Screenland (May-Oct 1942)

Above, Lynn Bari and Cornel Wilde, as they appear in "The Perfect Snob." Darryl Zanuck was so pleased with Wilde's work in this film, he presented him with a new contract. "Sorry, my friend," he said with exaggerated sympathy. "Last night we both had bad luck !" "Yours wasn't fatal," Chris said dryly. "No." The Major shrugged. "But my propaganda plane was shot down in the Channel. All my beautiful pamphlets were lost."' Lost ! Chris managed to keep back the exclamation as he took Anita's hand and faced the Chaplain. So everything had been for nothing then, after all. He had failed in everything. Suddenly he tensed as the shrill warning of the air raid signal filled the room, as it was echoed from the other signals outside, blaring through the city, sending crowds fighting their way through the streets, making the old ladies scream with terror as they obeyed the Countess's orders and flung themselves terrified against the soldiers trying to calm them. And in the confusion Chris heard the Countess's urgent whisper and taking Anita's hand followed her through the room, down the stairs into the street, taking the rusty old gun she drew out of her pocketbook and bringing it down with a crash on the head of the guard who tried to stop them. Anti-aircraft guns began booming, adding to the terror of the night, and the street was deserted as the three of them made that last desperate dash to Zellfritz's car and started for the airfield. They sa\v the waiting plane when they stopped and Chris, taking the bag of leaflets, held it up on his shoulder so that his face was hidden as he made the lunge for the me that with the coming of the war, he felt that fighting here was the moment to be remembered in the lives of men who ordinarily would have been clerks, film stars, farm boys, electricians, captains and kings, and soda jerkers. For them and for him, there were some words for this instant. They could say with Winston Churchill, "Let them say in a 1,000 years this has been their finest hour." The finest hour also leads to death and suffering. Douglas knows, but he won't talk about it at the drop of a hat. But when his ship was docked in Iceland, he saw men in the base hospital who were dying or worse plane where the pilot stood waiting. Again he was thankful for the rusty old gun that had not been fired in over a century as he brought it down with a crash on the pilot's skull. There was just time for Anita and the Countess to make the dash for the plane when they heard shouts and saw the guards running toward them. But Chris was calm now. He was in a plane again, the_ stick was in his hand and already it was lifting, lifting to the skies and freedom. It was almost morning when they looked down and saw the white cliffs lying below them, the brave cliffs that were Dover. And then as Chris whispered the one word, England, they saw the Spitfire approach them and Chris reached toward the plane's radio. "I'd better speak to them," he whispered. Then aloud, "Hello, hello, I'm not an enemy. I've just escaped." "Are you Goering," a mocking voice came from the radio. "Or Goebbels ?" Then as Chris shouted a denial, "Shoot him down. He's nobody !" "I'm English," Chris explained desperately as shots whizzed past him in the darkness. "RAF pilot do'wned in Holland!" But only the mocking laughter answered. "Listen," Chris said desperately. "You fellows are from the Coastal Command. Your Squadron Commander is Major Carlysle Wilson, 'Lucky' Wilson. I can tell you more about him. His pet phrase^ is 'highly irregular !' He always says it." The laughter stopped and there was a whispered consultation in the other plane, and then a wary voice saying, "Let him land. But stay right with him." "Well!" The Countess smiled, settling more comfortably into her seat. "That's real nice, isn't it? Even Hess didn't get a military escort." But it was more than an escort. The Squadron Commander himself was waiting as Chris taxied his plane to a stop and jumped out. "We've located a new submarine base at Yselmunde!" he shouted. "They're assembling a fleet. It will have to be bombed at once." And then as a pilot went dashing for headquarters to report the news, Chris helped Anita and the Countess to alight from the plane. "Major Wilson, this is my wife," he said. "I met her the night before our divorce." And then seeing the Commander's amazed look, he went on quickly. "I mean, we weren't married before the divorce but we are now !" The Commander shook his head in bewilderment and Chris grinned as he swung Anita into his arms, kissing her there before all of them. Then he caught a glance at the Commander's shocked face and heard his bewildered voice. "Highly irregular!" he was saying. "Highly irregular !" still, waking up to the grim reality_ that they will never be able to walk again or pitch a baseball back on the home diamond. "Whatever it was," the serious film star told me, "the men took it so well. Those kids would look up at you with sweat pouring off their brows, and then grin." He told of one boy, just 17, whose legs had been amputated, but the doctors and nurses could not bring themselves to break the news. Finally the doctor told him, expecting to hear the great despairing shriek of the man who has lost hope or either the deathly dull silence of the man who has lost all will to live. Instead, Douglas related, "The kid said, 'you don't have to tell me, Doc. I could see in the mirror across the room that you had taken them away from me. But you can fix me up, can't you, Doc?" "The doctor listened and could not speak. This was worse than what he expected, for here was the boy saying, 'I've gotta get back in there and fight.' " Once Lieut. Fairbanks started remembering, the lines around his mouth began to deepen. "Then, there was another boy," he added, as he rubbed his hand across his cheek as if the sting of memory were still burning. . . . "that kid was about to die. I sat by his bed all night, talking to him. I told him what a swell welcome he would get from the folks back home when he returned. He died, believing me." These blue jackets who left a leg behind in Iceland or died in that northern base were victims of the shelling of the Kearney. When the commander of the Kearney visited the hospital to tell the boys goodbye, Douglas told me that the boys and some of the older sea dogs' actually wept. In Iceland Lieut. Fairbanks met and mingled with the British officers and observed the good fellowship between the Yanks and the British tars. Fairbanks, who has spent a good deal of his life in England and who has known Prime Minister Churchill since he was a little boy, didn't have to be sold on the British. He has been with them all the way for a good long time now. He saw things that convinced him that every American blue jacket in Iceland would think the rest of his life that the British are "square guys." He pointed out that the English lads in pea jackets thought the Americans were O.K. As an illustration, Douglas told me, "The British lads were so grateful for all the courtesies and attention paid them when they visited the United States, they wanted to show in some small way at least how deeply they appreciated it. "So they invited the American sailors from a certain nearby ship to a party. Now you know, the American Navy is bone dry on shipboard. Not a drop to drink, you know. The British sailors get a daily ration of rum — just a jiggerful. "Well, this is what they did. They got together and decided not to touch their rations for three weeks. This amount piled up to barroom proportions and what a party .they threw. By the time it was over I wouldn't be surprised if our boys didn't mistake that Icelandic moon for the Carolina moon." While in Iceland, Douglas discovered there was a movie-struck group of blonde young girls in the population, but they were a little shy about asking for his autograph, since they had no practice, as have our home vintage. On shipboard the officers and men steered away from the subject of films and Hollywood, as much as possible. "It was a month before the word moving pictures was mentioned," Douglas relates. Lieut. Fairbanks is only interested in the war and Navy career now, but recognizes that such a short term with the fleet and Navy Department cannot make the public and his fans forget that his chief claim to fame is the films. But he is doing absolutely nothing to make them remember, as he thinks it is, to say the least, unbecoming. For this reason, he hesitates to appear in public places as if he were showing off his uniform. When not busy at the Navy Department, where Lieut. Robert Montgomery is also working, Douglas lives quietly in a subrented house in crowded Washington with his wife, baby daughter and a Flight Commander and a group captain of the Royal Air Force. WarTimeExperiencesof Lieut.Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Continued from page 27 82 PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. BY THE CUNEO PRESS , INC.