On this day, 11 January 1908, blacklisted US actor Lionel Stander was born. Most famous in recent years for playing the chauffeur in 1980s hit TV show Hart-to-Hart, Stander was a popular Hollywood actor, and active in supporting strikes and anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigns and was blacklisted during the anti-communist hysteria of the 1940s and 50s. Early in his career he helped organise actors in the Screen Actors Guild, raised money for anti-fascists in Spain during the civil war of 1936-9 an campaigned against racist miscarriages of justice like the Scottsboro boys case.
Stander later became one of the most defiant actors pulled in front of the anti-communist House Un-American Activities Committee. Not only did he refuse to inform on any of his colleagues, he exasperated the committee by speaking over senators and lawyers, ignoring their questions and instead testifying about the committee itself: “I know of some subversion, and can help the committee if it is really interested… I know of a group of fanatics who are desperately trying to undermine the Constitution of the United States by depriving artists and others of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without due process of the law. If you are interested in that, I would like to tell you about it. I can tell names, I can cite instances, and I am one of the first victims of it, and… these people are engaged in the conspiracy outside all the legal processes to undermine our very fundamental American concepts upon which our entire system of jurisprudence [legal system] exists”.
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