It was just a few years after this film was released that Muni, Parks, Lawson, and supervisor Sidney Buchman were named by the House Un-American Activities Committee as having communist affiliations. Lawson refused to testify and was branded as one of the "Unfriendly Ten," while the other
three were blackballed from the industry for most of the rest of their lives. At the time COUNTERATTACK was made, the Russians and the U.S. were allies, but in the cold light of several years after, witch-hunters read things into the script that were never intended. Based on the Russian play
"Pobyeda," the script was brought to Broadway as the stage play ONE AGAINST SEVEN, wherein Morris Carnovsky played the lead to fair success. Muni was chosen for the film, the title of which was changed to COUNTER-ATTACK. The film betrayed its stage origin in its one-set structure, with Muni as a
Russian soldier trapped in the bombed-out basement of a building in a small town held by the Nazis. Muni and Chapman, a Russian woman trapped with him, are holding off a septet of German soldiers while they await rescue in the destroyed factory's cellar. Muni learns that Meller, one of the
Germans, is an officer, and a mental war begins between the two men, each eager to learn information from the other so that he can pass it on to his own army, depending on who digs all of them out. Muni tells Meller that the Russians are building an underwater bridge in order to cross a river.
Chapman is shocked by the admission, but Muni lets her know he can kill Meller before the man can tell anyone, if they are rescued by Germans. Time passes slowly, and Muni and Chapman begin to nod off. The Germans get the weapon Muni has been using, and in the melee Chapman is wounded. Rudolph
Anders, another German, owns up to the fact that he does not agree with Hitler and is in the army under duress. He tells Muni that he will keep the other Germans covered with a rifle in order to let Muni close his eyes. Muni gives him an unloaded rifle (without telling him of the absence of
ammunition) and nods off. True to his word, Anders does keep the men covered with the rifle. Now the sounds of digging are heard, followed by some words in German from the diggers. When Meller begins shouting the information about the bridge, Muni shoots him dead, then prepares to shoot everyone
else in the basement. But the German language is just a ruse; the rescuers are, in fact, Russians who have just taken the town. The Germans are taken away, and Muni is removed on a stretcher, sound asleep.
The picture was not a success, and no one could figure why. Muni was a major star for many years and the play was a proven commodity on Broadway. Was it just that people were tired of the war by 1945 and were not at all interested in the plight of an obscure Russian? Larry Parks's career was
shattered by the communist accusations, and, although Parks was never officially blacklisted, frightened producers did not avail themselves of Parks; he only did three roles in the last fifteen years of his life. Faced with the lack of screenwriting work, Lawson took up writing books and had
several successful how-to tomes on drama and film. leave a comment
