An up-to-the-minute “radio telephone” had been installed in the Macom, and Byrd broadcast his first greeting to the nation, complete with “word pictures” of his adventures. Oh, he had had adventures! Asked skeptically about the value to mankind of proving that south polar flight was feasible, a surprised Byrd countered, “Who knows? It was a hundred years or more before our own country was put to use after its discovery.”
The police band struck up “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny.” This distressed Byrd’s terrier Igloo, who howled at the boat whistles and the general cacophony. Perhaps, like some of the men from the expedition, Igloo was having trouble adjusting to all the hubbub after two years of tranquility on ice.
After a forecast of fine weather, it now threatened rain. At eleven thirty in the morning, a truck carrying a thousand umbrellas—a gift from a New York manufacturer looking for press—drove up to city hall, where five thousand city officials had been invited to witness the formal ceremony. Three umbrellas were given to the Misses Roon, Katherine, Mary, and Ann, maiden aunts of Mayor Jimmy Walker, who had arrived sensibly early and had already been shown to seats in the exclusive mayor’s box in the spectator stands. The well-loved Street Cleaning Department Band kept the growing crowd amused until the explorers arrived.
Farther south in the city, Byrd’s third tickertape parade had begun. The “pride of Richmond and glory of Virginia,” the thirty-two-member Richmond Light Infantry Blues, an all-black band in white duck trousers, launched into marching tunes at full blast, followed by the New York National Guard’s Seventy-First Regiment in full dress, and Richmond’s Sixteenth Infantry Battalion Band in its khakis. A paper snowstorm once again hit the Canyon of Heroes, the grey sky bleached with real Wall Street ticker, torn telephone directories, and adding-machine tape thrown through windows above. Billy rode in one of the cars of honor as the parade proceeded down lower Broadway.
Camera bulbs flashed before city hall at an honest moment of reunion between husband and prim wife, and a father greeting his long-neglected son and pigtailed daughters. Dickie, Evelyn, and Catherine danced with excitement. Daddy was home. (No mention was made of the whereabouts of the Byrds’ three-year-old daughter, Helen.)
World-famous soprano Anna Case sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Inventor Thomas Alva Edison had once used her atmospheric voice to see if people could tell the difference between recorded sound and the live thing.
As Billy and the other men were ushered into reserved seats, the man of the hour was welcomed onto the columned rear portico of city hall by official city welcomer Grover Whalen, who said to Byrd, somewhat unthinkingly, “You have here as magnificent a reception as Colonel Lindbergh received.” The praise for his rival smarted, and both knew it was not really true. As much attention as was being paid, nothing could ever top Lindbergh’s flabbergasting reception in 1927. Nothing ever will.
Whalen then called a “birthday boy” to the stage: forty-nine-year-old Mayor Walker, who hailed Byrd as “a great scientist and a still greater human being.” Chancellor Elmer Ellsworth Brown of New York University bestowed an honorary doctorate of engineering on the man, and each member of the expedition received the city’s Medal of Valor.
Then it was over. Crowds dispersed. A sixty-nine-year-old man attached to the Richmond Light Infantry Blues lay down on a bench and drifted into sleep after having marched in the heat. It took 478 men to sweep up seventy-five truckloads of torn paper, at a cost of $21,915. The parade had been gigantic and gaudy, and the next morning the New York Sun, more reliable than the paper of record (it wasn’t sponsoring the expedition), declared halfheartedly that it had been “fine enough.” It would have been impossible to live up to the hype.
• • •
But the festivities were nowhere near through. A grand luncheon was scheduled for two o’clock at the Advertising Club of New York at 23 Park Avenue. Byrd, still in his rear admiral uniform, rode with Mayor Walker in a Ford Model T limousine; the Ford Motor Company was an expedition sponsor, after all. Prisoners in the grey municipal jail on Centre Street, called the Tombs, waved as Byrd passed by, cheering from their cell windows when he waved back. The man who did the actual flying over the South Pole, Bernt Balchen, followed angrily in the car behind.
At the fancy afternoon meal, the exhausted rear admiral was given the highest medal from the American Geographical Society: the David Livingstone Gold. Not mentioned in the Times coverage the following day was that Charles Murphy, the club’s president, was Byrd’s favorite and best-paid ghostwriter.
Most of the Byrd party had not been invited to the event and were instead taken to the Biltmore to collect their accumulated mail, secretly grateful for even the briefest rest. New Yorkers like Billy could now spend a little time with their loved ones or catch a few hours’ sleep. Out-of-towners without funds or families crashed at the Seamen’s Church’s two New York hotels, home to scores of sailors without a ship. Seamen’s was (and still is) an Episcopalian-affiliated, partially charitable society that had already worked closely with Byrd by providing ditty bags and first aid kits filled with sewing tools and other useful supplies when his ships left New York Harbor in 1928. Now fifteen of Byrd’s party required room and board—not an easy ask, as the lodging houses were already full of mariners seeking refuge in increasingly hard times. The $1 rooms were given to expedition crew members for a heavily negotiated 75 cents, with each man accorded an allowance of $1.50 per day for meals until the celebrations ceased.
Billy, at this point, at least, did not need extra aid, although he had been handed exactly $100 for two years of work upon his official discharge. His parents found him after the parade; his beloved babcia pinched his cheeks once more and held him close.
Then it was back to the draining life of the publicly exalted. That evening, he was expected to attend his first formal dinner (of many) in the grand ballroom of the Hotel Astor in Times Square, an even bigger bash than the luncheon he’d missed, broadcast live by radio stations WOR, WABC, and WNBC. In a dinner coat borrowed from his father, Billy took his place—mercifully, Byrd’s expedition heroes were grouped together—at table A, seat 5. The lavish menu was a bounty of food the likes of which had not be seen in the iciest of continents, and would have been scandalous to serve even a year later as the economy fared ever worse.
Coupe of Melon Granada
* * *
Petite Marmite Mikado
* * *
Celery * Salted Nuts * Olives
Brook Troute Sauté Almandine with Cucumbers Grenobloise
* * *
Contre-Filet of Beef Chasseur
Fresh mushrooms Forestiere
Vegetables Bouquetiere
Poitrine of Capon in Jelly Nigey with Bouquet of Asparagus Riviera
* * *
Bombe Ambassadrice
Petits Fours
Friandises
* * *
Moka
* * *
Cigars
Cigarettes
Mineral Water
The “best” families of Virginia graced the room of a thousand, as well as a Who’s Who of New York. The hotel band played “Old Virginny” again (a tune everyone was getting damn sick of already, especially Byrd). Prohibition would not end for another three years, so a toast of ice water was made. Russell Owen, who secretly hated Byrd for trying to rewrite his Times copy, cheekily proposed raising a glass to Balchen. Byrd smiled big, maybe for show. The camaraderie was outwardly exquisite.
• • •
“There’s been a sixth successive reduction of bank rate from 3 cents to 2 1/2 percent.” The following day’s New York Sun tucked this worrisome economic news into the same page as its report on Byrd’s welcome. A few pages later, another ominous tidbit: the Ford Motor Company, a sponsor of the expedition, would close two plants in Detroit beginning July 12 until further notice, to force employees to take their vacations simultaneously. That same day, a thirty-seven-year-old Wall Street broker named Walter Werner shot himse
lf under the heart, blaming financial difficulties.
Byrd had time for only a brief kip after the reception. The Biltmore Hotel rose to the occasion, running an ad that the hero was asleep in his semipermanent home. “In Little America, they named their most comfortable shack the Biltmore,” the ad claimed. All the expedition sponsors wanted a piece of Byrd in his moment of glory. At least in the Antarctic, he had been away from this madness.
As for Billy, following a few hours in his second-story bedroom in Bayside, the nineteen-year-old had to pack again. All the expedition men were to board a midnight train out of Grand Central, arriving at eight thirty the next morning in Washington, DC. If they were annoyed to be put on the road so soon after having been reunited with their families, no one was going to miss a chance to be photographed with the president.
The “Byrd Men” faced another swarm of well-wishers at the capital’s Union Station. After shaking many hands, they trailed Byrd single file, waiting respectfully as their leader entered a White House limousine. Once he was off, they clambered onto three presidentially chartered busses headed to the stately Willard Hotel at 1401-09 Pennsylvania Avenue—just two blocks from the White House—where, by special request, the busloads of adventurers could get some actual rest.
Billy nearly pinched himself at the White House later that day. He had been there before—on a group tour in high school with Textile’s history club—but here he was among the guests of honor; a hero photographed with a sitting commander in chief. The group photo with President Herbert Hoover on the White House lawn would appear twice that week in the New York Times, in the daily edition and the weekend magazine. Billy was now a living legend—at least at his alma mater, where his former history club advisor, Mr. Fliegel, hung up the photo and invited him to address the entire school. He would do so, twice.
The expedition’s demanding Washington itinerary included a luncheon given by the National Geographic Society’s board of trustees and a tagalong with Byrd to Arlington Cemetery, where Billy watched silently as Byrd placed wreaths on the graves of Admiral Charles Wilkes, the first American to explore the Antarctic; Admiral Robert Peary, reportedly first to the geographic North Pole; and the desperately missed Floyd Bennett. Then they were off to a private screening of the Paramount twins’ documentary. Billy was startled to find that not every member of the expedition was listed in the program; the names of those who had in some way angered Byrd were simply not there. Thankfully, Billy’s loyalty had secured his inclusion.
The American heroes were not, however, awarded their Congressional Medals that day—a shame, as Billy had hoped to bring his home to his mother; a small token of thanks for forgiving him for stowing away. The medal was finally mailed his way an inexplicable fifteen months later, along with a heartfelt message from Byrd: “This is knighthood that your grateful countrymen have conferred upon you—the highest honor within their gift. This is a recognition that will carry your name on the pages of history.”
• • •
After a relentless, sledgehammering ad campaign, With Byrd at the South Pole opened June 20 at the Rialto Theatre on the corner of Broadway and Forty-Second Street. Naturally there was a rave review from the New York Times. “It’s a great picture,” declared Mordaunt “Freddy” Hall, the Times’s first regularly assigned film critic, “one that captures the eye from beginning to end, with a gripping climax.” The paper even ran an article by the two filmmakers on how they braved the elements at the bottom of the world.
Less expected praise came from Byrd’s most dogged critics, the cynics at the New Yorker, who lauded the Paramount twins’ cinematography but couldn’t resist gibing the expedition’s hero worship even when delivering compliments. Their own first regularly assigned film critic, John Chapin Mosher, wisecracked, “It must be noted of [Byrd] that never once in the course of the chronicle of his adventures does his expression for a moment alter.”
The British had long prized their significance in the history of Antarctic exploration, and perhaps this explains why their critics bordered on cruel when they reviewed the film in July. One typically jeering review ran in the London Times:
It is hard to believe that the South Pole can be vulgarized, but this has now been done and been done thoroughly. One would have supposed that the Antarctic plateau would have rejected the atmosphere of the studios; but Paramount has marvelously subdued it—split polysyllabic heroics over it, decorated it with sentimental ribbons, trodden it with captions, tickled it with humor, has supplied it with brass bands and flags and letters from home and photographs of the explorers’ children on the croquet lawns of Massachusetts—with everything except, by some unaccountable omission, “love interest”—has in brief, found it snow and left it slush.
Time magazine reported the ruffled reactions from across the pond with a bit of glee, and with a wink to readers as to how unsporting the Brits were. Jealous, even.
Still, the British did have a point: the documentary was mawkish. A song from the film that was (wrongly) expected to be a hit—by familiar Tin Pan Alley songwriting duo Irving Kahal and Sammy Fain, best known for the schmaltzy “You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me” and “Let a Smile be Your Umbrella”—included not-so-memorable lyrics such as these: “If pride can build a hero’s throne, the world is proud of you alone,” and “Like ships that brave a stormy wave, thru Virginia skies you’ve flown / The Voice of Fame shall sing your name in every dreamer’s poem.”
Conceived in a time of economic flush, the ambitious picture was released to a Depression-era audience for the price of ten cents or a quarter, depending on the seats. Paramount had so very much riding on the film—not least of which being pride—that With Byrd at the South Pole had continuous performances from eight thirty in the morning on; advertisements proclaimed the film “Superbly human with rare humor that only high daring could evoke!” But months of media bombardment had dulled national interest in Byrd and his expensive expedition, and while more than sixty million Americans still frequented the pictures, with the onset of hard times, they itched for stories closer to home. The more popular films during this era, even the comedies, were grounded in classlessness and social realism. (The Byrd documentary’s competition in cinemas was the romantic comedy True to the Navy, starring “It” girl Clara Bow as a lunch-counter girl who falls in love with a rough-and-tumble sailor.) While the film did not tank—there would always be Billy Gawronski types eager to support their idol in his every endeavor—box-office receipts were respectable but hardly exceptional.
The mostly silent film would nonetheless go on to win Joseph Rucker and Willard Van der Veer each an Academy Award for Best Cinematography, the first—and, to date, only—documentary so honored. Today the movie can be watched in its entirety on YouTube. Billy the stowaway does not officially appear by name, but he can be seen for brief seconds unloading supplies on ice and building an igloo.
• • •
Billy, back home in Bayside—dependent on his father for pocket cash, probably getting yelled at by his folks for leaving his room a mess—was almost a normal young man again. But every once in a while, he’d need a lift from his pop to be a guest of honor somewhere posh. The man on the street may have been starting to tire of the heroes, but formal dinners didn’t stop: one evening, a bash in the plush Hotel St. George in Brooklyn Heights; the next, a reception hosted by the Polish Democratic Club.
If there were an excessive number of events for Billy to attend, imagine Richard Byrd’s migraine: bogged down in luncheon after luncheon, one that served ice cream in the shape of South Pole penguins; another where he was introduced by a ventriloquist’s dummy.
At least the social engagements filled the men’s days. The Great Depression was still at its start; 1930 was several years away from the three major Dust Bowl storms that would devastate the agricultural heartland. Yet many of Byrd’s men struggled to find work. The academics fared best, with most returning to university life; but for the regular crew, any paying job was consid
ered a gift, from line chef to janitor. The shame of unemployment was too much for these men who had been household names. When they left for Antarctica in 1928, only 4 percent of the nation were out of work; now the number was almost 9 percent. One year more, and unemployment would reach double digits.
Not even a month after the expedition’s return, the Associated Press ran a story on aerial photographer Ash McKinley’s new deployment: to aid the noble volunteers desperately seeking work after demobilization. The kindly Captain Gustav Brown—still living downtown at the Seamen’s Institute, where Billy and other favorites would visit sometimes—let newspapers know he was looking to join a whaling mission. Several expedition members, including Billy, were said to want to get into the “flying game.” Even the world’s most famous Boy Scout, Paul Siple, was having trouble finding a part-time job to pay his way through three more years of college. (To save expenses, he would finish his degree in two.)
As the expedition’s remaining salaried administrative staff searched for paying work for the most loyal, the panicky men, happy to return favors, were positioned across the country to lecture at events where the documentary would be screened. (Byrd let his men know how pleased he was that they were promoting the film without salary.) McKinley helped Billy secure at least five such speaking engagements in July, including, on the last day of the month, a noon luncheon at the Oswego Kiwanis club upstate. Most of his lectures were arranged where he could travel by train in a few hours and at little expense.
The Stowaway Page 16
