Politics
There was a side of Collyer's career that involved controversy. During his 1950s heyday with Beat The Clock and To Tell The Truth, he was a leader in an overtly anti-Communist faction of the New York chapter of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. That faction supported such publications as Red Channels (the famous list of 151 reputed Communists or reputed fellow travelers, as the term was then, in radio and television) and interest groups that shared the authors' politics—groups like AWARE, Inc. (co-founded, in fact, by the man who wrote Red Channels' introduction), purporting to screen broadcast performers for actual or alleged Communist ties, pressuring networks and advertisers to shun them under threat of boycott.
An opposing faction, led by CBS radio personality John Henry Faulk and Orson Bean, defeated Collyer's faction in an election to run the New York local.
Read more about this topic: Bud Collyer
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“We are naïve and moralistic women. We are human beings. Who find politics a blight upon the human condition. And do not know how one copes with it except through politics.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“Our family talked a lot at table, and only two subjects were taboo: politics and personal troubles. The first was sternly avoided because Father ran a nonpartisan daily in a small town, with some success, and did not wish to express his own opinions in public, even when in private.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
“The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.”
—Ben C. Bradlee (b. 1921)