13 JULY 2002, Page 29

Ferrer error

From Mr Sheridan Morley

Sir: I hesitate to correct my old friend and colleague Mark Steyn (Cinema, 6 July), but Mel Ferrer could hardly have been Jose' Ferrer's son, given that Jo was born in 1912 and Mel in 1917.

They were, in fact, not related, but it was Jo who, faced with charges of communism by the UnAmerican Affairs Committee because of the many years he had toured as Iago to Paul Robeson's Othello, heard his lawyer open the case for the defence.

'My client Mr Ferrer,' the lawyer told the Committee, 'is a man of tremendous political and social naivety. In all the years he toured with Mr Robeson, he never knew he was a communist. Indeed, he never knew he was black.'

Sheridan Morley

London SWI I