Airside, p.1
Airside, page 1
Dedicated to the memory of Mae Clarke, the original victim of the grapefruit, and to Rosalind Knight, who was not
CONTENTS
Dedication
Title Page
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9 La Jetée in Retrospect by Justin Farmer
10
11
12 Romance and Reality – Casablanca revisited
13
14
15
16
17
18
19 A comedy without laughs
20
21
22 Hanks in Waiting
23
24
25
Acknowledgements
By Christopher Priest:
Copyright
1
On April 13th 1949 a woman travelling under the name V M Kalutz caught the overnight flight from Los Angeles to New York City. After landing at LaGuardia Airport, and with the help of a member of the airport staff, she deposited most of her baggage, three large suitcases and four smaller ones, in the left luggage office. She departed the airport without attracting any attention.
She stayed the night in a hotel close to LaGuardia, then returned to the airport the next morning. Here she had a reservation on a Pan American Douglas DC4 headed for London. Her transit through New York had been belatedly discovered by the press, and as she arrived back at the airport she was surrounded by a small crowd of reporters and photographers. She spoke to the reporters, answering a flurry of questions about the reason for her flight, her future filming plans and the state of her relationships.
She evidently saw the questions as intrusive and at first she would not talk about the upcoming lawsuit brought against her by her ex-husband. She finally gave way under persistent questioning. She dealt with the questions politely if vaguely. She said that nothing could be said about the lawsuit until after the court hearing. When asked about the name of the male companion who had been with her at the recent preliminary court hearing, she said she never commented on gossip. Some of the reporters guessed a few names, but she declined to confirm or deny. She posed willingly for photographs, the recurrent flashing of bulbs drawing the attention of other passengers and staff passing through the airport building. Many paused to try and take a look at her.
She was known to the public as Jeanette Marchand. She was a film star, under long-term contract to Warner Bros but recently lent out to other studios for single projects. After two decades she was still one of the most famous women in American cinema, with around fifty films to her name, in many of which she had taken leading roles.
The photographs published in the newspapers the next day were carefully selected by the picture editors to emphasize her beauty and glamour, and to confirm her status as a major star. Two days later, when they learned what happened to her when she arrived in London, a few reporters remarked privately that although she had put on a brave front for the cameras, she had looked tired and seemed fraught and nervous. The lawsuit being brought against her by her ex-husband Stan McPherson, star pitcher with the Los Angeles Dodgers, was likely to cause a sensation when the case opened. They revealed that she had been noticeably upset by the judge at the preliminary hearing, who had made several financial and restraining orders against her.
While she was still being interviewed at the airport one of the reporters asked her about her travel plans. She was going to England, she said, to take a short vacation and to explore the possibility of making some films over there. American actors were in demand in the British studios, but few were working there because post-war conditions of austerity were said to be uncomfortable. Jeanette Marchand said this made no difference to her – she came from a working family in Pittsburgh and had grown up without privileges. She would not confirm that Warner Bros had released her from her contract. Asked about her relationship with Dirk Halliday, she said no other films with him were being planned at present. She denied the rumours about Halliday, and said that she had always found him a serious and professional co-star, for whom she had the highest regard. She would not reveal where she would be staying in London, but said she would return to California in about a month’s time.
A Pan Am representative appeared and politely interceded, then led Jeanette Marchand through to the VIP lounge. From there she was conducted to her seat in the first class section of the plane, where she asked for a champagne cocktail. The aircraft took off about half an hour later.
This was to be her final journey. Jeanette Marchand did in fact arrive in London, but she never returned to the USA.
Many years later, the film critic and essayist Justin Farmer gave a wide-ranging interview to the UK film magazine Sight and Sound . Amongst many other things he was asked about his beginnings, what it was that had originally sparked his interest in cinema.
He replied immediately, ‘Seeing two of Jeanette Marchand’s early films when I was seven years old.’
He explained. He was born towards the end of the second world war, a period when Marchand’s career was starting to fade. He was only five years old at the time she flew from New York to London, so of course was completely unaware of everything that happened then. He noticed her after his family bought one of the first television sets to be made available to the general public in the UK. This was in the early 1950s, a time when there was only one channel, a limited service provided by the BBC. The television signal was restricted at first to the London area, then soon to parts of the Midlands and the North, so there was not yet a mass audience. Live programmes were few and far between, and the signal was prone to break down because of technical problems.
The BBC had access to a tiny library of films, all of which they broadcast in turn several times. Two of Jeanette’s films were among them, and as a pre-teen child he had watched them repeatedly, learning her name from the credits, but not at the time registering the titles. He had fallen innocently in love with her beautiful face and was amused by the clever way she delivered her lines. This had stirred emotions in him he did not understand. The interest she created led eventually to his lifetime involvement with cinema.
He went on that as an adult, when he had access to reference works, he had worked out which of her films they must have been. They were both from the pre-Code era of Hollywood: one was The Dashing Young Man from 1932, and the other was Frozen Hearts from 1933. As a filmographer he said he was intrigued by this. Many of the films made at that time had been subsequently withdrawn by the studios because of the Hays Code and were rarely seen, let alone shown on television. How they had reached the BBC was something he had not been able to find out, but was still interested to try.
Justin Farmer added that he learned about Jeanette Marchand’s mysterious end while he was still at university, and that he had made a special visit to London Airport, not with the thought of trying to solve what had become a notorious mystery, but simply to have a look at where it was thought to have had happened.
Jeanette Marchand was born Verity Mae Kalutz, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was an only child. Her mother was a pool typist, her father managed a small grocery store. She studied acting and dance while still at school, and moved to New York City in 1928 when she was sixteen years old. She worked as a dancer in vaudeville and as a hostess in night clubs. She roomed with a friend called Ruby Stevens, whom she met while they were dancers in a burlesque show. Ruby, who was slightly older, also had ambitions to act in films.
In 1929 the two young women travelled overland to Los Angeles, where they managed to scrape up occasional paid work as uncredited extras and walk-ons in a handful of Hollywood musicals and gangster movies. They were part of a whole generation of young women and men who dreamt of becoming film stars.
They both changed their names. Verity became Jeanette Marchand, and Ruby called herself Barbara Stanwyck – as Stanwyck she was the first of the two friends to find a breakthrough role, in a romantic drama called Ladies of Leisure , directed in 1930 by Frank Capra.
Jeanette followed a few months later. She made a brief but memorable appearance in a Chicago-set crime thriller called The Public Enemy . In this she was in the uncredited role of Kitty, the unhappy girlfriend of a mobster played by James Cagney. She had only one scene with the star and just two short lines to speak. She sat with him at breakfast while he vented his anger at her. Suddenly, he stood up, seized the half-grapefruit she had been eating and thrust it violently into her face. It was not in the script and to all appearances the attack took the young woman by surprise. In the following few seconds of the film Jeanette Marchand can clearly be seen in distress. She was humiliated by it and afterwards left the studio in tears, but when the film was released a few months later the brief scene hit the headlines. She went straight into working on another film, this time with a role in The Headline Story . Her rise to fame began there.
Throughout the 1930s Jeanette worked regularly, becoming one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood. She made around forty features before much of the studio activity was reduced by the start of the second world war. Jeanette starred in many of her films, but towards the end of the decade the quality of the films she made, the standing of the other actors she worked with, and the roles she was given to play, steadily declined.
She was soon mostly appearing in derivative and hurriedly made B-features. Just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Jeanette was playing the abandoned wife in a romantic comedy for Warner B ros, and for the rest of the war years she played similar secondary characters. In 1946 she returned to making main features, but a new generation of young actors were competing for the starring roles and she was usually cast as a teacher, an older relative, a nurse. She had been married twice, and had a young daughter.
The plane Jeanette boarded took off from LaGuardia on time. There were two planned intermediate stops for refuelling, in Newfoundland and west Ireland. There was only one other passenger in the first class section of the aircraft: a man travelling alone. He sat apart from Jeanette in the seat to which he had been allocated. According to the cabin crew she spent much of the first part of the journey sleeping. She woke up from time to time to eat a meal and take several glasses of wine.
During the stopover at Gander Airport, then known as Newfoundland Airport, all the passengers transferred to the terminal building while the aircraft was being refuelled. The crew did not know what passed between Jeanette and the other passenger while on the ground, although they were together in the airline’s VIP lounge. When they reboarded the man took the seat beside hers, and remained there for the whole of the next part of the journey, the long non-stop flight across the Atlantic to Ireland. Jeanette sometimes seemed tearful, and for extended periods stayed silent, her shoulder turned against the man. At one point a female member of the crew approached Jeanette to check that all was well, which she said it was.
When the plane landed at Shannon the man left the plane and did not reboard. Jeanette was alone in the first class compartment for the final leg of the flight.
After the aircraft landed safely in London, Jeanette was allowed to disembark before the other passengers. She first spoke warmly to the cabin crew who had served her during the long flight, and autographed the menu cards for them. The captain, second pilot and flight engineer left the cockpit to speak briefly to her. She then walked down the mobile steps alone. One of the cabin crew watched her as she crossed the tarmac towards the ex-military marquee that served as an office for customs officials, airline staff and where travellers could retrieve their baggage. Two other similar tents stood beside it. The other passengers were only allowed to start disembarking from the plane once Jeanette reached the entrance to the marquee.
The flight stewardess who had observed Jeanette crossing the tarmac later told a reporter that Miss Marchand seemed well as she walked from the plane. She confirmed that they had served her with several glasses of wine during the flight, but these were evenly spaced over a long duration. She did not appear to be under the influence.
The captain of the aircraft, who returned to the cockpit after briefly meeting her, also watched from his window as she walked away from the plane. He said that she appeared normal, but added that many passengers were visibly tired after long transatlantic flights, and if Miss Marchand had seemed a little unsteady on her feet then it would have been nothing unusual.
When she entered the tent he turned away from the window. He was the last person to see Jeanette Marchand alive. What happened to her after she entered the marquee, or where she went next, no one knows.
She was a famous celebrity, suffused with the aura of stardom, and her appearance stood out almost everywhere she went, but once she was inside the marquee she was not seen by anyone who could recall her. Her passport was not checked. Customs officials had no recollection of her passing through. No one was at the airport to meet her. It turned out that she had not ordered a car and driver to be at the airport to collect her. No one approached the small information office to enquire about her.
Her baggage was unloaded from the aircraft but it remained unclaimed.
The cab drivers who regularly served the airport were later interviewed, but none of them had taken a fare from her, nor had even seen her around the taxi rank. They all said they would instantly have recognized her if she had been there.
She never arrived at Claridge’s, the hotel in the Mayfair area of London where she had reserved a suite of rooms.
It was not realized for some time that she had gone missing. It was only the next day that staff at Claridge’s made telephone enquiries with the airline and the airport management. At this point the airport passenger area was searched, but there was no sign of her. Later, when the police were called in, all the airport marquees and other temporary buildings were searched again, this time more thoroughly.
Jeanette Marchand had no family in Britain, and as far as anyone knew she had no British friends or other personal contacts. Her American parents were both deceased, as was her first husband, an actor from the silent era, who died in 1933. She was divorced from her second husband, Stan McPherson – when he was contacted by Los Angeles Police, McPherson stated that he was convinced she was still alive and was in hiding somewhere. He claimed she owed him large sums of money, which was why she had tried to disappear. He could provide no more information than that, but he pointed out that all her property, contacts and business interests were in the USA.
Her talent agency said that they had heard nothing from her and did not know where she was, but that there was the possibility of an offer of a part from Warner Bros. A representative from the Warner studio said she was still under contract to them, but she had been granted two months’ leave of absence.
The two largest film studios close to London had not had any contact with her, and were in fact surprised to hear that she was intending to work in the country. They said they would make enquiries, but they never came up with anything.
For a week Jeanette’s disappearance was widely reported in the popular newspapers. Photos of her familiar face were on the front pages of most of them. Some speculated that she had been kidnapped or even murdered, but no body was ever found and there were no demands for a ransom. There was a brief rash of alleged sightings of her: on the beach promenade in Bournemouth, at a race meeting in Leeds, in an exclusive store in London’s Bond Street. All of these turned out to be mistaken. The story soon slipped from the headlines and eventually was no longer of interest. The police file was closed.
2
At the age of twenty Justin Farmer still knew nothing about Jeanette Marchand’s disappearance. He had in fact barely thought about her for several years – the memory of those old films had largely faded away into the muddles of childhood experience.
He had been born and brought up in Field Green, a Cheshire village on the outside southern edge of Manchester, but the family moved to the London area in 1960.
Justin was about to go to university at the time and he had already been selected for a BA course in Media Studies, part of which was a Film Theory module, at Reading University. Reading was in the Thames valley to the west of London and was sufficiently far from his parents’ new home on the other side of the city to feel like he was making a break, but it was also close enough to the centre of London for frequent visits to the wide range of first-run cinemas. He sometimes travelled in with a group of other students from his course, or more often he went alone. Film had become his passion.
One of the screens he visited most frequently was at the National Film Theatre, on the South Bank. As a child his film-going had been largely governed by the choices of his parents and sister, so he had grown up with comedies, musicals and a few WW2 pictures. Now living a semi-independent life Justin was restless to catch up with what he realized he had been missing. He was relishing his belated discovery of European, Asian and independent American movies. The French nouvelle vague had forged a radical new approach to film, and German and Japanese cinema was emerging from post-war trauma. In Sweden, Ingmar Bergman was at his peak.
As for films of the past: many of the revivals were shown in repertory at the NFT, some because of their art house qualities, others to illustrate the careers of certain directors, actors, cinematographers, and so on.
In 1964 one of the NFT’s retrospective seasons focused on the career of the British film director James Whale, who had had a long career in Hollywood, and who was probably best known for his film adaptation in 1931 of Frankenstein . While catching up with contemporary cinema Justin had not yet given much thought to the past. Curious to find out about Whale’s work Justin went to see a few of his films. One in particular, also made in Hollywood in 1931, gave him a start of surprise and recognition. The film was called Westminster Bridge .
