‘Hell, I am just a Guitar Player’: The National Security State Confronts the Threat Burl Ives Posed to Cold War America

Abstract

At the height of the Cold War, Burl Ives nearly saw his career undone. The Federal Bureau of Investigation launched an investigation into the singer-actor based on his associations with left-wing political organisations, his flirtation with Communism during World War II, and his contacts in 1944 with two known Soviet spies. J. Edgar Hoover classified Ives as a ‘turncoat’. Guided by intelligence it received from the FBI, the State Department moved to block his right to travel abroad. Only the intervention of Eva Adams, Senator Pat McCarran’s (Democrat, Nevada) formidable administrative assistant, salvaged Ives’ career. In 1952 Adams pressed the State Department and coaxed the FBI into granting Ives the right to sing American folk songs to allies in Western Europe and Australia. Subsequently, he gave public testimony to the McCarran Internal Security Sub-Committee where he identified four colleagues as having had Communist associations. This essay draws on recently declassified files from the FBI and State Department to show the way that counter-subversives in government sought to micromanage popular culture during the Cold War, the multiple bureaucratic actors involved in evaluating the loyalty of individual entertainers, and the role luck played in determining final outcomes.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Laurel Macronday at the National Archives who declassified Ives’ FBI file and pointed me towards other records relevant to my research. David Langbart offered immensely helpful guidance on how to pursue State Department materials. Noah Shankin answered questions for me about congressional sources on Ives. Jacquelyn Sundstrand at the University of Nevada-Reno made available documents in the Eva Adams papers. Margie D’Aprix at Hamilton College acquired several sources for me through inter-library loan. Finally, Provost Scott Dransfield and colleagues on the Faculty Development Committee at Southern Virginia University (John Armstrong, Barbara Crawford, Alan Whitehurst) provided funds in support of my scholarship.

Notes on Contributor

Francis MacDonnell, Ph.D. is Professor of History Emeritus at Southern Virginia University and a Scholar-in-Residence at Hamilton College. His current research project is Policing Show Biz: J. Edgar Hoover, the Entertainment Industry and Cold War Popular Culture. He is the author of Insidious Foes: The Axis Fifth Column and the American Home Front (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

Notes

1 Refusal, March 5, 1952, 130 Ives, Burl. Classified Passport Application File, RG 59, National Archives and Record Administration (hereafter Ives Passport File); William Dix, Report on Burl Icle Ives, February 21, 1951, Burl Ives FBI file, 100 HQ-35881, RG 65, Freedom of Information Act Request 53669, NARA, 55–80 (hereafter Ives FBI file); American Business Consultants, ‘Burl Ives’, Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television (Counterattack: New York, 1950), 87–8; Adams support for Ives in L. B. Nichols to Mr. Tolson, April 17, 1952, Ives FBI File, 94–5; ‘Testimony of Burl Icle Ives’, May 20, 1952, Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal SecurityLaws of the Committee on the Judiciary. U.S. Senate. 2^nd sess. Subversive Infiltration of Radio, Television, and the Entertainment Industry. Part 2. 1952 (Washington, D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952), 205–28. (hereafter Testimony of Burl Icle Ives, May 20, 1952.)

2 Hoover handwritten comment calls Ives ‘another expedient turncoat’ in F. J. Baumgardner to A. H. Belmont, September 8, 1950, Ives FBI File, 41.

3 Helen Ross, ‘Just a Guy Who Sings’, Saturday Evening Post, April 14, 1945, 12.

4 Those interested in Ives’ work in music, theater, film, and television will find papers at the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress. Finding aids are available online at Burl Ives Papers 1913–1975, Archives and Manuscripts, New York Public Library, http://archives.nypl.org/the/21784# detailed and Burl Ives Collection 1940–1960, Burl Ives Collection 1940–1960, Music Division of Library of Congress http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.scdb.200033549/default.html

Film and television credits are listed under IMDB, Burl Ives, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0412322/

All accessed July 17, 2018.

5 A fine summary of the scholarship on Cold War espionage can be found in K. A. Cuordileone, ‘The Torment of Secrecy: Reckoning with American Communism after Venona’, Diplomatic History 35 No. 4 (September, 2011): 615–42. For a lively colloquy between two distinguished scholars representing the revisionist and traditionalist positions see Maurice Isserman, ‘Open Archives and Open Minds: ‘Traditionalists’ Versus ‘Revisionists’ after Venona’, and Harvey Klehr, ‘Reflections of a Traditionalist Historian’, with ‘Rejoinder’ and ‘Response’ all in American Communist History, v. 4, no. 2, (December, 2005): 215–36. A brilliant, acerbic, and now a bit dated historiography on the blacklist can be found in Thom Anderson, ‘Red Hollywood,’ and ‘Afterward’, in ‘Un-American’ Hollywood: Politics and Films in the Blacklist Era, eds. Frank Krutnik et. al, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 225–75.

6 John Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000); John Haynes, Harvey Klehr, Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2009); Harvey Klehr, John Haynes, Fridrikh Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America – the Stalin Era (New York: Modern Library, 2000); Katherine A. S. Sibley, Red Spies in America: Stolen Secrets and the Dawn of the Cold War (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2004); Kathryn Olmsted, Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Sam Tanenhaus, Whitaker Chambers: A Biography (New York: Modern Library, 1998); Harvey Klehr quote comes from Klehr, ‘Reflections of a Tradtionalist’, 231.

7 Isserman, ‘Open Archives and Open Minds’, 216.

8 Ellen Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 412.

9 Important revisionist studies of the FBI include: Athan Theoharis, Chasing Spies: How the FBI Failed in Counterintelligence But Promoted the Politics of McCarthyism (Chicago: Ivan Dee, 2002); Athan Theoharis, Spying on Americans: Political Surveillance from Hoover to the Huston Plan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978); John Stuart Cox and Athan Theoharis, The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); Kenneth O’Reilly, Hoover and the Un-Americans: The FBI, HUAC, and the Red Menace (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983); Natalie Robins, Alien Ink: The FBI’s War on Freedom of Expression (New York: William Morrow, 1992.)

10 The best traditionalist account of the Communism in Hollywood is Ronald and Allis Radosh, Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony’s Long Romance with the Left (New York: Encounter Books, 2006.) Alan Casty denies that the McCarthy period resulted in bland films. Instead he sees the era producing a rich body of ‘humane’ and ‘innovative’ movies, ‘some of the best ever made’. He also rebuts efforts by writers such as Victor Navasky to turn Hollywood Communists into heroes and friendly witnesses into villains. Alan Casty, Communism in Hollywood: The Moral Paradoxes of Testimony, Silence, and Betrayal (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009) 257, 294–6. For a traditionalist account whose polemical bent is revealed in its title see Kenneth Billingsley, Hollywood Party: How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry in the 1930s and 1940s (Forum: Roseville, CA, 2000.) Hellman and lover in Ronald and Allis Radosh, 239; Quotes from the Radoshes are in Red Star Over Hollywood, 235 and 242

11 Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund’s magisterial work on the blacklist remains essential reading. See Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics and the Film Community 1930–1960 (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2003.) Ellen Schrecker sees anti-Communism as distorting American entertainment by discouraging the production of works that addressed race, class, and gender. Instead films presented ‘the ostensibly homogenized society of Cold War America . . .’ See Schrecker, Many are the Crimes, 399. John Sbardellati credits the FBI’s investigations into Hollywood with killing for a time the social problem film. His superb monograph mines the FBI file on Communists in the Motion Picture Industry. John Sbardellati, J. Edgar Hoover Goes to the Movies: The FBI and the Origins of the Cold War (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2012.) Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle, Tender Comrades: The Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997) xx.

12 Kathryn Cramer Brownell, Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014.) Donald Critchlow, When Hollywood Was Right: How Movie Stars, Studio Moguls, and Big Business Remade American Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 42–108.

13 No detected political activism in unsigned FBI memo, 1/2/1959 in Ives FBI File. 147–8. On anti-littering see Randall Wilson, America’s Public Lands: From Yellow Stone to Smoky the Bear and Beyond (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014), 197.

14 Steven Ross, ‘Little Caesar and the HUAC Mob’, Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 89–129.

15 East of Eden, directed by Elia Kazan, Warner Bros., 1955; The Power and the Prize, directed by Henry Koster, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1956; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Richard Brooks, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1958; The Big Country, directed by William Wyler, United Artists, 1958; Our Man in Havana, directed by Carol Reed, Kingsmead Productions, distributed by Columbia Pictures, 1959.

16 Burl Ives, Wayfaring Stranger, Kessinger Legacy Reprints (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill, 1948). Grandfather knocks out horse p. 32, 100 year old with Henry Clay, 49–52, Ives in disguise 75–7, thoughtlessness on race 98, Dad and Klan 81–2, leaves Beowulf lecture 108–9, ‘Foggy Dew’ and police 129–31, hobo on train 140–1, views on Spanish Civil War and friendship with Will Geer 205–6, 212, Ives praised in Daily Worker 212, singing and acting career takes off 242–7.

17 Quotes on Ives’ breakdown and claim that while still in the Army Ives ‘corresponded with a known Soviet Espionage Agent’. Irving Weeks, Los Angeles FBI, 7/19/49, Burl Ives FBI File. 8–9.

18 ‘Testimony of Burl Icle Ives’, May 20, 1952. The comment on ‘six or seven’ meetings appears to include the combined figure from the Communist Political Association and the musicians’ group—though the testimony is somewhat unclear, 221. On weekly salary in 1943 and 1944 see 219. On entrance card and collections, 221, on discussing winning the war rather than communism see 222, on Stevens biography 222. In 1944 Earl Browder dissolved the Communist Party and replaced it with the Communist Political Association. His action endorsed a pragmatic form of Marxism pledged to support American democracy and the re-election of Franklin Roosevelt. The move drew in 24,000 new Communists, matching the highs reached before the Hitler-Stalin pact. See Maurice Isserman, Which Side Were You On? The American Communist Party During the Second World War (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1982), 203–5, 208–13.

19 Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood. On Dodd and Stern, see 50–71. On Stern’s recruitment see 65. On Morros see 110–39. Morros begins spying 111, place illegals in US and Switzerland, 117, failed music business as cover, 118–23. For more on Morros and Stern see John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America. 268–75. Morros works for FBI in 1947, 271.

20 Unnamed FBI Agent, Los Angeles, 5/27/1949, Subject Boris Morros, File No. 18539, acquired through Federal Bureau of Investigation, FOIPA 1373724-0, Stern quoted on 30, Morros on Ives on 33. As of February 2019 this material is available in the online FBI Vault under the heading ‘Burl Ives’. These documents are distinct from the Ives FBI file available through the National Archives.

21 On Lincoln and Washington, 2/21/1947, radio script episode 19, folder 1, box 2 Ives on ‘the world’s getting so small’ 7/4/1947, radio script episode 38, folder 3, box 2, and Philco radio ad undated radio script and unnumbered episode, folder 1, box 2, in Burl Ives Collection, 1919–1965, Music Division, Library of Congress. Washington, D.C.

22 Burl Icle Ives Hearings, May 20, 1952.

23 Red Channels, 87–8. F. J. Baumgardner to Mr. A. H. Belmont, September 8, 1950, in Burl Ives FBI File, 39.

24 The FBI recorded that in 1943 Military Intelligence intercepted a letter Ives had written to a Soviet spy whose correspondence was under surveillance. The file does not name the Soviet agent. Irving Weeks Report, Los Angeles, 7/19/1949, Ives FBI File, 9.

25 Baumgardner to Belmont, September 8, 1950, in Ives FBI File, 39.

26 Ibid., 40.

27 Ibid., 40.

28 Ibid., 40–1 and SAC New York to Director, FBI 5/13/1957 in Ives FBI File, 143.

29 Burl Ives, notarized statement, September 28, 1950, in Ives Passport File.

30 Burl Ives, ‘To Whom it May Concern’, notarized statement September 28, 1950 in Ives Passport File.

31 Initial decision to prepare a security card is in SAC New York to Director, February 21, 1951, Ives FBI file, 46. Apparent handwritten rejection of recommendation by Hoover in Ibid.,William Dix, Report on Burl Icle Ives, February 21, 1951, 55–80. Confidential informant T-10 said Ives was in the CPUSA when in the Army, 60. It’s hard to know the basis of this accusation. Another informant, T-24, said Ives was in the CPUSA in 1944, 61. This date matches the years when he admitted exploring Marxist ideology. In May 1948, Rene Soares the chairman of the Carlson Club of the Village Section in NY of the Communist Party claimed that Ives was a Communist, 60. Most sources in the file simply emphasised his associations with Communists and his left-wing activism.

32 Director, FBI to SAC, NY, March 16, 1951, Ives FBI File, 81.

33 An initial refusal to grant Ives a passport is in his file with the explanation that he was an ‘alleged Communist’, See ‘Refusal March 5, 1952, on explanation for granting limited travel rights see A. J. Nicholas, for PD files, March 19, 1952 both documents in Ives Passport File.

34 Burl Ives to A. J. Nicholas, March 28, 1952, in Ives Passport File.

35 This typed note has irregular spacing throughout. So much so that Ives added a handwritten apology—‘Excuse typing’. I’ve regularised the spacing. Burl Ives to Eve Adams, Friday March 28, 1952, 82-11/I/1/169 in Papers of Eva Adams, Special Collections Department, University of Nevada, Reno.

36 All quotes in L. B. Nichols to Mr. Tolson, March 19, 1952, Ives FBI File, 86.

37 Adams on Boykin discussed L. B. Nichols to Mr. Tolson, April 17, 1952, 94–5.

38 ‘I am astounded’ handwritten comments by Hoover to Tolson, March 25, 1952 memo, 85; ‘this fellow Ives’ handwritten comments by Hoover on L. B. Nichols to Mr. Tolson, April 17, 1952, 95; I am not in the least desirous . . . handwritten comments by Hoover on L. B. Nichols to Mr. Tolson, April 18, 1952, 91; ‘apparently not too mentally deranged’ handwritten comments by Hoover in L. B. Nichols to Mr. Tolson, April 23, 1952, Ives FBI File, 97.

39 Ruth Shipley to Mr. Nicholson, April 9, 1952, Ives Passport File.

40 ‘adverse publicity’ in US Embassy in London to Acheson, March 26,1952; ‘security standpoint’ in Acheson to Embassy in London, April 8, 1952, Ives Passport File.

41 Acheson to Embassy in London, April 18, 1952, Ives Passport File.

42 Ives’ explanations for testifying on p. 209. A sampling of Ives’ responses to his associations with left wing groups includes that it was ‘very likely’ he entertained for the American Friends of the Chinese people in 1941, 210. Ives admitted supporting the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee as well as a number of associations supportive of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 213, 219. He didn’t remember acting as a sponsor for the American Russian Institute in 1947 but ‘it is possible’. 210 He had sponsored and participated in a broadcast for the Committee for the First Amendment fighting back against HUAC’s investigation of Hollywood. 211 He denied ever appearing at the Shrine Auditorium for a Save the United Nations rally and said he never approved of the use of his name to support the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace in 1949 , 217. ‘Testimony of Burl Icle Ives’, May 20, 1952, 205–28.

43 In his FBI interview of 1950 Ives had linked a woman named ‘Marian’ to drawing him toward Communism, but in public testimony he identified Dyer-Bennett, 220. On Meltzer, 221. Lev and Kay mentioned on 221. ‘Testimony of Burl Icle Ives’, May 20, 1952.

44 On relationship with Pete Seeger and Peoples’ Songs Inc. in Testimony of Burl Icle Ives, May 20, 1952, 216

45 Seeger on Ives in David Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing: Pete Seeger (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), 191.

46 ‘Testimony of Burl Icle Ives’, May 20, 1952, Ives’ benefit work listed 223–5. On the fees charged by Ives, 225.

47 Christopher Gerard. ‘A Program of Cooperation’: The FBI, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and the Communist Issue, 1950–1956’ (Ph.D. Dissertation. Marquette University, 1993). On Hoover and McCarran see especially ii, 378–9.

48 Nichols quotes Adams and then records his response in L. B. Nichols to Mr. Tolson, May 20, 1952, Ives FBI file, 113.

49 Passport Division’s denial of leaking FBI records is in D. M. Ladd to A. H. Belmont, June 2, 1952, Ives FBI file, 129.

50 On FBI documents linking Ives to the security designation ‘C’ see SAC Los Angeles to Director, October 7, 1949, 26, and SAC New York to Director, November 17, 1949, 30.

51 Orson Welles interview by Juan Cobos, Miguel Rubio, and J. A. Pruneda, 1964 in Orson Welles Interviews, ed. Mark Estrin (Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 2002) 113.

52 There’s an extensive literature on Dalton Trumbo. I have relied on Larry Ceplair and Christopher Trumbo, Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical (Lexington, KY: University Press of KY, 2015) and Ronald and Allis Radosh, ‘The Struggle of Dalton Trumbo’, Red Star Over Hollywood. All quotes from Trumbo are in Ceplair and Trumbo on 551. The Radoshes treat Trumbo’s retrospective attitude toward informers on 228–33. Ceplair and Trumbo offer a satisfying account of the debate between Trumbo and Albert Maltz where the former rejected ideas that the Hollywood Ten could be easily classified as ‘heroes’ and the cooperative witnesses as ‘villains’ on 550–2. For entries on Dyer-Bennet, Lev, and Seeger see Red Channels, 53–4, 99–101, 130–1.

53 ‘Actress Judy Holliday Admits Stupidity About Red Fronts’, Washington Post, September 25, 1952, 12; ‘Was Duped by Reds Says Judy Holliday’, Los Angeles Times, September 25, 1952, 32; William Moore, ‘Innocent Dupe of Red Fronts Actress Claims’, Chicago Tribune, September 25, 1952, part 2, 5; ‘Judy at Red Inquiry Told of Own Probe’, Washington Post, September 24, 1952, 28.

54 I was led to quotes from Silber and Seeger in Paul Jenkins, Richard Dyer-Bennet: The Last Minstrel (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2010), 72. Also see Ronald Cohen, Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival & American Society 1940–1970 (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), 80–1. Irwin Silber, ‘Burl Ives Sings a Different Song’, Sing Out! v. 3, no. 2, October 1952, 2. Pete Seeger, ‘Sea Song Paperback’, Sing Out! v. 6, no. 4, 1957, 21. Ronald Radosh describes Irwin Silber and Pete Seeger’s ties to radicalism in Ronald Radosh, ‘The Communist Party’s Role in the Folk Revival: From Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan’, American Communist History, v. 14, no. 1, (April, 2015): 3–19. The obituary of Ives cites as its source for his HUAC informing ‘newspaper accounts of the period’. Perhaps such stories exist, but I have not found them. Roger Dietz, ‘Burl Ives (1909–1995)’, Sing Out! v. 40, no. 2 Aug. Sept. Oct. 1995, 26. My query to the Legislative Section of the National Archives has not produced evidence that Ives gave up 110 names or more to HUAC. I was informed that a search of HUAC materials on Ives showed only ‘one folder containing primarily clippings and other published material (the files in the File and Reference section are typically made up of similar material). The only document of interest was a memo relating the same information as above – I have scanned and attached it to this email’. The attached email was correspondence to Mary Valente from the File and Reference Section of the House Un-American Activities indicating that there were ‘no references in our files pertaining to Burl Ives later than 1949’. Archivist Legislative Section of National Archives to MacDonnell, private email correspondence, June 21, 2017. File and Reference Section, House Un-American Activities Committee to Mary Valente, December 10, 1962, HUAC Files, RG 233, NARA.

55 Richard Severo, ‘Burl Ives, the Folk Singer Whose Imposing Acting Won an Oscar, Dies at 85’, April 15, 1995, New York Times; Bart Barnes, ‘Singer, Actor Burl Ives Dies’, Washington Post, April 15, 1995 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1995/04/15/singer-actor-burl-ives-dies/617ec2f8-3515-4762-885d-d46b9981de1b/?utm_term=.3c8d394713b8; Burt A. Folkart, ‘Burl Ives Folk Singer, Oscar Winner, Dies’, Los Angeles Times, April 15, 1995 http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-burl-ives-19950415-story.html; and ‘Burl Ives’, Variety, April 24, 1995 https://variety.com/1995/scene/people-news/burl-ives-99128275/. Marc Fisher, ‘America’s Big Daddy’, Washington Post, April 15, 1995. ‘Mason, not a Communist’ in Fisher. ‘balladeer who brought new life . . .’ in Barnes.