from Hilda Vaughn, 13 August 1955 -- "still blacklisted"

 

 

 

Dears

This little note I'm about to write -- at long last -- in answer to so many and varied and gay communications from you. But let's call it (this) an interim communication.

Plain truth is I've been too damned depressed to write. No play -- still blacklisted in TV -- and all I did was a few poetry readings at the Lexington Ave Y all year long.  (The poetry -- a group doing Murder in the Cathedral and Jeffers' Tower Beyond Tragedy -- interesting to do -- but just a few scattered evenings.)

Now I'm too busy to write! About to open in a play being tried out in Summer Theaters for 2 weeks, after which the intention is to open here toward the end of September. Small part -- but a nice play -- "A Palm Tree in a Rose Garden." -- (Nice title too, isn't it?) and I'm breathing again!

So know that I think of you often and often -- and love you much -- and treasure our friendship.

Hilda

A big, big hug for Lane

Hilda Vaughn in Guanajuato, 1953 - Rosa Morgan photo

Hilda Vaughn was a theater and movie actress, most known for character roles in the 1930s and '40s.My folks met her in Mexico in 1942 and stayed friends. I met her when we went back in 1953. I remember her only as a happy feeling when her name came up. Apparently she liked me, and I've heard from adults who knew me then that I was a mouthy little kid who was not to everyone's taste. 

 

Later I associated her with the romance of martyrdom as she was caught up in the Hollywood Blacklist of the 1950s. It's unclear why, as what I can find of her political activity was pretty innocuous: participation in a radio program about the accomplishments of the early United Nations -- along with Lena Horne, Laurence Olivier, Vincent Price, Charles Boyer, and others; signing a promotion for a Labor Day March in 1947; Chair of the New York State Democratic Committee at one point.  Who knows? Columnist Louella Parsons did call her "The Most Distinguished Actress that the City of Baltimore ever Produced,"but that doesn't seem career-ending. 

She once gave a set of brass knuckles to Una Jeffers, wife of the poet Robinson Jeffers, who admired her performance as Cassandra in his play "The Tower Beyond Tragedy." And she wrote me a nice letter in 1957, a few months before she died at age 60.