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(From Alan Wald)
I always liked Frank for his irreverent nature. I think the first time
I met him was in the early 1980s. John Barzman and I went to his home
in Hollywood to solicit support for what we hoped would be a new Marxist
journal. (Somehow we imagined that there weren't enough such journals
already.) Instead of a check we got a stern lecture on how such a
magazine must take after the British journal "International Socialism."
We explained that, although we certainly admired this, we had nowhere
near the resources for that kind of project. Frank then said that John
and I were "two sorry-assed revolutionaries." As he made these remarks
he was standing next to his rather impressive swimming pool; his home
had once belonged to Marilyn Monroe, the one in which she committed
suicide. (Or at least this is what Barzman told me.)
Later I developed a relationship with Frank by bombarding him with
constant questions about the Socialist Union, American Socialists, and
the "Cochranite" tendency. My interest started after I began to
associate with Milt Zaslow (Bartell) in 1972, and deepened after I
became friends with David Herreshoff in Michigan in 1975. Frank
insisted to me that Cochran had the ability to "become the American
Deutscher," but was "personally a prick." I visited Cochran in his
office at Columbia, but all he wanted to do was talk about
opera--something about which I knew (and still know) nothing.
My last conversation with Frank was about two months ago, a phone
interview about George Clarke, whose writings in the Fourth
International I had been reading. Frank recalled all the details of
Clarke's remarkable political career, but knew absolutely nothing
personally. I pointed out that I was unable to locate any reference to
Clarke's birth or death dates on the Social Security Index, even though
there are dates given in SWP publications and the Marxist Internet
Archive, nor have any obituaries turned up. Frank was perplexed and we
both wondered if, in fact, Clarke was not a birth name (just as Cochran
wasn't). He promised to check into the matter with some of his few
surviving comrades....
I also recall attending the memorial he hosted at Frank's home in
Berkeley for Ernest Mandel. It was the last time I saw the remarkable
Asher Harer.
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