A Frenchman’s Love Affair With America
Daniel Dorian
Europe #1 wasn’t my only source of revenue. I was freelancing for CBC and for CKAC,
a private radio station in Montreal, and was also writing articles for L’Express, the French
equivalent of Newsweek or Time. I had plenty to report about. 1967 and 1968 were
unquestionably the most turbulent years of the decade. The war in Vietnam had divided
the country. The Democrats were in shambles and the Republicans were bent on
recapturing the White House. That suited me fine. There’s nothing as lethal for a
journalist as peacefulness and harmony. We need bad news to thrive. We feed on
conflicts.
Europe #1 expected thorough pre-presidential election coverage, preferably
sprinkled with sound bites from political personalities. Finding French-speaking people
to interview was challenging. I had set my sights on Governor Nelson Rockefeller. He
was fluent in French and was running for the presidency against Richard Nixon. He had
been governor of the state of New York since 1959 and had tremendous influence within
the Republican Party. I was ready to move heaven and earth for an interview with him.
I started by calling his press attaché and hit a wall. I couldn’t move past the
secretary who would end each and every telephone conversation with, “I’ll give him the
message, Sir.” The lady had no idea who she was up against. She wouldn’t get rid of me
that easily. I called two to three times a day, until she finally gave up and decided to pass
me on to her boss.
Rockefeller’s press attaché was cool, all business and no charm. My first
conversation with him was brief. It concluded with a vague promise. “Call me back in a
few days and I’ll see what I can do.” I did call back. The secretary suggested, “Put your
request in writing.” So I did, to no avail. I waited a week and called again. The press
attaché picked up the phone. Had my luck turned? He remembered me. How could he not
have? I begged. My insistence either annoyed him, wore him down or both. He threw me
a bone to get rid of me. There was a governors’ conference at the Hilton Hotel, he
explained, that would be followed by a press conference. After that, the governor would
speak to a few journalists, mainly tenors from The New York Times, The Journal and the
three networks. It is then, the man assured me, that he would arrange for me to ask the
governor a few questions.
The room at the Hilton was packed with the usual suspects, their writing pads in
hand, cameras and tape recorders at the ready. The governor stepped in. The din stopped.
The clickety-clacks of shutters and the pops from flashes filled the silence for a brief
moment. Once the press conference ended and most of its participants left, the governor
stepped away from the podium to be surrounded by a handful of journalists he had
handpicked for an intimate “give and take.” I recognized Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings
and my friend Lou Cioffi from ABC.
I remained in the back, a few feet away from the group, patiently waiting for the
press attaché to come and get me. The mini press conference was about to end and
nothing was happening. The man was avoiding my look. He had once again given me the
runaround. I took a deep breath, grabbed my tape recorder and crossed the auditorium.
The press attaché rushed toward me and laid his hand on my chest, in an effort to stop me
from reaching his boss. I pushed him hard and sent him tumbling in the empty chairs.
Startled by the noise, everyone turned to me. I seized this short distraction, held my mic
at arms length like a lance, and attacked Rockefeller head on. “Governor, do you think
that the recent riots in Newark and Detroit have impacted national unity?” I asked in
French. The interview lasted a few minutes. After giving me his last answer, Rockefeller
exclaimed in English, “You’re very patient, you know. You have a lot of patience.” My
American colleagues applauded. Some tapped me on the shoulder. One of them said,
“way to go!” My persistence had paid off, but I doubt that my editor would ever be fully
aware of the hurdles I had to surmount to secure this material.
From then on, the governor called me ‘Frenchy’—not offensively but in an
affectionate way—and never turned me down for interviews. The last one he granted me
was at the occasion of the opening of the Michael C. Rockefeller exhibit at the New York
Metropolitan Museum. He had given the museum the collection of Asmat art his
youngest son, Michael, had assembled before his disappearance in New Guinea, late
1961. During that interview, he had been quite emotional. The death of his son had
affected him profoundly. As was often the case, Jean-Pierre Laffont took photos of the
event. One of them clearly reveals the governor’s fondness for me, as he answers one of
my questions, his hand covering mine in a caring gesture. I liked him too.
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Any European attending a National Convention for the first time is bound to question the
soundness, rationality and seriousness of the American political system, given the chaos,
the brouhaha and the puerility of these proceedings. When Republicans and Democrats
gather every four years to choose their candidate for the presidency, they throw a party
that makes the carnival in Rio look tame and organized. But the hoopla, the funny hats,
the trepidations, the chanting, the hysteria as well as other exuberant and often comical
manifestations are smokescreens for serious business. Not only will each party elect its
candidate to the highest office of the land, it will also come up with a platform that will
define its mission and provide a laundry list of its political objectives for the next four
years.
When I landed in Miami and got off the plane in the late afternoon of August 4,
1968, a puff of searing and muggy air knocked me down, mellowing me up as efficiently
as would have a couple of valiums. It briefly sapped my energy, but I recovered the
following day the moment I stepped in the excessively air conditioned Miami Beach
Convention Center. The Republicans were fired up, poised to reclaim the White House.
The Democrats had been weakened by an unpopular war and by racial violence. They
were on the defensive. The future looked good for the Grand Old Party.
The outcome of this nomination process was predictable. Richard Nixon,
Eisenhower’s former VP, emerged as the frontrunner from the start. His two opponents,
the liberal Nelson Rockefeller and California Governor Ronald Reagan lagged far behind.
Nixon’s significant lead killed the suspense and somewhat lessened the interest my radio
station had in the proceedings. Still, the Democrats had been at the helm for eight years.
The end of their reign would also mark the end of a tumultuous era in American history.
That alone was a matter of great import.
Jacques Sallebert, the head of the French Broadcasting System, had secured a
cubicle in a corner of the convention floor, next to Agence France Presse. It was my base
to which I would always return after having roamed the place, spoken to delegates,
conducted interviews, chased after caucuses and snooped around for juicy stories.
On the evening of Wednesday, August 7, 1968, an AP wire alerted me to the fact
that riots had erupted in a section of Miami known as Liberty City. The disturbances were
contained in a small area. They would have remained unnoticed had they erupted
elsewhere. But blacks had rebelled in the city Republicans had chosen for their
convention and, what is more, the night before the nomination. The incident was
newsworthy. I decided to check it out. Jacques Sallebert dispatched one of his
cameramen to accompany me. He was a tall and muscular fellow by the name of JeanClaude Luyat. A photographer from AP joined us.
The three of us exited the convention center at around eight-thirty and took a taxi.
The cabbie refused to take us to our final destination. He dumped us in the middle of
nowhere. “That’s as far as I’ll go,” he told us categorically. Liberty City, he said, was
straight ahead. Luyat grabbed his Aries. I took hold of my heavy and cumbersome Nagra
and we started to walk in the direction of trouble.
Liberty City, also listed as “Model City”—what an oxymoron—was home to a
large and poor African-American population in North West Miami. We knew we had
reached it when we found ourselves surrounded by blacks, in an area blanketed by fourstory housing projects, all identical, all built in cement.
Each floor featured long and narrow open galleries that extended the length of
entire blocks and linked these low-income buildings to one another. They were mobbed
by a restless crowd on edge, ready to burst. The oppressive humidity made matters worse.
We ventured deeper into the ghetto, unnoticed for a while, but it didn’t take long
before a bunch of black men and women, assembled on the second floor gallery of one of
these building, spotted us. They followed us from above, some of them raising their fists
and heaping profanities on us. An empty bottle crashed on the pavement a few feet from
where I stood, then another one. A heavy black woman ran frantically along the gallery,
pushing and shoving her way through the crowd, holding a chair at arm’s length. She
flew down the first staircase she could find, hit the street and sprinted after me. I tried to
get away, but she was surprisingly faster than I thought she would be. She crashed the
chair on my back with unexpected strength. It must have been a cheap piece of furniture.
It literally exploded in hundreds of pieces. No one had ever attacked me with such
hostility. I was unharmed but shaken.
Jean-Claude Luyat and the journalist from AP picked up speed. I tried to keep up
with them, but the weight of my Nagra slowed me down. Suddenly, young blacks—they
must have been twenty at least—emerged from nowhere and chased us. One of them
grabbed the strap of my tape recorder I carried over my shoulder from behind me, and
pulled it hard, making me fall on my ass. He snatched the expensive machine and
disappeared with it. I picked myself up and ran. His cohorts, energized by what they saw,
redoubled their efforts to catch me. One of them got hold of my jacket and tore it off.
Another ripped my watch off my wrist. It was a solid gold Movado my father’s best
friend had given me before passing away. A third tripped me up and punched me in the
face before I hit the pavement. The rest of the pack swooped down on me like vengeful
bees and started to kick me in the stomach and in the face with a vengeance. I felt like a
pig about to be slaughtered. I shouted hysterically, “I am French! Please, I am French!” A
young man smashed a baseball on my skull with all his might. I staggered under the blow
but remained conscious. A thought came to me in a flash; these were my last moments on
earth. Another youth hit me again with his baseball bat. All lights faded.
When I came to, I found myself lying in the back of a police car, weak and numb.
As I tried to raise myself in the sitting position, I heard someone say, “Take it easy, boy.
Stay down.” I managed to look at myself in the rear view mirror. What I saw scared the
hell out of me. That face, torn, cut, bloody and swollen couldn’t possibly be mine. A
blinding lamp dazzled me. Jean-Claude Luyat, his camera mounted with a flood lamp,
was filming me. The newsman that I was had turned newsmaker.
I would have been dead if that police car hadn’t showed up. An ambulance pulled
in next to it. I was taken to the nearest hospital where I had to go through a battery of
tests. Miraculously, I suffered no fracture, though I still can feel an indentation on the top
of my skull. A young intern sewed more than twenty stitches inside my mouth.
When I woke up at five the following morning, I immediately picked up the
telephone in my hospital room, called Europe #1 and informed Bruno Dahl, the man in
charge of correspondents, of my whereabouts. He already knew. My story had made the
first page of the leading French newspapers. Bruno asked me if I was up to participating
in a live Q&A for Europe Midi, the newscast that included public participation. I said I’d
try. He called me back an hour later and connected me to the studio. Journalists and
listeners asked me detailed questions about my ordeal. I answered the best I could, my
speech significantly hampered by the stitches inside my mouth. One of them wanted to
know if I felt any resentment. I answered that I could not blame all blacks for the actions
of a few.
I was released from the hospital the day Richard Nixon was officially nominated
by his party. I flew back home and took a cab directly to Westchester, a suburb of New
York, where my wife and my daughter had spent the week at some friends’ house. I got
out of the cab, rang the bell of their brownstone. The hostess opened. She took me to the
living room where my three-year-old daughter was playing. When she saw me, my child
burst into tears and ran into her mother’s arms. I tried to get hold of her. She became
hysterical. My face was still swollen and scarred, my lips had stitches and my black eyes
made me look like Frankenstein. I had spooked my daughter out of her wits. The scene
reminded me of Somebody Up There Likes Me, a movie in which the boxer Rocky
Graziano, played by Paul Newman, returns home disfigured by a succession of bouts and
triggers identical reactions from his kid.
I submitted my expenses to Europe #1 a month later and asked to be reimbursed
five hundred dollars for the solid gold Movado watch that had been stolen from me and a
hundred and fifty dollars for the designer suit that my assailants had ripped to pieces. My
request was denied under the pretext that the Miami-Dade County police had estimated
the watch at fifty dollars and the suit at thirty. How could the local police put a price on
an item that had disappeared and on another one that had been totally ripped? It seemed
to me utterly unfair that my employer would base his decision on such an arbitrary
estimate. Europe #1 had questioned the veracity of my claim and had refused to pay a
relatively small compensation for my loss after I had risked my life while doing a job for
them. Their pettiness left a bad taste in my mouth, but it did not stop me from traveling to
another hot spot where I would confront more dangers in the name of journalism.
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The mere mention of the 1968 Democratic Convention brings back the vivid memory of
the foul smell of stink bombs and of the stinging and blinding of teargas that turned the
lobby of the Chicago Hilton where I stayed into hell. Mid afternoon, on Wednesday,
August 28, 1968, two days after the start of the Democratic Convention, ten thousand
protesters had rallied at Grant Park legally. When a young boy lowered the American
flag, police broke through the crowd and began beating him. Protesters started throwing
food, rocks, bags of urine and chunks of concrete at them, first chanting “Hell no, we
won’t go,” referring to Vietnam, then switching to “Pigs are whores.” Police responded
by spraying Mace at demonstrators and innocent bystanders indiscriminately. Protesters
upped the ante with chants of “kill, kill, kill.” An empty coke bottle hit my head. Tom
Hayden, one of the leaders of Students for a Democratic Society, an organization
vehemently opposed to the war, encouraged the protesters to move out of the park. If they
were going to be tear-gassed, he felt, then the whole city would have to be tear-gassed as
well. If blood were spilled in Chicago, it would be spilled throughout the city. That’s
what incited that crowd to storm the Hilton Hotel. I was told later that the commotion had
disturbed the Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey, as he was taking a shower. This
day would be known as “Police Riot Day.”
Demonstrations had started the preceding Sunday. Anti-war leaders had been
denied city permits that would have allowed them to sleep in Lincoln Park and to
demonstrate outside the convention site. That night, William Burroughs took to the stage
and briefly addressed the crowd. Jean Genet, who came to Chicago as a reporter to cover
the convention for a French magazine, spoke next. The famous French novelist,
playwright and poet had been prohibited from entering the US and had traveled from
Canada illegally with his Black Panthers friends. He alluded to the German shepherds the
Chicago police were using to intimidate, and occasionally to attack the protesters. “I am
pleased that white America is threatened by these dogs,” he said, “these dogs who
dispensed the same brutality against blacks in Alabama. It’s therefore good that
American dogs devour American whites.” I didn’t need a Ph.D. in psychology to guess
how the Chicago police felt after hearing these provoking words. The coldness in their
eyes expressed their profound contempt for the foreigner who had come to their town to
insult the white race and who, by the same token, had humiliated them. For their part, the
multitude of hippies loved these inflammatory remarks. They craved for words that
would feed their anger and incite them into action. These amateur anarchists were bent on
creating havoc. They were determined to do battle with one of the most repressive and
cruel police force this country had ever assembled, knowing full well that they didn’t
stand a chance. Yet, they seemed eager to be immolated in the name of their convictions.
Law enforcement had received strict orders from the top to crush the rebellion at
all costs. Mayor Richard Daley had raised an army of forty thousand cops and National
Guardsmen.
The following day, I recorded the black comedian and social critic Dick Gregory
when he addressed the same crowd that was now surrounded by hundreds of police and
National Guard on the ready. “You can look around and you can see from the amount of
police and the amount of federal soldiers, you must be doing something right,” he said.
Suddenly, rows and rows of policemen armed with billy clubs started pushing the
demonstrators, leaving behind them hordes of youngsters lying on the pavement and
bleeding profusely from blows in the head. Tear gas grenades exploded everywhere.
Chaos reached an intensity I had rarely seen. “I was chanting Aum…Aum, a holy prayer
with a hundred kids joining me under a fucking tree,” said Allen Ginsberg, “when the
teargas came from all these cops advancing on us behind a fucking National Guard tank.
There was no reason to it.” “They were like vicious dogs—yapping, snapping, every bit
as hysterical as their fucking handlers,” Burroughs added. “Me, I wallowed in this violent
maelstrom, like a dog rolling with relish all over the putrefied corpse of a dead skunk.”
Photojournalist Art Shay wrote:
By the happy circumstance of being a lucky photojournalist, (I was shooting
for Time Magazine) I was in a gaggle of journalists blinded by teargas who
stumbled out of Lincoln Park, across City Street, and into the minuscule lobby
of the Lincoln Hotel.
Ten feet into the door, coughing and wiping tears with me were
small, sturdy, egg-bald Jean Genet, the Gallic Sartrian bête noire, his
momentary girlfriend of the week, poet Allen Ginsberg, and drug company
heir and heavy user William S. Burroughs. For lagniappe, there was William
Styron leaning on a plastic-marble wall.
My first picture was of Genet tissuing a slight wound on his left
forehead and muttering imprecations against the police in French, as Allen
Ginsberg comforts him. Fortuitously I included the small wooden sawhorse in
the lobby displaying a long green and yellow sign dispensed by the city,
“Welcome to Chicagoland.”
It wasn’t Ginsberg’s first confrontation with law enforcement. In the several
interviews I had conducted with him while covering anti-war protests and in particular
the march against the Pentagon in March 1967 during which I, incidentally, was locked
and forced to spend the night inside the US Department of Defense headquarters, the bard
consistently expressed his staunch opposition to the war and condemned any form of
repression unconditionally. He once told me “cops had a ‘provincial’ hatred for culture,
freedom and for conscience.”
I felt as unsafe in the streets of Chicago as I had in the streets of any American
ghetto, as I stood with my friend Paul Slade, from the French magazine Paris-Match,
sandwiched between protesters and the National Guard, their rifles at ready, bayonets
drawn. I was also roughed up on the convention floor, but wasn’t punched by ground
security, as was Dan Rather, the future CBS anchorman. Inside, the convention had
turned as tumultuous as outside.
Given these circumstances, you’d think that the place was totally secured. In fact,
the people in charge of security had outdone themselves. They had issued the press four
passes we had to swipe to release a narrow and claustrophobic turnstile located at the
entrance of the Chicago International Amphitheater, a large structure adjacent to the
Union Stock Yards. These passes made of lead were electronically encoded and bore a
different color, one for each day. The technology was way ahead of its time.
On Thursday, August 29, 1968, I arrived early at that entrance and reached for my
right pocket where I usually kept my valuable papers. The pass wasn’t there. I feverishly
checked all my pockets over and over again. It was definitely lost. I was crestfallen. I
turned to a French colleague and said jokingly, “You know what, let me try my Amex
card.” I slid it in the slot and the turnstile opened, as if by magic. So much for security.
Most of that day, I hung out with two delegates, Theodore Bickel, the folk singer,
and Robert Ryan, the actor. Both men were opposed to the war in Vietnam. Bickel, who
spoke French fluently, had granted me many interviews in the past. I liked the man. He
was easy going and warm. Ryan was truly concerned about the state of things in
America and bent on trying to make a difference. In fact, his presence as a delegate
surprised me. I would never have imagined then that a Hollywood actor would get
involved in politics, let alone accept being a delegate for his party.
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Acknowledging that there was “division in the American House” five months earlier on
March 31, 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson had declared in the name of unity, “I shall not seek
and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” His
successor and Vice-President had won the nomination of his party on that fourth day of
the convention, but the prospects for the Democrats of carrying the day against a
Republican Party that had coalesced behind Richard Nixon were low. President
Johnson’s decision not to run did not produce an ounce of unity. In fact, the Democratic
Convention had shown to the world how divided America was. The violence and chaos
overtly displayed during these four days of August 1968 had put on view a party in
disarray. The Democrats had committed suicide. They would have to wait almost a
decade before regaining power for a brief period, to lose it again for another twelve years.
That convention had given us the kind of stuff reporters dream of: action,
violence, suspense and controversy. But it also left a bad taste in the mouth of those who
loved their country. In its immediate aftermath, many of us were left with sadness and
anger. The main issue for which the young demonstrators had fought remained unsettled.
They would have to wait another five years before the signing of the Paris Peace Accords
with Hanoi, on January 27, 1973.
I remained with Europe #1 another year. Eisenhower’s funeral in Washington on
March 30, 1969, was the last significant event I covered for the French radio station. It
gave me the last occasion to stand next to General de Gaulle in the Capitol Rotunda
where Eisenhower’s body lay in state. The Frenchman had come to pay his respects to his
companion-in-arms for whom he nourished great affection.
I would have had to move back to France if I was going to pursue a career in
journalism. It was out of the question. America had become my home.
On this side of the Atlantic, the political scene had turned boring under the Nixon
Administration. The country had quieted down. The blacks didn’t want to burn their
houses anymore; the opponents to the war had lost their oomph and the hippies had
turned bourgeois. This new order had taken the fun out of reporting. Nixon’s tenure
would be marked by only two surprises, the first when he and Henry Kissinger opened
relations between the US and China, the second when his staff was caught orchestrating
the breaking and entering into the Democratic National Committee headquarters,
triggering a scandal that would lead to his resignation.
I had mouths to feed. My wife was expecting another child. I was thirty-two. It
was time for me to settle down. I spread the word that I was looking for a steady job.
I didn’t have to wait long. In July 1969, I received a phone call from Henri
Marescot, the Director of Air France’s operations in the US. He needed an assistant
director for his public relations department. Would I be interested? I would be given a
nice office, a secretary, free air travel and I would work regular hours. I resigned from
Europe #1 and took the job.
XXX – My [Debauched] Crossing of the Desert
(Trade #5)
Life is the sum of all your choices. ~Albert Camus
I showed up for work at eight forty-five. The executive offices of Air France were located
at Fifty-Fifth Street and Sixth Avenue on the sixteenth floor. The building was modern.
Dark wooden panels, thick carpets and large bay windows overlooking the skyline lent
that floor an elegance that suited me.
Henri Marescot introduced me to my future boss, the PR director. Ed was in his
early forties, short, tanned, partially bald but in good physical shape. The excessive
warmth with which he greeted me didn’t ring true; neither did the obsequiousness he
displayed with his general manager. The man was faking bonhomie. Did he see me as a
threat? His boss, after all, hadn’t consulted him when he hired me as his number two.
That alone could have been at the root of an antagonism that would persist for the
duration of my stay at Air France. There was something else, something I failed to detect
at first, the flexing of a finger, precious mannerisms, subtle yet unmistakable clues. It
took me a couple of days to realize that the man was a homosexual.
It turned out that Ed wasn’t the consummate pro, the highly creative, hard at work
perfectionist many gays are. He managed with an iron fist to cover up his inadequacies
and used deviousness to make up for his paranoia. His insecurity as a homosexual put
him in a position of inferiority with his superiors but led him to abuse his power with the
people under him. If the decision had been up to him, he would have chosen someone of
his sexual orientation as his assistant. He must have seen me as a spoilsport.
÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷
I realized that I had just traded excitement for predictability, mobility for inertia,
intellectual challenge for bureaucratic routine, freedom of movement for rules and
regulations, the world for a fourteen by eight inch room, blue jeans and T-shirts for a suit
and tie. Up until now, the streets of New York, Chicago or Houston had been my office,
the White House, the Capitol and the United Nations my hangouts. I had been reporting
the facts. I now had to embellish them.
Having been on overdrive all these years, could I adjust to the slow tempo of a
government-owned corporation? Private companies had to be creative and dynamic. Air
France was an irremovable institution that did not need to compete to survive. The
French government would bail it out even if it were on the brink of bankruptcy. Besides,
labor unions and French laws made it virtually impossible to fire anyone. So the good
ones and the mediocre ones received equal paychecks at the end of each month, whether
they had performed well or not.
I wasn’t the first journalist to turn flack but wished I could have felt like this New
York publicist who once wrote, “I’d like to thank God that I am no longer a journalist…I
do not have to assimilate complex information from multiple sources, reconcile the
contradictions and deliver an analysis—all on a daily deadline.” Assimilating complex
information is precisely what I missed, as well as being called late at night, jumping in a
plane on the spur of the moment to go cover a big event or simply hanging out with my
brilliant colleagues. I missed the challenges of interviewing all kinds of people, the press
conferences, the action, the danger and the unexpected. I missed living on the edge.
To break from my past was going to be painful.
÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷
My main responsibilities as Assistant Director were of a bureaucratic nature. I was also
Air France’s liaison with the French media, but that alone didn’t fill my days. Ed didn’t
care whether I was busy or not. I did. So, to avoid total boredom, I had to come up with
original ideas. Not an easy task in a rigid bureaucracy.
The introduction of the Boeing 747 gave me the opportunity to exert some
creativity. The advent of the 747 would revolutionize air travel. To diffuse the negative
association of high capacity aircrafts with mass transportation, a concept that was
anathema to Air France then, a specific PR campaign endemic to the French airline had to
be devised. France’s flagship carrier had to be Gallic in every which way. The interior
design of Air France’s planes had to meet the norms of what the French considered le bon
gout. The stewards and stewardesses had to wear uniforms designed by les grands
couturiers. The food served on board had to be prepared by les grands chefs. A
transgression of these norms would drive the highest executives to hara-kiri.
When the first 747s were delivered to Air France in the early seventies, its PR
department in Paris organized a short flight to introduce the jumbo jet to the French
media. A Boeing 747 filled with journalists took off from Charles de Gaulle Airport and
headed toward Paris. When it reached the western outskirts of the capital, it descended
steeply and settled at an altitude of three hundred feet, which is quite low for an aircraft
of that size. The captain then welcomed his guests through the in-flight sound system and
informed them that they were about to fly down the Champs-Elysées.
Those who had middle seats stood up, pushed and shoved in the aisles, leaned
toward the windows, trying to catch a glance at the famous avenue. The heavy turbulence
that hit us the moment we flew over the Arc de Triomphe didn’t prevent me from looking
down. From my seat I could see the faces of the people walking up and down the French
thoroughfare, even read the plate numbers of cars. Many strollers must have been
terrified when that huge flying machine blocked their view of the sky. The PR stunt had
the desired impact. Photos of the gigantic aircraft grazing the roofs of the buildings made
the first page of most French newspapers. A crash would have been devastating!
It wasn’t easy to come up with an event that could rival in originality the daring
ride down the Champs-Elysées for our own inaugural, on this side o the pond. I proposed
to my boss that we organize a fashion show in flight. The logistics for such an event
clashed with safety procedures, but the idea was appealing. What’s more French than a
fashion show? Ed gave me the green light. Paris found the couturier who would best fit
the image of modern travel. They chose Paco Rabanne, the avant-garde Franco-Spanish
fashion designer.
I was immediately taken by the warmth and sensitivity of this great artist who
started his fashion house in 1966. Paco gave me a piece of advice that helped me for the
rest of my life. The organization of this fashion show had left me paralyzed by anxiety. A
few minutes before the start of the presentation, Paco caught me with my two thumbs
folded inside the palms of my hands, buried in my fists. “Open up your hands,” he
advised, “stretch your thumbs, do not tuck them inside. You’ll see. You’ll feel much
better.” I indeed felt better once I did it. Whenever I caught myself making a fist from
that moment on, I’d immediately stretch my thumbs wide open, thus releasing the
pressure of anxiety instantaneously.
The upper deck had been converted into a dressing room where makeup artists,
fitters and models bustled about feverishly as they would have during a catwalk at Dior
or Balmain. The gorgeous mannequins going up and down the narrow aisles of the
aircraft, wearing clothes of outlandish and flamboyant designs made of unconventional
materials as metal, paper and plastic, was a sight to behold. This ‘fashion happening’ at
thirty thousand feet high was picked up by enough newspapers and magazines to
establish me as someone capable of handling other responsibilities than the French press.
I became the coordinator and occasionally the initiator of Special Events.
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Working for an airline had its perks. Rushing to the airport, breezing through the Air
France counter and US customs—there wasn’t much security at that time—hopping on a
plane just before takeoff and being given a first class seat never failed to fill me with
immense exhilaration.
I’d fly to Paris for haircuts on Friday nights and return to New York on Sundays.
There was that young woman at a small salon in St.-Germain-des-Près who knew how to
handle my mane—I had plenty of hair then. She was worth the fifteen hours spent in the
stale cabin of an airplane, though hanging out in first class and being served great
champagne and grands crus wasn’t that much of a burden.
One day, I found myself the only first class passenger on a 747 bound for Pointeà-Pitre, Guadeloupe. The stewardess had already prepped my tray for lunch. She had
gone to the galley, had loaded her cart and had rolled it back to my seat. “Caviar?” she
asked. I loved caviar. She served me a dollop and headed back to the galley. I didn’t
bother spreading it on a slice of buttered black bread sprinkled with a dash of minced
onion and crushed hard-boiled egg. I simply took a spoon and gulped the whole thing.
The stewardess came back to me and asked if I wanted more. I nodded. She obliged. I
wolfed down that second serving as fast as I had the first. When she returned a third time,
she grabbed the silver bowl that contained the rest of the Beluga destined for thirty-two
passengers and placed it in front of me. Those were the heydays.
I was eventually given the responsibility of promoting Guadalajara, Puerto
Vallarta, the French Riviera and the French West Indies, which included Martinique,
Guadeloupe, les Saintes and St Barts. If I wasn’t flying to Paris, I was heading for Nice or
Fort-de-France or was organizing and participating in junkets for the media, during which
I was given room and board at the most luxurious establishments these destinations had
to offer. The Ritz, the Crillon, the Plaza Athénée, the Bristol, the Intercontinental, the
Negresco, the Carlton, the Hotel du Cap, the top Relais-Châteaux Hotels became my
second homes; Paul Bocuse, Roger Vergé, les Frères Trois-Gros and Gaston Lenôtre—all
famous three-star chefs—my new buddies. I was living a millionaire’s life with my
modest Air France salary. With all this came temptations that only someone with a will of
steel could resist.
The opening of the four-star Meridien Hotel in Dakar—an Air France
subsidiary— took me to West Africa for the first time. I had been given the task of
chaperoning a few members of the press, among them Horace Sutton, the indefatigable
and prolific travel writer who collaborated with Saturday Review for more than thirty
years and Caskie Stinnett, a man dear to my heart, who claimed he traveled a lot because
he didn’t want his life “disrupted by routine.” His stories appeared in Atlantic Monthly,
Travel & Leisure, The Saturday Evening Post and The Ladies’ Home Journal. He was in
his early sixties then.
Many Air France executives from Paris were also part of the inaugural bash. One
of them was Georges Dutheil, a charming fellow who belonged to the PR staff and who
was often used as a cameraman. Filming was his passion. He was also a sensualist, who
adored good food and beautiful women. He had traveled the world. He knew where to eat
well and where to find easy women, whether in Africa, Asia, Europe or the Americas.
When we arrived at the Meridien, a fine hotel that sat on eighty-five acres of
luxuriant green foliage, on the sands of the Atlantic Ocean, Georges told Caskie Stinnett
and me that he knew a place where we could find young Senegalese prostitutes. “It’s an
experience you can’t miss. Interested?”
“Why not?” said Caskie.
We requisitioned a van from the hotel. Georges took the wheel and off we went.
He obviously knew the city well, judging from the ease with which he navigated its busy
streets. He stopped in front of a lounge bar. Caskie and I followed him inside. Young
women in their early twenties—too young to wear the stigma of prostitution on their
faces—were hanging out at the bar.
Georges had it all figured out. “Take your pick,” he said, “and let’s head back to
the hotel.”
He and Caskie chose their sex partners in a matter of minutes. I had mixed
feelings about the whole experience. I took my time, not sure of what to do. I didn’t like
the idea of paying for sex. I finally laid my eyes on a young woman with an angelic smile
and vulnerability in her eyes. Her ingénue looks helped me forget who she really was.
The six of us headed back to the hotel. Not one word was uttered during the short ride.
Georges pulled up in the parking lot. We got out of the van, walked through the
main entrance and stepped inside the main lobby, which was packed with the crème de la
crème of Senegalese society and Air France executives. The elevators were on the
opposite side. How could we cross that big room without being noticed? We decided to
go for it. We pulled our dates by the hand and zigzagged in between the people.
Miraculously, no one paid attention to these young hookers heavily made-up and so
ostentatiously dressed. We headed to our respective rooms.
I did not share my buddies’ enthusiasm. On the other hand, here she was, willing
to please. What was I to do?
When we were done, the young lady and I exited the room as Caskie, Georges
and their two escorts exited theirs. Talk about timing. Total beatitude was written all over
Caskie’s face. No remorse, no shame. The old man was happy.
Only second-class writers accepted our invitations to junkets, with the exception
of a few prima donnas like Caskie or Horace who would write whatever they pleased
whether or not they had been spoiled with great meals and expensive wines. Most other
journalists working for top publications knew their editors would pillory them if they’d
let themselves be wined and dined. They’d be fired for accepting sexual favors. Caskie
was above all that. Yet, how could he have possibly tanked the Meridien after this
shameful stunt?
We decided to drive the three girls back to town. We got out of the elevator and
crossed the lobby once more. This time, everybody spotted us. We raised quite a few
eyebrows but also aroused envy among most men. These French executives must have
wished they had the guts to pull it off as we had.
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Air France’s close collaboration with Club Med opened up interesting possibilities for my
department and for me. I felt that movies were great promotional tools and had a wider
impact than press releases or slideshows. When Club Med asked us to publicize its
property in Djerba, Tunisia, I suggested to Ed that we make a travelogue. He was not
convinced that producing movies was something the PR department should get into.
Movies were expensive to make. Our competition was doing it, so did many offices of
tourism, I objected. Why not us? I kept going after Ed until one day he entered my office
and said, “Okay. You have three days and three thousand dollars.”
He probably hoped I would turn down his ludicrous offer or maybe that I would
accept it and fall flat on my face. Who could shoot a movie in three days for three
thousand dollars?
I decided to meet the challenge. I picked up the phone and called Georges Dutheil
in Paris. “Hey Georges, does Club Med in Djerba appeal to you?” When I explained to
him the constrains imposed by my boss, he burst into laughter and kept repeating, “Three
days, three thousand dollars…I love it.” “See you in forty-eight hours under the hot
Tunisian sun. And don’t forget to pack your camera,” I replied.
The New York-Djerba flight took ten hours. Georges was already at the Club
when I arrived, late morning. We had a bite at the restaurant then went to work without
further ado. It was the middle of July. Djerba was unbearably hot, with temperatures
flirting with the one hundred degree mark. We couldn’t let the oppressive heat and the jet
lag interfere with what we were set out to do. Georges was as eager and as passionate as I
was. We were on location at five the following morning and kept shooting way after
sunset, nineteen hours straight. I don’t know what killed us the most, the long hours we
put up or the fun and games we still managed to grab during the five remaining hours.
It was common knowledge. Many women chose to spend their vacations at
certain clubs to get laid. They found their preys among the patrons called GMs (gentils
membres) or among the Club Med staff, the GOs (gentils organisteurs).
That summer in Djerba, the Club had experienced an unprecedented shortage of
studs. Most GMs were women and all GOs happened to be gay. Imagine how these
sexually starved females felt when they saw us. A few of them made outrageous passes at
us, others stalked us as we were shooting. We needed models. We were spoilt for choice.
The ones we didn’t select turned vindictive. One of them threw a knife at me while we
were having lunch the day after our arrival. How many models can you use in forty-eight
hours? The two we selected for beauty shots during the day wound up in our beds at
night. When it was time to leave, Georges and I were exhausted. I slept all the way back
to New York.
We had shot more footage than I thought we could possibly have in such a short
time. I had to find an editor with enough talent to build something whole out of this maze
of incoherent material. Someone introduced me to Bob Duffus. This Emmy-Award cutter
owned an editing company with his father in midtown Manhattan.
Bobby possessed an instinctive sense of pace and continuity, an ability to infuse
life even to flat, static or boring images by matching them with appropriate scores. He
taught me the importance of music in film, how to select the appropriate piece and how to
cut images on or against its beat, depending on the feeling or emotion to be conveyed.
With a background in commercials, he was fast cutting way before Quentin Tarantino
ever introduced the technique. While previewing dailies, he would immediately forge a
vision of the finished product. Editors are storytellers. Their work is often referred to as
the “invisible art” because the viewer will not be aware of the technique and efforts put
into it if the job is well done. Bobby’s talent impressed me. I kept him as my editor for
the following thirty-five years.
He turned out a fifteen-minute presentation in no time. Georges’ images were
okay. A lot of them had been shot handheld and were a little shaky, some scenes were not
sufficiently lit, but the overall product had a style of its own and was amazingly attractive
given our time and budget constrains. The people at Club Med loved it so that they asked
me to produce another short on three of their Caribbean villages. We agreed on an
eighteen thousand dollar budget and felt that three weeks were sufficient for the shoot.
Georges Dutheil was inadequate for this particular assignment. I needed a pro.
Bob Duffus suggested Dick Kuhne. Dick was affiliated with ABC Network but accepted
occasional freelance jobs. He was a two hundred and fifty-pound fellow in his fifties,
short tempered, stubborn, strong as an ox, but deep inside, as sweet as a puppy. He
probably was the most reliable cameraman I would ever work with.
After he’d shoot a difficult sequence—a long zoom or a handheld pan—he’d
invariably state, “Got it.” When I’d ask him for another take, just for safety, he’d repeat,
“I got it,” and barked, “Next,” his way of turning me down flat. Dick rarely filmed the
same shot twice. That’s how sure he was of himself and I must admit, he always came
through. His technical prowess amazed me.
Shooting a movie in the Caribbean beat being cooped up in an office in
Manhattan. I was so lucky to have been able to make a living that way.
It took us two months to edit our film. I suggested to Bobby that he alternate fast
cut images over jazzy scores with romantic and long, moody shots over slow and
schmaltzy music. The sharp contrasts would keep any audience awake. I asked Peter
Karman, our in-house writer, to scribe the script. I called the piece Ride the Sun.
Peter’s description of a Club Med vacation was one of the best I had ever read. “A
vacation is a funny thing,” he wrote “You can buy one across the counter, but you can’t
take it home. You can’t wear it, except as a tan. You can’t drive it or plug it in. You can’t
store it in a freezer or leave it to rust in a garage. It can’t be recycled, repaired or sold for
scrap. And there is no market for used ones. It’s yours alone, a set of experiences, a
collection of feelings, a piece of your life. A vacation should let you forget the
aggressions of daily existence. It should awaken your body, your mind and if you’re
lucky, your heart. That is in a way what a village vacation is all about.”
Ride the Sun won the prestigious Public Relations Society of America Award.
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New pleasures and excitements always awaited me whenever I’d fly to Guadeloupe or
Martinique. When I was not staying at one of the Club Med villages, I was given a room
in the best hotels of the region. One of my favorite places was Diamond Roc, south of
Fort-de-France. Its owner, a British Canadian, could have been Robert Cummings’ clone.
The man was sharp as a razor, witty and extremely generous.
As I was having dinner by myself one night, he joined me and ordered
champagne. By the time the waiter brought me dessert, we had downed two bottles of
Perrier-Jouët. I felt tipsy. The maitre d’ happened to be a gorgeous Martiniquaise.
Couldn’t get my eyes off her. The champagne gave me enough courage to ask her if she
was available after work. She said that she would not be done before midnight, and added
bluntly that I could take her to her place if I was willing to wait. My friend who had
overheard the conversation asked me, “You know who she is? Last year’s Miss
Martinique.” I wasn’t surprised. The woman was stunning. At midnight, she showed up
at my table, ready to go. I took her to the car I had rented and off we went. She lived in a
village five minutes away from the Diamond Roc Hotel. We pulled in front of a simple
hut covered with a roof made of straw. The full moon covered the palm trees, the beach
and the ocean with a soft glow. The young lady invited me in
Unabashed, she undressed in front of me, in the semi obscurity of a tiny room that
was furnished with a single bed. She crossed to the back of the hut on the ocean side,
filled a large pitcher and emptied it in a small bidet that was resting on a primitive
wooden stand. She then straddled the bidet. The sight of her head leaning backward, of
her arched back, of her firm breast and of her hand splashing her private parts with such
grace, her slim body outlined against the starry sky, was simply surreal, beyond
voluptuous. She had allowed me to share a slice of her intimate life filled with such
earthly simplicity, a moment so intrinsically poetic I would never experience again, even
if I lived a thousand years. She dried herself. We fell on the bed. When the time came for
me to perform, I could not get an erection. I tried my darnedest. To no avail. I was drunk.
The lady turned nasty. She began insulting me in her native patois. I got off the bed,
dressed and left, shamefaced. The woman was still calling me names as I got into the car.
I turned the motor on and floored it. I must have been driving a hundred miles an hour
when I realized that I had missed the intersection that would have taken me back to the
hotel. I slammed on the brakes and came to an abrupt stop. Making a U-turn on that
narrow road was tricky. I slowly veered right, then carefully drove in reverse, repeated
the maneuver a few times and suddenly realized that my two rear wheels were spinning
in neutral. The car hesitated, tilted and crashed in a deep ditch. The mishap had sobered
me up. I walked back to the hotel in total darkness, occasionally bumping into wandering
cows. I didn’t get there before four-thirty. When I showed up for breakfast the next day,
bags under my eyes, my friend the owner greeted me with a smirk. He already knew what
had happened. The story had spread throughout the island like wildfire.
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Ed asked me to focus on Puerto Vallarta, a Mexican destination Air France had banked
on. Air France’s General Manager’s wife, who was Pierre Cardin’s rep in the US,
entrusted me with the French designer’s entire summer collection that she loaded in two
large containers. She instructed me to find young women on location to model the outfits.
Dick Kuhne was not available. I turned to Georges Dutheil who flew from Paris
to meet us.
The New York Times travel editor had compared Puerto Vallarta to a “Mexican
fleabag.” Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor apparently didn’t think so. It is in Puerto
Vallarta that they had fallen in love, while he was shooting The Night of the Iguana.
The day we arrived, we went scouting with the hope of finding amateur models
willing to pose for us. As we were crossing a little bridge in the center of town, Georges
suddenly turned around like a weather vane slapped by high winds and started to run. He
caught up with a ravishing young lady. We could see him talk to her but could not hear
what he was saying. He must have used the right words. The young woman followed our
cameraman as he was heading back to us. She was stunningly beautiful in a summer dress
that revealed a large bust, a thin waist and shapely legs. She was a redhead. I was partial
to redheads. Georges, Franz-Yves and myself were drooling with desire, as we examined
her from head to toe. Her name was Toni. She was a college student from Seattle.
We took her to our hotel, where we had reserved a suite that we used as a dressing
room. We were staying at the Posada Vallarta, one of the plushest accommodations in
town. Georges spread the Cardin outfits on the bed. Toni chose one and moved to the
bathroom with it. What a shock when she reappeared. Totally sheer, the outfit revealed
her large but perfect breasts—she didn’t wear a bra—her thighs and her ass, highlighted
by a sexy G-string. Had Toni been entirely nude, she would not have looked half as sexy
as she did in that dress. Georges would have killed to take her to the sack. I was
determined to deny him that opportunity. Toni spent the next hour trying other outfits.
Expensive garbs are powerful aphrodisiacs for certain women.
Toni wanted to take a shower. I took her to my room, which was adjacent to the
suite, and rejoined my crew. More than a half hour had elapsed and Toni had not
returned. I headed back, opened the door. Toni was combing her hair sitting in front of a
credenza, bare- breasted, a towel wrapped around her waist. She smiled at me when I
entered. I crossed to her, kissed her shoulder. She turned around, fell in my arms. She
then took my hand and led me to the bed. We made love. Toni turned out to be insatiable.
She adored making love and was totally void of inhibition.
I didn’t fall in love with her. I simply loved to make love to her. She was almost
fifteen years younger than I, displayed great vitality, was sweet, affectionate and
uncomplicated. Our relationship lasted a long time. After that first encounter, I managed
to spend several weekends with her in Seattle, where she lived with her family.
It was with Toni that I committed true adultery. I lied to my wife, flew to Seattle
often pretending that I was doing research on American Indians. I would leave the office
at around five p.m. on Friday, take the six o’clock flight to Seattle on United Airlines and
return the following Sunday on the red eye that was landing at JFK early Monday
morning. I would then take a cab directly to the office.
Remorse always burns you inside like acid reflux. If, at the end of his life, a man
could separate the good things he’d done from the bad ones with a sieve, and if he could
weigh each, it would give him a precise idea of how decent he had been. I am not proud
of my misdemeanors. I only hope that I have occasionally redeemed myself and that my
good deeds have outweighed the bad ones.
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