Showing results by narrator "Tony Kahn" in All Categories

In the late 1930s, the Federal Writers' Project set out to create a first-person portrait of America by sending young writers around the country to interview people from diverse ethnic groups, occupations, and backgrounds. When the Writers Project closed its doors, some 10,000 of these oral histories were left gathering dust in a remote storeroom at the Library of Congress. In First Person America, Ann Banks has collected dozens of these oral histories.

Episode Six: In 1960, a thaw comes to the Cold War. Blacklisted writers in Hollywood and New York begin to work again under their own names. But in New Hampshire the ice is slow to break. Gordon Kahn's younger son becomes embroiled in a political protest at his high school and is denounced as a communist and Kahn loses his resolve to write under his own name. Kahn dies of a heart attack in a freak storm, on the last night of 1962. His name reappears in print the following month. Hoover, notified of Kahn's death, closes the files. As he does, we learn that Kahn and Hoover had met once and that...

Episode Four: Gordon Kahn learns that his business partner, an FBI informer, has robbed him of his money. Blacklisted and bankrupt, Kahn suffers a heart attack. While recovering, he writes day and night, stockpiling short stories, articles, and plays to sell under a pseudonym in the States. Forced by political and financial pressures to leave Mexico, he makes plans to return, hopefully unnoticed, to the shelter of his wife's father's house, in New Hampshire.

This program is part of a series of six half-hour dramas about one of the darkest periods for the First Amendment in American history:...

Episode Five: Gordon Kahn arrives with his family in Manchester, New Hampshire, in the winter of 1955. Soon after, a "friend" informs on him to the state Attorney General, a nationally known Red Hunter named Louis Wyman. Wyman launches an investigation that becomes front-page news. FBI surveillance and wiretaps are resumed; the children are beaten up at school and Kahn is threatened with twenty years in prison for refusing to cooperate. Kahn's wife Barbara looks for work as a schoolteacher and learns she has been blacklisted, too. Kahn, earning a small living under the pseudonym of Hugh G....

Episode Three: Joined by his family, Gordon Kahn makes plans for an indefinite stay in the quiet, sunny town of Cuernavaca, Mexico. Back home, the "red scare" grows and J. Edgar Hoover launches a secret program to get the Mexican government to ship American "subversives" like Kahn to the United States. To protect his family, Kahn applies for Mexican citizenship and invests his life savings with a Mexican businessman.

This program is part of a series of six half-hour dramas about one of the darkest periods for the First Amendment in American history: the Hollywood blacklist. Gordon Kahn's...

Episode Two: The Committee re-opens its hearings in early 1950 and calls Gordon Kahn as its first witness. Kahn flees the subpoena to Mexico, leaving his two young sons in the care of family and friends. J. Edgar Hoover, calling Kahn "one of the three most dangerous Communists in Hollywood," issues an all-points-bulletin to the FBI, the State Department and the CIA, and puts Kahn on his security index, "a secret list of people to be placed in armed detention camps in the event of a "national security emergency."

This program is part of a series of six half-hour dramas about one of the...

Episode One: The House Un-American Activities Committee opens its stormy hearings into Communist influence in Hollywood, in October, 1947. Ten leftist screenwriters denounce the investigation and are sentenced to jail for contempt. Gordon Kahn, a well-known enemy of HUAC, escapes a similar fate when the Committee suspends it hearings before calling him to testify. Blacklisted and under FBI surveillance, Kahn fights publicly for the freedom of "The Hollywood Ten" as fear of criticizing the Committee spreads through Hollywood.