Olympic Affair

by Terry Frei

  “You will. I know you will. But you think that’s important to me?”

  “Yeah, I do. What kind of story do we have if I finish fifth?”

  “You’re underestimating yourself.” After a few moments, she asked, “So will you at least think about what I say?”

  “Of course I will. For one thing, you’re asking me to—no matter where it leads—walk away from the girl back home.”

  “That was part of your old life. You just said your life has changed. It will change more in the upcoming days. You’ve made no promises to her, have you?”

  Glenn said no, and then thought a moment. “But I’d be telling her it’s over for something that’s only a ‘maybe’ with you. Didn’t Marlene Dietrich move to America? Why can’t you do that? Then we see what happens.”

  “She just acts, Glenn. She is not a filmmaker. She left before the Führer came to power. It would not be as simple to leave now. I don’t know what has become of her family, but I will not turn my back on mine here.”

  “And me moving to Germany wouldn’t be turning my back on my family?”

  “It wouldn’t! You could go back and forth. That is fine with Americans. Here . . . well, once everything stabilizes, we could go back and forth.”

  “But when will that be? Can you promise me you know when that will be . . . or that it will happen at all? Or that it won’t get worse?”

  Leni’s reddened eyes bore in on his. She said nothing.

  “So you don’t know those answers,” Glenn said.

  “No, I don’t. I also am saying I am willing to let it play out—with us together.”

  Glenn sighed. “We have plenty of time to think about this. Can’t we just leave it here for now? That we think about it? You’re right. A lot can happen in the next week or two.”

  “Some things might change,” Leni said, standing. “This won’t.” She leaned over to kiss him.

  Glenn made it back to his room at about 11. Walter Wood was reading. “You keep carousing, you’ve got no chance at gold,” he said.

  Glenn interpreted it as teasing with a point. “Carousing?” he asked. “Just eating there by the stadium, that’s all, after everything was over.”

  “In your sweat suit?”

  “Sure! Half the guys there are dressed like this, you know that,” Glenn said.

  “How was dessert?”

  “Fantastic!”

  “If you talk about strudel in your sleep, I will suffocate you with your pillow. If you talk about the movie lady again, I’ll be taking notes.”

  As he was climbing into bed a few minutes later, Glenn told Wood, “I did meet her today.”

  “The movie lady?”

  “Yeah,” Glenn said. “I was talking to the hammer throwers and she came over to thank them because they’d gone along with her putting some gadget camera by the hammer ring. So I got introduced, too.”

  “Did you tell her you’d already dreamed about her?”

  “I sure didn’t,” Glenn said with a laugh. “But I think she might have been able to tell.”

  Leni was distracted as she went through her meticulous notes and instructions for each camera crew at the Castle. Only Guzzi Lantschner, Walter Frentz, and Hans Ertl knew her well enough to notice, and each asked—in his own way—if anything was wrong. She had told them that the infighting about access and everything else, thinking all was set and then finding out that wasn’t the case, was testing her patience and endurance—and that was as true as far as it went.

  When he could approach her alone, Ertl asked, “I know what’s wrong. What’s his name?”

  “Stop it!”

  He did, but he patted her hand.

  After the meeting ended, Anatol still was lingering in the hall. His eyes asked the question. Again, Leni shook her head.

  22

  The Führer’s Box

  Tuesday, August 4

  When lanky American Helen Stephens won the 100 meters in a rout, finishing well ahead of Stella Walsh and Germany’s Käthe Krauss, Leni was by the broad jump pit with Walter Frentz, eagerly awaiting the final rounds of jumps in a gold-medal showdown between Jesse Owens and German hero Luz Long. Leni shook her head in regret, thinking of the terrific footage she could have gotten of the white American girl if officials hadn’t ordered her shooting trench at the end of the track filled in. All the other trenches remained, so she decided to accept one small defeat.

  Soon, an SS man she recognized as a member of Hitler’s security entourage hustled across the track. “Fraulein Riefenstahl,” he said forcefully, “I have been ordered to bring you to the Führer’s box. Now.”

  She thought: Here we go again. Giving the SS man a pained look, she asked, “Is this from Goebbels?”

  “No, Fraulein,” he said. “Herr Hess. The American woman sprint champion was about to meet with the Führer, and Herr Hess said she asked about you and seemed very interested in meeting you, too.”

  “I’ve seen her down here,” Leni said impatiently. “She’s seen me. I’ll be happy to introduce myself to her if she comes back to the field. But I shouldn’t leave here now—not with Long about to compete!”

  “Please! I have been told not to take no for an answer. It shouldn’t take long.”

  Leni shrugged at Frentz. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  With the SS man, she went up the private stairway to Hitler’s loge area and into the room behind the box. The Führer was in a rage, screaming at a photographer Leni didn’t recognize. He turned to his SS men. “Get him out of here! Destroy his film!”

  Stephens, a towel around her neck and tucked inside the top of her USA sweatshirt, watched, dumbfounded. Rudolf Hess, the deputy Führer, was with the American, and Leni wedged herself next to Albert Speer in the back of the room. The guards shoved the photographer through the door.

  “What’s this all about?” Leni asked Hitler’s architect.

  “He photographed the Führer and the American girl,” Speer said. “There weren’t supposed to be photographers in here.”

  Suddenly, as if the switch went back off, Hitler softened and smiled at Stephens, who still seemed confused. He spoke to her in a flurry of German words. “You are such a big, strong woman,” he said. “Blonde hair. Blue eyes. You should run for Germany!”

  Stephens turned to Hitler’s translator and listened. Then she responded, “Thank you, Mister . . . Chancellor. But I like America fine!”

  The stilted small-talk conversation continued, with the translations going back and forth. Hitler congratulated her on setting a world record. Helen giggled and told him records were made to be broken. He asked her what she thought of Berlin, and she said it was very clean and nice. Then, incredibly, Hitler asked if the tall American would like to come to visit him at Berchtesgaden—his Bavarian retreat—over the upcoming weekend.

  The American coach, apparently nonplused, explained that Helen still would be training for the Monday relay and needed to stay in Berlin. Helen thanked him for the offer. Hitler smiled, shrugged, reached out and pinched Helen’s rear end, turned and left the room. The runner looked surprised, not offended.

  Much of the tension seemed to leave the room with Hitler. Hess nodded at Leni, motioning her to meet with the runner. As Leni moved forward, she called out, “Miss Stephens . . .”

  The American turned and brightened. Leni introduced herself. “Oh, I know!” Stephens exclaimed, enthusiastically pumping her hand. “I’ve seen you on the field. Jesse said you were Mister Hitler’s favorite movie person and that I’d get to meet you if I won. He was right.”

  “Congratulations on your victory,” Leni said.

  “Am I going to be in your movie?” Stephens asked, wide-eyed.

  “Oh, I certainly think so,” Leni assured her, smiling. “You were very impressive.”

  Noticeably flattered, Helen said, “Thanks!”

  The woman American coach interjected: “Helen, you need to talk with the writers now.” She turned to Leni. “I hope you don’t
think that’s rude.”

  “Oh, no,” Leni said, hoping her relief wasn’t obvious. “I understand. I need to get back to my crew—and see if your Jesse can beat Luz Long!”

  Walter Wood sought out Glenn at the Village practice track and suggested heading to the stadium to catch the end of the day’s events.

  “You sure you want to go?” Glenn asked. “You need your rest for tomorrow.”

  Wood waved that off. “If I throw my lifetime best, I might crack the top ten,” he said.

  Gordon Dunn, Ken Carpenter, and Wood were the American entrants in the discus, set for the next day. Dunn, known to his teammates as “Slinger,” was the favorite, with Carpenter considered his top threat. Deciding there was a happy medium between not going to the stadium at all and hanging out there for hours, Glenn agreed to go. They wore slacks and USA sweaters, but not their sweat suits. At the stadium, they came out of the dressing room tunnel and walked around the outside of the track, and entered the athletes’ section of the stands.

  “Hey, decathlon man!”

  Glenn looked in the direction of the dignitaries’ boxes.

  “Decathlon man!”

  Thomas Wolfe was waving and smiling. The blonde German woman, the newspaper artist, was with him.

  “Come on up, decathlon man!”

  Glenn and Wood briefly debated whether they could get over the railing that set off the boxes from the athletes’ seats to join Wolfe and the woman.

  “What the hell,” Wood said. “If somebody stops us, they stop us.”

  Glenn and Wood took seats directly behind the novelist and the German woman. Glenn introduced Wood to Wolfe and Thea, and also shook hands with what turned out to be a couple of functionaries from the U.S. Embassy. These were Ambassador Dodd’s seats, Wolfe explained.

  Wood got Glenn’s attention, nodded at Wolfe and mouthed: “He’s drunk.”

  Glenn nodded. Standing and cheering as the runners came down the stretch, they watched Glenn Hardin win the 400-meter hurdles, with fellow American Joe Patterson finishing fourth.

  “Nice to know a Southern white boy can win for us!” Wolfe bellowed.

  As the 800-meter runners warmed up and the broad jump qualifiers—including Jesse Owens and fellow decathlon man Bob Clark—prepared for the final rounds of jumps, Wolfe turned.

  “So what you think, boys? Will Owens beat this German fellow?”

  “Absolutely,” Wood said.

  “I sure hope so,” Glenn said. “And John Woodruff is going to win the 800, too.”

  “He’s a Negro, too, right?” Wolfe asked. When Glenn nodded, the writer hooked his thumb toward Hitler’s loge, barely seventy-five feet above them. Hitler was seated, near the rail. “Not sure Mister Mein Kampf up there is going to like that,” Wolfe said.

  In the 800, the tall Woodruff weaved in and out of traffic. At one point, he had to virtually put on the brakes to drop back and maneuver out of a box of other runners. Despite running farther than anyone else because of his wanderings, the University of Pittsburgh student won the race, ahead of Mario Lanzi of Italy and Phil Edwards of Canada. The other Americans, Chuck Hornbostel and Harry Williamson, were fifth and sixth.

  “What a race!” Wolfe exclaimed. “Never seen a runner give ground like that and come back!”

  Wood and Glenn cheered almost as lustily for the quiet, but popular Woodruff. “You might have to put him in your next book!” Glenn teased Wolfe.

  “I might, at that,” Wolfe cheerfully conceded. As they sat down, the author asked. “So, Morris, how’s your reading going? Do I get a good review?”

  “So far, so good,” Glenn said.

  Wolfe was offended. “That’s all?” He gestured around the stadium. “Hell, Morris, one of the reasons I’m here is that probably half the people in this stadium have read my German editions. And you think that’s because they’re ‘good’?”

  “Okay . . . so far the book is great!”

  “That’s more like it.”

  As the broad jump drama unfolded, Wolfe loudly cheered each Owens jump. Glenn watched Leni scrambling around the infield, from cameraman to cameraman. After Owens uncorked a final jump of 26 feet, 5 inches, beating Long by 7 inches, Glenn and Wood cheered and clapped, but Wolfe outdid them. The author jumped up and roared: “Way to go, Jesse! Atta baby, Jesse! That’s the way to show them!” Several at the front of Hitler’s box—including the Führer himself—looked down, glaring. Wolfe turned and, with his hands still forming the megaphone, yelled in the direction of Hitler and his entourage: “They might be darkies, but they’re our darkies!”

  Naoto Tajima of Japan was third, and Bob Clark—despite a terrific leap of 25-2—finished sixth.

  Leni was shocked to see Long’s reaction to finishing second. He raised Owens’s arm overhead, saluting him as the champion, and embraced him. In the next few minutes on the infield, and openly as photographers—including Leni’s—snapped away, the two men lounged on the grass and cordially talked as if they had grown up in the same neighborhood, at one point huddling heads so close no prying ears could pick up the conversation. They also headed off the track, to the dressing room area, together, with Long taking the lead to make it arm-in-arm. Leni checked. It was hard to tell from this far away, but the Führer didn’t look to be paying attention.

  Leni thought: Maybe Luz Long knew that. Maybe he didn’t. Either way, this is not the smartest thing he has ever done, and now I understand why there are rumors that he is not enthusiastic about the cause.

  As it had all week, the spectators’ reaction surprised Leni, too. Mostly German, of course, they were enthusiastic about the success of Owens and the other American Negroes, cheering them and chanting “Yess-ee, Yess-ee” and “Ow-ens, Ow-ens” to honor the man who had won two gold medals and perhaps would win one or two more.

  She wondered if they would cheer Glenn Morris this way, too.

  A spirited conversation was in progress when Glenn and Walter Wood arrived in the dining room for a late snack, and to join what had become a nightly gathering of the American track athletes.

  “It was my fault,” Glenn Cunningham said ruefully. “I didn’t even think about making sure the women knew, too.”

  “No,” said Ralph Metcalfe, “none of us thought of it, either. Plus, she must have known what had gone on—and she still went up there. That’s her fault.”

  “You’re being a little unfair,” Jesse Owens said. “She’s a nice girl. How old is she? Eighteen? I really don’t think she thought she was doing anything wrong. If she heard anything about it, she probably thought we were talking about him congratulating winners in front of the crowd in his box—not in private.”

  Glenn Hardin, hours removed from winning a gold, said, “Hey, she came back down and was talking about it. She wasn’t trying to hide it. I don’t think she had any idea she wasn’t supposed to go up there.”

  Marty Glickman, red-faced even before he’d said a word, snapped, “But that’s the point. She didn’t know. But she should have.”

  “Well, I’m going to blame the women’s coaches and the Badgers,” sprinter Frank Wykoff said. “They knew the deal, too, and didn’t keep her out of trouble.”

  Hardin summed it up. “It’s all their fault,” he snapped. “Helen said Coach Boeckmann was with her the whole time.”

  There was a brief silence, so Glenn Morris jumped in. “Congratulations, Jesse—again!”

  “Thanks, Glenn,” Owens said. “It’ll be your turn soon.”

  “We’ll see,” Glenn said. He paused. “Sorry, but what are you guys talking about? Something with Helen Stephens?”

  Glenn Cunningham spoke softly. “She didn’t get the word that we agreed we weren’t going to go up to Hitler’s box . . . even if we were invited.”

  “She got invited,” said high jump gold medalist Corny Johnson. “She went. She even got his autograph!”

  Confused, Wood said, “I thought they told Hitler he either had to have all the winners up to the box—or none of
them.”

  Hardin said, “This wasn’t in the box. It’s like Jesse was saying. It wasn’t a ceremony. It was in a room behind it. Least that’s what Helen said when she came back down.”

  “What happened?” Glenn asked.

  “She said some German soldier came up to her and the coach after the ceremony and told her Hitler wanted to meet her,” Hardin said. “She even said she held them off and went and did the radio interviews first, and the Kraut was getting all nervous, like Hitler was going to have him shot if she didn’t show up.”

  “But she went?” Wood asked.

  “Sure as hell did,” said high jumper Dave Albritton.

  A guy Glenn didn’t recognize spoke up. “Can a swimmer say what he thinks?”

  “Sure,” said Cunningham. “By all means.”

  “Sounds like you trusted word of mouth on this—even getting to the women’s village,” he said. “And I think it’s reasonable to think there’s a difference between meeting him in his box in front of the world and meeting him in a private room in something that’s not a real ceremony. My God, guys, he is the head of a country. How often do we have chances to meet heads of countries?”

  “Jesus,” said Albritton. “Why don’t you just spit in our faces?”

  “I’m just saying what others might think,” the swimmer said.

  “I still think you’re making too much of this . . . at least about Helen,” Owens said as he got up and stretched. “She was pretty close to being the first to congratulate me yesterday after the 100 meters. Today, she wasn’t that far behind Luz Long. They said Hitler called Long to the back room, too, and I don’t blame him for going. And that’s why I’m going to meet him now in his building.”

  “You’re meeting the German?” Metcalfe asked incredulously. “You think they’ll let you in? What are you going to talk about . . . the Master Race?”

  Jesse waved dismissively as he started to the door.

  “Life,” he said. “Just life.” He stopped and turned. “Besides, I’ll say this again—for people who are supposed to hate us, these Germans are being a lot nicer to us than a lot of folks back home. I’ve signed more autographs here than I do at home. These people want to touch us wherever we go. They cheer us and they mean it. Some of the same people who wanted us to boycott the Olympics don’t want us to eat with them or stay in their hotels or, God forbid, go out with their daughters. Any of you guys thought about that?”