Larry
Adler was
born in Baltimore on 10th February, 1914. A self-taught musician,
he won the Maryland Harmonica Championship at the age of 13 and began
his show business career the following year. He appeared in Clowns
in Clover
(1928), Flying
Colors
(1934) and Tune
Inn
(1937) and toured the USA, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. In
the 1940s Adler played as a soloist with some of the world's leading
symphony orchestras.
After
the Second World War the House
of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began to investigate
people with left-wing views in the entertainment industry. In June,
1950, three former FBI agents and a right-wing
television producer, Vincent Harnett, published Red
Channels, a pamphlet listing the names of 151 writers, directors
and performers who they claimed had been members of subversive organizations
before the Second World War but had not so far
been blacklisted. The names had been compiled from FBI
files and a detailed analysis of the Daily
Worker, a newspaper published by the American
Communist Party.
A free copy of Red Channels
was sent to those involved in employing people in the entertainment
industry. All those people named in the pamphlet were blacklisted
until they appeared in front of the House of
Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and convinced its members
they had completely renounced their radical past.
Adler was one of those named and after refusing to appear before the
House of Un-American Activities Committee
he moved to England where he wrote the music for films such as
Genevieve
(1953), The Hook (1963), King
and Country (1964) and A High
Wind in Jamaica (1965).
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