I want you to picture something for a second.
You are sitting in a movie theater. OK. Maybe
it is a rainy Sunday afternoon or late at night.
And you are watching an old black and white classic
from the late 40s. What's in the scene? Right.
So the music swells, the screen fades to black,
and the credits start to roll. Which is the part
where most people walk out to get more popcorn
or beat the traffic. Exactly. But you stay. You
watch the name scroll by the director. the producer,
key grip, but then you get to the writer. And
let us say you are a film historian or maybe
just a really obsessive fan who has read all
the books and you realize something is wrong.
Or wrong how? Like a typo. No, more like the
name on the screen. It doesn't actually exist.
There is no such person or even creepier. Maybe
there is just a blank gap right where a name
should be. It is literally like a ghost wrote
the movie. That is a very specific, almost haunting
kind of horror story. I mean, we are so accustomed
to the idea of authorship, right? If you build
a table, you sign the bottom. If you paint a
canvas, you sign the corner. It is a fundamental
human desire to claim your work. But in mid 20th
century America, we had this this systematic
machine designed to strip names off their creations.
And today we are going on a deep dive into one
of those ghosts. We are talking about a man named
Edward Hupsch. Sometimes he's credited as Eddie,
sometimes Ed. And for a really long stretch of
history, absolutely nobody. Edward Hupsch is
such a fascinating entry point into this era.
Because usually when we hear about the Hollywood
blacklist, we get the very standard saint versus
sinner narrative. Right, the poor innocent writer
getting crushed by the evil government machinery.
Exactly. And to be fair, the government was pretty
crushing in this story. Oh, absolutely. The crushing
weight of the state is undeniable here. But Hupsch,
he complicates that narrative. He really does.
If you look at the sources we have pulled for
this deep dive, we've got Wikipedia excerpts,
we've got actual HUAC testimonies, intelligence
reports, and memoirs from guys like Bernard Gordon
and Victor Nowaski. And through all of this,
you see that Hupsch isn't just a victim, he is
a combatant. And just to jump in real quick before
we get too deep into the weeds here. Yeah, go
ahead. Because we are dealing with some very
intense, highly charged political documents from
the time stuff from both the far left and the
far right. We just want to make it super clear
to you listening that we're not taking sides
here. Right. Good point. We are not endorsing
any of the viewpoints found in these sources,
whether it's the Communist Party line or the
congressional committee stance. We are purely
here to impartially unpack the ideas and the
history contained in the original material. Exactly.
Our mission today is to figure out what happens
when a complex human being gets caught in the
vice, because he was a guy who viewed film as
high art, a guy who volunteered to fight in World
War Two, but also a guy who was a really rigid,
sometimes brutal enforcer for the communists.
party. Two massive gears grinding against each
other. The US Congress on one side and strict
party discipline on the other. And the core question
we want you to think about today is what happens
to a person when those two gears start turning?
What happens to their art and what happens to
their soul? It is a heavy question. It is. So
let us unpack this. We have a huge stack of documents
to go through. The transcripts from his government
hearing alone are wild. Plus, we have reviews
of his literary work and memories from his friends
and his enemies. Though in this particular story,
the line between friend and enemy gets blurry
very fast. So let us rewind. Before the subpoenas,
before the federal stakeouts, who is this guy?
Because just looking at his early bio, he does
not strike me as a revolutionary bomb thrower.
No. Not at all. Edward Hupsch was born in New
York City, February 20th, 1914. So this is a
generation that comes of age right as the whole
world is essentially falling apart. World War
I starts right after he was born. The Great Depression
hits right when he is a teenager. Exactly. But
he has a very specific intellectual background.
The source is mentioned relative of his. B .W.
Huge, who was a massive deal at Viking Press.
Viking Press. I mean, that is huge. That is John
Steinbeck. That is Arthur Miller. That is the
absolute peak of the literary establishment.
Right. So Edward isn't growing up in a vacuum.
He's growing up in an environment where words
have serious weight, where literature is considered
serious business with a capital S and a capital
B. He joins the League of American Writers early
on. He's really positioning himself as an intellectual
from the jump. But then, history intervenes.
December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor. Huebsch is
what, 27? 28? He is in his late 20s. Yeah. And
this is a key character moment that we absolutely
cannot gloss over. Yeah. He does not wait around
for a draft notice. Right. He volunteers. In
1942, immediately following the attack, he signs
up for the US Army. Which is incredibly important
context for later because 10 years down the line,
the government is going to paint him as this
dangerous un -American subversive. But here he
is voluntarily signing on the dotted line to
go fight fascism overseas. He does his service.
The war ends. And like a lot of creative types
in 1946, he looks at New York, looks at the snow
and basically says, I'm going to California.
The gold rush of the 1940s. The movies. He lands
in Los Angeles in 46. The post -war economy is
booming. The studios are just churning out content.
And Huge starts getting work. But... And this
is a crucial distinction made by historians.
Supplier in England, Hubs wasn't just a hack.
Because we tend to think of 4D screenwriters
as these sort of assembly line workers, right?
Like, give me a cowboy movie by Friday. The factory
system, yes. And Hubs did do some of that genre
work. He wrote horror, he wrote thrillers, things
like The Son of Dr. Jekyll and The Wreck of the
Hesperus. But Supplier in England specifically
grouped him with the writers who treated film
as high art. High art. Which, honestly, sounds
a bit pretentious for a guy writing The Son of
Dr. Jekyll. It does sound a bit lofty, but you
have to look at his other credits. In 1948, he
adapts a Mark Twain story called Best Man Wins.
Adapting Mark Twain is not something a studio
hands to the guy who just writes cheap pratfalls.
No, you need someone who understands voice, satire,
social commentary. Exactly. Hübsch wanted cinema
to be literature. He saw the potential for the
medium to be so much more than just disposable
weekend entertainment. He brought that Viking
press pedigree to Hollywood. So he's ambitious.
He is clearly talented. He is a veteran. By all
accounts, he should be on the fast track to a
long lucrative career. But while he is climbing
the studio ladder, he's also getting really deep
into the local politics. And this is where we
have to adjust our mental picture of what communist
recruitment actually looked like back then. Because
I think when we hear those words today, we imagine
a dark alley, a guy in a trench coat passing
a microfilm whispering about overthrowing the
government. Right, spy stuff, secret codes, espionage.
But in Hollywood in the late 40s, it was boring.
It was deeply bureaucratic. It was mostly just
labor politics. We have this really revealing
testimony from Stanley Roberts. He was another
screenwriter in the industry. And in May of 1952,
he is sitting in front of the committee, HUAC,
and he is spilling the beans on how he got recruited
into the party. And Hübsch is the absolute star
of this story. Roberts describes being visited
by what he calls delegates. It sounds more like
a church committee or a neighborhood watch meeting.
Listen to the pitch Roberts describes in his
testimony. He says they didn't talk about Stalin.
They didn't talk about the proletariat rising
up in violent revolution. What were they actually
selling? They were selling better conditions
in the Screenwriters Guild. They were selling
higher wages. They were talking about furthering
Roosevelt's policies. That is it. That is the
grand communist pitch. Hey, do you like FDR and
making more money? It was an incredibly soft
sell. Roberts even told the committee that, in
his view, communism in Hollywood didn't seem
to go anywhere beyond that. It was hyper -local.
It was entirely focused on the union and labor
issues. But Hübsch was the guy making that pitch.
Roberts specifically names him as a delegate.
And what strikes me from the source material
is how relentlessly persistent Hübsch was. Because
Roberts actually quits the party in 1946. He
gets bored or maybe disillusioned and he walks
away. But Hübsch comes back. He knocks on his
door again. Why? To start a revolution? No, to
support the CSU strike, the conference of studio
unions. Okay, we need to pause on the CSU strike
for a second because if we don't understand this,
we don't understand why the heat was turned up
so high. This wasn't just a bunch of writers
holding signs and singing songs outside a gate.
This was what became known as Hollywood Black
Friday. This is critical context. In October
1945 at the Warner Brothers studio, this strike
turned into an all out riot. We're talking about
studio firefighters turning high pressure hoses
on screenwriters and set decorators. We're talking
about tear gas canisters flying through the air.
Chains overturned cars and bloody noses. So when
we say Hupsch was recruiting for the strike,
he wasn't asking people to sign a politely worded
petition. He was asking them to join a literal
street fight against the studio moguls. And for
men like Hübsch, this was the front line. He
wasn't just sitting in a cafe theorizing, he
was actively organizing support for a massive
violent labor conflict. And in the eyes of the
studios and eventually the FBI, that is what
made him dangerous. Not because he was a spy
handing nuclear secrets to the Soviets, but because
he was highly effective at shutting down the
production lines in Hollywood. So he is a true
believer. He is knocking on doors. He is getting
people to the picket lines. But by 1951, the
climate has drastically shifted. The Cold War
is freezing over. The FBI isn't just watching
anymore. They are acting. And this brings us
to the real thriller part of the deep dive. Yeah.
The chase. It is April 1951. Enter William A.
Wheeler. He is an investigator for HUAC. And
he has a piece of paper in his pocket with Edward
Huch's name on it. The subpoena. Now, getting
subpoena today. Usually means you get a registered
letter in the mail or someone in a suit hands
you an envelope at your office. But in 1951 Hollywood,
it was a high stakes game of cat and mouse. Because
they cannot serve you the paper, you do not have
to testify. And if you don't testify, you cannot
be forced to name names. So Wheeler testifies
that they got the subpoena late. They rush over
to Huebsch's house in the valley. 11200 La Maida.
It is nighttime. They pound on the door. And
Mrs. Hupes answers. And according to the testimony,
she is cool as a cucumber. She looks at these
federal agents and says, oh, my husband isn't
home right now, but he will be back later tonight.
The absolute oldest trick in the book. But the
US Marshals buy it. Or at least they have no
choice but to wait. So they set up a stakeout.
Picture this. A dark suburban street, unmarked
cars, men in fedoras, chain -smoking cigarettes,
just watching the front door of a screenwriter's
house. They sit there for hours. All through
the night. No Eddie. And then the sun comes up.
And the neighbor's witness something that tells
you everything you need to know about the sheer
panic of that historical moment. Mrs. Hoops comes
out, calmly loads up the family station wagon,
and just drives away. Just like that. Just like
that. Wheeler says in his report, no one has
been there for the last five weeks. He completely
vanished. They abandoned their own house. Imagine
the stress of that reality. You are a writer,
you adapt Mark Twain, you spend your days worrying
about dialogue and character arcs, and suddenly
you were throwing suitcases into a station wagon
and fleeing your own life because the federal
government wants to ask you questions you cannot
answer without destroying your friend's lives.
He became a fugitive writer. But the massive
problem with running is that the hearings go
on without you, and people were starting to talk.
This is the naming names phase, and it is brutal
to read through. It is a cascade of betrayal.
Frank Wright Tuttle, a director, is on the stand.
He is rattling off names of suspected subversives
to the committee. And he gets to Huebsch. He
says Huebsch, H -U -E -B -S -C -H. I think it
was Eddie. I think it was Eddie. That hesitation
just kills me. You are actively destroying a
man's career. You are putting him on a federal
blacklist. And you aren't even 100 % sure of
his first name. That speaks volumes about the
chaotic, almost haphazard nature of the witch
hunt. It was all about quantity over quality.
Just give us names. Then David A. Lang comes
in later, in 1953. He is much more specific.
He places Hübsch in a communist cell. He lists
him right alongside other major writers like
Hugo Butler and Dalton Trumbo. But Lang mentions
something really interesting. He says Hübsch
was part of a writer's clinic. A writer's clinic?
That sounds entirely innocent, like a weekend
workshop where you critique each other's dialogue
over coffee. Hey, Eddie, act two is a little
slow, maybe tighten up the pacing. If only it
were that benign. In the specific context of
the party structure, a clinic was often about
ideological purity. It was a mechanism for control.
Control how? Like editing the scripts? Yes. But
they would review scripts not for artistic merit,
but for political correctness. Does this character
represent the working class correctly? Is the
capitalist villain sufficiently evil? So Lange
isn't just saying Hübsch was a casual member.
He is saying Hübsch was essentially part of the
thought police. He was part of the machinery
that tried to insert or remove messages in films
to serve the party's broader goals. So the committee
is painting Hübsch as a wing leader. a guy enforcing
the doctrine. Meanwhile, he is still technically
on the run. He is successfully ducking that subpoena.
And this leads us to honestly what I think is
the most heartbreaking story in this entire deep
dive, the guild meeting incident. This account
comes directly from Bernard Gordon's memoir,
Hollywood Exile. and it captures the suffocating
atmosphere of fear better than any official government
transcript ever could. Set the scene for us.
It is a meeting of the Screenwriters Guild, the
union that is literally supposed to protect these
guys. Right. Now keep in mind, Hubsch is still
hiding. He's actively avoiding the Marshals.
Yeah. But the Guild is holding a massive meeting
to discuss the Blacklist itself. This is his
life. This is his entire career on the line.
He decides he absolutely has to be there. It
is a huge calculated risk He goes to the meeting
hall, but as he approaches the building Who does
he see lurking outside the federal marshal the
guy with the subpoena in his pocket? He is waiting
right by the door scanning faces as people walk
in so huge has to think fast He realizes wait
the marshal is not a member of the Union. He
cannot legally come inside so huge slips in,
maybe he goes through a back door or just pushes
past in the crowd, and once he is safely inside,
he takes the floor. He stands up in front of
his colleagues, his friends, his co -writers,
and he makes a procedural motion. He asks the
chair to bar the marshal from entering the hall.
He essentially says, this is a closed meeting,
members only, keep that guy out so we can conduct
our business. It is a really smart play. He is
using the union's own bylaws to buy himself sanctuary.
And he probably thinks the room is with him.
These are his union brothers and sisters. But
then, the room turns. A member from the right
-wing faction of the guild stands up. He raises
a point of order. And reading this, I almost
could not believe it actually happened. What
does this guy propose? He moves up that the marsh
will be given temporary membership in the screenwriter's
guild, specifically so he can enter the hall
and serve the subpoena on Hubsch. They voted
to make the hunter a member of the club just
so he could catch the prey. And they put it to
a vote. all those writers in the room, and they
voted in favor of the motion. Wow. Just wow.
Imagine standing there at the podium. You are
looking out at people you've had lunch with,
people you have broken story with, people whose
kids play with your kids, and you watch them
raise their hands to say, yes, let the police
in to get them. Why would they do that? Was Hupsch
that hated personally, or was it something else?
Bernard Gordon wrote that this specific moment
was the ultimate proof of how deep the fear went.
He said, and I am paraphrasing here, that no
one dared to oppose the extreme right wing openly.
It wasn't that everyone in that room hated Hübsch,
is that they were completely terrified. If you
voted no, if you tried to protect him, were you
going to be next? Would they mark your name down
as a sympathizer? It is the total collapse of
solidarity. The mentality becomes, we will sell
you out to save ourselves. So the motion passes,
the doors open, the marshal walks in. walks right
up to Hubsch in the middle of this crowded room
and hands him the paper. Gotcha. The chase is
finally over. Hubsch has been served. He has
to go to Washington and face the music. And face
it, he does. March 1953, Edward Hubsch walks
into the hearing room. And if the committee expected
him to be cowed or to plead for mercy, they were
in for a massive shock. Reading this testimony,
it feels electric. Most people know the Hollywood
10 approach, which was a lot of shouting, making
speeches, getting physically dragged out of the
room, or the standard Fifth Amendment approach,
where you just stay quiet and read a statement.
Hughes does something completely different. He
decides to act like an incredibly aggressive
lawyer. A very aggressive, very sarcastic lawyer.
First thing he does, he objects to the TV cameras.
That is right. He flat out refuses to testify
if he is being filmed. He essentially tells them,
I am not going to be a prop in your television
show. And amazingly, the committee blanks. They
actually agreed to reschedule him. So he comes
back a couple of days later, March 25th. No cameras.
They assure him he isn't being recorded for broadcasts,
though obviously the stenographer transcript
survives. And he starts right out of the gate
by going after the chairman of the committee,
Harold Velde. He repeatedly addresses him as
King Harold Velde. King Harold? I mean, that
is just gutsy when these guys hold your entire
future in their hands. It is a very specific,
intellectual, historical chap. He's referencing
King George III. He is actively framing the congressional
committee, not as a democratic body. But as a
tyranny, he is saying, you are acting exactly
like the monarchy we fought a revolution to get
rid of. He is completely flipping the script
on them. He is calling them the un -American
ones. And the committee tries to put him in the
standard trap. They ask, are you a member of
the Communist Party? Answer, yes or no. This
was the ultimate trap. Because if you say no
and they have a witness like David Lyon who already
said yes, you go straight to federal prison for
perjury. If you say yes, you have legally waived
your right to silence, and they can force you
to name names or hold you in contempt. But Hupsch
doesn't just plead the Fifth and leave it at
that. He actually sits there and lectures them
on the Constitution. He uses what we might call
the gambit of amendments. When they try to force
the yes or no, he cites the Fifth Amendment clause,
prohibiting such coercion. But he doesn't stop
there. He refuses to answer based on the First
Amendment, freedom of speech and association,
the Fifth Amendment, the privilege against self
-incrimination, but then throws in the Ninth
and Tenth Amendments. Okay, I think most of you
listening know the First and the Fifth. You hear
about those all the time. But the Ninth and Tenth,
those are deep cuts. What was his legal theory
there? It is brilliant, really, and... quite
novel for the time period. The Ninth Amendment
basically says just because the Constitution
lists certain specific rights, that does not
mean that people don't have other rights that
aren't explicitly listed. It is like the et cetera
clause of the Bill of Rights. And the Tenth Amendment
says that any power not specifically given to
the federal government belongs to the states
or to the people. So he is arguing jurisdiction.
He is telling them they are out of bounds. Exactly.
He is arguing that the federal government has
absolutely no constitutional power to ask him
what he thinks, what he reads, or who he hangs
out with. He is saying, it isn't just that I
don't want to answer you. It is that you have
no legal right to even ask the question in the
first place. The New York Times actually covered
this hearing. They described it as verbal jousting.
They noted that the committee members were absolutely
furious with him. They officially called him
contemptuous. And he was. He had total undis
- guy's contempt for them. He wasn't playing
the victim at all. He was playing the prosecutor.
He was essentially putting the United States
Congress on trial. So if we stop the movie right
here, Edward Hughes looks like a pure hero of
civil liberties. He is the guy standing up to
King Harold, citing the Ninth Amendment, fighting
for the very soul of America against a committee
of bullies. But history is never that clean.
And this is exactly why we do these deep dives.
Because while Hughes was an absolute tiger in
that hearing room defending his own constitutional
rights, he was also a strict disciplinarian for
the party, who didn't seem to care very much
about the rights of others within his own circle.
We have to talk about the high noon incident.
This is the pivotal counterweight to his heroic
testimony. This comes from Victor Nowaski's book,
Naming Names, and it involves a very famous figure.
Carl Foreman. Carl Foreman, the writer of High
Noon, which is the ultimate movie about a guy
standing all alone while his entire community
abandons him to face the bad guys, which ironically
sounds exactly like what happened to Huebsch
at that guild meeting. The irony is incredibly
thick. You could cut it with a knife. But in
this particular story, Huebsch isn't Gary Cooper
standing alone. He is the bad guy. Or at the
very least, he is the heavy, the enforcer. So
what is the setup for this meeting? The party
leadership is extremely worried about Carl Foreman.
They know he is under immense pressure from the
studios and the government. They think he is
going to break. They think he is going to name
names just to save his career in his movie. So
they send Eddie Hupsch to talk to him. And Hupsch
later described this himself. He said, I was
assigned by the party to find out what Foreman's
testimony was going to be. Assigned, he treats
it like a military mission. They meet for lunch.
at a place called Lucy's. Lucy's, the fanciest
restaurant in Hollywood at the time, right across
the street from Paramount Studios, a place where
you explicitly go to be seen by the industry.
And how long does this lunch last? Hughes says
in the sources, I sat for 11 hours with him.
11. Hours. That isn't a lunch. That is an interrogation
with a waiter occasionally refilling the water
glasses. Just imagine the intense psychological
pressure of that. Eleven straight hours of Hubsch
drilling foreman across the table. What are you
gonna say? Are you gonna sell us out? Where exactly
do you stand? You really have to understand Hubsch's
personality here. He is relentless. Remember,
he is the guy who went back to recruit Stanley
Roberts months after Roberts had already quit.
He does not give up. He is sitting there at Lucy's,
probably smoking pack after pack of cigarettes,
just wearing Carl Forman down. And what was the
verdict? Did he break him? Not quite. Hubsch
could not get Forman to commit to the rigid party
line, which would be to refuse to cooperate entirely,
like Hubsch did. But he also couldn't get him
to admit he was going to name names. Foreman
was trying to find a nuanced middle ground. He
wanted to testify about his own past, but refused
to talk about others. And Hübsch absolutely hated
that. He despised it. Hübsch's retrospective
assessment of that meeting is brutal. He said,
and this is a direct quote, the main point is,
Carl wouldn't tell the commies to go fuck themselves.
Wait, unpack that for us. Hübsch was the dedicated
communist in this scenario. is angry that Foreman
wouldn't tell the communists to get lost. It
is a kind of ideological doublespeak. Hübsch
felt that Foreman was being slippery and evasive.
Hübsch respected strength and conviction above
all else. If Foreman was a real man in Hübsch's
eyes, he would either be a fiercely dedicated
communist or a fiercely dedicated anti -communist,
pick a side and fight. But this middle of the
road, I don't know, compromise stuff, Hübsch
viewed it as pure weakness. He went back and
reported Foreman as an informer to the party
leadership. He actually recommended expulsion.
He wanted Foreman kicked out of the party before
he could even testify. So look at the complete
picture we have now. On a Tuesday, Hughes is
in Washington D .C. fighting passionately for
his right to free speech and association, citing
the Ninth Amendment. On a Wednesday, he is back
in Hollywood sitting in a restaurant for 11 hours
trying to force a fellow writer to conform to
a rigid political line or face expulsion and
ruin. It seems wildly hypocritical. It is hypocritical,
but it also perfectly illustrates the intense
rigidity of the era. You had to choose a side,
and once you chose, you had to follow the orders
of that side. Hupsch was a man of deep principle,
but his principles led him to be persecuted by
the state and to act as a persecutor for the
party. He fully believed that the ends justified
the means. It really is tragic. He is caught
in the machinery and eventually the machinery
wins because after 1953, the Hollywood career
is over. The erasure begins. We see it in the
actual credits. The son of Dr. Jekyll, his name
is just gone, snipped right out of the real.
And he enters what historians call the shadow
years. This is the period where these blacklisted
writers could not work under their own names.
They had to find fronts people who would pretend
to write the scripts and take the checks, or
they had to use pseudonyms. Hooch becomes Eduardo
Bueno. Good Edward. It is a playful but also
slightly sad nod to his own identity. He writes
a movie called Little Giants in 1958. The credits
say Screenplay by Eduardo Bueno. He also worked
with Hugo Butler on that, who was using the name
Hugo Mozo. Hupsch is literally ghostwriting his
own life. And this goes on for 20 years. 20 years
of forced silence. Imagine being at the absolute
peak of your powers, talented enough to adapt
Mark Twain, and for two full decades, you were
essentially invisible to the public. It is not
until the late 70s that he tries to make a real,
credited public comeback. And the project he
picks? Man, it fits his life story perfectly.
1977. Twilight's last gleaming. Yeah. Directed
by Robert Aldrich. Have you seen this movie?
It is incredibly intense. Burt Lancaster plays
this disillusioned Air Force general who takes
over a nuclear missile silo and threatens to
start World War Three unless the president reveals
the secret truths to the public about the Vietnam
War. It is the ultimate post -Watergate post
-Vietnam paranoia thriller. It is a movie entirely
about a man who served his country, got profoundly
betrayed by the government apparatus, and decides
to hold a gun to the head of the establishment
to force them to be honest. It is autobiography.
wrapped in a Hollywood thriller. Hupsch is the
general. He is the guy saying, tell the truth
or I blow the whole thing up. He was channeling
all that stored up rage, all that betrayal from
the Screenwriters Guild meeting, all that contempt
for King Harold Veld. He poured all of it into
this script. The reviews were really fascinating.
Variety loved it. They called it intricate, intriguing
and intelligent. But the New York Times. They
absolutely hated it. They called it deadly, solemn,
gadgety, suspense melodrama. Ouch. But you know,
looking back, a review from 2012 called it a
quintessentially 70s moment. It seems Hupsch
was really tapping into the cultural zeitgeist,
that deep feeling of mistrust in institutions,
even if all the critics weren't quite ready for
it at the time. But the big comeback didn't fully
take. He tried to pivot to novels next. In 1979,
he published a book called The Last Summer of
Matahari, Historical Fiction. And this, well,
this kind of proves that screenwriting and novel
writing are two entirely different sports. Very
different creative muscles. Right, because in
a screenplay, you are essentially writing blueprints.
You rely on the director. the lighting team,
and the actors to bring the emotion and the subtext
to life. In a novel, you have to do all of that
heavy lifting yourself with just the pros. The
Kirkus review for this book was absolutely savage.
I have to read this quote because it is rare
to see a review this mean. They wrote, noble
banalities pulse endlessly from Mada's tear -drenched
heartstrings. pathos supreme. Pathos supreme.
That is a career ending phrase right there. It
really suggests that while he could perfectly
structure a thriller script, the praise style
just got away from him. Maybe he was trying too
hard to be literary again, trying to recapture
that Viking Press high art label he had back
in 1946. It is a really sad note to end on professionally.
He spends decades in the shadows, finally tries
to come back, gets mixed reviews on his big film,
gets slammed on his novel. And then in 1982,
he died. He was 68 years old. He never got to
see his name fully restored while he was alive.
No, he didn't. The real outro to this story,
the restorative justice part, happens much later
in 1997 and 2000. That is when the Writers Guild
of America West finally, officially corrected
the historical credits. They scrubbed Eduardo
Bueno from the records and put Edward Hupes back
on the screen for films like Little Giants. It
took 50 years. But they finally fixed the glitch.
It matters. It really matters that we go back
and fill in those blanks. Because Edward Hubsch
represents the deep complexity of that time.
He wasn't a saint. He was a guy who would sit
you down for 11 hours and grill you until you
broke. But he was also a guy who stood face to
face with the United States government and said,
you have no constitutional right to ask me these
questions. He leaves us with a lot to chew on.
Especially regarding the concept of loyalty.
You know, I keep thinking back to that guild
meeting. The vote. The vote to let the marshal
in. It is so easy for us, sitting here with our
microphones in 2026, to say, oh, I would have
voted no. I would have stood on my chair and
shouted shame. It is always very easy to be brave
in hindsight. But if you were actually in that
room, if you had a mortgage to pay, if you had
kids at home, if you knew for a fact that the
FBI was taking down license plate numbers in
the parking lot. And you see everyone else's
hand go up. That is the ultimate question. Solidarity
is a beautiful concept when you read about it
in a textbook. It is a terrifying thing to actually
practice when the subpoena is standing right
there in the room. Edward Hughes walked out of
that room with the subpoena, and he never really
walked back into the life he had built. But he
left us a story that is absolutely worth diving
into. A story about the deliberate erasure of
a name and the very long, very slow road to getting
it back. That is a perfect place to leave it.
Think about that vote. Think about what you would
have done. That is it for this deep dive. Thanks
for listening. Thanks for joining us.