For at least the past 13 years, when I first shared online a Playbill signed by Eva Marie Saint from her appearance with Fred Gwynne in a 1972 production of The Lincoln Mask, I’ve been telling a story about the actress — who died earlier this month at 102 — which turns out to have been false.

So here’s the tale as I’ve wrongly been telling it — and serendipitously (as you shall see), there’s no better day for me to be correcting it than today. Last century, I attended an event about the Blacklist featuring Abraham Polonsky, Walter Bernstein, and (or so I’d remembered) Eva Marie Saint.

During the Q&A, I shared with Saint (though as it turned out, no, I hadn’t) whether it was possible to still enjoy On The Waterfront (in which she’d starred) after learning Elia Kazan had directed it as an apologia for having been a fink. She told me (though as it turned out, no, she didn’t) to get over it.

I’ve been telling this story for years on various social media sites, at conventions, on podcasts, with strangers, whenever Eva Marie Saint, or the Blacklist, or separating art from the artist has come up. And since there’s no way for me to track down all I’ve told it, I must go public and wide.

Here’s how I learned the truth — and why telling you that truth is serendipitous. It occurred to me I should track down exactly when this happened, so I searched online for the names of the participants at that long ago event in D.C., but looking for it using all of their names yielded nothing.

Not until I eliminated Eva Marie Saint’s name from the search. And then I discovered a write-up of the event in the Washington Post — the only evidence I could find — and learned it had taken place in November 1997. Only instead of Eva Marie Saint, I found the name of a different actress — Lee Grant.

Surely the event could not have happened that way, I thought. Obviously, Grant had to have backed out so Saint could have taken her place to embed that memory in my brain. So I dug out my journal from that month — I’ve been keeping one daily since November 1978 — and discovered the horrible truth.

It had been Lee Grant — who’d been blacklisted for 12 years because she refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee— who told me to get over my On the Waterfront qualms. Eva Marie Saint had nothing to it! How could my memory have led me so astray and caused me to lie to you?

The only solution I can come up with is that at some point in time, my porous brain conflated the two women, and made the leap I must have asked about On the Waterfront of the actress who’d starred in it. And I’ve been telling that story over and over, spreading a lie, and dishonoring both women.

As for what makes it serendipitous for me be sharing this truth with you right now — Lee Grant, the actual woman who told me to get over it and learn to separate the art from the artist, is still with us, and turned 101 today! I’m so sorry to her, and Eve Marie Saint, and all who’ve been misled.

If you were one of them, please forgive me. And if you can, since there’s no way I can track down everyone to whom I told this fabrication, share this so they can learn what really happened and not be walking around with a lie. It was the talented, courageous Lee Grant after all! I am so sorry.