National Affairs: The Heat's On

From coast to coast, indignant citizens took after Communists, their party-line friends, and some they just suspected of being party-liners. Distinctions were not always finely drawn, and so the actions they took ranged from sound to silly to unjust. Items:

NBC postponed the fall premiere of the TV version of The Aldrich Family, because it had received a lot of protests against one member of the cast, Actress Jean Muir. She was identified as a leftie in a directory published by Counterattack. Rejoined Actress Muir: "It's strange . . . especially since I consider Communism one of the most vicious things in the country today." The sponsor, General Foods, said it was making no judgment on the charges, but fired her as "a controversial personality."

¶Members of Joe Ryan's A.F.L. longshoremen, who a week earlier had balked at unloading inbound cargoes of Russian furs and crab meat, refused to touch 2,000 cases of Polish hams aboard two American freighters at New York docks.

¶The Peace Information Center, a Manhattan outfit which has been a wholesale distributor of the Red-sponsored Stockholm "Peace" Petition, was directed by the Department of Justice to register as agent of a foreign power.

¶New Hampshire's Wentworth by-the-Sea Hotel canceled a scheduled Sunday evening talk by Owen Lattimore after the management polled the guests, found that more than half who voted did not want to hear him.

¶The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed an emergency ordinance requiring all Communists or Communist sympathizers (which they had trouble defining) to register at the sheriff's office after Sept. 1 or face a $500 fine and six months in jail for each day's failure to register.