Texas Humorist John Faulk Dies; Exposed and Beat Blacklisting

John Henry Faulk, the pipe-smoking Texas humorist who exposed and defeated the entertainment profession’s McCarthy era blacklisting system, has died at his Austin home. He was 76.

Faulk died Monday after a long bout with cancer.

A latter-day Will Rogers, Faulk had his own radio show on CBS in New York until the network suddenly fired him in 1957.

He blamed his firing on false accusations leveled by Aware Inc., a group of self-appointed vigilantes paid by networks to inform them of entertainment professionals with purported communist leanings.

Faulk sued Aware and two of its chief operators for libel, and in 1962 won the then-unprecedented damage award of $3.5 million. Even when appellate courts reduced the amount to $725,000, it remained a record.

Most importantly, the decisive verdict ended the practice of blacklisting in Hollywood and New York instituted as a result of the congressional hearings conducted by Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) to identify communists or communist sympathizers. Entertainers who acknowledged communist ties or who refused to sign an anti-communist oath on privacy grounds were branded “red” or “pinko” and blacklisted, dooming their careers.

Faulk, who was subpoenaed but never called to testify before McCarthy’s committee, detailed his ordeal in the best-selling book, “Fear on Trial.” The book was made into a television movie in 1975--shown by CBS--starring William Devane.

Faulk liked the film, noting: “Why, you can’t hardly sit there and watch yourself portrayed by a man 25 years younger--ever so brave and ever so tenacious, just slaying dragons right and left--without it having a certain therapeutic effect on you.”

But Faulk, who collected only about $75,000 of the jury award from the penniless defendants, remained philosophical about his hard-won victory.

“You know, I’m given a lot of credit for breaking the back of the blacklist,” he said in a Dallas Times Herald interview recently. “But when I back off and really evaluate what my battle against the blacklist was . . . it had no profound effect, I don’t think. If it had had a very profound effect, Ronald Reagan wouldn’t have ever been President.”

(Reagan won a following during the blacklisting period as president of the Screen Actors Guild that later helped boost his political career.)

Faulk believed Aware’s attack on him was in retaliation for his election on an anti-blacklisting platform as an officer in New York City’s American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union local.

“It was one thing to be a radical Jew from the Bronx, but a down-home, church-going boy (like me)?” he said later. “They hated me worse than anyone. They had to get me.”

Unable to obtain work during his six-year legal battle, Faulk’s employability improved little even after fabled lawyer Louis Nizer laid bare Aware’s smear and guilt-by-association tactics and won the libel award.

“By the time the trial was over,” Faulk said in 1975, “the industry had forgotten what it was I ever did in the first place. They didn’t know if I juggled or stood on my head or rode two horses at the same time. They had no notion of what my talent was . . . nobody rushed out and offered me a job.”

Faulk returned to his native Texas where he worked in public relations, sold encyclopedias, had a show on local television, wrote a column for a newspaper, and gave folksy talks on the mashed-potatoes circuit.

His fortunes improved somewhat after the 1975 television movie of his experience. He was hired as a storyteller on the country music television series “Hee Haw,” and the price tag for his entertaining after-dinner speeches rose to $1,500 each.

Spinning yarns about neighbors like “Peavine,” Faulk inspired modern humorists such as Garrison Keillor.

In 1983, Faulk ran unsuccessfully for Congress. In 1985, he published a second book, “The Uncensored John Henry Faulk.”

Born in Austin in 1913, he studied folklore and taught at the University of Texas. Because of severe eye problems, he was unable to join the armed forces during World War II. Instead, he signed on with the merchant marine and later worked for the American Red Cross in the Middle East.

Finally allowed to join the Army for limited service, he was on Christmas leave in New York in 1945 when CBS executives heard him telling country stories at a party.

He soon had his own radio show, “Johnny’s Front Porch.”

Faulk’s first marriage ended in divorce shortly after the 1962 trial. He is survived by his second wife, Elizabeth Peake Faulk, two sons, three daughters, a brother, three sisters and three grandchildren.