CHARACTER SKETCH DETAIL

42, father, writer, activist, public intellectual, co-owner of the small, struggling publishing firm Cameron & Kahn.  Principled, passionate, idealistic, competitive, and uncompromising.

When his old friend, Clint Jencks, asks him to track down Harvey Matusow and publish Harvey’s tell-all memoir, Albert reluctantly agrees, setting himself and his family on a collision course not just with the brash and unpredictable Matusow, but also with intractable forces of government and history.

What does Albert believe? That fascism has come for America. The enemy which he helped to conquer during World War II has now suddenly resurfaced on his doorstep. It’s almost too much for Albert to watch as the country turns sour with demagoguery and as countless lives are ruined through political innuendo and personal invective. Defeating this evil is his life’s work. And now that its darkness is all around him, the stakes are higher than ever.

Yet when Clint Jencks comes calling with a plea to find Harvey in order to save himself from prison, Albert is at his least ready to join the fight. He’s been blacklisted from writing and speaking around the country. His publishing business is folding. His heart is weak from family history and a lifetime of self imposed stress. For a moment, he balks.

Maybe he has some idea that saying yes to Clint means he’ll have to wrestle with more at once than he’s ever had to before: With seeing humanity in his political enemy, Harvey Matusow. With stepping into a rabbit hole of government conspiracy and unseen dangers. With explaining to his children why they’ve been abandoned by friends and why ominous figures are lurking outside. With facing the very real possibility that he’ll end up in prison. With risking it all by placing his faith in a con man who’s more interested in showing off than he is in coming clean about his public lies and national treachery.

But before too long, and as always, Albert takes up the cause.

Whatever he’s wading into, and whichever way it will alter his life forever, Albert knows in his heart that passion and drive alone won’t be his salvation. He must also rely on his rich sense of humor in order to add levity to the heavy task he and his partner Angus are undertaking, along with a deep well of tenderness in order to connect with his wife and instill the power of love in his three young sons.

STAKES

Albert is at risk of losing his firm to foreclosure, his family to danger, and his friend to prison.

CHARACTER ARC

Albert doesn’t move off of his principles, but he does come to realize the dangers of his own impulses and develops a deeper understanding of sacrifice when he chooses his family over his firm in releasing Harvey’s book to the press.

BIO NOTES

Raised in London and Detroit and educated at Dartmouth College (where he was a Shakespearean scholar and a track star), Albert was the nephew and namesake of Albert Kahn, the iconic American industrial architect. 

After rejecting his life of privilege and becoming politically active in the anti-fascist movement of the 1930s and 40s, Albert founded the syndicated newsletter The Hour and co-wrote with Michael Sayers the best-selling book Sabotage! The Plot Against America (1942) exposing Nazi activities in the United States.  Kahn went on to collaborate with Sayers on two more books, The Plot Against The Peace (1945) and The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War Against Soviet Russia (1946).  Albert ran for Congress on the American Labor Party ticket in 1948. 

When his writings and politics landed him on the anti-communist blacklist in the early 1950s, Albert formed the publishing agency Cameron & Kahn with fellow blacklisted publisher Angus Cameron, which is where both are working at the opening of FOOL THEM ONCE.