***SPOILERS***
This might be repetitive (I'm too lazy to read all the threads), but I was wondering, after having watched the movie again, if maybe this couple had an extra secret, other than just being married...?
Well, I've just seen the titles of recent threads... I see no one is all that interested in the actual movie, so nevermind. God I hate politics!
shareNo secrets. Wershba was a young, gifted reporter for See It Now, who covered the Washngton beat (Senate hearings, etc.) when McCarthy was beginning to surface.
shareIf you are implying that they were secret communists, they had to fight that bit of innuendo courtesy of poison pen columnist Jack O'Brian of the New York Journal-American. Just think of Bill O'Reilly's spiritual father and you've got O'Brian. He was successfully sued for libel in the manner that Quentin Reynolds sued Westbrook Pegler. Anyway, when "See It Now's" Don Hewitt created its spiritual successor, "60 Minutes," Joe Wershba became one of its first producers. He had a long career and worked on some of its best known stories.
shareI wondered about the same thing, especially with the scene of the two of them (1:16 minutes into the film) when they are in bed talking to each other:
Joe: "What if we're wrong?"
Shirley: "We're not wrong."
Joe: "We're not going to look back and say we protected the wrong side?"
It is never made clear what they are talking about, so it made me wonder if they were secret Communists too.
After watching the movie again recently and especially with the commentary by Clooney it was clear that the Wershbas were suspicious that the African American woman, Annie Lee Moss, really was a spy. That's what the bedroom scene was all about. No, the Wershbas were not communists.
shareYou are absolutely right. The commentary made that very clear.
shareI think they were pillow-talking about the "wrong side" being Murrow and journalism and the First Amendment and were wondering if they shouldn't have been protecting McCarthy and McCarthyism? That's the effect the Red Scare had on people. It got them thinking by instilling paranoia. Communism was never the threat McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, etc. claimed it was. Never. That's what propaganda does. It makes you unnecessarily afraid by telling you who you should hate. Jews, Commies, Muslims....it's all one big message with no other objective than to keep you scared, because when you're afraid, you're weak.
shareI didn't necessarily think that there was something suspicious about 'em other than their marriage, however I did wanted to learn a bit more about them in the film (would have been unnecessary though). They were kind of an interesting couple, to say the least.
You want something corny? You got it!