On this day in 1954, the famous McCarthy hearings began. There’s a story in “Records Truly Is My Middle Name” about those famous hearings, and John Records Landecker’s personal connection to them through his first wife, Judy…
Judy and I dated all the way through high school. Everybody knew us as a couple; “There go Judy & John!” Leslie Gore had a song called “It’s My Party” about a girl named Judy and a boy named Johnny, and followed it up with “Judy’s Turn to Cry,” and both of those songs were significant to us. They were a big deal in our early romance. All through high school Judy and I were inseparable. We were together all day at school, we were dating and going out at night, and I was hanging out with her family on the weekends.
I really connected with her family; her brother Joe and sister Bambi, and her parents, Angela and Lyndon. I love them to this very day (though, sadly, Angela passed away a few years ago). Judy’s family had an open house every Sunday, and it was always quite a production, with a huge spread of food. Relatives and close friends would come in and out, and I was invited over every week. I was really treated like part of the family from the very beginning.
Judy’s grandfather was the head counsel for the United States Army while it was under investigation by Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for Communist activities in the 1950s. His name was Joseph Nye Welch and he famously said the line that turned public opinion against McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” He also occasionally hosted a television show called Omnibus. The walls of Judy’s parents’ rec room and bathroom were covered with old Omnibus teleprompter scripts. There was no need to bring along newspapers when nature called, if you know what I mean. Plenty of reading material on the walls.
Leave a Comment