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<\/a><\/p>\nSo here\u2019s the tale as I\u2019ve wrongly been telling it \u2014 and serendipitously (as you shall see), there\u2019s 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\u2019d remembered) Eva Marie Saint.<\/p>\n
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<\/em> (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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how I learned the truth \u2014 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/em> \u2014 the only evidence I could find \u2014 and learned it had taken place in November 1997. Only instead of Eva Marie Saint, I found the name of a different actress \u2014 Lee Grant.<\/p>\n