A Word In the Right Ear

Yesterday, I began to tell you about a movement by one government employee, a Mr. Murray W. Garsson, to rid from American soil all those pesky foreigners like Marlene Dietrich, Charles Chaplin and Greta Garbo.

Well, according to Mr. Garsson the whole thing started when the Actors' Equity Association and the Lambs Club of New York got hold of Mr. Garsson and bent his ear about the "influx of foreign players who, they declared, were taking the jobs that belong to Americans...for less money than the Americans have been accustomed to."

And it seems that once Mr. Garsson knocked on the doors of the big studio executives asking for the records of their employees, said studio executives were only too happy to comply. Now you know when big business is only too happy to comply with the government's request for information it usually means they are hoping something else stays hidden. Or maybe it had to do with Mr. Garsson's arrest of John Farrow, the future father of Mia Farrow, a lowly writer at the time and Mia only a twinkle in daddy's eye. The arrest came the first week Mr. Garsson started throwing his weight around in Hollywood.

More tomorrow...

[Leslie Howard leaving America for
the last time, August 22, 1939]

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