by Terry Frei
When Brutus Hamilton wandered by, Glenn asked him about the post-Olympic meets. Nobody seemed to be willing to be specific about the possibilities.
Hamilton said, “The one I know about is London—a dual meet with the Brits—and that’s even the day before the closing ceremonies. But Brundage keeps talking about negotiating with a lot of other places, too, for after that. That’s why you guys don’t have definite return dates. And it’s why you’re supposed to sign those ‘leave of absence’ forms in your packet there, so you’ve officially signed up to participate.”
“I heard that.”
“We might be coming back in several groups on separate ships. Some of the rich kids will stay over there until Christmas or something and then pay their own way back.”
“How many of those do you think there’d be?”
“A few.”
Hamilton laughed and said a couple of his teammates on the ’20 team at Antwerp didn’t return home at all. “I guess they met Belgian girls and decided to stay,” he said.
“Can’t imagine that happening this time,” Glenn said.
Hamilton’s eyes widened. “Have you seen many German women?”
Glenn thought of the Blue Light poster. But he said, “I don’t mean that. I mean all the things going on there now.”
Hamilton shrugged. “Leaders come and go.”
At the sendoff banquet, Glenn and the decathlon men were pleasantly surprised to find themselves placed at a table near the dais with, among others, retired heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey. It had been nine years since Dempsey’s final fight, the “long count” loss to Gene Tunney. On an exploratory walk around the Times Square area earlier in his visit, Glenn had ducked into the new “Jack Dempsey’s Broadway Restaurant,” ordered a sandwich, and looked at pictures and souvenirs from the champ’s career. He was disappointed to find that Dempsey wasn’t in the restaurant at the time, and he hadn’t dreamed that he soon would be sitting next to the champ at dinner.
“They were going to put me with the boxers,” Dempsey roared, enthusiastically pumping Glenn’s hand. “I said I wanted to be with the boy from Colorado I’ve been reading about.”
“Thanks, sir.”
“Call me Jack, for Chrissakes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dempsey asked, “Did you know I was from Colorado, too?”
“Sure,” Glenn said. Grinning, he added, “The Manassa Mauler!”
The table’s Badger host referred to a sheet as he made the introductions. The table’s guests included the three decathlon men, three rowers, Dempsey, a Broadway producer, a publisher, and the president of Fordham University.
Dempsey gestured for Glenn to take the seat next to him. Glenn caught Parker and Clark’s grins, amused rather than jealous, he decided.
“First question,” Dempsey said. “Where the hell is Simla?”
Glenn told him.
“Hope that didn’t offend you,” Dempsey said, “but nobody knows where Manassa is, either.”
Glenn knew the lore of a young Dempsey brawling his way through the Colorado mountain mining towns on his way to boxing glory, and he was fairly certain Manassa was somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.
“Everybody thinks it’s in the mountains somewhere,” Dempsey said.
“It isn’t?” asked the Broadway producer.
“No, damn it,” Dempsey said disgustedly. “It’s in the San Luis Valley, over by Alamosa. It was my family and a bunch of Mormons. Me and my brothers and sisters loved it. I was fishing and hunting on the Conejos before I was old enough to go to school! We all cried—well, at least I did—when we moved, but we ended up in Uncompahgre, and that was fun, too. Anyway, we were so poor, we didn’t even know any better.”
Glenn told the champ about growing up on the family farm in Simla.
Eventually, the conversation opened up, with Clark and Parker joining in to explain the tricks of the decathlon—maximize your points in your best events and avoid disaster in your worst—and the rowers surprising the trackmen by explaining the U.S. crew was the team from the University of Washington in Seattle, taken en masse after winning the Trials.
As they finished their slices of apple pie, Dempsey spotted an approaching emaciated man in round eyeglasses and with a Turkish Oval cigarette hanging from his mouth.
“Here’s a sight!” Dempsey exclaimed, jumping up and blocking the man’s path. The other man seemed more concerned that he wasn’t going to be able to get to the bathroom within the next minute than he was impressed that the former heavyweight champion of the world was greeting him.
Dempsey gestured at the rest of the table. “To those of you who haven’t had the pleasure . . . this is Pueblo, Colorado’s own Damon Runyon, the man who nicknamed me the Manassa Mauler.”
“They stopped claiming me in Pueblo long ago,” the famous writer said with a tight smile.
Dempsey wasn’t going to take a crack at getting all the names of the men around the table right, but he turned and gestured at Glenn. “Jesus, three guys from Colorado within spitting distance of Times Square,” Dempsey said. “What are the odds of that?”
“All life is six to five against!” Glenn said, surprising even himself.
Flattered that Glenn remembered an often-quoted line from the story “A Nice Price” in his most recent collection, Runyon reached out to shake his hand.
“You must be ‘The Simla Sensation,’” Runyon said.
After Runyon left, the publisher said, “It must pain Runyon to be here.”
“Why?” asked the host Badger.
“He was against sending a team to Berlin,” the publisher said. “Ranted against it for months. The Nazis and the Jewish business.”
“So why is he here?”
“Free whisky?” asked a rower.
“He hasn’t had a drink in years,” the Broadway producer said. “Doesn’t want to ruin his image by talking about it, but it’s true.”
Dempsey said, “I’ll tell you why he’s here.” He looked at Glenn and the other athletes. “The boat’s leaving tomorrow, right? You’re going to be on it, right? The debate’s over. Now it’s time to get behind you. Put all the other bullshit aside.”
“Amen,” said the publisher.
“Thanks,” Dempsey said. “And the best way to shut up the Nazis is to win all the gold medals, right?”
Glenn smiled uneasily. “We’ll do our best,” he said.
Five minutes later, Bob Clark grinned at Glenn. “Hey, Simla Sensation, . . . pass the sugar, will ya?”
After the banquet ended, and Glenn stood by his table, he noticed a chunky man of perhaps forty approaching, with a hand up to get his attention. The man had dark sharply parted hair, wore big glasses and had a pipe in one hand.
“Hi, Glenn,” the man said, extending his hand. “I’m Paul Gallico of the New York Daily News.”
“Hello, Mr. Gallico,” Glenn said.
Another famous writer!
“It’s Paul,” Gallico said.
“Okay . . . Paul.”
“I’ll be on the ship with you folks, and I’m wondering if we can sit down tomorrow after we shove off and chat.”
“An interview?”
“Yes . . . I want to tell my readers about you. I think it’ll be good if they feel like they know you when they hear about you competing over there.”
“I guess that would be all right.”
“Good, I appreciate it. I’ll find you tomorrow and we’ll talk.”
Dempsey had been shaking hands and signing autographs, but he noticed Gallico and joined them.
“Oh, my God, watch what you say to this guy!” the fighter said to Glenn, joking. He “punched” Gallico in the shoulder. “Did he tell you about sparring with me so he could write about it? Now he’s telling people that he kicked my ass for three rounds.”
“My memory’s going, Champ,” Gallico said, smiling. “That’s how hard you hit me.”
Gallico peeled off, waved at Glenn and said as he moved,
“See you tomorrow!”
The Broadway producer broke off from conversation with friends, too, and shook Glenn’s hand again. “Good luck, Morris. You can do me two favors over there. First, win the gold medal.” Glenn waited. The producer leaned closer and said, “Second, stick it right up Hitler’s ass.”
Glenn smiled. “I’ll see what I can do . . . about winning it, at least.”
5
Bon Voyage
In the middle of the Hotel Lincoln lobby, the pot-bellied small-time lawyer in an ill-fitting American Olympic Committee blazer bellowed through a megaphone. Sweat dripped down the Badger’s face despite the early-morning hour.
“Gentlemen . . . and ladies! Have your Olympic identification card out. Show it when you get on a bus, so we can check you off. From here on out, you have to assume nobody’s going to recognize you or take your word for who you are! That’s everywhere, but also, if Mr. Hitler is around, the more likely they’ll be to react and ask questions later. So when men in strange uniforms tell you where to go or where not to go, do what they say.”
Glenn thought of the Broadway producer’s suggestion the night before and smiled. Then, looking at the Badger in his funny suit, he laughed. An elbow dug sharply into his ribs. Next to Glenn, his eyes narrowed by fury, was the spunky Jewish sprinter from New York City. Barely out of high school. Looks more like one of these corner newsboys hawking New York papers than an athlete. Glickman. Marty Glickman.
“What’s the idea, Marty?”
“You think that’s funny?”
“Think what’s funny?”
“The Nazis’ bullshit.”
“Hold on,” Glenn said, pointing at the Badger. “I was just thinking about him warning us to put up with a bunch of guys in funny uniforms over there. That’s all we’ve been doing for the past two days here!”
Not wanting to sound too cocky, Glenn didn’t bring up the producer’s suggestion for what to do after winning the gold medal.
“Do you even know what the Nuremberg Laws are?” Glickman asked sharply.
“Absolutely,” Glenn said.
“You’re comparing the Nazis and some guys telling us to get in line to pick up a handbook?”
“You’re reading too much into this,” Glenn said. “Way too much.”
Jack Torrance, the huge shot-putter beloved as “Baby Jack” and “Baby Elephant,” stepped between them. Glickman needed to stand on his toes and lean to the side to even see the six-foot-two Morris; and that made, first, the decathlete, and then the sprinter, laugh. If anything was going to foil Torrance in Berlin, it was that the world record-holder and former football player at Louisiana State University had gotten fat and flabby after leaving college while serving as a Baton Rouge policeman. The rumor was the scales at the physicals couldn’t even handle him, and that he was up to at least 325 pounds.
“Now boys,” Torrance drawled. “Need I remind you we’re all on the same team from here on?”
“Honest, Marty,” Glenn said, “I didn’t mean anything by it . . . except against the Badgers.”
Shaking his head, Glickman said, “Sorry. I guess all this has me a little on edge. I’m going to the Olympics, but it doesn’t feel right. I’m starting to wonder if Brundage insisted we go over there just so he could hug Hitler and tell him what fine ideas he has.”
“I understand, Marty,” Glenn said. “Or at least I’m trying to.”
“Good,” Torrance said. “Now shake hands . . . or no more throwing lessons for you, Morris, and I’ll accidentally drop a shot put on your toes, Glickman, about the time we’re passing Greenland.”
Torrance stepped aside, letting them shake hands, and then said. “So we’re square? From here on out, it’s all red, white, and blue, one for all, and all for one.”
Glenn felt old, telling himself: When I was Marty’s age, “the world” was the globe in the corner of Old Man DeWitt’s history room at the high school . . . and I didn’t know much about it.
Outside the hotel, as a small band played “Stars and Stripes Forever,” New York policemen on horses formed a corridor for the athletes to pass through on the way to the buses. Other officers on motorcycles waited to give them an escort to the docks.
Several curious Olympians already were by the buses, gathered around the revolutionary Harley-Davidson VLH chase models, asking questions of the policemen drivers. Others emerging from the hotel were making a beeline for the motorcycles, too. Instead, Glenn stopped at the line of horses, patted the face of a light bay beneath a burly cop and asked its name.
“Golden Boy,” the cop said.
Glenn laughed. He leaned close to the bay’s ear as he continued to pet. “Golden Boy,” he said softly. “Hope that’s an omen.”
The cop reached in his pocket and held out a carrot to Glenn. “Be careful,” the cop said. “Don’t want a bite to knock you out of the Olympics.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Glenn assured him. “I know horses.”
“You a country boy?” the cop asked, smiling, and then he nodded as Glenn answered the question with his hand, holding it flat so the horse could nip the treat from his palm.
“Well, guarantee you,” Glenn said, “you’ve never heard of my hometown.”
“What is it?”
“Simla, Colorado.”
“Can’t say I have. Maybe you’ll put it on the map.”
“Oh, it’s on the map. But nobody knows where to look.”
The bus rides were short enough to make many of the Olympians grumble that it would have been easier to walk. At Pier 60, at the end of West 20th Street, the SS Manhattan, 705 feet long and less than five years old, was draped with red, white, and blue bunting. Newsreel photographers crowded together to document the athletes’ gawking reactions as they got off the buses and started the walk to the ship, carrying suitcases.
“I’m getting seasick already,” Walter Wood complained.
“It’s all in your head,” said Glenn.
“Keep telling yourself that . . . until you throw up.”
Judging from the yells at the dock, a lot of the athletes—mainly those from the East, Glenn supposed—had friends and family members gathered to see them off.
A man marched up and down the pier, carrying a sign announcing: “Boycott Germany, Land of Darkness.” He was noticed, but ignored.
As Glenn was about to step onto the ramp leading up to the deck, a taxicab screeched to a stop nearby, sending band members and well-wishers scrambling. A young woman jumped out, jamming a white cowboy hat on her head. She wore a stylish outfit of billowy white slacks and a white jacket over a blue blouse. That, plus white cowboy boots.
She called out, “You didn’t think you were leaving without me, did you?”
A couple of the male swimmers broke ranks to greet her, and one even grabbed her suitcase from the taxi driver. An impeccably dressed man got out of the other side, skirted the back of the cab, then grabbed the woman, planted a huge kiss and didn’t let go. It knocked his breast-pocket handkerchief askew, but he didn’t seem to mind. The swimmers and others hooted.
“I assume that’s Eleanor Holm,” Bob Clark said dryly.
“Eleanor Holm Jarrett now,” said swimmer Al Vande Weghe, who hadn’t joined the mob. “That’s her husband, the bandleader.” He chuckled. “I hope.”
Eleanor’s reputation was known to even the most sheltered members of the Olympic entourage. The Olympic Committee put up with her because at age sixteen, the New York girl turned down the Ziegfeld Follies to give swimming a try (“I’ve always had gold-medal tits!” she liked to brag); at age eighteen, won a gold medal in the 1932 Games in the 100-meter backstroke at Los Angeles; was an actress on a $500-a-week retainer at Warner Brothers without much success; and now, as a twenty-two-year-old “veteran,” continued to draw considerable attention to the Olympic program. Even more important, she was favored to win again in Berlin. The swimming coaches encouraged her to go her own way, hoping she wouldn’t “contaminate” the younger girl swi
mmers. She bragged about paying only casual attention to swimming as she sang with her husband’s band and bragged of training on “champagne and cigarettes.” At the Olympic Trials, she easily qualified for a return trip to the Games, then responded to the first writer who asked how she felt: “Got any hair of the dog?” The word among the athletes was that she actually trained hard around her singing stints with her husband’s band, and had given in to the coaching of sportswriters to go along with the exaggerations. But there also wasn’t any doubt that she had a good time along the way.
Watching her over his shoulder, Wood laughed. “Think she’s in tourist class with the rest of us?” he asked. “Looks like she could afford a cabin ticket.”
“At the team meeting the other day, she said that’s what she was going to do,” Vande Weghe said, falling in stride with them. “But the Badgers said everybody had to be in third class. I give her credit, though. She was mad at first, but then she said, what the hell, it’d save her a hundred and eighty-six bucks. A hundred and eighty-six bucks! And she said nobody was going to stop her if she went to see her friends in first class. But she said if Clark Gable or Fredric March are on the first deck, don’t look around for her and don’t believe the rumors.”
Most of the 382 members of the American Olympic team were on the passenger list, and they were ticketed to stay on the two lower decks. On the ship, roughly another 400 passengers were coaches and officials, family members, and journalists bound for Berlin, too. That left about 300 passengers considered “outside” the Olympic traveling party. While there was no mention of Gable or March, the buzz the night before at the sendoff banquet was that their fellow passengers would include famed actress Mary Astor, plus playwright Charles MacArthur and his wife, Helen Hayes, relaxing following the recent withdrawal of the alienation of affection lawsuit filed against Hayes by MacArthur’s first wife.
