Hannah grinned. There was some Scottish that needed no translation, though she wouldn’t dare try to pronounce it.
“Never mind,” she said briskly. “Let’s get to work. I’ll get the option secured this afternoon and we’ll need a terrific actor. And director. And a top cameraman.”
“We cannae afford all that,” Sidney protested. “A corner must be cut.”
Hannah gave him a baleful look. “You have to spend money to make money. Good quality pays for itself.”
Sidney stumped off to make the calls, and Hannah chuckled. She’d grown up enduring taunts about Jews being tightfisted—even though her family could barely make rent. Those people should try getting a penny out of a Scot.
She looked out her window down at the leafy Cadogan Square. Her childhood bedroom window on Orchard Street had looked onto an airshaft. She’d known she would go far, but even her vivid imagination had never conjured anything like this. Her own company, and a man as her second-in-command. She and Sidney had met when they both talked their way into minor production roles on a television movie and discovered they had as much acumen as the entirety of the seasoned crew and a shared passion for work labeled “controversial.” He thought they should start slow, but Hannah was far too restless for caution, and had been told too many times in her life to moderate her reach. Once she understood the basics of television production, she knew she could do it, and Sapphire Films was born the next day.
It was only when they produced their third television film—and got it aired on CBS—that Hannah asked Sidney what he thought of the blacklist. She knew he was a fervent socialist who was keen to hire the best writers, provided they came at a bargain rate. But potentially ruffling the feathers of an American television network might be a bridge too far.
“How can a country like America have a blacklist?” Sidney demanded when Hannah brought it up. “How is it not aping something your man Stalin would do?”
“How to explain the inexplicable?” Hannah said. “You’re quite right. The studio heads in Hollywood have always been a strange breed. They want to be seen as innovators, but are terrified of criticism. So when some politicians and religious conservatives yowled about films being filthy, in came the Production Code. Really, they want to be seen as patriots, good Americans. Important. Well, so when HUAC starts huffing and puffing about ‘Commie propaganda’ in movies, the studio heads could have said they’d make the pictures they wanted and let audiences decide, but being them, they all agreed to wipe Hollywood clean of anything even remotely leftist, starting with screenwriters. So sure, there can’t be an official blacklist, that would be unconstitutional. But word can go around saying, ‘Don’t hire this person, don’t hire that one,’ and suddenly the hottest writers, directors, actors in town are as good as dead. No one dares defy the word—who knows what HUAC could do then.”
Sidney shook his head. “We had actual Communist spies here—British men, educated at Cambridge, if you please—and we still believe in civil liberties.”
“That’s why there are Americans escaping the witch hunts living here,” Hannah said.
He grinned at her shrewdly. “Are you hinting you’re one such? I did wonder. They don’t much cotton to leftist journalists, I hear.”
“They don’t,” she agreed. “I saw the heat turning up and decided to get out before it got to me. Word is I’ve been forgotten in the midst of all the bigger fish.”
Sidney had several choice words about the treatment of the bigger fish.
“I’m glad you feel that way,” Hannah said. “Because I have to feed those fish, by which I mean I’d like to hire blacklisted screenwriters.”
Sidney kept a stash of Walkers shortbread, which he nibbled when he was thinking, or worried, or both. He nibbled some now.
“I can’t be the sort of person who shakes my fist from a safe distance,” Hannah went on. “I’ve always been an activist. I have to do something strenuous.”
He grinned. “You bonkers liberal do-gooder, you.” Then he looked around the office, decorated with still photos from Sapphire’s productions. He raised an eyebrow at Hannah. “You’ve been hiring blacklistees already, haven’t you? That’s why some of these writers have no other credits.”
“Some of them are my friends,” Hannah admitted. “All of them need help. I can’t change what’s happening in America, but I can continue to give these men a voice. And an income doing what they do best.”
“I’m game,” Sidney said. “And I understand the money end more than you, pardon my saying so. We’ll need additional books and careful means of sending payments. And a stash of cash for legal fees if we’re ever caught—they’d insist on you coming to America to testify, that’s certain. Also, these writers get paid the same as any greenhorn.”
Hannah could hardly argue.
So Sapphire developed the secret reputation as a place for blacklistees to submit work. Despite her determination, and bravado, Hannah was a little nervous. She had no friends in British politics, no one who could protect her if she needed it. She wasn’t certain her status as a UK business owner would save her if the American Embassy requested she no longer be allowed residency, or refused to renew her passport. Or if a registered letter arrived containing a subpoena. Would she be forced to respond? She didn’t want to find out. The fewer people who knew she hired blacklisted writers, the better. If there was one thing Hannah learned the day the HUAC hearings began, it was that even the person you least expected could turn out to be the one who betrayed you.
* * *
• • •
“If any of the men see you reading a script, they’ll have a fit hoping it’s one of theirs.”
Hannah looked up from the script she thought was hidden in her capacious handbag and into the patrician face of Shirley LeGrand.
“Sorry, Shirley. Great gathering, of course, it’s just—”
“You can’t stop working, I know.” Shirley nodded. “I wouldn’t mind doing some composition myself, but I suspect it might look untoward for a hostess to work at her own party, radicals though we all are, naturellement,” she added, with a twirl of her long, slim fingers and slight eye roll at the men huddled in a circle talking politics, ignoring the women until they wanted fresh drinks.
“I thought I was being sneaky,” Hannah confessed.
“But of course. Only don’t forget I was taught to know what every white person in a room is doing at all times. Habits, don’t you know.”
Hannah knew. It was the same trick she’d employed as the only female journalist in a press room, and she had far fewer reasons than Shirley to be so vigilant.