Perry Wolff

La Guerre Inconnue

 Career  No Responses »
Jun 162017
 

The Belgian project helped finance two feature-length documentaries made from Airpower: La Guerre Inconnue (the Unknown War), and Kamikaze. I bought the footage from CBS and cleared the rights. To distribute in France I needed a co-producer who recommended technical facilities and personnel.

The editor was Jeanne Gilot, a woman in her thirties who was technically capable and physically strong. She was attractive, a brunette with small solid breasts that I had to disregard. We sat close together for hours at the editing machine. Though we were shoulder to shoulder, our body language was proper.

An early feminist, during working hours she would not permit me to carry heavy film cans from the shelves to the editing machines. “Perry, c’est mon travail. Je ne suis pas un fleur bleu.” I am not a shrinking violet is how I translated it, but my French was never too good. She glared and I retreated.

At quitting time she went to the ladies’ room and returned with lipstick properly placed and a bit of eyeliner that set off her best feature, her blue eyes. She stood next to the coat rack.  I was then allowed to take her garment from the rack and help her into it. She moved from female to gentlewoman, and I went from patron to gentleman.

We always used the vous form; never the tu. From the formal to the familiar was a great leap for the French.

While watching her edit I noticed she wore a wristwatch—an expensive Boucheron with the fine gold mesh strap. I was quizzical.

“This came from my married lover,” she said.

One day her wrist was bare. She said nothing, but I thought I heard her cry. I never questioned her, and I never learned more. I was as disappointed as you may be, dear reader.

As the weeks went on she became used to my terse style both in editing and writing. “You are very good Perry. I am learning a lot about America.”

When the rough cut was finished she sat beside me in the sound mixing room. Events became heated. The sound mixer was excellent…in the morning. His equipment was obsolescent even for the late ‘50’s in France, but he handled it well—until lunch. We ate at a small café on the Avenue du Boulogne where a steak, salad and a half bottle of red wine cost about a dollar. He would drink his wine, and sometimes mine. When we went back into the sound studio he was half the professional he had been at noon. Error after error, retake after retake. I was paying for his services and the facilities. I called his attention to his inept work and blamed the wine.

“Monsieur, vous êtes un puritain. Le vin rouge au déjeuner est une tradition ouvrière protégée par les syndicats.”  (Red wine at lunch is a worker’s tradition protected by union rules.)

Then he added something derogatory using the tu in French, which I did not understand, but Jeanne did. She was startled. I could not understand her French, but I understood her tone to him and his sullen retort to her. Insult to insult. He quit two days later. Jeanne finished the mix, but would not take screen credit except as the editor.

When she and I said goodbye, it was not with the French triple kiss—cheek, cheek—cheek, with pelvises decently apart. It was a long hug, faces over the shoulder, and body warmth to body warmth. It said far more than sex ever could. The heart and the head are many inches above the gonads, and that much closer to heaven.

“Tu vas me manquer,” she said at our last meeting. Tu, she said. Not vous. She would miss me.

 

Distribution in France

La Guerre Inconnue (The Unknown War) was a recapitulation of the air war in Europe. Kamikaze discussed the defeat of Japan. Kamikaze was received well in the major French newspapers. While the audience for documentary features is always small, the film turned a profit.

The co-producer never bothered to see La Guerre Inconnue. He was well connected with the French government. He arranged to have the opening at the grand Palais de Chaillot with dignitaries and veterans of foreign war present. Every seat was taken.

At that time the belief of the French military was that one of their armored division had liberated Paris. They had entered Paris without firing a shot. But the American 4th Division had prepared the way for them. The GIs took the casualties but the French took the credit. General LeClerc’s troops were shown leading the liberation of Paris.

I did not say it directly—indeed he film only hinted at it—but that was too much.  Indignation led to rejection.  Several of the anciens combatants rose to their feet and left in the middle of the movie.

My co-producer apologized profusely—even to the officials who had made the arrangements. A few days later he gave me some bad news. The French government imposed a tax on all movie tickets. For deserving films, this aid to the cinema was returned to the producer. Since technically, since the film had a French visa, this money went to him, and the American producer would have to wait. He was planning another movie, and he would invest my share in it.

The money could not be transferred out of France. In the meantime he had invested in a successful comedy, La Belle Americaine, and made a fortune with it. Unfortunately the fortune was reinvested in a remake of The Three Musketeers, which flopped.

Belgian Waffles

 Career  No Responses »
Jun 142017
 

We were in Paris at the time Liz Taylor and Richard Burton were living in sin in Rome and filming Cleopatra. The scandal was worth millions in box office revenue to Spyros Skouras, the head of Twentieth Century Fox.

At that time Skouras had partially underwritten a documentary for Baudouin, the fifth King of the Belgians whose father, King Leopold III, had ruled the Congo. The Belgian Congo was in a rebellious state. Perhaps King Leopold thought that a first rate documentary on the glories of the country would bring him political allies.

In 1950 Leopold III gave up his crown because of his affiliation with the Nazis. The chief naturalist on the film was a renowned expert on animal behavior who had to be dropped because of his Nazi connections. For over a year the rushes had been locked in the vaults of the Studio of Boulogne. No editing had been done. A Belgian Executive Producer had titled the film Les Seigneurs de la Foret. Lords of the Forest.

Skouras asked the chief of the CBS News bureau if he knew anyone who might structure and edit the footage. I had written a number of documentaries from the American Museum of Natural History. I was living in Paris at my own expense. I seemed to be qualified.

Documentaries and nature films meant little to the head of Twentieth Century Fox. He had seen nothing but the print advertising campaign. Snarling lions, threatening gorillas. He liked the action. Anyway, he knew he would receive honors and medals from the Belgian Royal family. Nevertheless, show business is always business before show.

“How much would you want?” he asked.

“What about four thousand dollars?”

“You’re crazy! I can hire the best writer in Hollywood for four thousand a week.”

A WEEK!! I had been thinking of a total payment. “Then what do you suggest, Mr. Skouras?”

“Two thousand, and we can get rid of you on two weeks notice.”

I agreed. We would be able to live in Paris for another year.

The photography was brilliant. It was the first nature film to be shot in Cinemascope, a French invention. The first rate crew worked in the Congo for over a year. They filmed shy animals at nighttime: The pangolin, for instance, was an ant eating armored mammal that only ventured out after sunset. Their nocturnal habits had never been photographed. Somehow this small animal had been followed in wide screen Cinemascope. No trickery. There also was wonderful footage of the mountain gorillas. The animals had been filmed with loving care.

There was a fault.

The people of the Congo had been photographed as if they were strange animals. Herds of humans, you might say. Big children at play.

The solution was to edit out the loveable humans and make an animal nature film, similar to those on television today. I spent thirteen weeks editing and writing and recording a cue-script in English, to be translated to French.

I was summoned to Belgium—to the Royal Palace of Laeken. I found a screen, a projector, the new King the Belgians, Baudouin, and his Queen; their retinue, Spyros Skouras, his wife and two daughters.

The Belgian executive producer was also present. The last time we met was when he unlocked the doors to the editing suite at the Paris studio. A microphone and a stand were placed in front of me, and I read my typescript to the silent picture.

King Baudouin applauded, as did his attendants. The Hollywood contingent seemed pleased, and the biography of Spyros Skouras notes he received a decoration from Belgium for his service to the country. Everybody shook my hand and went to a dinner, to which I was not invited. I was enlisted hired help.

I went back to Paris. I thought I would have some two months to make a soundtrack and find a Belgian narrator. I found the executive producer in the editing room.

“Bien fait, Monsieur Wolff, mes felicitations.” Then in English, so I understood. “We don’t need you anymore. “

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong. The pace is just a little too rapid for Europeans. I will change that. You Americans are too quick. I must slow things down. Also, the film now has to be totally Belgian. All the way.”

“Totally Belgian? What do you mean?”

“This is a Belgian production. You’ll receive no credit because your arrangement with Mr. Skouras did not include screen credit. But we’re grateful. We’ll expand your two week option to three weeks.”

It ended with twenty thousand for me, and no screen credit.

I saw it later. He truly had slowed it down.

They entered Les Seigneurs de la Foret at the Cannes Film Festival in 1958. It was nominated but did not win. The Congolese threw the Belgians out just before the release in the United States. It made no money either here or in Belgium.

 

Image

Les Seigneurs de la forêt Movie Poster: http://www.encyclocine.com/index.html?menu=72608&film=11315

 

Closure in Belgium

 Postwar  No Responses »
Jun 122017
 

Marche-en-Famenne, Hôtel de la Gare, 1948

Thirteen years after the war I decided to return to that territory just over the Dutch-German border.  Prummern, Geilenkirchen, and Beeck. Then southeast to Belgium and Marche-en-Famenne. I might have died in any of these places.

I had no trouble until I came to the German customhouse on the German border. Though the agents were young, they could have been old enough to fight.  I had a sense memory of the green and black German Wermacht uniforms. The guards wore clothing with colors that triggered the recall.

I told myself that any German under thirty had an automatic pass, a verdict of not guilty. But wormed in my medulla were Ahlem Hanover and the Holocaust. Unreasonable maggots that took years to crawl out of my brain, my memory.

I went through Prummern and turned north to Geilenkirchen.

I was lost. There were no ruins. The church where I had failed as a sniper was rebuilt.  The Cathedral in Geilenkirchen had been restored to its 18th faux 16th Century exterior.

As for the beet fields that had sheltered me until Robas and his BAR rescued me, they were gone. Concrete roads, parking lots, buildings of no distinction had replaced the battlefield.  No rows of beets.

One October day in 1944 a fine officer, Lieutenant Mercer Yeager, had been mortared when we attacked Beeck. We called off the attack and went back to our foxholes. I brought the wounded officer into my shelter and tried to stop his bleeding. I could not. The only sounds he made were animal noises. Except once, when I thought he said he was cold. I wrapped my arms around him, and his blood flowed into my combat jacket. He died.

I got a new field jacket two days later.

I turned the car towards Belgium and slept the night in Heerlen. The coal mines had disappeared. I could not find the house where the husband had offered me his wife. The following morning I crossed into the Ardennes on my route to Marche-en-Famenne and the chicken coop where I had last seen Hyman Lipsky.

It was early fall, not the grey winter of the Battle of the Bulge. The light on the hills and trees was elegant amber, and the roadway was without peril. Woods and foliage wove into a mixture of orange, brown and yellow.  Sun, no snow. Water, not ice. Streams interlaced the twisting road. I climbed a path toward the exterior of Chateau of Biron from which I had fled.

The chicken coop was not there. What remained, and had grown raggedly well, were the trees that had been torn apart by artillery shells that had burst in the air.

I went into Marche. I saw the schoolhouse and the jail again. On the main street was a small shop I had forgotten. One night in that long past December the door to a grocery shop had been left wide open. Technically I suppose I looted, but there was a quantity of Belgian chocolate I liberated. To my surprise the shop was still there. I entered and found the storekeeper. I told him about my thievery and offered to pay.

He called to the back of the store and three men, well dressed, came out.  I was introduced as one of them men who had kept Marche from falling to the Germans thirteen years earlier.

Suddenly, for all of us, it was a solemn moment.  They said, “Merci, cher Americain. Vous qui nous avez libere, êtes toujours  bienvenue.”  You will always be welcome.

“Do many Americans come back?” I asked.

“Not many.”

“Too many Americans have never left Belgium.”

It was a fragile emotional footbridge that could only be crossed by memory. It would fall into the depths of banality if we walked on it with words. We smiled and said nothing more. We shook hands and I left.

 

I was Never in the CIA

 CBS  1 Response »
May 032017
 

Outrageous Good Fortune, A Memoir by Michael Burke

CBS and Mike Burke paid for the move from Posillipo to Paris. He saw that the Paris news bureau found us an apartment and arranged to have our baggage moved into the building.  It took four months before I discovered his reason for wanting me nearby. One night he took me to meet an old friend to the Hôtel de Crillon on the Place de la Concorde.

The friend was Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA in Switzerland. I was introduced and Dulles accepted my television credentials. Mr. Dulles said he had an acute recruitment problem, and although I was not to join his organization, he thought my television producing skills might help.

His recruiting problem was James Bond…007.

CBS had optioned the rights to the Bond novels, but for his own reasons Chief Executive Bill Paley wanted the deal undone. The author, Ian Fleming, was paid $70,000 and the rights were returned to him.

Espionage had become the latest chic and CBS wanted to be fashionable.

The CIA wanted a less lurid series than James Bond. The agency was not interested in recruiting a womanizer and gadgeteer. Their recruitment officials felt too many applicants had spying and seduction on their minds. The agency could not permit CBS an on-screen seal of approval as the FBI had given NBC, but the CIA would cooperate in other ways.

Burke had been so successful a spy that Dulles asked him to re-do the Bond saga.

Mike was handsome, and had been an all-American running back at Penn State. During the war he had fought undercover in occupied Italy and France. His exploits had been made into a movie in which Gary Cooper played Burke and Mike himself played a bit part.

Wild Bill Donovan, the head of the OSS, predecessor to the CIA, had first recruited him. The Office of Strategic Services, the OSS, a highly Protestant group, was often called “Oh So Social” by its envious rival, the FBI, a heavily Catholic group. Dulles’ agency was a small unit, recruited from Ivy League colleges and tutored by the British intelligence services. Mike had been on the unofficial board of directors under Donovan.

When Burke and I began work he spoke at length about his activities as an ex-spy—except he neglected to say that he and CBS were still aiding the agency. He was wearing two hats. At first I saw only one.

007 had Sean Connery; 008 could be Mike Burke. Not quite so handsome, but women found him attractive and he liked women a lot.

When he first worked for Allen Dulles his code number was 101. The projected series took its title from the cipher—101 became the successor to 007.

(Mike told me tales that he could not repeat in his published memoir, Outrageous Good Fortune. He had signed an agreement giving the agency complete censorship of his writings. However, I read the galleys before the company tore the book apart. I had made extensive notes and sent them to Burke)

Mike was not permitted to name the countries into which he had sent agents. He was not allowed to name the people who had betrayed his colleagues and sent American and allied agents to their deaths. Years later I understood why the agency had cut his work to ribbons; in all cases it reflected badly on the work of the CIA and had little to do with national security.

I thought the following story would make a good pilot film:

The Burkes were living in Italy. Albania was across the Adriatic.  Just after World War II the Allies made plans to deter the Hoxha Communists from taking over that small nation. Many Albanian refugees were in Rome, and Burke began a recruitment and training program for a clandestine airdrop to upset and take over the red regime.

Timmy Burke, Mike’s wife, was a beautiful and elegant lady who sat outside the fashionable Excelsior Café on Via Veneto. Mike had recruited his wife as a courier. Vogue Magazine was the drop point. The Albanians who wanted to forward a message to Mike would slip a paper into the open magazine. The distinguished lady would close the periodical and open another. In the Roman afternoon Mike would meet his wife for Cinzano and together they would page through Vogue the fashionable spy contact.

Timmy’s beauty complicated the last airdrop.

Burke had to find an airfield close to Rome, deliver his trained Albanians by truck to the plane, see their equipment loaded, and work out the radio contacts. The schedule was tight. It was a complicated affair in a foreign country. Help came from the British Intelligence Service.

Unfortunately, a local policeman had noted that the beautiful American woman was often alone. He tried romancing Timmy, to the point of an attempted forced entry into the Burke home.  The next time the officer put his foot in the door to coax the bella signora, Mike had just returned from a dinner with the British allies.  Mike slugged the cop and was arrested and jailed for assaulting a police officer.

He got out in time to bring his Albanians to the airfield and see them leave to liberate their country from the communists. They were dropped in the assigned area and were expected to contact the same plane by radio the next night.

The next night and the following night, his Albanian Allies did not make the scheduled radio contacts. They were, as it turned out, seized immediately after they landed. Probably killed.

The reason the CIA had cut the manuscript to shreds was that Mike’s British contact and social companion had passed on the plans to Moscow. Kim Philby was one of the highest-ranking intelligence officers in the UK’s counterpart to the CIA, but was also a mole planted by the Soviets for many years. After the Albanian action, Philby moved to Moscow.

The CIA had had its suspicions about Philby and should have passed them on to Mike.  They didn’t, so Mike had to kill the story in his memoirs. Burke was moved from Italy to Germany and given a raise.

I thought it would make a fine opening show for 101, and wrote a treatment. Burke asked me not to submit it.  He never told me why. I found out later that almost a million dollars was missing and it probably went to Philby.

Mike vetoed the outline and suggested another story.

The CIA needed help in a half-Communist, half-capitalist Germany. Just after WWII ended, the agency made a deal with the Nazis.  It recruited Reinhard Gehlen. Gehlen ran the Nazi intelligence apparatus in the war against Russia, and against the Allies.  He brought with him dozens of agents and a structure that had the same purpose as the CIA—infiltrate the Soviets, recruit agents, and gain knowledge of Soviet plans.

Mike told me that spying was a mind-shattering job. The CIA had recruited a number of bilingual psychoanalysts to treat both German and American agents. One patient was Otto John who was the head of the West German Secret Service. Unfortunately, Herr John, after an emotional session with his psychiatrist, defected to the Soviet Union. Otto John knew too much about the clandestine American efforts.

“In the espionage business, Mike told me, “There is no strip tease. Once you lose part of your cover, you‘re naked, you’ve lost it all.”

Burke received a message from Washington. Because of the defections of John and an analyst, all the safe houses—shelters in Germany—were to be closed down at once. Trucks came to his home and picked up his belongings. He and his family were flown to Bremershaven and shipped to the states. Mike was blown, no longer of use in the job he had. The whole intelligence apparatus was to be rebuilt—but the Nazi spy leader Reinhard Gehlen was to be kept in place.

The story was censored in Mike’s book, but at the time I thought it should be the first in the CBS series, 101. I wrote a draft.

Mike had another story I thought might make a sexy 101 episode. An American spymaster and a British lady spy finally go to bed together. The American man believes the woman has faked her orgasm, and extrapolates from that that she has faked her information. Knowing Mike, I knew this to be autobiographical.

I would see Mike at his Paris hangout, the Hotel Vendôme. When he unpacked, he kissed a framed photograph of a woman and put it on the mantel. It wasn’t a photograph of his wife or anyone I knew, and Mike never explained.

Burke left the Vendôme one evening for his home in London. I received a terse phone call from him, asking me to go to the hotel at once. He had called and told the management not to enter the room until I got there. He asked me to pick up an address book that had fallen under the bed.

I found the book where he said it was. I did not read it, but Mike thought I had. From then on he assumed I knew he was working for American intelligence sources. That’s probably why he let me vet his autobiography.

A few years later I asked Mike to help me see the CIA film library for the year 1945.  I went to Langley and was well received by two guides. One was on crutches, the other approaching senility. They mistakenly considered I was one of the company, and lauded Mike for his “undercover work while he was working for CBS.” They thanked CBS and a current employee for the help they were still receiving. A specific person in the newsroom and archives was sending copies of films made behind the Iron Curtain, but never broadcast.

This was a violation of CBS policy, and I gave the name to Dick Salant, the head of CBS News who promptly fired the employee.

I don’t think there was an organized CIA cell within CBS. But the man on crutches did mention three people high up in the CBS hierarchy as friends of the company.  (His company, not mine.)

Although I spent two months in New York writing a pilot film, CBS decided not to go ahead. Mike was reassigned to New York. The network bought the New York Yankees and he became the head of the ball club.

Later, when I helped him with the manuscript, I asked him what had happened to the series. He was cryptic.

“CBS and the company broke off relations and I was compromised.”

“And me?”

“Sorry.”

 

The Next Time I Saw Paris

 Family  No Responses »
Apr 242017
 

Fernandel

The night after we arrived in Paris we tested our French. We went to the movies and saw a comedy played broadly by Fernandel (Fernand Joseph Désiré Contandin). He spoke with an enormous cigar in his mouth and mumbled his lines. We couldn’t understand a word, let alone his regional accent.

The audience roared with laughter.

My wife cried. Two years of expensive Italian lessons!

Our first apartment was on the Boulevard Richard Wallace. It had an exquisite salon with wood painted panels. We lived across the street from the Bois du Boulogne. Facing us was the chateau of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. We never saw them, but the maid we hired knew the maid they hired. Their servant reported the Duchess wore the Royal Seal of England embroidered on her silk underpants.

The dollar was mighty, and the Air Force had given me PX (Post Exchange) privileges. That meant American baby food for our son, Johnny Walker Black label, the best cashmere sweaters for Tuulikki, and Hermes ties at $5 for me.

We were lucky. The maid we hired, Marie Thêrese Jean was an extraordinary cook and a fine shopper. She bargained at the stalls for the freshest produce. She bought small fruits instead of large ones—les petits sont toujours plus doux. The smaller, the sweeter…les framboises du bois, raspberries from the woods.

Most of all she taught us the glories of French cooking. Her sauces were delicate, her vegetables were fresh and only slightly cooked, and her main courses were small and wrapped in the ancient secrets of haute cuisine. Her culinary fastidiousness became audible. We heard her draw her breath sharply as the preparation reached the climax. There was an exact temperature at which the heat of the sauce must met the warmth of the meat. That meant we had to sit down at the proper time. She also taught us the applicable wines for the meal.

Delicate and refined, she dared not address an obvious culinary and cultural problem.

The French large meal is served at midday, while Americans eat heavily at night. I’d have lunch and a glass of wine and go to sleep, only to awaken to another large meal and another glass of wine. I noticed that Marie Thêrese had a hard-boiled egg and tea for dinner. Our large meal then was changed to lunchtime.

Six months later, when I was sure he had forgotten my rejection of Meet Me at Maxim’s, we invited David Schoenbrun to lunch. We asked Marie Thêrese to buy the best red wine at the best liquor store in Neuilly.

She did. It was Le Chambertin. Legend says when Napoleon’s Army was marching south the command, “Eyes left!” was obligatory when passing by the village of Chambertin. Victor Hugo had said, “This wine should be drunk bareheaded while kneeling.”

David had one sip and pushed the glass away as if it contained poison.

David had not forgotten.

 

Image

Fernandel, undated photo: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/356277020495127116/

 

Michael Burke

 CBS  No Responses »
Apr 192017
 

E. Michael Burke

We were still in Italy when Mike Burke, the head of CBS Europe, asked me to evaluate a pilot film made by David Schoenbrun, the Paris bureau chief. David very much liked himself and his job. When David summoned government officials he had himself announced as le télévision americain: he was all three networks in one.

The Prime Minister of France had changed 22 times since the liberation. To talk to America was important for any leader of France. David presented himself as the doorknob to America. I saw David close a Head of State in a CBS News clothes closet. Schoenbrun did an introduction; nodded to an aide who opened the door. On the second nod the released Premier came to the interview table.

In that turbulent period Schoenbrun’s knowledge of France was extensive, His book Ainsi Va La France (As France Goes), became a best seller in that country, and a basic text in American college political science courses.

He knew his beat. He just didn’t know when to stop.

Schoenbrun had secured CBS funds to make a pilot he would host: Meet Me at Maxim’s.  His documentary opened with a parade of beautiful models, and a tease stating, “This very Vietnamese doctor is on the verge of curing cancer.” As backdrop, at Maxim’s plush tables, were Jeanne Moreau, Michele Morgan and Sacha Guitry.

It was too bad that the middle camera of the three camera was slightly out of focus—but this was a pilot made only to sell to the New York executives.

At the Studios of Boulogne Marlon Brando was playing a Nazi officer in the film version of The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw. Shaw had visited the set.  David persuaded both men to meet him at Maxim’s for a dual celebrity interview. But Irwin Shaw was not a pleasant celebrity.  He was angry with Brando.

“You are playing that Nazi sympathetically!” said the writer.

Brando said, “I’m finding the human qualities in a villain.”

“I wrote the character, and he doesn’t have any fucking human qualities!”

“I can’t play a cartoon!”

Even though the middle camera covering both men was blurred, it was evident that a news-making fight between celebrities was about to happen on screen. It would have guaranteed success with the programmers in New York.

Alas, there’d be no news, because at that moment the correspondent stepped in. He analyzed the news before it happened.

“It seems to this reporter that this is an age-old argument between the written and spoken word,” said David.

The two principals stopped talking and glared at each other.

David continued his overview. The viewer ached to see Brando and Shaw go at each other. But to David the meaning was more important than the experience.

Because the pilot was too long, David’s producer cut the interview with the Vietnamese doctor who might have had a cure for cancer. When the screening was over Mike Burke turned to me.

“What do you think?”

“Burn the print and burn the negative.”

“What will I tell Schoenbrun?”

“Tell him he’ll lose his job at CBS News if it’s shown in New York.”

That’s what Burke did. David was sent to a hospital and given the French cure for hysteria—a week of coma induced by large doses of seconal. The correspondent was furious with me.

Burke said that if we moved to Paris he could give me some freelance jobs. He’d pay for the move. I found out why later.

Wife, child, cat and baggage left Naples for France.

 

Images

E. Michael Burke, undated photo: http://www.veterantributes.org/TributeDetail.php?recordID=1064

Italy

 Family  No Responses »
Apr 182017
 

Present day view of 281 Via Posillipo, Naples, Italy

Alfredo Antonini had arranged a three-month stay for my family in a villa on the Bay of Naples, complete with a view of Capri, Vesuvius and the harbor. In the course of my work we had visited Europe several times. After a week as tourists on the Amalfi Coast we decided to move to Italy. I had about ten thousand dollars for an extended stay, plus the money from the reruns of Airpower.

We brought John, the cat, and a baby nurse to 281 via Posillipo—reachable only by lighted tunnel through solid rock.  Jutting into the water and built above unassailable stones, the villa had been designed as protection from 15th Century bandits whether by land or sea.

Our host was the father of a talented pianist. Signore Bernasconi had a contract for every light bulb sold south of Naples, including Sicily. He was a gracious Neapolitan who showed us our magnificent rooms.  He introduced us to his staff of six, including his female butler. Under his breath he said, “If you want to sleep with her the charge will be 30,000 lire. I assume you have no venereal disease.”

His wife found a cook and asked me not to pay her more than a hundred dollars a month. If we paid her more, it would upset the family’s arrangements with their help.

The superintendent at 281 was friendly and addressed me as “Dottore.” My American sense of equality resisted the title. “Non sono dottore, sono signore.”  (No doctor, call me mister.)

I could see he was hurt.  It took me some time to understand. If I didn’t have a doctorate, if I was just Mr. Wolff, and his position as portiere to a noble address was diminished. I accepted the honorary doctorate.

Many years later on I did a series of hour-long broadcasts into what I called “a reconnaissance into the national culture” of various peoples. Our Friends the French, The Israelis, The Japanese, and The Italians.  (More later)

Luigi Barzini, the author of The Italians led me to some conclusions:

“On the outside the Italians, particularly the southern Italians, are generous and emotional. On the inside they are cold steel, remote from emotions.

“Just the contrary with the seafaring nations. The British and Japanese are cold steel on the outside.  Inside they are turbulent emotional people. “

Like all good generalizations they appeal to one’s emotions, not to one’s reason.  But I was more fearful of Naples than any other city in which I have lived.

Our baby nurse was a French Protestant who insisted that I drive her to the only Protestant church in the city. When she went to services, I sat in my parked car with German license plates. I was immediately surrounded by hostility. A Protestant German was a rarity and a threat. I pretended not to understand when a glowering man told me he “would guard my car for three thousand lire.”

And yet there was a friendly, warm and helpful side to the Neapolitans.

My Finnish American wife was adept with languages, and had been tutored for years in Italian. It made a difference. Unlike the French who wince at errors in their language, the Italians feel complimented by the effort.

Tuulikki, the fair blond Nordic, went into the only butcher in Naples selling beef.

“Guardi! Le Bella blonde signora chi parla Itliano senza accenta!”  (Look! The Beautiful blonde lady who speaks Italian without accents!) The dark Neapolitan ladies were swept aside and the Nordic, shy, blond woman who spoke excellent Italian was taken into the locker room. We had not known the Italian word for filet mignon, and so they cut up a whole carcass for three pounds of meat. The butchers then wrapped the cut into a fancy package, which they carried to our little convertible. They opened the door as if were Rolls and wished us a good day.

On the other hand, my insufficient Italian led to a misunderstanding.  Naples is famous for its antiquities and I wanted to visit the National Museum.  I asked directions from two tall white-helmeted policemen.  “Per favore, dove se trova il Museo Nationale? (Please, where may one find the National Museum?)

There was no smile, just a gesture that I follow.  We walked a block or two and they pointed to a large door with frosted glass and left me.  In Naples Museo Nationale was the largest bordello in town.

La Dolce Vita is sweet, pleasant and shallow. We had to leave Naples. The three month lease was up.  I couldn’t retire at 36.  It was either Rome or Paris. We threw away our tutored Italian and chose Paris.

 

Air Power: Red Scares

 CBS  No Responses »
Apr 142017
 

Henry Varnum Poor

In 1956 the Air Force public relations machine was pleased to re-tell its history in World War II, but the war on Washington’s mind was the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

There was a notion that American Stalinists worked in the media. By clever distortions of story lines, narration, and dialog, it was thought that the Communist cause could seep into and corrupt the minds of the audience.

Peter, one of my editors, was the son of two old and famous artists. His mother had joined the Communist Party of the United States in the 1930s and her husband loved her. In the eyes of the FBI Peter had continued his beliefs far too long. The FBI came to see me about him. Until the early fifties non-fictional editors were usually blue collar workers. Many of them pronounced, “film” in two syllables: fill-um.  Peter was a Harvard graduate with a retiring mien but a sharp intellect.

When the two FBI agents came to see me I was prepared. I had gone to a friend in the CBS Legal Department. Robert Evans, Esq. was a conservative in fact, politics and deed. He gave me advice I used.

When the agents came to my office I asked to see their identity cards. They flashed them and started to put their wallets away.

“May I hold your identity cards? I want to verify your credentials. What is the phone number of your superiors?” They gave me the local number of the FBI. I talked to their supervisor. Holding their ID photos in hand I asked their manager to give me a physical description of the two men.

It was given with some reluctance. I returned the wallets to the two agents.

“What do you want to know about Peter?” I asked.

The conversation was curt and brief. He was admittedly the son of Henry Varnum Poor, a famous American architect, painter, sculptor, muralist, and potter; and Sophie Poor, who had been a member of CPUSA. I had nothing to tell them except that Peter was a fine editor.

I told the verified FBI agents there was no way Peter could twist the film he was making into a Marxist mode. The subject was the battle for the South Pacific island of Tarawa in 1943.

I had applied the procedure recommended by Legal. There were no handshakes when they left.

Colonel Pitchford later told me the FBI tried to lift my Q clearance.

The music of Richard Rogers, scored and conducted by Robert Russell Bennett, was overwhelming. It was the best of Broadway and the best of victorious emotions, remembered. I settled on a classical composer of operas, Norman dello Joio. The moods of Air Power were darker. Of immeasurable help was the CBS conductor, Alfredo Antonini. Dell Joio over-orchestrated and I would be at his side when Antonini opened the score.“Il stessa minestrone — the same soup,” he would say, and he would thin out the orchestrations. Alfredo was a great conductor, and was equally literate in jazz. On CBS radio he was “Eddie Collins and the Gang” and he spoke no Italian when he and the band were swinging.

Unfortunately Alfredo was overweight and sweaty. For some reason classical audiences prefer their conductors gaunt, with sunken cheeks. Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa come to mind. Alfredo had a small career in the United States but a large one in Europe, particularly in Italy. He brought European audiences to American composers including Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber. His Italian connections would change my life.

For CBS, Air Power was a mild success. Fair ratings, no awards. In the next few years it re-ran three times in prime time. The network made a large profit. But Air Power never bested Victory at Sea.

I knew it was over for me when the colleague who had succeeded me was at a loss for my next assignment. He thought of a series to be called Ground Power. The sponsor of Air Power was willing to sign on, but he insisted on Walter Cronkite.

I resigned and had my contract torn up. I didn’t want to study war any more.

It wasn’t disaffection with CBS News.  Since returning from the war, I had had no trouble finding employment and it never occurred to me that I would be jobless, nor that I had “walked off the top of the mountain”, as a colleague said. Broadcasting had become il stessa minestrone. I wanted to change my life. After ten years of marriage, our son had arrived. We sailed from New York to Naples; husband, wife, son and cat.

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Henry Varnum Poor: http://www.graham1857.com/publications/henry-varnum-poor/

Air Power: Japan

 CBS  No Responses »
Apr 132017
 

General Curtis LeMay

Because I needed access to classified footage on the atomic and hydrogen bombs, I was given a Q clearance — the United States Department of Energy (DOE) security clearance that is roughly comparable to a United States Department of Defense Top Secret clearance with Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Access (TS-SCI).

I requested the Order of Battle plans for the proposed invasion of Japan, Operations Olympic and Coronet.  I discovered that had the atomic bombs not been dropped, my old outfit, Third Battalion, 334th Infantry, 84th Division was chosen to be part of an early wave in the invasion of Japan. Almost certainly Perry Wolff would have been killed or wounded.

It was Harry Truman’s decision to drop the bomb on a city. It is why Truman is my most revered president.

Those who are indignant about America’s use of atomic weapons are often silent about the firebombing of Tokyo on March 9, 1945. We killed almost one hundred thousand people with magnesium bombs, more people than died than at Hiroshima. In all, firebombing killed or wounded three quarters of a million Japanese in WWII. The general who firebombed the Japanese was Curtis LeMay. He had converted his aircraft from high altitude pressurized planes into low altitude trucks for the carpet bombing of Japanese cities. Incidentally, LeMay later became the vice presidential running mate of American Independent Party candidate George Wallace in the 1968 presidential election.

The justification was that air power could force a nation to surrender. It never has. Tokyo was ours only when the foot soldiers entered the city.

Nine years later, in the time of Air Power, jet bombers carried atomic bombs. The missile age had not yet arrived. LeMay was the head of SAC, the Strategic Air Command, based at Offutt AFB in Omaha. It was obligatory that I visit him. I was brought into his office. The general was a small man. His office was at least forty feet long and the floor sloped upwards. My chair was about two feet below him. He looked down on everybody who sat in the chair across his desk.

Behind the Commander was a picture of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. Above the illustration was an arched caption. “HE WENT BY LAND.”

LeMay dismissed me. He thought the largest part of 26 part series should be about the future— mostly SAC. I was polite and left quickly. I did not ask about the firebombing of Japan.

At the time we were in the Cold War. The Japanese were grateful for our military protection. So grateful that in 1964 — on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor — the Japanese government conferred the First Order of Merit with the Grand Cordon of the Rising Sun upon General Curtis LeMay. Under his command air power had burned millions of Japanese out of their homes.

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General Curtis LeMay, undated photo: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/161777811591529709/

 

Air Power: Schweinfurt

 CBS  No Responses »
Apr 122017
 

The Schweinfurt Monuement in Germany located near the Spitalseebunker.

Target Ploesti gave me trouble with the Air Force and Cronkite. A program on a raid on Schweinfurt  gave me trouble with Ed Murrow, Truman Capote and Bill Paley.

Schweinfurt manufactured ball bearings for the German military. The military logic for bombing the plant seemed impeccable: without ball bearings, German rolling stock would be stopped.

The target was probably not worth it. At the time American intelligence thought Schweinfurt was the sole source of German ball bearings. What we learned later was that the Nazis had made a deal with the neutral Swedes for replacement ball bearings. Nonetheless, bomber crews attacked Schweinfurt on “Black Thursday,” October 14, 1943.

The bombing of Schweinfurt is the only air battle I knew of that had a monument dedicated to it—at Amherst there is a plinth with the single word, Schweinfurt, set in it. Later in 1998 a coalition of U.S. bomber crew veterans and German flak crew veterans installed a joint monument adjacent to the Spitalseebunker, one of 11 concrete bunkers which provided protection for the inhabitants against bombing attacks.

We did extensive research on the mission. For every ten planes that went out, three did not come back. For every ten men who flew the mission, three were shot down. I thought the program was one of the best I had ever done. Edward Murrow, the most famous correspondent of World War II did not. He turned white with anger. He said he had flown the mission, and I had the facts wrong. I pointed out there had been two missions. I was aware of the one he had flown, but I had documented the one Murrow had not flown. He was not appeased.

I wrote one line that reminded me of LT Mercer Yeager and my bloody combat jacket: “…Anxiety and guilt. Why was I safe on the ground while they were being killed in the sky?”

I was lucky to be alive. Luck fades. Remorse does not. I have never lost that sense of guilt.

Bill Paley took a print home to his estate in Long Island, and showed it to Truman Capote. Capote called it crude. Bill Paley called Sig Mickelson who called me to tell me that the playwright thought the film was crude.

Sig said hesitatingly, “I was told to make this call.”

 

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Schweinfurt monument: https://www.quora.com/Are-the-German-War-memorials-offensive-to-Jews

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