MovieChat Forums > Trumbo (2015) Discussion > Lucile Ball radio quote

Lucile Ball radio quote

posted 9 years ago by jeff-kutach
10 replies | jump to latest

What is the full quote Lucile Ball said on the radio, about not silencing those you don't agree with and comparing it to the walls of a house?

[–] chicago85 8 years ago

I don't know. What I have read is that Lucille Ball was an actual Communist party member with her own card and number. Her studio had so much clout that the committee heard her testimony in private and she wasn't charged with anything. Exceptions were made if you were important enough.

She said she joined in 1936 to make her grandfather happy but did nothing. While others said she was a member in 1936 and 1938 at least and had meetings in her home.

Any rate, she learned not to take controversial stands or make comments for the rest of her career.

I don't know everything. Neither does anyone else

[–] dakowill11 8 years ago

Hopefully you've come across it by now, but if not, having watched this flick the other night, here she is:

"This is Lucille Ball. All of us agree that the Constitution of the United States must be defended. But the way to do this is not by shutting up the man you disagree with. You must fight for his right to speak and be heard. All civil liberties go hand in hand. And when one goes, the others are weakened. Just as a collapse of one pillar in a house would endanger the whole structure" (From scene 5).

So...anyway...I hope this helps.

[–] jeff-kutach 8 years ago

Thank you very much.

[–] chicago85 8 years ago

I did read online the complete testimony of her, her mother and her brother, They were all questioned at the same time. The only one to suffer was her brother who lost several jobs in the aeronautical industry where security clearances were needed. It even effected military deferments by his employers and finally his attempts to enlist in the war.

He said his grandfather nagged them into registering to vote as Communists. In California you listed political affiliation when registering but in the voting booth you could vote any way you wanted. Their grandfather was the only father they were knew and had had two strokes and was confined to the house with a medical caregiver.

I don't know everything. Neither does anyone else

[–] matt605 8 years ago

She says "all of us agree that the Constitution of the United States must be defended." That's sort of a problem.

Joseph McCarthy in his hearings said he considered a member of the Communist Party to be loyal and beholden to Moscow. Trumbo and the others fought the jurisdiction of HUAC to question a person's politics and affiliations. What a person thinks isn't subject to the law in the United States. A person's associations with others are protected too, under the protection of free assembly defined in the First Amendment.

Trumbo and the others were right, up to a point. And that point was when HUAC questioned affiliations with a government of a foreign power with violent intent against the Constitution. Trumbo asserted his rights under the Constitution. Trumbo also lived like a rich guy while advocating for an end to personal property too. Can anyone find statements by Trumbo or the others that matched Lucille Ball's opening declaration that everyone supports the Constitution?

[–] haldurgz 8 years ago

Did Trumbo actually seek to end personal property? There's a lot of different flavors of communism, and that's one I've never heard of. There's the communism of the Israeli Kibbutz, where everyone shares responsibilities, but there's still property. There are the Communes that grew out of the Hippy movement. There's Soviet communism, and Chinese communism, which I don't think Marx would recognize. Except for maybe the Hippies, I don't think any of them ever would want to eliminate property.

That said, I don't see any hypocracy. He played by the rules of society, and was rewarded for those efforts. The fact that he wanted to change those rules is far from hypocritical. It's actually poetic.

[–] matt605 8 years ago

I guess I take my interpretation of Communism from the conversation between Trumbo and Louis CK over ownership of a pond. It's good to see that we should not assume things that are not specifically stated. There are forms of Communism that are not hostile to the Constitution of the United States? Then they're perfectly legal. Did Trumbo and the others advocate one of those forms? We don't know.

To achieve Communism in the United States with the current Constitution would take a long, long time. It would require a majority of the Supreme Court (to approve the "due process" of seizing property which the 5th Amendment requires), or it would require a Constitutional Amendment, which requires 2/3rds of Congress and a simple majority in 3/4th of all state legislatures. That's part of why Communism tends to be revolutionary. Constitutional processes here are too slow. But attempts to end the Constitution by non-Constitutional methods are considered treason. In post-WW2 America, the Soviet Union sought to end capitalism through violent revolution world-wide. Did Trumbo reject that?

Lucille Ball said, "everyone agrees" the Constitution should defended. Where is Trumbo on record as being part of "everyone"?

[–] haldurgz 8 years ago

You have to also realize that most people that join political parties don't support all the same things, even if they are on the platform for that party. Electing someone from the communist party, of course, won't make the government communist, because they have to operate within the law. For that very reason your supposition that these people threaten the constitution is purely there to incite. There's no reality to it. Even you admit that.

A lot of people joined the communist party before the time of Roosevelt. And what they wanted was for working people to be treated fairly. That's why there were so many communists involved in trade unions. They wanted a safety net, they didn't want to be fired if they got sick, but to be able to see a doctor, without fear of their family starving. I'm sure there were other reasons as well, but those were the big ones. But it didn't matter to HUAC why you were in the party, it didn't matter to them if you were even active in the party. They didn't even have to show that at any time you were interested in overthrowing the government. It was persecution.

THEY WERE NOT AFTER PEOPLE BECAUSE THEY WERE DANGEROUS. How dangerous was Spartacus? How dangerous was Exodus? But they wanted those films shut down, NOT because of any danger. Danger was the least of their concerns. Certainly, there were the Rosenbergs. But they were actual spies. The purpose of the Red Scare was publicity for those leading the witch trials. Nixon and Mccarthy made names for themselves.

[–] matt605 8 years ago

Spartacus and Exodus were written after Trumbo had been blacklisted for more than a decade, and these films, particularly Spartacus, marked the end of the blacklist.

If you see "Heaven With A Barbed Wire Fence" which Trumbo wrote in the late 30s, then you will see that he was intent upon using film scripts to advance his political viewpoint. But everyone uses film scripts to advance their political viewpoints, even today. So that's no such a big deal.

What is a big deal is that after WW2, Communist Parties all over the world were becoming synonymous with loyalty to the Soviet Union and were becoming controlled by Moscow. In the film we see a confrontation between Trumbo and John Wayne, where Wayne frames the issue as America versus Russia. In that scene, Trumbo never said he backed America, and we know from the Lucille Ball quote that the script writers could have put those same words into Trumbo's mouth had they chosen to.

Trumbo, at least in the film, asserted a 1st Amendment right but never voiced a loyalty to the Constitution that self-evidently recognized it.

HUAC did absolve many people upon learning the reasons they affiliated, including Lucille Ball and Edward G. Robinson. In fact, when McCarthy's Red Scare was at its fever pitch, the most popular show on television was "I Love Lucy," and McCarthy never said a negative word about the program.

[–] haldurgz 8 years ago

Lucile Ball was too popular and powerful. That's why they didn't go after her. They only went after the people they knew they could bully.