The true story of a Hollywood writer turned soldier, killed in action - then blacklisted.
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| Robert Meltzer, circa 1938 |
Bob
was a composite of patriot, writer, soldier, humorist and socialist
sympathizer. I never met him and have very few pictures of him. He left this
world long before I arrived. But through some unexpected research I've come to know this American original –
mostly from his correspondence with Hollywood big shot, Orson Welles.
The Early Years
Born
in 1914, the 5th of 6 children, Bob grew up in a Jewish family. His
parents had emigrated years earlier from Russia by way of New Jersey then Utah before settling in Oakland, California. There was a 16-year gap between Bob and his sister, Beatrice, my own Granny, whom he thought of as a second mother. His early years were spent in school, Scouts,
and occasionally on the stage in local productions of whatever he thought funny.
He studied music, French, and took quickly to writing, a natural at putting ideas
into words that both motivated and amused.
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Spring 1935 edition of Cal Berkeley's
California Pelican
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Later
Uncle Bob attended Cal Berkeley and hit the ground running his first year on
the Blue and Gold yearbook staff, the only Freshman to do so in 1932. The next
year he was on the editorial board of the university’s renowned publication,
The California Pelican. His senior year he became a member of the men’s
journalistic honor society, Pi Delta Epsilon and was the Pelican’s editor.
He
raised eyebrows when he approved 5 pages of socialist artwork to be published. In
the spring of 1935 he wrote a controversial piece about his generation
accepting the inevitable Next War with its lamentable “express purpose of
butchering our fellow man.” Peripherally aware of Adolf Hitler and how fascism
was already rearing its ugly head abroad, he noted that home in the US,
“intolerance and bigotry threaten the very rights for which Americans have
traditionally fought.” He was – like so many others of his age - disillusioned
with the country’s economy, having seen firsthand how capitalism
had thrown the nation into the worst Depression of its history.
After
graduation, Bob made his way south to Hollywood and by 1940 was listed as
assistant director to Charlie Chaplin on “The Great Dictator,” a cynical and searing take on Hitler's fascist world. Bob understood
the young movie industry’s power and reach. In 1941 he flew to New York City to attend
the American Writer’s Congress alongside Ring Lardner, Jr. The Congress had
decidedly socialist leanings and spent time discussing the use of motion
pictures as propaganda.
The
following year he began working extensively with Orson Welles and even appeared
as a walk-on in Welles’ production of Journey into Fear alongside actor
Joseph Cotton. When Welles sent Bob to Brazil to do research for his next
project, the two exchanged a flurry of letters and telegrams discussing
everything from Carnaval to local folk music and dance. Orson Welles’ friendship
lasted to the end of Bob’s short life.
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Robert Meltzer (c) alongside actor Joseph Cotton (l) in Orson Welles'
"Journey into Fear." See Related Articles below for video link.
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America
Enters the War
When
the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor December 1941, the world changed for most
Americans, Bob included. It’s one thing to criticize your own country, but it’s
altogether something else when an outsider attacks it. So like millions across the country, Bob responded.
On
October 11, 1942, Robert Meltzer sent a 4-page typed letter to Orson Welles
outlining a new radio program he thought would fit Welles perfectly. The
program would introduce Americans to the nation’s military aircraft – Flying
Fortresses – by interviewing the engineers, the builders, pilots and finally
the aircraft themselves. The aircraft were given names like “Snoozy, Rattler,
Baby Doll, Big Stuff . . . They come out
of a common experience of democratic living, an experience that’s warm with a
humor we like and strong with skills we admire.” This was a far cry from Bob's college days when he bemoaned the inevitable “Next War” with its senseless
killing. Our country had been attacked, and he was going to help defend it.
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Orson Welles visits Lockheed factory to acquaint himself with military
aircraft for broadcast of "Ceiling Unlimited." See Related Articles below
for audio link.
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But
promoting Americanism through the media was not enough for Robert Meltzer. Two days later he
marched himself down to the recruiting office and enlisted in the US Army for
the duration of the war. Within a month, Orson Welles’ new radio show, Ceiling
Unlimited, hit the CBS airwaves almost exactly as Bob had proposed it. “Ladies
and gentlemen, we want you to get acquainted with the Flying Fortress. It’s
your plane, and it’s a great plane. You’re paying for it. Your sons and
husbands are flying it. This is your personal war.”
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Camp Polk, LA. Meltzer noted that "Louisiana
Purchase a mistake."
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Private
Meltzer kept his humor while stateside, noting in a telegram from Camp Polk,
Louisiana, that “with respect to life here can only say Louisiana Purchase a
mistake.”
He later described one of his Supply Battalion squad leaders as “just
recently been a copper miner in Butte, Montana, but for some twenty years
before that had occupied his time in most of the nation’s small jails serving
time for vagrancy and drunkenness. He’s bald, bow-legged, and ribald – all in a
quiet way. I asked him if he were married. Divorced, he said. Why, I asked. Oh,
she was a lazy son of a bitch, he said; every time I went to piss in the
kitchen sink it was filled with dirty dishes. Under that kind of leadership
this squad will obviously win the war and the peace.”
“We have actually only one test by which to judge our
actions: will we be contributing by them to the defeat and eradication of Fascism?”
– Lt. Robert Meltzer, October 10, 1943
After
only a few months enlisted, Bob was sent to Officer Candidate Training at Ft.
Benning, GA. He graduated in June 1943 and took duty at Ft. Jackson, SC a newly
commissioned Lieutenant.
By
February 1944, Bob was “indoctrinated as hell” and now stationed at Fort Bragg,
NC. He was then shipped overseas shortly after D-Day and, although not part of the landing at Normandy, he
volunteered to join the battle-hardened 2nd Ranger Battalion, the Boys of Pointe du Hoc. According to memoirs of the Battalion’s Pfc Morris Prince, “these
men were all volunteers and knew what they had let themselves in for. They had
been carefully selected and chosen by our staff of officers, who had given each
a thorough interview. They had been physically tested and found to be in the
best condition. Their service records were unblemished. They had answered all
the Ranger requirements. Each of them had the makings of a true Ranger.”
Over the next several weeks the Battalion gradually
moved west from its initial landing location near La Havre, France. It traveled
up the Cherbourg Peninsula with the primary purpose of rounding up German
prisoners and corralling them in holding pens. Sometime during that period Bob took charge of 1st Platoon in Able Company.
The troops’ comparatively mundane
task of capturing the enemy by day was offset by the hope of finding a bottle
of hard drink in nearby villages at night. Cognac was preferred, but
they generally made do with a “damned wonderful, belly-burning,
gut-tearing, mind-searing concoction” called Calvados. Uncle Bob not only tried it, he wrote a light-hearted article about one such adventure called “Normandy Interlude,” published in Collier’s
Magazine September 23, 1944.
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Robert Meltzer's "Normandy Interlude" as it appeared in Collier's Magazine, September 1944.
See Related Articles below for link.
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By mid-August, Able Company left the peninsula heading
further west to the German stronghold of Brest. Along the way they rounded up more
prisoners. The Company camped near Le Folgoet, a lovely area not scarred like
Normandy. The men had plenty of time to relax, write letters, play cards, softball,
etc.
On August 15 Orson Welles sent Bob a short letter:
“Dear Old Bob: I don’t know whether I owe you this or not, but I’m writing it in the hope of another of your happy letters, and some word of your health and whereabouts. I have no news worth a soldier’s attention. – Yours to command, [Orson]”He never received a reply.
One week later, on August 21, Able company received a
combat mission that was not supposed to be more than a motorized patrol. At
first there was no trouble and the Company made contact with friendly units who
warned that concealed German automatics were causing a lot of casualties in the
area. Lieutenant Meltzer led his platoon on
a foot patrol. As Pfc Prince describes it:
“They cautiously inaugurated their search
to hunt out the enemy. They did a thorough job of it, but no trace could be
found of the hidden Germans. Suddenly, out of the clear blue skies, a barrage
of 88’s began to rain down on them. To add to this, the enemy opened up with
his automatic weapons upon the patrol led by Lt. Meltzer. The initial burst
literally cut the Lt. down, killing him on the spot.”
Killing him on the spot. At 30 years old, my
great-uncle Robert Meltzer died fighting for the country that he loved and worked to defend.
It hardly mattered to the world at war that Bob was
killed. Not many were aware he had volunteered to go into combat. And only a few noticed
as he led his platoon into an ambush that cost him his life. It hardly mattered
to most of the world.
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Robert Meltzer was awarded
the Purple Heart
posthumously
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But his death mattered to some. His family mourned the loss for the rest of their lives. The Purple Heart later awarded did little to ease
their grief. When I was old enough to understand, my Granny quietly said she once
had a younger brother who served but was killed, her heartbreak still clear by the
catch in her voice.
And it mattered to his Hollywood friends and
associates. In June 1947, the Screen Writers Guild (SWG) established the Robert
Meltzer Award, originally meant to honor writers who had been killed in battle.
At the unveiling of the award, Orson Welles eulogized:
“Robert Meltzer was a good deal more than a
talented writer. He was a good deal more than talented, and a good deal more
than a writer. If he’d lived I think he would have been an important writer.
Before he died he was already an important human being.
His was a disciplined intelligence, a mind
wholly free, informed with a focused curiosity, and anchored to a big warm
sympathy.
There had better be more of his sort, if
our literature is to survive, and if the democratic cause is still to be
defended.”
The award was presented four times in the next four
years, mostly for scripts that contributed to a better understanding of the
problems of the times. But soon lawmakers in Washington began taking a long hard
look at Hollywood.
In 1951, seven years after his death, Robert Meltzer
was blacklisted by the House Unamerican Activities
Committee (HUAC) for his earlier socialist sympathies. The Robert Meltzer Award
was withdrawn in Hollywood and wouldn’t be re-established for another 40 years.
It did not matter to HUAC that Bob helped the American
public understand its military aircraft.
It did not matter that he had enlisted, served, and volunteered for combat duty.
It did not matter that he was ambushed, killed, and
lay buried overseas in a military grave, his heroism all but forgotten.
Because, despite all he had given and all he had lost,
he was still considered a threat to our Democracy in the age of HUAC, the Red
Scare, and McCarthyism.
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2nd Lt Robert Meltzer is buried in the
American Military Cemetery,
Brittany, France
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Eventually, long after HUAC disappeared
from the national spotlight, the Robert Meltzer Award came out of the shadows.
The SWG had merged with the Writers Guild of America, which now presented the
award to honor “one act of bravery by remembering another, recognizing an
artist's singular act of courage in defense of freedom of expression and the
rights of writers everywhere."
In 1991 the Robert Meltzer Award was given to Kirk
Douglas in recognition of his role helping bring an end to Hollywood
blacklisting.
This year marks the 75th anniversary
of my great-uncle Bob’s death. I did not know him. I never heard his voice or
saw his smile. And I probably would not agree with all of his politics. But still he matters. I’m proud of who he was and what he
did, and I hope this begins to honor him in the way he deserves: patriot, writer,
decorated Veteran, socialist, humorist. American.
"Time will not dim the glory of their deeds." - General John J. Pershing
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Related Articles:
Robert Meltzer's article, Normandy Interlude, as it appeared in Collier's Magazine Sept 1944
Orson Welles' film, Journey into Fear. Robert Meltzer appears at the beginning of this video clip, and again at the 3:20 mark.
Audio recordings of Orson Welles' CBS broadcast, Ceiling Unlimited about the nation's military aircraft and Flying Fortresses
Audio recordings of Orson Welles' CBS broadcast, Ceiling Unlimited about the nation's military aircraft and Flying Fortresses
Special thanks to the staff at Indiana University’s Lilly Library who meticulously maintain Orson Welles' correspondence, scripts, photos, etc.
