The Wilmington morning star., 1947-09-02
AS Pegler Sees It
By WEsTBROOK PEGLER

By WEsTBRoOK PEGLER
Copyright By King Features Syndicate Inc
NEW YORK, Sept. l. - To my own skepti-
cal, even captious, mind, it was plain that
Carson Kanin's prototype OF the crude, greedy
capitalist in the Broadway play Born Yes.
terday' was not the ambiguous character
that we saw on the stage. The prototype
seemed to me to be Murray w. Carson, the
inveterate crook who was mixed up with
Congressman Andrew j. May of Kentucky,
the new deals chairman Of the House Mill.
tary Affairs Committee in the historic war
frauds recently proved in the federal court.
The only journalist who was conspicuously
mixed up with CARSON was not a New Re.
public fellow, but a Golfers man, and he
certainly was not the hero of the situation
as Kanin's reporter was. He was a red-hot
new dealer, to be sure, who made an enor-
nous speech, measured by decibels, at the
1914 democratic convention, by name, Quen-
tin Reynolds. Mr.. Reynolds made a great
profit out of the war as a correspondent and
patriotic lecturer for large fees. Unfortunate
ly he had to be absent from many critical
and uncomfortable scenes of battle to keep
prior profitable engagements made by his
managers. The trial evidence in the case OF
the people VS.. Murray Carson and Andrew
May had it that he got 81, 900 for making a
rapturous speech about the Carson NUM-
tons enterprises and Mr.. Garsson's
fine character. This 1000 ultimately was
paid by the taxpayers through their pay
ments to Carson. The relationship between
the New Republic man and the blonde in the
play was, Of course, literary license and in
vention.
Two other congressman besides Mr.. May
had had important dealings with Muir
ray Carson in years long gone by. Both are
new dealers, Sam Dickstein. of New York,
slid out OF his cheap job in Congress into
his political reward as a judge Of the New
York Supreme Court at $25, 600 a year, vir-
tually for life; and Adolph SABBATH of Chicag go.
Both are passionate anti-nazis, of course, and
both, oddly enough, had truck with Murray
Carson in connection with their committee
work in Congress. Carson was a notorious
crook in the limited circle of those who knew
him, for years and years, a sneak and graft
er and Shakedown operator. He worked in
the current of Dickstein's duties in the in
vestlgatlon of immigration frauds when Dick
stein controlled immigration and naturaliza-
ton, and with Sabatl in the unbelievably
loose and ineffective investigation of the So
called reorganization frauds" involv-
ing crooked investment corporations after the
great crash. Lawyers and other rascals set
to guard the wreckage made off with the
salvage. 1t was hilarious but cruel. In Holly
wood, this Carson had opportunities to shake
down foreign actors working in movies, and
the extravagant producing companies
employing them. Also, in Hollywood, and else
where, too, he shook down corporation pro
moters and investors in the great 'reorgani-
zation'' farce. One gift or loan of
500, 900 was hung on him in incidental testi-
mony in another trial. He had a police record
in New York all the time that he was working
with these two congressional committees.
The Herald Tribune's editorial judgment in
selecting Carson Kanin as the beneficiary of
the priceless gift of two columns Of publicity
on a Sunday is the more interesting because
Donald Ogden Stewart is the author Of the
new play which Kanin is producing.
Stewart has been cited u times in the re-
ports of the Dies committee on un-American
activities and although he is described as a
humorist he once blew up at an alumni din
ner Of Exeter Academy because another ora
tor had warned those present not to relax
their suspicious Of Soviet Russia just because
we happened to be monentarily on the same
side In the war. l ought to know. l was the
other speaker and I refer to recent develop
ments as confirmation Of my prophecy.
Carson Kanin recently went to Washington
as a character witness for a communist plot
ter named Carl Aldoo Marzani. alias Tony
Whales, who slowed away in our State De-
partment under false representations
concerning his personal history. Marzani was
convicted Of perjury and sentenced to one to
three years in prison. Kanln gave this com
peace and good order and being a law-abid;ng
citiZen.'
Kanin himself was asked whether he had
ever been a member or sponsor of the joint
anti-fascist refugee committee. After some
stalling on the part Of this great literary hero
of the Herald Tribune's drama section, he
finally said he couldn't remember, but he
was willing to say yes"
Later, on animation, he was ask
ed whether this was a communist organiza-
ton and the court sustained. an objection but
disallowed a motion for a mistrial.
However, the joint anti-fascist refugee COM
mittee was identified as a communist front
in the United States by two committees Of
Congress in formal reports, a fact which
might account for Mr.. Kanin's angry temper
toward Congress expressed in Born Yester-
day." And Howard Fast, a writer of pro-
communist propaganda, said in a book called
''Tito the 1ncredible' that this. front had fl
nanced the return of Drug Tito, the COM
munist dictator, to Jugoslavia after the Al
lies had driven out the Nazis. Fast was con-
victed of contempt OF Congress ana sentenced
to three months in prison for refusing to re-
veal to a mmit the records OF the JOINT
anti-fascist refugee committee.
Kanin testified that he served in the war
with the office of strategic services, the So
called cloak and dagger service organized
by Maj.-Gen. william J. Donovan, who is so
naive after all his service among communists
that he still doesn't suspect where Kanin's
sympathies might be-
Marzani and Kanin saved democracy to-
gether in the O. S. S., but Kanin's service
was hardly comparable to that of some other
Americans who had less urgent personal rea-
sons to thirst for the blood of the Hitlerites.
Donovan put him to work making moving
pictures, not actually for public propaganda
but to spell OUT situations by the cut-pie
and taxpayers dollar system OF graphic
charts to officers who were running the war.
It needn't be pointed out that such a mission