D.C. drama worthy of Hollywood

In 1954, with the support of my wife and family, I quit the only full-time job I’ve ever had to make my living as a freelance writer.

I had just sold articles to the Saturday Evening Post and Harper’s, and it was a lot more fun than public relations. So I moved my office home and started a new life, full of excitement and contemptuous of risk. Then, a week later, the Senate hearings on the charges leveled by Sen. Joseph McCarthy against the U.S. Army started -- the most gripping soap opera on television, replete with heroes, villains and victims.

And it almost sank my new career at birth because, for more than six weeks, I abandoned my work to watch. We took a dangerous hit in income as a result, but those weeks kindled a political awareness that didn’t exist before and a deep and lifelong aversion to bullies of every name and nature -- especially when they prey on defenseless people.

All of this played through my head again last week when I saw “Good Night and Good Luck,” the story of how newsman Edward R. Murrow took on McCarthy at a time when the whole country was scared to death of him.

The movie is still playing in local theaters, and I strongly recommend it -- both as a reminder of a day when reporters didn’t make news by selling out to their sources or making up facts and when mostly irrational fear was allowed to displace such abiding principles as justice and decency and fair play in how this country was run.

All of the arguments against Murrow taking on McCarthy publicly are given a fair hearing in this film -- and the same arguments prevail today. Especially how far to lean over backward for balanced editorial treatment of those who don’t offer balance or truth themselves, and how -- if at all -- to factor in the reaction of advertisers who pay the bills for the media in question and carry always the threat to withdraw advertising if sufficiently offended.

It was my good fortune to work with national magazines at a time when there was no crossover between advertising and editorial. And when the Murrows of journalism had the guts and the reporting skills to take on the McCarthys of their time. Maybe films like “Good Night and Good Luck” will help strengthen the guts we need to take on the bullies of today who -- among many other outrages -- would rip us off at the gas pump and the pharmaceutical counter and call it treason when we exercise our rights to challenge their decisions.

*

I have a great idea for a screenplay, and I’m enough excited about it that I want to share it with you, even at the risk that somebody will steal it before I get it written.

See, it’s about this congressman who got elected a long time ago because he hung out with the right people in Washington and was a kind of harmless, good-natured dude who smoked pot in college and was into sports. It also helped that about 93% of his constituents belong to the same party he worked for in Washington.

Well, this dude fancied himself as a writer and wrote a screenplay he was very proud of and tried diligently to sell it while he pursued a political career. For many years, his screenplay would be submitted and turned down, and he would rewrite it and try again, and it would be turned down again. But he never quit trying and never lost hope.

Then he met a guy named Conrad Mann (who goes by the nickname “Con”) who said he was a movie producer.

Well, our congressman never met a movie producer he didn’t like, especially one who would be willing to read his script. So they became pals.

And it was natural that Con would tell the congressman that he had a hot new idea for a TV show that required talking to insiders in Washington and he sure would like to meet some of them. So the congressman said he’d see what he could do while Con was reading his movie script.

Every so often, when the congressman would ask how Con’s reading was coming along, Con would ask how efforts to set up his meetings were progressing. And so it went until Con one day decided that he was so enchanted with the congressman’s script that he would like to option it for $25,000, a quite remarkable figure considering that it had been rejected by almost every producer in Hollywood.

As you can imagine, the congressman was so excited to actually be paid for his writing that it reminded him of his promise to set up Con with a passel of his Washington connections. So he did.

In the months that followed, the congressman would call Con periodically to find out if a date had been set to start filming his script. Each time, Con had a different reason to explain why this was not happening. This made the congressman uneasy and irritated with his producer pal. He would have been even more irritated had he known that Con was dropping names of these insiders he met through the congressman as a means of selling himself to potential investors in his production company.

The congressman didn’t learn about this activity until it was time for his return to the House of Representatives to be rubber-stamped in an election.

Two surprises made this election different. Con Mann had been arrested on a 20-count indictment for fraud that charged him -- among other things -- with a $5-million stock swindle. And for the first time in years, the congressman had serious opposition. A liberal professor from a nearby university had dug up his connection with Con Mann and was using it against him.

So the congressman explained there was no connection between the $25,000 and his efforts on behalf of Con.

“This was nothing I wouldn’t do,” he said, “for any of my constituents.”

He also said he would give serious thought to returning the money if Con is convicted -- even though Con wouldn’t have much use for it under those circumstances.

The congressman’s constituents listened, and 87% of them believed him. Given a choice between a liberal professor and stupidity, they sent him back to Congress.

I have a smash ending showing the congressman mounting the Capitol steps. There would also, of course, be a disclaimer that “any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.”

I’m only sorry that both Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart are dead. They would have been just right for this movie.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column appears Thursdays.

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