April 24, 2013

FINEST HOUR 150, SPRING 2011

BY DANA COOK

Mr. Cook ([email protected]) has published collections of literary, political and show business encounters widely, including his first installment for Finest Hour in issue 147.

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LONDON, 1946: RELUCTANT OWL

[A friend] asked me to luncheon with his mother….After hasty introductions, we went downstairs to the dining room, where I found myself sitting next to Lady Churchill. Mr. Churchill was at the far end of the table, looking silent and grumpy, not unlike, I thought, a great old owl who had been dragged, much against his will, out into the bright sunlight. [Luncheon guests] alternately filled Mr. Churchillʼs glass in an attempt, I concluded, to induce artificial respiration with champagne. The old man remained hunched over and hardly said a word, although a plump pink hand would reach out for the glass at fairly regular intervals and bring it to his lips to be drained. —Joseph Alsop, Journalist, “Iʼve Seen the Best of It”: Memoirs, with Adam Platt (New York: Norton, 1992)

NEW YORK 1949: “PROP HIM UP”

He came to the Times for dinner and reflected on Yalta, Stalin, Roosevelt, and the atom bomb….He looked considerably more rounded fore and aft than when I had seen him about a year and a half earlier. There was a curious sort of grayness to his flesh, which gave me a start when he entered the eleventh-floor dining room. I saw him take a quick look at the scowling photograph of Mussolini in the gallery of big shots on the wall, but he made no comment. He asked for a glass of tomato juice, which I thought was newsworthy, but corrected this impression when the brandy was passed around, and he complained that everybody kept him talking so much that he didnʼt have time to drink. I thought the old man snorted and lisped more than usual, but this may have been induced by sobriety….As he left at a few minutes past eleven, a little shuffly and a little bent, Dr. Howard Rush, the Timesʼs favorite doctor, remarked, “Jesus, prop him up.” I thought his political days were over….
—James Reston, Journalist, Deadline: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 1991)

CHARTWELL, 1950: OLD SEA LION

I happened to be briefly in the chair at The Daily Telegraph, then serialising his War Memoirs, and it was in connection with some dispute arising over his excessive proof corrections that he had required my presence. His physical condition was….flabby and puffy, and, in some indefinable way, vaguely obscene. Like an inebriated old sea lion, barking and thrashing about in shallow water. He was wearing his famous siren suit, with a zip-fastener up the front; various of his collaborators were there, familiarly sycophantic, as is the way with such people, especially the service ones. At four o’clock, in lieu of tea, a tray of highballs was brought in, and as others followed my senses began to swim. I cannot recall that the subject of the proof corrections was ever broached, except perhaps very casually. At one point Churchill took me out into the garden and showed me his goldfish and water works.
—Malcolm Muggeridge, Journalist, Chronicles of Wasted Time, vol. 1, The Green Stick (London: Collins, 1972)

CHARTWELL, 1950: CHAMPAGNE REVIVAL

Randolph called me at my hotel and invited me to lunch at Chartwell the next day. I naturally supposed that there would be a large number of interesting and important people at the luncheon, and that I could perform the function of a fly on the wall. Instead, the lunch party consisted of the old man, Randolph and myself, and at first it was a most uncomfortable affair. Mr. Churchill was dressed in a siren suit and looked like an angry old baby. He responded to my shy greetings with an angry harrumphing noise. I think Randolph had sprung me on him at the last moment, and that I was not at all a welcome addition. [But] the effect of the champagne on Mr. Churchill was like that of the morning sun on an opening flower. He began to talk, through the champagne, and then through port and a small bottle of a special cognac, which he consumed alone, since the champagne and the port were almost too much for me. He was talking, I suppose, for his own amusement—I was a thirty-six-year-old American journalist, of whom he had probably never heard, and there was no good reason to waste such talk on me. For the talk was good, very good, wise and witty and malicious by turns.
—Stewart Alsop, Journalist, Stay of Execution: A Sort of Memoir (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1973)

LONDON, 1951: LOOKING FOR THE LOO

The first time we realized that he was honouring us was at a great performance of Caesar and Cleopatra. In the interval, I was hovering about in my dressing-room, wondering what the great man was thinking of us, when my door opened and that immortal head with the wonderful blue eyes came round it. I was too much taken aback to say anything, but he said at once, “Oh, I’m sorry, I was looking for a corner.” Realizing his need, I took him back through the outer office, and indicated to him exactly where to go and how to get himself down the stairs again, where there would be someone waiting for him to take him back through the pass-door and into his seat….[At the following reception] we were introduced to the Prime Minister as we came into the gathering and, during the drinks with sandwiches before the formalities started, I took the liberty of seeking him out and imploring him for his help and would he have the generous patience, so very nervous and anxious as I was not to say the wrong thing, just to please glance through what I had planned to say, it wouldn’t take him more than two minutes? He turned eyes so hooded they were almost shut away from me and said, “Oh, I would suggest a few impromptu words….”
—Sir Laurence Olivier, Actor, Confessions of an Actor (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982)

**Churchillʼs account of this meeting was made when he returned to his seat and his daughter Mary: “I was looking for a luloo, and who dʼyou think I ran into? Juloo.” —Ed

HOUSE OF COMMONS, 1952: METTLE

Ted Heath took me into the smoking-room….”Remember, Winston hates small talk.” I was already very alarmed by the forthcoming encounter, but now I panicked. What big talk could I possibly think up in the thirty seconds that remained? When we reached him, Churchill was reading the racing results….Heath introduced me: “This is Nicolson, sir. The new Member for Bournemouth East.” He did not even look up. Heath then left us. I spoke my hastily prepared question: “Prime Minister, what do you consider the most important quality in a man?” At that he did look up and, over the rim of his spectacles and the rim of the newspaper, he spoke one word in reply: “Mettle.” He then resumed his study of how his horse had done.
—Nigel Nicolson, Publisher and Politician, Long Life: Memoirs (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997)

DOWNING STREET, 1954: DRAWING POWER

I was shown into a large, dimly lit Cabinet Room. Mr. Churchill rose from his chair and shook my hand. I had not realized what a short man he was; I towered over him. He motioned with an unlit cigar for me to sit next to him. It would be just the two of us, apparently. I noticed that three London afternoon dailies were spread out on a table next to him. “Well, first,” he said, in the marvelous voice I had heard so many times on the radio and in the newsreels, “I want to congratulate you for these huge crowds you’ve been drawing.” “Oh, well, it’s God’s doing, believe me,” I said. “That may be,” he replied, squinting at me, “but I daresay that if I brought Marilyn Monroe over here, and she and I together went to Wembley, we couldn’t fill it.”
—Billy Graham, Evangelist, Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham (New York: HarperCollins, 1997)

NICE, MID-1950s: CUTE, FOR A LEGEND

I was strolling with Brigitte [Bardot] through one of the corridors of the Victorine studios when we saw the silhouette of a man walking toward us and treading heavily with the aid of a cane. At first I thought it was Orson Welles; but Welles was not that old, I remembered, changing my impression. When we got closer I recognized Sir Winston Churchill….Brigitte was always herself, whether in the presence of her wardrobe woman or the world’s great personalities. After the usual exchange of polite formalities there was silence. Churchill’s eyes sparkled as he looked at the young actress without speaking. He seemed to be wondering what platitude would come out of this sensual mouth made for love and the screen….”When I was eight years old and heard you on the radio, you frightened me,” said Brigitte. “But now you seem rather cute, considering you’re a legend.” “Cute” was not a word people normally used to describe Churchill to his face! The great orator remained speechless.
—Roger Vadim, Film Director, Bardot Deneuve Fonda: My Life with the Three Most Beautiful Women in the World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986)

MARRAKESH, 1959: MOMENTS OF HIS OLD SELF

Coffee and brandy with Churchill on his last night in Marrakesh. We sat at his table in the corner of the Mamounia Hotel dining room….He looked older: his skin is no longer pink but whitish and blotchy. His eyes are watery and dim. His hearing is even worse (as usual he wouldnʼt wear his hearing aid), and his voice is very faint. He is now really weak and canʼt get up without massive effort, has to be half-supported when he walks upstairs. But he wasnʼt “ga-ga” as so many people have said. I think he has difficulty, because of his hearing, in following things. So he seems to miss part of whatʼs going on, above all when heʼs tired. But he has moments of his old self.
—C. L. Sulzberger, Journalist. The Last of the Giants (New York: Macmillan, 1970)

MONTE CARLO, 1960: DOZING OFF

The outer door of the house opened to admit several manservants, bearing among them the recumbent form of…Sir Winston Churchill. It was a strange and uncomely way in which to see for the first time a human being of such renown and consideration….the prostrate figure came emphatically into being, gesticulating and muttering in a fashion most indicative of life, and within a few minutes was established in a dining-room chair and manifestly the man who had come to dinner….I saluted him with reverence. He was not, I think, aware of this; having been deposited in his chair the old gentleman was clearly content to let circumstances take their course, and by and by fell into a doze. He continued in a light sleep throughout the meal….After dinner somebody put a cigar into his mouth and lit it; it seemed a ritual gesture without dignity; the completion of an effigy.
—James Cameron, Journalist, Points of Departure,(Northumberland: Oriel Press, 1967)

London, 1962: Still Flashing the “V” Churchill fell and broke his thigh in Monte Carlo….The next day he was flown back to London and I was outside the hospital as they brought him out. I leaned close to the ambulance window to see his face and judge how ill he was. Two feet away from me, the old boy opened his eyes and smiled. He raised his hand to me in the famous “V” sign of the war years. Evidently history couldnʼt claim him yet. But the incident debilitated him and, [in 1964] he reluctantly resigned from Parliament.
—Robert MacNeil, Broadcast Journalist, The Right Place at the Right Time (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982)