"Stevenson wouldn't be happy as president. He thinks that if you talk long enough you get a soft option and there are very few soft options as president." — President John F. Kennedy
While walking out of the Dallas Memorial Auditorium, Adlai Stevenson, the United State’s ambassador to the United Nations, was hit over the head with a protest sign by Cora Lacy Frederickson, a local Dallas woman . Stevenson was then accosted and spat upon by several others on his way to his car. Stevenson reportedly said to the police as they tried to protect him, “I don't want to send them to jail. I want to send them to school!”
The 25 October 1963 event was Stevenson’s chance to promote the United Nations as a positive and altruistic organization to a city with a sizable anti-U.N. coalition consisting of the John Birch Society, The National Indignation Convention and members of a still-born group, The American Fact Finding Committee. The AFFC who would achieve infamy a month later by posting an anti-Kennedy advertisement in the Dallas Morning News the very day President Kennedy was assassinated. Bad timing.
The event was an ambush largely orchestrated by former General Edwin Walker, an anti-Kennedy alarmist well known at the time. While Stevenson spoke, a banner behind him which read, “Welcome, Adlai” was unfurled by pre-positioned agents: UN RED FRONT. Protesters interrupted with jeers and Halloween noise-makers yelling, “traitor” and “How about Cuba?”
The obnoxiousness and violence against Stevenson so unnerved and appalled internationalist liberals they reacted they only way they knew how: by condescending to the American people.
Stevenson’s message to send us “to school” was heard by the Director of the U.N. Special Fund, Paul G. Hoffman, who was appalled at the frothing, right-wing animus toward the United Nations. He contacted a friend in public relations, Edgar Rosenberg. Together they formed a film production company, Telsun: Television for the United Nations, with the express mission to educate the American people, send them to school, in other words. There was no PBS yet, you see.
This preachy use of television was reasonable to many at the time. Wilsonian collective security (the United Nations) in the minds of Americans was at its absolute zenith. Confidence in ourselves had never been higher. The right people were in power: LBJ and the Whiz-kids. America was committed to go the moon. We had faced down the Soviets over Cuba and won and we had the Peace Corps. So put that your pipe and smoke it, Russel Kirk.
A fear of an activist military was also extant. The film, Seven Days in May, had premiered in February. The antagonist in the movie, and in the eponymous novel from 1962, was largely inspired by the same uber-anti-communist General Edwin Walker now planted in Dallas. Kennedy had read the novel, thought it plausible, and wanted the film made. He directed Press Secretary Pierre Salinger to support the film’s director, John Frankenheimer.
By the time the first Telsun movie was ready, President Lyndon Johnson had so thoroughly trounced Barry Goldwater in the November 1964 election the populace took it as a vindication of all things JFK and a mandate for anything Johnson wanted to do.
Amidst this zeitgeist, Telsun’s effort was enthusiastically embraced by many film-making luminaries and industrialists. Xerox donated $4 million to the project and promised to cover the cost of all the commercial time so that Americans could watch the films without commercial interruption. Telsun planned six films using that $4 million, so, to keep costs down, the producers asked directors and actors to perform for the $350 guild minimum. Not surprisingly, much of the A-list talent dropped out, their love for the U.N. being more of a crush than obsession.
But not all the A-list dropped out. Rod Serling, Peter Sellers, Sterling Hayden and Robert Shaw all hung in there (not all for charitable reasons). The first film was ready by November 1964 in time for the Holidays: Carol for Another Christmas.
Rod Serling, mega famous for The Twilight Zone, wrote the polemic teleplay. Carol for Another Christmas was so ham-fisted and pro-U.N. that the ABC Network demanded several changes and didn’t broadcast it until December 28.
Serling was no snowflake having fought in WWII. However, his combat experience in the Pacific had shattered his psyche. If nations could “talk” their way to peace and avoid war, he was all for it. To him, the U.N. was a way to save the world. Invested in the outcome of the 1964 election, Serling had passed the year listening to Barry Goldwater’s people and he hated three things: nuclear militarism, isolationist real politik and Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. Serling’s Carol was a hammer to the temple.
The Scrooge role was played by another combat veteran and former Tito-communist, Sterling Hayden. Infamous for making Humphrey Bogart’s Committee for the First Amendment look like commie dupes in the McCarthy era by concealing his past, Hayden recanted and then went on to “name names” himself.
Hayden, fresh from playing General Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove the year before, plays it about the same as Daniel Grudge, the Scrooge. He based his acting for both roles on the very same Kennedy-hating General Edwin Walker who had organized the protest against Stevenson in Dallas.
Grudge is a bitter retired naval officer, grieving over his son, Marley, who died in battle on Christmas Eve (Marley was played by Peter Fonda, but all of those scenes were cut. Probably because they stunk).
The ghost of Christmas past (played well by a young Steve Lawrence) takes Grudge to Hiroshima 1945 where he must witness his past self stoically visiting a hospital for burned women. These victims are obviously an analog for the famous Hiroshima Maidens; women whose beauty was burned away, with no hope of marriage or children. This is the only part of the film with some truly touching moments.
Grudge next encounters the ghost of the present, played by Pat Hingle, who gives the best performance of the film. The spirit confronts Grudge and demands he explain his anti-altruism. A displaced-person’s camp is adjacent the dining table, people behind wire, in the snow, and the ghost gives Grudge a good ‘ole U.N. lecture filled with sad statistics.
The final act is a didactic Serling farce. The ghost of Christmas to come (a sober Robert Shaw) takes Grudge to his own town hall, now a derelict in a post-apocalyptic world. The survivors of the town arrive to meet with their mad leader, the Imperial Me played by Peter Sellers, also fresh from the set of Dr. Strangelove and recovering from a drug-induced heart attack. Me tells the crowd that a nearby town wants to “talk” about cooperating, but he suspects it is a trick, a ruse to conquer them. The only solution to the “talkers, the involvers” is to dispose of them and then to dispose of one another until the ultimate “me” is achieved.
Peter Sellers’ over-the-top performance is sprinkled with a half-assed Texan accent. We should all be grateful he hurt himself on the B-52 set of Dr. Strangelove which forced Kubrick to hire Slim Pickens to play Major “King” Kong. The Imperial Me reveals some of Serling’s prejudice against Americani communi populo.
Carol for Another Christmas was obsolete by the time of its airing. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was already several months old and the very kind of war Grudge blamed internationalists for causing was indeed about to happen. Rod Serling sensed this, I think, and ended the film on a somber note with only a hint that Grudge was changing his ways. A year later, America would be mourning its dead after the shocking Battle of Ia Drang.
Are there still powerful media and industrial figures promoting the U.N. as the solution for the world’s ills? Look no further than Ted Turner and his two organizations, The United Nations Foundation and The Better World Campaign.
We need not apply hyperbole to the words of Turner, or Bill Gates or Spooky Soros or whoever else. They are outrageous enough. Let us not then attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by simple conceit, elitism and the unconstrained visions of progressives. Those things are malign enough. The primary conceit of Wilsonian internationalism is that mere talk somehow keeps powers, especially great ones, from war. Has that worked? Would the Cuban Missile Crisis had ended differently without the U.N.?
Certainly the U.N. was of no help in November 1964. That month U.N. Secretary General U Thant approached Ho Chi Minh about “talks” with the U.S. and Ambassador Stevenson was receptive. The proposal went nowhere. North Vietnam had everything to gain by legitimizing themselves at the U.N. Ho knew that much. The U.S had everything to lose. McGeorge Bundy knew that much. Years later, Henry Kissinger concluded the Paris Peace Accords with Le Duc To also without the help of the U.N.
Has the utility of the U.N. ever exceeded that of common statecraft and subtle diplomacy? Does collective security have any role at all? Do we lose sovereignty in the process?
Those questions are best answered by Henry Kissinger in his masterwork, Diplomacy. Read it unless you think Kissinger himself was a dupe of a very clever international Jewish conspiracy to drain the world with ceaseless wars run by the Rothschilds, secret Bolsheviks and Free Masons with Bigfoot and the Yetis providing the muscle. Actually, read it even if you do think that.
Most importantly, Christmas is the birthday of the savior of the world, Jesus Christ. No construct of man will save him from the sin in which he wallows. In Christ alone is there hope. His birthday is not a moment to proselytize anything but joy. Instead, be merry and jolly, worship and praise the Christ Child and have goodwill toward men at all times, everywhere.
Thanks for this fascinating history lesson (I had no idea about this film or its origins). Gee, with a stellar cast like that, one would think this would have *had* to be a massive hit! I guess viewers back then were more discerning.
I can only agree with your final sentiments here. With the holidays pretty much upon us, seems like a very good time to start practicing that goodwill toward everyone, everywhere. If enough of us do so, maybe we can actually change things for the better on this planet Happy holidays, Harry.