Radio was the big thing, TV its little brother that NBC management ignored and no one thought would last. It was partly down to technology: to film anything you had to use hand-held cameras, powered by a large metal key on the side. You could only film for one minute and ten seconds before you had to turn the key again to power the motor. Compared to the ease of radio, TV was cumbersome and time-consuming, which meant camera-crews spent most of their time filming ice-cream-eating contests and beauty pageants. They left the serious news to the radio staff.
What TV really needed to prove itself was an epic story, a human drama, and in the early 1950s the perfect story appeared: the Cold War. Here was a new war, unlike any other, that was spreading to every corner of the world, involving the US and its greatest enemy: the Soviet Union. Like a Marvel film on steroids, the Cold War story promised action against the constant threat of total nuclear annihilation.
The only problem for the TV networks was that this new war was characterised by stalemate and inaction, or – even worse – drawn out UN General Assembly meetings, with incomprehensible votes won and lost. But there was one place where this story came to life, where the two superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union, faced each other with soldiers, tanks and machine-guns: Berlin.
Here, American camera-crews could peer behind the Iron Curtain and film their new arch-enemy, the Soviet Union. NBC started making mutual exchange deals with European broadcasters such as the BBC, agreeing that each broadcaster could use each other’s footage. Night after night, NBC would stream European pictures into American homes: Russian tanks rumbling down German streets, protesters throwing stones and bricks, American soldiers patrolling West Berlin, Chesterfields hanging out of their mouths. They’d never seen anything like it and American viewers drank it in.
Before the war, this story would have been a hard-sell. Back then, Europe felt a long way from the US, its politics of little relevance to an isolationist country. After the war, Europe felt closer. Americans knew that what happened in Europe could change things in the US, and, as millions of soldiers returned from fighting in European cities, they’d brought tales from the very places that were now appearing on TV.
By 1952, seventeen million American homes had televisions. The Cold War had given this novelty medium a sense of purpose, and it was clear: TV was here to stay. Reuven Frank had arrived in TV at the perfect time. With the medium new and unproven, there were no rules yet, no one to say, ‘that’s not how we do it’, and so Reuven Frank, a born disrupter, helped invent them. It was Reuven Frank who first sent reporters onto the floor of American political conventions, telling them to talk live into the camera, and it was Reuven Frank who helped draft the blueprint for election-night coverage. He’d seen how powerful TV could be and spent hours in edit suites, weaving footage into stories that spoke to the gut as well as the brain. As he later wrote in a famous thirty-two-page memo: ‘the highest power of television journalism is not in the transmission of information but in the transmission of experience’. And it was Reuven Frank who’d created The Hunter–Brinkley Report, a nightly news show presented by Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, with Reuven Frank behind the scenes, orchestrating quick cuts between reporters from different cities. Then, at the end, a sign-off that Reuven had invented, that felt revolutionary at the time in its friendliness: ‘Good night, David, Good night, Chet. And good night from NBC news.’ It was corny, but audiences loved it and the show was the most watched TV programme in the US for ten years.
Now, in the summer of 1961, as Reuven Frank sat in the plane, arcing down to West Berlin, his star-presenter David Brinkley beside him, he was one of the most powerful TV executives in the US, with TV the undisputed king of mediums. Once a niche product, with only 9 per cent of households owning TVs in the 1950s, TV-watching was the new normal, and by 1960 over 80 per cent of American homes had a set. Whenever anything happened, the first question was: how do we tell this story on TV?
And that was the question that Reuven Frank would be asking in a few hours, for the plane was due to land just before noon on Saturday 12 August 1961, and in an astonishing bit of good timing the biggest story of post-war Europe was about to unfold around him.
It wasn’t until nine the following morning that Reuven Frank heard about the barbed wire. He’d spent the previous afternoon filming escapees in refugee camps with David Brinkley, then they’d collapsed in their hotel rooms, exhausted after their long flight. On Sunday 13 August, after a lie-in, Reuven Frank had come down for breakfast and was drinking coffee while reading a paperback when the buzz of conversation around him got so frenetic he realised something must have happened. He went to the hotel reception to find out.
‘They’ve closed the border,’ the man at reception said.
‘Who?’ Reuven asked.
‘The East.’
Within minutes, Reuven Frank and David Brinkley were at the border between East and West Berlin, David Brinkley talking to camera, recording pieces that would tell the world what had happened, that showed the barbed-wire barrier still going up behind him. When they heard that Russian tanks had been seen in the district of Wedding, they drove there, filming hundreds of West Berliners shouting and screaming at the Russian soldiers protruding from the top.
For forty-eight glorious hours, the Berlin Wall story was theirs and theirs alone, their network rivals (ABC and CBS) racing to West Berlin from West Germany. The first footage that American audiences saw of the Berlin Wall was NBC’s, and at a time of intense rivalry between networks, this was one of the sweetest feelings Reuven Frank had ever had.
On the Tuesday evening, exhausted after two days of filming at the border, Reuven Frank sat in the NBC bureau, talking to the man running it – Gary Stindt. Gary Stindt was one of the greatest cameramen of his day. He had an eye for pictures, the nose for a story and the stomach to see it through. Born in Berlin, the son of a cameraman, when the Second World War broke out he was sent to live in New Jersey. There, he’d joined the Air Corps, becoming a cameraman like his father, filming into plane cockpits while strapped to the wing. After the war he’d returned to West Berlin and become a cameraman for NBC, filming the American planes in 1948 as they came in to land, delivering food during the Soviet blockade. And it was Gary Stindt who’d had the ingenious idea of renting the attic of a bakery across the street from the prison where the seven last survivors of the Nazi leadership (including Rudolf Hess and Albert Speer) were serving out their sentences. Using a long lens, he filmed them in their army greatcoats and pillbox prisoners’ hats as they shuffled out their final days in the prison exercise yard, the footage making an award-winning documentary.
Also with them in the bureau that night was Piers Anderton, NBC’s correspondent in West Berlin – a tall, dashing Princeton graduate who served in the navy during the Second World War, then became a journalist. Charismatic, his dark hair streaked with a white quiff, Piers was admired by Reuven Frank for his rare combination of competence and brilliance. That night, they all got talking about the best way to tell the story of this new Wall between East and West Berlin.
Reuven Frank had long been looking for a more powerful way to explain the Cold War, one that went beyond a ten-minute snippet on the news. The era of TV documentaries was just beginning and Reuven Frank had seen how powerful they could be, but he wanted to push the format further, make the kind of story that no one had seen before. TV documentaries were now where the networks fought their ratings battles; they all wanted to be the ones to tell a story that would grip the country.
With this new barbed-wire barrier, an idea came to Reuven: what if Gary Stindt and Piers Anderton were to find an escape story? Not an escape that had already happened, but one that was just beginning? They could film it in real time, every twist and turn, not knowing how it would end. This idea was revolutionary. Ahead of his time, Reuven Frank had seen that if news journalists borrowed techniques from the world of drama and film, they’d have the power to move people, not just impart information. As R
euven put it: ‘Every news story should, without any sacrifice of probity or responsibility, display attributes of fiction, of drama. It should have structure and conflict, problem and denouement, rising action and falling action, a beginning, a middle and an end. These are not only the essentials of drama, they are the essentials of narrative.’
Reuven knew that if they were to find and film an escape, it would give them the most gripping drama of the Cold War. Reuven Frank told Piers and Gary to start looking immediately. ‘If you find something interesting’, he said, ‘start filming. I can pay for it. Whatever you need.’ That’s the kind of thing you could say if you were Reuven Frank.
Then the hotshot TV executive got a car back to the airport and took off into the night, the newly divided city disappearing beneath him.
32
The Deal
May 1962
NINE MONTHS AFTER Reuven’s visit, Piers and Gary still haven’t found an escape to film. It’s not because they hadn’t been looking. They’d put word out with their fixers that they were looking for an escape story, but every time they heard something promising, jumping in a car or driving to a field to film it in action, something always went wrong.
Once, Piers had climbed into the sewers, only to crawl into the torchlights of VoPos from the East. Another time, he’d lent walkie-talkies to a couple of West Berlin students who were orchestrating an escape, on the condition that he could come and film. Lying in a field, Piers had listened helplessly as one of the students crawled into the barbed wire and disappeared, never to return.
But Piers hadn’t given up. If anything, he was more determined than ever to find an escape story – he wanted audiences in America to know what was going on, how desperate people were to leave East Berlin. He’d seen the aftermath of escape attempts: open manhole covers, bullets in the Wall, but that wasn’t the same as filming one from the start. He was beginning to think it would be impossible to ever find one. Escape operations were shrouded in secrecy as they kept being infiltrated by Stasi informants, with disastrous consequences. A few months ago, a group of students had finished digging a tunnel from West to East Berlin. Crawling into the East to bring through the escapees, a student called Heinz had found the Stasi waiting for him. Flashing his torch into their eyes, Heinz scrambled as fast as he could back through the tunnel to West Berlin, Stasi soldiers shooting after him. By the time he arrived back in the West, blood was streaming from a bullet hole in his chest. Heinz looked up at his friends: ‘Those swine shot me,’ he panted. His last words.
By the end of May 1962, while Piers and Gary were still sniffing around for an escape to film, Joachim and the other diggers had just begun their hunt for money – for tools and to pay for more diggers. And they hadn’t done badly: first, an aide to the mayor, Willy Brandt, had put them in touch with a political party which donated 2,000DM (around £170 – a substantial sum).
Then they discovered that Peter’s mother (who also wanted to escape) had 3,000DM (£270) in a West Berlin bank account that she was happy to donate. The only problem was that Peter’s mother was stuck in East Berlin and couldn’t cross the border into West Berlin to withdraw the money. Mimmo and Gigi came up with an ingenious idea. They crossed the checkpoint into the East to see her, taking a pack of cigarettes. Peter’s mother then wrote a note, giving Mimmo and Gigi power of attorney on a thin piece of cigarette paper. They rolled it with tobacco and placed it in the cigarette packet. If they were searched at the border, they could smoke away the evidence. Mimmo and Gigi got the note safely through the checkpoint and took it to a bank in West Berlin, where they withdrew her money. It was a lot, but they’d spent it quickly, on tools and a second VW van – this one with no windows, better for hiding diggers on their way to and from the cellar.
Now they needed more. And it was down to Wolf Schroedter, the charming, blond fixer, to find it. If anyone could, he could. Charming, with twinkly blue eyes, Wolf started the hunt. His first idea was to go to Der Spiegel, West Germany’s largest newspaper. It was an obvious thought: a few months earlier the newspaper had done a deal with the Girrmann Group, paying 6,000DM (around £500) in return for a front-page scoop about their escape operations (not giving away any names). With the Wall so recently built, escape operations were exciting and sold papers. Escapees became instant celebrities – two had even met Robert Kennedy (the president’s brother and US attorney general) in his hotel room when he’d visited West Berlin that year.
But Der Spiegel said no, they’d already run one escape story, they weren’t after another. But they had a suggestion: what about talking to MGM, an American film company in West Berlin? They were shooting a Hollywood blockbuster about an escape tunnel from January that year, but maybe they’d be interested in filming a different tunnel as it was dug? The diggers knew all about the film company, most people in West Berlin did, because the crew had built a 275-metre fake plaster wall near Tiergarten Park that was so convincing they had to stick a sign on it, explaining it was an imitation. On the first night filming, when shooting a scene by the canal, close to the real Wall, VoPos had spotted the film-crew, shining their searchlights into the cameras. The producer of the film was ecstatic, calling the LA Times to tell them all about it. ‘Talk about realism!’ he gushed.
Wolf made some calls, found the address of MGM’s German publicist, and a few days later, he, Mimmo and Gigi turned up at his door. Did he want to come and see a real tunnel?
Of course he did, and so a few days later, they bundled him into Wolf’s new windowless van and took him to the tunnel. He was impressed but scared: he knew what he was doing when it came to shooting in a fake tunnel, but didn’t have the stomach to shoot in a real one where anything could happen.
MGM said no.
Just as Wolf was giving up hope, he had another idea: what about trying an American news broadcaster? If American audiences were so interested in escape stories, maybe they’d be interested in a film showing a real one while it unfolded? Wolf asked around and a friend put him in touch with a fixer at the NBC bureau in West Berlin. Finally, word reached Piers Anderton, who couldn’t believe it: after months looking for a tunnel, a tunnel had found him.
Two days after the bomb blast, on 28 May 1962, Piers meets Wolf, Mimmo and Gigi at their university. Mimmo does most of the talking. Gigi doesn’t say much. Wolf sits in silence, fiddling with the bolt on his newly acquired automatic – with all the stories flying around about Stasi spies infiltrating escape operations, he wanted protection. The diggers tell Piers all about the tunnel, how they can’t finish it without more money.
Piers listens, nodding. ‘How much do you need?’
‘Fifty-thousand dollars,’ Mimmo replies.
Piers gulps. ‘Can I see it?’
The diggers agree. But only if Piers reassures them that he won’t tell anyone about the tunnel – where it is, where it’s going. Wolf, ever the businessman, draws up a contract:
I hereby declare, on oath, that I will maintain absolute secrecy regarding the location of the operation of which I was informed on 28th May, 1962, by Mr Wolfhardt Schroedter. If I break this agreement, I agree to pay $50,000 to Mr Wolfhardt Schroedter.
Piers Anderton.
A few days later, Wolf collects Piers Anderton in his windowless van and drives him to the tunnel. As soon as he sees it, Piers knows this is NBC’s best chance of filming an escape. All he needs now is approval from Reuven Frank, and timing is on his side. For this week, Piers Anderton is due to fly back to New York to get married.
33
New York
June 1962
‘I’VE GOT TO talk to you!’ Piers Anderton pulls Reuven Frank aside, looking serious.
Reuven laughs. ‘Come on, not now!’
It’s Piers Anderton’s wedding day; he’s just married his Swedish air-hostess girlfriend, Birgitta, and they’re all at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York at the wedding breakfast.
But Piers is insistent.
Let’s meet back at the office then,
says Reuven, and so that evening, after the party ends, they meet a few streets away at the NBC bureau. As soon as they’re in his office, Piers tells him: ‘We have a tunnel!’
Reuven is confused. ‘What do you mean, you have a tunnel?’
‘Some students came to us and they’re digging a tunnel under the Wall and we want to make a deal with them.’
‘What d’you mean, you want to make a deal with them?’
‘They need money for equipment. They’re engineering students and they’re going to build a proper tunnel.’
‘How much?’
Piers tells Reuven about their request for $50,000.
‘That’s crazy! We can do $7,500. Max. Make a deal with them where we will supply the material. They have to give us a bill and we will pay it. And in return, we have the right to film. Period.’
And with that, Reuven Frank has just made one of the most controversial decisions in the history of TV news. A top American news network has agreed to fund a group of German students digging an escape tunnel in one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
34
Cameras
20 June 1962
IT’S EVENING IN Berlin, it’s pouring with rain and a VW van is sloshing through the streets. Inside, two men wearing blindfolds. The van slows, turns and stops. A door opens, the men are pulled out and they fumble down a track, arms outstretched in front. At the end of the track, their blindfolds are removed and the two men blink their eyes open, through the rain that streaks down their faces, and straight ahead they see a door. Pushing it open, they creep inside, down to the cellar, and there it is.
Tunnel 29 Page 13
