John Henry Faulk

John Henry Faulk, the American humorist who was credited with defeating the blacklisting system during the McCarthy era, died Monday at his home of cancer. He was 76. Faulk's lawsuit against the blacklisters, who terrorized entertainers during the 1950s, was the subject of the book, "Fear on Trial" and was later made into a movie. The case in 1962 pitted two of the best-known trial lawyers of the day, Louis Nizer for Faulk and Roy Cohn for the blacklisters.

John Henry Faulk, the pipe-smoking Texas humorist who exposed and defeated the entertainment profession's McCarthy era blacklisting system, has died at his Austin home. He was 76. Faulk died Monday after a long bout with cancer. A latter-day Will Rogers, Faulk had his own radio show on CBS in New York until the network suddenly fired him in 1957. He blamed his firing on false accusations leveled by Aware Inc.

John Henry Faulk, the pipe-smoking Texas humorist who exposed and defeated the entertainment profession's McCarthy era blacklisting system, has died at his Austin home. He was 76. Faulk died Monday after a long bout with cancer. A latter-day Will Rogers, Faulk had his own radio show on CBS in New York until the network suddenly fired him in 1957. He blamed his firing on false accusations leveled by Aware Inc.

John Henry Faulk, the American humorist who was credited with defeating the blacklisting system during the McCarthy era, died Monday at his home of cancer. He was 76. Faulk's lawsuit against the blacklisters, who terrorized entertainers during the 1950s, was the subject of the book, "Fear on Trial" and was later made into a movie. The case in 1962 pitted two of the best-known trial lawyers of the day, Louis Nizer for Faulk and Roy Cohn for the blacklisters.

The entertainment industry's nightmare years--the blacklisting era of Joe McCarthy, loyalty oaths and Red Channels--seem eerily topical as assaults on expression rumble onward. If communism is out of style, witch hunts never are. "John Henry Faulk: The Man Who Beat the Blacklist" (at 9 tonight on Channels 28 and 15) is a primer in how the blacklist actually worked.

However much Frank Sinatra might illuminate a lyric, it is always clear that it is someone else's words he is highlighting. Jerry Jeff Walker, who has the vocal range of a drunk rattlesnake, is a whole other kind of saloon singer, but somehow he is able to bring a personal, revelatory quality to all he touches, whether he wrote it or not.

On an episode of ABC's post-World War II drama "Homefront," the characters played by Ginger Szabo and Linda Metcalf were to meet for ice cream sundaes. What creator-executive producer Lynn Marie Latham needed to know was whether whipped cream would be a sundae topping in 1947, the year in which the show is set.

In the empire of country music, all roads are supposed to lead to Nashville. Jerry Jeff Walker, however, is content to travel his own byways and stay clear of country music's business hub. Walker, who plays today at the Coach House, has his own cottage industry going in Austin, Tex., his home for the past 20 years. In 1986, Walker and his wife, Susan, launched Tried & True Music, a custom record label that has released his last three albums, including the new "Navajo Rug."

Louis Nizer, the legendary trial lawyer who took on some of the most formidable cases of the postwar period and who wrote 10 best-selling books, including the world-renowned "My Life in Court," died Thursday at Beth Israel Hospital of kidney failure. He was 92 years old and lived in Manhattan. Nizer, who founded the firm of Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, Krim & Ballon, was one of only a handful of courtroom lawyers to emerge as well-known figures.

Apparently a kindly deity has put certain rich people on this earth to give us lesser mortals the pleasure of detesting them. "In All His Glory" persuades me that William S. Paley is in that group. One may easily admire him for the willpower, craftiness and luck that enabled him to dominate the Columbia Broadcasting System for more than half a century. And socially, when everything was going his way, he could be very charming. But otherwise, phew!

"No one wants to hear from the producer," says the producer, Irwin Winkler. "He's the guy by the pool with a cigar in his mouth and a couple of lovelies on his arm. But when you're a director, they want to hear what you have to say about everything--the war, the world. . . ." Winkler has just walked 45 minutes from his Bel-Air home to Orsini's, an Italian restaurant on Pico Boulevard near Century City that remains a favorite among Hollywood's fiftysomething crowd.