REDGRAVE ASKS NEW APPEALS COURT RULING

Vanessa Redgrave has asked an appeals court to overturn a ruling that her civil rights were not violated when her appearance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra was canceled after complaints about her sympathies for the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The actress, in a brief filed Monday with the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said the federal jury’s November decision “expressly encourages political coercion.”

Redgrave had contended the orchestra fired her for her support of the PLO, and that the firing kept her from getting work for 14 months.

The orchestra had hired Redgrave, 47, to narrate Igor Stravinsky’s “Oedipus Rex” in April, 1982, but canceled her appearance after protests from subscribers and threats from the Jewish Defense League. The orchestra said it canceled only to avoid violence.

Although the jury found her civil rights had not been violated, it agreed that Redgrave’s career had been damaged and awarded her $100,000.

U.S. District Judge Robert Keeton left intact the jury’s finding, but threw out the award, saying harm to her career was legally “irrelevant.” But he also ordered the orchestra to pay Redgrave $27,500 for breach of contract, slightly less than her fee for the performance.

In her brief with the appeals court, Redgrave asked for unspecified damages. In the suit decided by the jury, she had asked for $1 million in civil rights damages and $166,000 in lost income.

The orchestra’s attorney, Robert Sullivan, and its public relations director, Caroline Smedvig, said they would have no comment on the brief until they had read it. Sullivan said he will file a response July 22.

The brief submitted Monday compared Redgrave’s firing with the blacklisting of entertainers in America during the McCarthy era.

“Like some employers in the 1940s and 1950s, the BSO decided that certain political views were too controversial to permit a contractual relationship to continue,” the brief said. “Vanessa Redgrave became an untouchable for a period of time.”

“Miss Redgrave did not work at all for 14 months following the cancellation, although she badly needed work and tried very hard to get work,” the brief said. Before 1982 she averaged $200,000 yearly, her lawyers said.