STUDENT COMRADES
My friends and I were recruited into the Communist Party in 1956 when I was 16. Some days after school, I'd meet my comrades, Sandy, Sheila, and Maidy, at the intersection of High Street and Germantown Avenue. We'd catch a trolley car and clatter east over the cobblestones to Wayne Avenue, past the theater where we had seen Potemkin, and south through Strawberry Mansion. We were happy about Sputnik, and Paul Robeson finally getting his passport. Fidel Castro was not a Communist but his increasing strength was good for the Cuban people.
There was bad news too. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was unsettling (but necessary). John Gates resigned as editor of The Worker, and Chou En-Lai, whose face I liked better than Mao's, resigned as China's Foreign Minister. The Party had finally quit denying the China / USSR split which seemed worrisome, but the "Great Leap Forward" sounded exciting. We discussed these things as if we knew what we were talking about, clueless that the "backyard steel furnaces" would destroy the Chinese economy.
We'd emerge on the other side of town to work on the "Youth March on Washington for Integrated Schools," or an SYU (Socialist Youth Union) meeting. Center City was where we filed petitions, distributed handbills, or hawked The Worker, a chore I hated, especially during cold weather. We actually sold very few since most people gave us a wide berth. HUAC (House Un-American Committee) was still sending people to jail for being Communists, courtesy of the FBI, who would certainly be lurking nearby, taking pictures as they did everywhere we appeared.
According to one FBI memo marked "confidential," I was active in not only the SYU, but also the Progressive Youth Organizing Committee, "New Horizons for Youth" (a magazine Manny edited), Philadelphia Chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, The Philadelphia Social Science Forum Committee, the Young People's Folk Chorus and the Jewish Youth Chorus. Some of these groups I actually remember.
A block down and across the street from school, the Germantown YWCA had become central to my cultural and political life. Clarisse, the Y's administrator, encouraged everyone to take advantage of the facilities, which we did for meetings and "socials." When she urged us to use the swimming pool, we did that, too.
"Teens Ahead" began as a discussion group meeting in Bernice's livingroom, until the crowds got too large and we moved to the Y. The SYU (Socialist Youth Union) sponsored monthly social events and programs with titles like "A Free City College in Philadelphia?" and produced musicians, like young enthusiast, Billy Vanaver, a dedicated, up-and-coming folk instrumentalist.
The High School Drama Club used the Y's top floor to hold rehearsals for Sorry, Wrong Number, a thriller based on the 1948 Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster movie about a helpless woman receiving threatening phone calls. We also produced Mooney's Kid Don't Cry. There were small parts for us, and sets to help build and paint. I would like to be a good actor, but it would take too much time, and I had more important things to do.
A group of young singers broke away from the old Yiddish Folk Chorus and formed the Jewish Youth Chorus (JYC) and began rehearsing once a week at the Germantown Y for a performance at the lefty New Century Club. Mattie, who led the beloved Camp Kinderland chorus, made the weekly commute from the Bronx to Germantown and rehearsed us in arrangements of Miner's Lifeguard and The Lonesome Train, Earl Robinson's epic musical narrative about the journey of Lincoln's funeral train to Springfield, Ill., where he was buried.
Sandy and I found part-time work ushering at a legitimate theater converted from an empty movie house off Broad Street. Catching the streetcar on Ogontz Avenue, I'd arrive at work where touring companies performed for three- or four-week stands. There was often a semi-star playing the lead in shows, like Compulsion, a drama about Leopold and Loeb, the privileged young thrill killers. When Larry Parks and Betty Garrett came through, Sandy and I snubbed them because they had been HUAC informers. Naturally, they never noticed us ignoring them.
Ann Corio, a famous, retired, stripper, had an interest in one production. She showed up with a mink coat and a thick layer of makeup, a well-preserved woman in her 50s. We heard that her mobster boyfriend owned the theater which folded after a few lean months.
