of bad publicity for your program, you have to be a little careful--it's an ordinary business safeguard."

-Whose name was never mentioned.

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