I had always been aware of the fact that Gene [Kelly] and I, and everyone we knew, lived in a happy, safe, productive enclave. In Beverly Hill and Westwood we were like the British in Hong Kong, protected from the hardship and squalor just beyond our tree-lined streets.

A few years later I decided to join the Communist Party. Gene had never objected to any of my activities; he agreed with most of them, and he wouldn’t have stood in my way. But now, fresh out of the navy, he said “All regimentation is bad,” and then, with a fond indulgent smile, “and you’ll be the worst Communist in the world.” I applied to my old mentor Lloyd Gough, in whose apartment in New York I’d attended the marxist classes. He took me for a drive in the Hollywood hills to break the news: “The Party has decided that it is not a good idea, because you are married to a very important man who is not a member.” And he consoled me with, “You can be just as useful outside.” I was a bit disappointed, but I may have been slightly relieved. I was a bit nervous about my ability to submit to any kind of control. Perhaps Gene was right – he did know me better than anyone.

But Gene never turned into an anticommunist. He believed in unions, freedom of thought, social justice, and racial equality. He never wavered from his democratic principles. And he acted on his beliefs. He signed petitions after reading them thoroughly. He gave money. At the time of the Hollywood witchhunt, the Un-American Activities Commitee, and the blacklist – “the McCarthy years” – he was solid. He went to Washington with the planeload of stars in support of the Hollywood Ten, and he didn’t recant as Humphrey Bogart did. For quite a few years afterward Gene helped several of the blacklisted writers, giving money for their families and trying to get them jobs under the table. (…)

And I guess I was kind of a oddball; I don’t know why, I just never bought the Hollywood system. I didn’t want a swimming pool, I didn’t want a fancy car. After two winter trips to New York where I enjoyed the warmth of my mink coat, I didn’t even want it: I traded it for a nutria jacket for my mother, a white mink shoulder wrap for premieres and a dark green rabbit-fur coat for me. I guess I was my mother’s child – a democrat. I didn’t want to look like a rich lady.

I kept my Chevrolet for ages. Justifying this, I could point to Katha- rine Hepburn, who never had a Mercedes or a Lincoln Continental. I had evening clothes for premieres and parties, but mostly I wandered around in blue jeans or a cotton skirt or a shirt, often Gene’s (the shirt, that is). (…)

As I look back and try to find clues to the girl I was, and evidence of the woman I became, I only see the little wife, loving mother, aspiring actress and politically innocent. But where am I? Where is that hidden self, the one we each carry within us? Of course it was there, that one that knows the truth, that sees everything and has its own opinion.

Betsy Blair, The Memory of All That, Knopf, 2003