Michael Gold Manuscripts on Peter V. Cacchione

The collection contains three (typed) manuscripts by Michael Gold, each about Peter V. Cacchione. The first two items are typed versions (127 leaves, 99 leaves) of The Honorable Pete, a two-act play (ca. 1953). Each version prominently features the story of Pete Panto (1911–July 14, 1939), the New York City rank-and-file longshore activist murdered in 1939. However, in the longer version he appears as "Rocky Greco," while in the shorter version he appears under his own name. The third (and untitled) item is a photocopy (apparently of a carbon copy) of an untitled, pamphlet-length biographical essay (ca. 1948; 49 leaves) whose sentence reads "Pete was a little guy who made a little history."

Two scenes from "The Honorable Pete," Act I, Scene III (young Pete is leaving his hometown of Sayre, Pa.) and scene VII (WWI veteran Pete at the Bonus March in Washington, DC), were published as "Councilman Pete" in Looking Forward: Sections of Works in Progress by Authors of International Publishers on the Occasion of Its Thirtieth Anniversary, pp. 143-153 (New York: International Publishers, 1954). The manuscript of the 127 pp. version is accompanied by a copy of a letter (13 July, 1974) from Gold's widow, Elizabeth Humeston, to Simon Gerson, in which she requests a copy of the untitled pamphlet (described below), and in which she states: "In 1948, we were in France [through 1952]. Later, Mike wrote his life, in the form of a play." This suggests that The Honorable Pete was actually written ca. 1953. (Note, however, that Alan Wald, on p. 53 of his Exiles from a Future Time: The Forging of the Mid-Twentieth Century Literary Left, states "in 1948 he [Gold] released parts of a play based on the life of…Pete Cacchione…"). The two versions described above are also among the thirteen versions of "The Honorable Pete" in the Mike Gold (Irwin Granich) and Mike Folsom Papers, housed in the Labadie Collection at the Special Collections Library, University of Michigan.

For the third (and untitled) item, two virtually identical texts (by Gold), for which this manuscript appears to have been a precursor, were later published. The first was titled "Making of a Communist: Pete Cacchione," Masses & Mainstream 3, no. 11, (Nov. 1950): 76-87. The second, titled "The Honorable Pete" (an essay, not a play), was published in The Mike Gold Reader, pp. 146-159 (New York: International Publishers, 1954), with the date of authorship given as 1950, presumably in reference to the "Making of a Communist: Pete Cacchione." This manuscript is accompanied by a memorandum (10 March, 1974) from Simon W. Gerson (longtime Communist Party New York State legislative director, and Cacchione's friend and campaign manager), that was apparently addressed to International Publishers, the Communist Party, USA publishing firm. In this memo, Gerson critically evaluates the manuscript, suggests that what is needed is a full-length biography of Cacchione, and announces his intention to write a such a book, the subsequently-published Pete: The Story of Peter V. Cacchione, New York's First Communist Councilman (New York: International Publishers, 1976).