Speed Kings (41 page)

—

I
rene Fenwick
remained married to Lionel Barrymore until her death from complications related to anorexia nervosa on Christmas Eve 1936.
Mae Murray
stayed married to the film director Bob Leonard for seven years. A year after their divorce, she got married again, this time to a dubious Georgian prince, David Mdivani, who also became her manager. She made the mistake of listening to him when he told her to quit her contract with MGM. Louis B. Mayer made sure she never worked in movies again. Her career stalled, and Mdivani burned through her earnings. They had a particularly ugly divorce. Still, she said, “once a star is always a star.” She took a job as a dancer at Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe nightclub. In 1964 she was found, confused and destitute, wandering the streets of St. Louis. She told the police that she had forgotten the name of her hotel, and she refused to accept money for a ticket back to her hometown of LA because she insisted that she was trying to get to New York. After a spell in a Salvation Army home, she was eventually taken into the Motion Picture House in Woodland Hills, a retirement home for Hollywood professionals. She died there on March 23, 1965.

—

T
he first “Wolf of Wall Street,”
Clarence Dillon
, died in 1979. He was ninety-six. By then he was, in the words of his company's official history, “almost completely forgotten outside of the firm,” although he remained involved in its running right up to the very end of his life. Whenever new partners or vice presidents joined the firm, they would be summoned for a dinner at his estate so they could meet him for the first—and in most cases, only—time. His son, Douglas Dillon, served as the US ambassador to France under President Eisenhower and as the secretary of the Treasury under President Kennedy. After his father's death, Douglas Dillon agreed to sell the controlling interest in the firm to the Bechtel Group.

—

G
odfrey Dewey
never did become the president of the Lake Placid Club Foundation, though he never stopped fighting other board members for the
position. And the 1932 Winter Olympics didn't do much for the club. It floundered, and passed into receivership by the end of the decade. During the war, it was bought by the US Army, which turned it into a rest and recreation center for soldiers. Over the next three decades the club sold off most of its land, but stuck fast by its exclusionary practices, even in the face of an investigation by the state Commission Against Discrimination in 1958. Membership dwindled. Finally, in 1976, the clubhouse was made open, all year-round, to all members of the public, regardless of creed or class. It was a little too late to help: in 1977 it was converted to serve as a regular hotel. Dewey died in October of that year, at the age of ninety. Three years later, in 1980, Lake Placid became one of the few towns to be awarded the Olympics for a second time, a feat all the more astonishing when you consider just how small a community it is. The club finally closed in 2002.

—

I
rving Jaffee
was elected to the United States' skating hall of fame in 1940 and to the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1979. He died two years later.
Werner Zahn
spent the Second World War running his manufacturing firm, which produced the leather liners for military helmets. In 1944 a photograph of Zahn, in full military fig standing next to Adolf Hitler, appeared in the American newspapers, prompting a gleeful retelling of his Olympic exploits in the pages of the
Lake Placid News
. “With typical German arrogance, the Berliners rejected Billy Fiske's offer to take them down the course to show them one bad turn. Zahn thereupon took his team down the run and at the curve which the Americans had indicated, the Heinies were hurtling through the air.” Zahn died in 1971, apparently after crashing his Bugatti sports car. He was eighty-one at the time.
Hank Homburger
died in Sacramento in 1950. The bob run he helped build on Mount Van Hoevenberg remained one of the fastest and most dangerous courses in the world even after they closed the first half mile: Max Houben died at Shady in 1949, and Sergio Zardini at Zig-Zag in 1966. A new run was built in time for the 1980 Winter Olympics.
Reto Capadrutt
died in 1939, after crashing his bob on the track at St. Moritz. After the war,
René Fonjallaz
was imprisoned for two years by the Swiss government after he was found guilty of collaborating with the Nazis.
Hans Kilian
became a hotelier.
Christian Fischbacher
became the Honorary Life President of the St. Moritz Tobogganing Club. “
Suicide Freddie” McEvoy
was credited with, among other things, “launching the fashion for flowered shirts for men” when he sold his own, right off his back, to an Argentine millionaire for two thousand dollars. He became a great friend of Errol Flynn and gave evidence on his behalf when he was accused
of statutory rape. He drowned off the coast of Morocco when his 104-ton schooner was wrecked on the rocks near Cape Cantrin during a storm. According to reports, McEvoy actually made it to the shore but went back into the water to rescue his wife.

—

B
illy's friend from Cambridge,
Henry Longhurst
, became a golf writer for the
Times
and spent the Second World War serving as an anti-aircraft gunner. He didn't see much of Billy after university, but he thought of him every now and then. “A little incident at a Birmingham gun site will always stick in my memory,” he wrote. “Twice a week, two kindly ladies used to appear in a YMCA van and hoot encouragingly at the foot of our tower—whereupon the monkeys would down tools and rush down for their bag of nuts. They sold us chocolate and cakes and razor blades and tea and lent out books, and were a cheerful and highly acceptable link with the outside world. One day, as I sipped my tea at the counter, I noticed the crossed Union Jack and Stars and Stripes on the side of the van. Underneath were the words ‘Fiske memorial.' Billy Fiske! My mind raced back over the years to the time when we used to travel almost daily the 21 miles from Cambridge to Mildenhall in his monstrous supercharged green Bentley, and to the days when his father had helped send a team of us to play golf in the United States . . . Now he lies buried in a Sussex churchyard, and a plaque in St. Paul's commemorates our gratitude. I wondered what crisp comment this forthright little man would have come out with if he could have seen me drinking tea from the van that kept his memory alive.”

—

A
mong the 601 pilots,
Max Aitken
,
Archie Hope
,
Little Bill Clyde
,
Paddy Green
, and
Mouse Cleaver
all survived the war. Cleaver regained some use of his eyes, after countless operations.
Willie Rhodes-Moorhouse
was shot down and killed during the Battle of Britain.
Roger Bushell
was executed by the Gestapo after orchestrating “the great escape” from the Stalag Luft III prisoner-of-war camp. He inspired the character of Big X, played by Richard Attenborough in the film about the escape.
Dr. Courtney Willey
was awarded the Military Cross for his conduct at Tangmere on the day of the raid, August 16, 1940. The two nursing orderlies
George Jones
and
Cyril Faulkner
were both awarded the Military Medal for retrieving Billy from his burning plane.

—

B
illy Fiske
received five posthumous decorations. The most notable of these was the oak leaf emblem he was awarded after he was mentioned in
dispatches by Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding on September 29, 1940, for “gallant and distinguished services.” The Ashcroft Mountain resort project at Aspen was abandoned during the war, because, as T. J. Flynn explained, “frankly, after Billy was killed we had little heart for putting steel into ski lifts.” But there is, to this day, a Fiske cross-country ski trail in Ashcroft, renowned as one of the hardest in the area. As Lord Brabazon of Tara predicted it would, the memory of Billy Fiske lives on in the mountains. The best bobsledders in the United States still compete for the beautiful Billy Fiske Memorial Trophy, which is awarded each year to the winners of the four-man national championship. And in St. Moritz, a Billy Fiske Trophy is still awarded every year to the rider who records the fastest time in the Grand National on the Cresta Run.

—

O
n September 23, 2002, the few surviving members of 601 Squadron gathered together at Boxgrove Priory with a group of friends, servicemen and servicewomen, and well-wishers, for a ceremony of thanksgiving for the life of Billy Fiske and to dedicate a new memorial headstone. The old, original stone is now kept in the memorial garden at RAF Tangmere. In 2008, sixty-eight years after Billy's death, the 601 Squadron Old Comrades Association paid for the construction and installation of a new stained-glass window at Boxgrove. It was designed and made by the artist Mel Howse. It shows Billy's Hurricane, with the Stars and Stripes trailing from one wing. When the sun catches it, the soft stone of this old English church is bathed in brilliant shades of red, white, and blue.

S
peed Kings
is, to borrow a phrase, a nonfiction novel. The characters are real, and the events are true. There are, of course, certain limitations on how accurate you can be when you're telling a tale that took place so long ago and all the protagonists are dead. Still, it is as faithful and precise as I was able to make it. The weather, for instance, is taken from contemporary newspaper reports. Conversations, where quoted, are taken from primary sources. I've used a certain degree of license when relating the motivations and moods of the main characters, although in several instances I was fortunate enough to have access to private diaries and letters, which gave me a good steer as to how they were feeling.

I have made extensive use of previously unpublished material from a large archive of Billy Fiske's letters, diaries, photographs, and personal journals. These were drawn from four collections, the first of them owned by the family of Peggy Fiske: Charles, Setsuko, and Emi Zabalaga; the second of them belonging to Billy's cousin, Newell Fiske Wagoner; the third to Skip Grieser; and the fourth to Richard Perkins. I was lucky enough to have access to two unpublished biographies of Billy:
An American Original
, by Richard Perkins, and
Billy Fiske
, by Skip Grieser. Plenty of the additional material is drawn from the extensive interviews with members of the St. Moritz Tobogganing Club, 601 Squadron, and other friends of Billy's conducted by Perkins and Grieser. This book stands on their shoulders. I have also used previously unpublished material from the archives of Lake Placid Olympic Museum.

I've made extensive use, too, of innumerable newspaper and magazine articles, which are, in the main, cited in the text as and when they occur. Finally, I have drawn material and information from the following books:

Anger, Kenneth,
Hollywood Babylon
(Dell Publishing, 1998)

Ankerich, Michael G.,
Mae Murray: The Girl with the Bee-stung Lips
(University Press of Kentucky, 2012)

Ardmore, Jane Kesner,
The Self-Enchanted: Mae Murray and the Image of an Era
(McGraw-Hill, 1959)

Barbee Lee, Mabel,
Back in Cripple Creek
(Doubleday & Co., 1968)

Bret, David,
Clark Gable: Tormented Star
(Da Capo Press, 2008)

Bushby, John,
Gunner's Moon: Memoir of the RAF Night Assault on Germany
(Futura, 1975)

Byron, Reginald, and David Coxon,
Tangmere: An Authorized History
(Grub Street, 2013)

Campbell, Christy,
Fenian Fire: The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria
(HarperCollins, 2002)

Carter, Randolph,
The World of Flo Ziegfeld
(Praeger Publishers, 1974)

Cull, Nicholas John,
Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign against American Neutrality
(Oxford University Press, 1996)

De Holguin, Beatrice,
Tales of Palm Beach
(Vantage Press, 1968)

DeArment, Robert K.,
Bat Masterson: The Man and the Legend
(University of Oklahoma Press, 1995)

The Dictionary of American Biography
(Charles Scribner's Sons, 2004)

DiGiacomo, Michael,
Apparently Unharmed: Riders of the Cresta Run
(Texere Publishing, 2000)

Douglas, Sholto,
Combat and Command: The Story of an Airman in Two World Wars
(Simon & Schuster, 1966)

Eagan, Eddie,
Fighting for Fun
(Lovat Dickson Ltd., 1934)

Fowler, Karin J.,
David Niven: A Bio-bibliography
(Greenwood Publishing Group, 1995)

Henderson Clark, Donald,
In the Reign of Rothstein
(Vanguard Press, 1930)

Higham, Charles, and Roy Moseley,
Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart
(Harcourt, 1989)

Jasen, David A.,
P. G. Wodehouse: Portrait of a Master
(Mason & Lipscomb, 1974)

——.
Tin Pan Alley: An Encyclopedia of the Golden Age of Song
(Routledge, 2003)

Kendall, Paul,
Aisne 1914: The Dawn of Trench Warfare
(History Press, 2012)

Kershaw, Alex,
The Few
(Penguin, 2008)

Klieger, P. Christiaan,
The Fleischmann Yeast Family
(Arcadia Publishing, 2004)

Knowles, Mark,
The Wicked Waltz and Other Scandalous Dances
(McFarland, 2009)

Kriendler, H. Peter, “
21”: Memoirs of a Saloon-Keeper
(Rowman & Littlefield, 1999)

Large, Dorothy (ed.),
As We Were: Life in Early Longmont as Reflected in the Newspapers of the Day
(Sharer Books, 1977)

Longhurst, Henry,
My Life and Soft Times
(Littlehampton Book Services, 1971)

MacKenzie, Mary,
The Plains of Abraham: A History of North Elba and Lake Placid
(Nicholas K. Burns Publishing, 2007)

Marion, Frances,
Off with Their Heads
(Macmillan, 1972)

Martineau, Hubert,
My Life in Sport
(Water Martin Press, 1970)

Mason, Francis K.,
Battle over Britain: A History of the German Air Assaults on Great Britain
(McWhirter Twins Ltd., 1969)

McCrary, John,
First of the Many
(Robson Books, 1981)

Mitgang, Herbert,
Once upon a Time in New York: Jimmy Walker, Franklin Roosevelt, and the Last Great Battle of the Jazz Age
(Cooper Square Press, 2003)

Mordden, Ethan,
Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Business
(St. Martin's Press, 2008)

Moulson, Tom,
The Flying Sword: The Story of 601 Squadron
(MacDonald, 1964)

Murray, Mae,
My Memories
(as published in the
Milwaukee Sentinel
, May 1942)

Nicholl, K. I.,
The History of the St. Moritz Bobsleigh Club
(private press, 1975)

Olsen, Lynne,
Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour
(Random House, 2011)

Ortloff, George Christian, and Stephen C. Ortloff,
Lake Placid: The Olympic Years
(Macromedia Inc., 1976)

Perez, Robert C., and Edward F. Willett,
Clarence Dillon: A Wall Street Enigma
(Madison Books, 1995)

Rider, Freemont,
Melvil Dewey
(American Library Association, 1944)

Rivadue, Barry,
Alice Faye: A Bio-bibliography
(Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990)

Schuessler, Michael Karl,
Elena Poniatowski: An Intimate Biography
(University of Arizona Press, 2007)

Seth-Smith, Michael,
The Cresta Run
(W. Foulsham & Co., 1976)

Small Town, Big Dreams: Lake Placid's Olympic Story
(a Marc Nathanson–Scott F. Carroll Production in association with Sundial Pictures, 2010)

Smith, Amanda (ed.),
Hostage to Fortune: The Letters of Joseph Patrick Kennedy
(Viking, 2001)

Sobel, Robert,
The Life and Times of Dillon Read
(Truman Talley Books, 1991)

Stansfield, Dean S.,
Images of America: Lake Placid
(Arcadia, 2002)

——.
Images of America: North Elba and Whiteface Mountain
(Arcadia, 2003)

Stewart Martin, James,
All Honorable Men
(Little, Brown, 1950)

St. Vrain Valley Historical Association,
They Came to Stay
(Longmont Printing Company, 1971)

Sutton, Antony C.,
Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler
(Clairview Books, 2010)

Tangye, Derek (ed.),
Went the Day Well
(George Harrap & Co., 1942)

Tyrell Kelly, Barbara,
Growing Up in Lake Placid
(Graphics North, 2012)

Van Diggelen, Michael H. (ed.),
Billy Fiske: A Souvenir Brochure
(private press, 2002)

Wallechinsky, David, and Jaime Loucky,
The Complete Book of the Winter Olympics 2014
(Crossroad Press, 2014)

Wiegand, Wayne A.,
Irrepressible Reformer: A Biography of Melvil Dewey
(American Library Association, 1996)

Wilkinson, Philip,
An American Citizen Who Died That England Might Live
(Lisek Publications, T J Kean, 1995)

Wood, Houston,
Displacing Natives: The Rhetorical Production of Hawai‘i
(Rowman & Littlefield, 1995)

Woon, Basil Dillon,
From Deauville to Monte Carlo
(H. Liveright, 1929)