Randolph, the Black-Listed Actor

Randolph, the Black-Listed Actor
was on a very shady list,
and if you ever saw it
you'd call him a Communist.
All of the other actors
pointed and named names.
They never let poor Randolph
play in any acting games.
Then one day in '66,
Frankenheimer came to say
Randolph and your black-list friends
won't you appear in my film Seconds?
Then how the actors loved him,
and they shouted out with glee,
Randolph, the black listed actor,
you'll be dead the year after 2003.

John Randolph, a veteran character actor who overcame the Hollywood blacklist to appear as Clark Wilhelm Griswold, Sr. in Christmas Vacation, died last week at the age of 88. With a career spanning from Broadway in the 1930s to two movies that were released in 2003, Randolph attained his greatest fame for his Tony-award winning performance in Neil Simon's Broadway Bound in 1987. He also played the police chief in "Serpico," Jack Nicholson's father in "Prizzi's Honor" Tom Hanks's grandfather in "You've Got Mail" and was Roseanne Barr's father on "Roseanne." After he and his wife, also an actress, refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955, he found himself on the blacklist, where he remained until John Frankenheimer cast him and fellow black listers Will Geer and Jeff Corey in the sci-fi film Seconds in 1966.