The Party Line: A Play in Two Acts - Softcover

Roger L. Simon is the author of eleven books, among them the award-winning Moses Wine detective series and a memoir, Turning Right at Hollywood & Vine. He is also the screenwriter of seven feature films, including Enemies, A Love Story and A Better Life, both Academy Award nominated. He is currently CEO of PJ Media.

Sheryl Longin is a screenwriter and author. Among her credits are the films, Dick and Prague Duet, and a novel, Dorian Greyhound: A Dog&;s Tale. The Party Line is her first play.

The Longin-Simon play is set in both the Moscow of the early 1930s and present-day Europe and the United States. It centers on the antics, life, and career of the noted New York Times correspondent in Moscow, Walter Duranty. . . .
                Duranty is most well-known for his reportage of the Ukrainian famine created by Joseph Stalin in the early 1930s, where he covered up the deaths of hundreds of thousands peasants as a fantasy and then perversely ran false reports written from Moscow about the success of Soviet agricultural policy. . . .
                In both time periods, the authors present compromised journalists [including] Harold Denny, a journalist groomed by Duranty to follow in his footsteps, misreporting the truth about the Soviet revolution to gullible American readers. He is contrasted with Denny&;s opposite, a man named Sid Brody, whose commitment to the truth leads him to eventually break ranks, thereby ending his standing on Soviet Press Commissar Konstantin Ouman-sky&;s list of approved journalists. In doing so, he also gives up any chance of achieving the high regard held for Duranty by the American establishment, who prefers the lies. . .

                                                                                   &; from Ronald Radosh&;s Introduction