Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars

by Kliph Nesteroff

As the hostility turned to death threats, Steve Allen contacted the FBI. Eighteen months after the first letter arrived in Sherman Oaks, the FBI interrogated a former playwright named Myron C. Fagan. Fagan had a grudge against show people ever since his Red Scare play A Red Rainbow was trashed by drama critics in 1950. Theater critic Brooks Atkinson wrote, “Mr. Fagan believes that he is helping to save America. That leaves us with an unworthy thought: Who is going to save America from Mr. Fagan?” Fagan wrote Richard Nixon a series of fan letters in the early 1950s, praising his anti-Communist record, but in a private memo Nixon warned that Fagan was “a Fascist and will pop up again six years from now.”