Owing to the fortuitous collision of the Internet and the Freedom of Information Act, you can now go to http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein.htm and see the FBI's accumulated files on Albert Einstein, whom it was pretty much convinced was a Communist in an era when it was pretty much convinced everybody was.
It's no surprise that an agency said to have spent actual tax dollars trying to find the "hidden" meaning of the lyrics to "Louie Louie" might have been intrigued by someone like Einstein, who, though no evidence exists to establish that he ever mastered even a raw three-cord progression, had some other ideas that were, according to the people who'd given him the Nobel Prize for physics, "pretty damn clever."
Frankly, one of the most intriguing aspects of Einstein's long and controversial public life, at least to me, apparently gets referenced in a new book out this month, "The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover's Secret War Against the World's Most Famous Scientist" by Fred Jerome.
On Feb. 12, 1950, it turns out, Einstein appeared on Eleanor Roosevelt's television show to chat about the dangers of the hydrogen bomb.
There may be 1,427 pages on Einstein on the FBI site, and several thousands more in Jerome's book and the dozens of previous volumes devoted to one of history's hugest brains, but I'm having a little difficulty this week just getting past the fact that Eleanor Roosevelt had a TV show.
What, like a 4 o'clock gabfest in the Rosie O'Donnell genre?
I imagine peppy saxophones fronting a good-sized stage band and some swirling lights and a hearty "Heeeeere's Eleanor!" Then Eleanor Roosevelt kind of half-prances out in a gray business suit with a carnation in the lapel as the studio audience works feverishly under the flashing "applause" lights.
"Oh you're too nice!" Eleanor chirps. "Oh my word, thank you so much!"
She bows toward the band.
"Give it up for Slim Booty and the New Dealers, ladies and gentlemen, official house band of 'The Eleanor Show.' It was so cold in New York today, I'm tellin' ya, it was so cold in New York today that . . . wait, I don't have a joke for that, do I? Come to think of it, I haven't thought of a joke since Harry Truman, butyaknow . . . "
Slim plays a quick riff over the laughter.
"We've got a great show for ya today, a huge show really. Orson Welles is here to talk about his new film, 'The Third Man,' which is just so captivating, a great mystery. I so love Graham Greene."
(Applause.)
"And Albert Einstein is here. Is he too cute? Albert Einstein? We'll see how smart he is."
(Laughter and applause.)
"Plus Eleanor's Mailbag and maybe a surprise visit from JoJo the Commie Sniffer. Don't go away!"
So anyway, Einstein comes out -- I'd imagine to eight bars of "Stardust" or something -- and (this is the part I'm not making up) starts talking about Truman's directive that the Atomic Energy Commission start developing a hydrogen bomb, which would be 100 to 1,000 times more powerful than the ones Harry dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki five years previous.
"Hydrogen bombs," Einstein tells Eleanor, "could result in the annihilation of life on Earth."
See, that's where I get stuck. I can't imagine what Eleanor might have said to that.
"Whoa Al! Annihilation of life on Earth, huh? Gee, then I really, really overpaid for landscaping, huh? Back after this from Lux Liquid!"
So after the break, we rejoin Al, Eleanor and Orson chuckling amiably.
"Al you look great, what's your workout?" Eleanor says.
"Nine-minute-and-fifty-seven-second abs," Al says.
Much laughter.
"Oh Al, you and that time thing!" Eleanor squawks. "I don't know if a lot our viewers know, much less our audience, but Albert Einstein, and this is true, before he came to Princeton in the '30s, essentially rewrote the laws of space, time, and gravity. Am I right?"
"I suppose that's essentially right," Al says modestly.
"What was that like?" Eleanor says.
"Pretty intense, Eleanor," Al says. "I wasn't getting out much."
"What's next for you?"
"Well, the government thinks I'm working on a death ray, so I thought I might just look into that."
"Dibs on the movie rights," Orson says behind a spreading grin.
"I wish we had more time," Eleanor says. "Lauren Bacall and Kirk Douglas join us tomorrow. Have a great night everybody!"
Had Al taken the trouble to invent the VCR while he was clapping erasers at the Institute for Advanced Study, we all might have a tape of that show. But no.
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