Marzani, Carl

MARZANI, CARL (1912-1994). One of the foremost radicals of the “American Century,” Marzani lived a tumultuous and remarkable life, distinguishing himself over the years as a communist and antifascist organizer, government intelligence official, documentary filmmaker, writer, and left-wing publisher. Perhaps more importantly, he became the first political victim of the Cold War.

Marzani was born and raised in Rome, Italy, but moved to the United States with his family in 1924, at the age of twelve, to escape fascism. They settled in the mining community of Scranton, Pennsylvania, where the father’s oldest brother had already migrated. Though he spoke no English when he arrived in America, Marzani was an outstanding student, finishing high school at the top of his class and winning scholarships first to Williams College and then Oxford. Aspiring to become a playwright, he initially immersed himself in theatre, writing, directing and producing plays. World events, however, quickly catapulted him onto the political scene, propelling him to become, in his own words, “a reluctant radical.”

When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Marzani put aside his books and crossed the border on a train bound for Barcelona with a thousand other men, one of the earliest contingents of volunteers against Franco. He originally intended to report on the war for the Daily Herald of London, but political considerations quickly persuaded him to join the republican cause. He ended up fighting for several months in the Aragon front with the legendary Durruti Column, the war’s most important anarchist brigade. While his experience in the front was brief, the Spanish Civil War altered Marzani’s life forever, reinforcing his radical bent and pushing him towards communism.

In June 1937, upon his return to Oxford, Marzani joined the British Communist Party together with his new wife, Edith Eisner, a promising actress whom he had met at Williams College. When the two returned to the United States in May 1939, they joined the CPUSA under the names of Tony Wales and Edith Charles. Most of their work as party organizers revolved around political campaigns in New York’s Lower East Side, where they had settled. Marzani, however, grew increasingly dissatisfied with the Party, which he considered too doctrinaire and bureaucratic, and allegedly resigned on 23 August 1941 to lead a popular front anti-fascist organization (the East Side Conference to Defend America and Crush Hitler).

Concerned over the Axis’ quick advance, Marzani became determined to further the war efforts by any means and in March 1942 joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor organization of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He worked in the Presentation Division of the Research and Analysis Branch, helping prepare top-secret reports and audiovisuals for military leaders. His most noteworthy contributions included picking targets for the Doolittle raid on Tokyo and producing war documentaries that won him high praise from his superiors.

Following World War II, the OSS disbanded, and the branch in which Marzani worked was transferred to the State Department. Concerned about the rapidly changing political climate, Marzani decided to resign from his post and make documentary films. Together with other OSS colleagues he formed Presentation Associates, later renamed Union Films. Their first production was Deadline for Action. Commissioned by the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America union (UE), it exposed General Electric connections to big businesses and accused Harry Truman of betraying Roosevelt’s legacy and starting the Cold War. The film was released in September 1946; four months later in January 1947, Marzani was indicted for having lied under oath about his communist affiliations in order to work in the OSS and was sentenced to one to three years in prison. Marzani appealed his conviction, and the case went twice to the Supreme Court. Both times the deliberations ended in a tie vote, which left the conviction standing, and Marzani went to prison on 25 March 1949. He served almost three years, with parole repeatedly denied despite pleas for clemency by many eminent political figures and intellectuals. Highly profiled, the Marzani case was a prelude to the anti-communist hysteria that swept the nation during the 1950s Red Scare.

After his release from prison, Marzani served as educational director of the UE from 1951-1954, editing its main newspaper, Steward. He then joined Cameron Associates, headed by Angus Cameron, a radical editor who became blacklisted during the 1950s. Together they established the Liberty Book Club, which later became Marzani & Munsell, publishing and distributing provocative books that countered the then consensus narrative of the Cold War. Two KGB retired agents, Oleg Kalugin and Vasili Mitrokhi, maintained that Marzani’s publishing venture was partially sustained by Soviet funds and that Marzani was a KGB contact during the 1960s. That he rubbed shoulders with communists was hardly a secret, but the claims that he was a spy remain highly disputable.

In 1961, Marzani separated from his first wife, Edith, and in 1966 married Charlotte Pomerantz, a children’s book writer, with whom he had two more children. That same year, his publishing company was destroyed in a fire, and Marzani made a living as a contractor and real estate operator, purchasing and renovating brownstones in Manhattan. His health began to steadily decline in the late 1980s, and he died at age eighty-two after battling cancer for several years.

Marzani devoted the last years of his life to his memoirs, which were published in five volumes under the collective title of The Education of a Reluctant Radical. A prolific writer, he was also the author of several plays, one novel (The Survivor), five books (including We Can Be Friends, the first revisionist history of the Cold War), and countless essays. Among other notable intellectual endeavors, Marzani translated the work of Antonio Gramsci into English for the first time in 1957, introducing the great Italian Marxist theorist to American scholars.

As a critic of capitalism and an engaged intellectual, Marzani was well known on the Left. He was a regular contributor to some of the most important American left journals, such as Monthly Review and The Nation, and right up to his death he stood firm in defense of democracy, socialism, civil liberties and human rights. Like many other radicals, he was a complex man, and his writings and worldview (which he often described as “radical democratic”) bear the mark of unresolved ambivalences in his lifelong struggle to reconcile his socialist principles with his love for American democratic and liberal traditions.

Bemcivnni, Marcella. “American Communism, Anti-communism, and the Cold War: The Case of Carl Marzani, 1947–51.” In The Bridge in the Park: The Five Eyes and Cold War Counterintelligence. Edited by Dennis Molinaro. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021.

Brazil, Percy. “Memories of Carl Marzani.” Monthly Review 46, 10 (March 1995): 34-43.

Gornick, Vivian. The Romance of American Communism. New York: Basic Books, 1977, repr. London: Verso, 2020.

Musser, Charles. “Carl Marzani and Union Films: Making Left-Wing Documentaries during the Cold War, 1946–53.” The Moving Image. 9, 1 (Spring 2009): 104-160.