The Vengeance of Rome

THIRTY-EIGHT

In the intervening weeks I saw nothing of Röhm. I received the occasional word via von Schirach, but the Nazi elite were completely absorbed in politics. I was desperately short of money and forced to borrow what I could. While I could not rely on Mrs Cornelius for ‘snow’, I was lucky in my acquaintance with Kitty, for she had unlimited supplies. But she was proving an exhausting mistress. She found my little place in Corneliusstrasse insufficiently comfortable, she said. She hated the area, too. Occasionally we would go back to Prince Freddy’s bizarre and elegant apartment, but I never felt at home there. Kitty apparently felt no jealousy towards Mrs Cornelius but knew nothing of Heckie. Kitty was familiar with every foible and perversion in the sexual almanac and would have suspected me of all kinds of obscenity. Finally, to placate her, I promised her I would soon have a new, more suitable flat.

As soon as Doctor Hugenberg had personally interviewed him in London, our Old Shatterhand finally arrived to join us. Desmond Reid was in fact an excellent version of just the tight-lipped, arrogant type of Englishman I described. He wore blazers and perfect flannels, an Ascot stock at his neck rather than a tie. His square-jawed good looks and pencil-thin moustache were typical of the contemporary English actor.

Reid had already made several films with Hitchcock in Germany and England. He had featured in a number of ’Sexton Blake’ serials as Blake’s arch-enemy, the albino Count Zenith. Indeed, I admired him in the movie version of The Affair of the Runaway Prince where he had interpreted the role of Blake’s most deadly opponent, who played the violin, smoked opium and took to crime to relieve his ennui. He also appeared in The Mystery of the Silent Death, Silken Threads and The Great Office Mystery, all of them two-reelers never quite achieving the same standard and later eclipsed by Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror, with a different actor playing Blake. A rapidly rising star, Desmond Reid had a classic profile and might have been a German of the higher type. Visually, he was a perfect ‘Surehand’, while his acting was adequate, as was his French and German.

We were introduced at Hugenberg’s party celebrating the re-election of President Hindenburg and the defeat of Adolf Hitler which had, by all accounts, sent the Führer into another of his retreats listening to Franz Lehar, reading Edgar Wallace, and no doubt exercising the dog whip he carried to impress Germans with his mastery of men.

Reid had just finished a job in Potsdam, where UfA had a large studio. He had played a cruel commissar in a film set against the background of the Russian Civil War, a historical nonsense, but Reid’s screen presence was unquestionable. For the sake of art, I was willing to enjoy a superficial friendship with him. Hugenberg also found him politically sympathetic, for though strongly pro-German, Reid was a great imperialist, a supporter of king and country. He thought the German war would never have been fought if the Kaiser hadn’t panicked at the socialist victories of 1914.

Hugenberg and Reid agreed energetically that the wedge driven through their great natural alliance by Edward VII’s flirtation with the French had thrown the world into chaos. Red Republicanism was the certain progeny of that bastard union arranged merely so the Prince of Wales should not lose the services of Parisian whores. For that he turned on his own German relatives. His own cousins and siblings. Later, Reid would become a famous correspondent for the Daily Mail and would frequently write articles in support of the Fascist cause.

Mussolini was Reid’s hero. The actor had known Pound, Fiorello and D’Annunzio. He had been with them in Trieste. They were all great romantics of the old school, he said. ‘Worthy to stand side by side with Marat or Browning.’ He spoke with warm admiration of those wild idealists whose actions had done so much to improve the morale of the Italian people.

By rights we should have been great friends, but there was some weakness in Reid I could not identify. He tended to avoid me, as if he guessed I could tell there was something fishy about him. I wondered if Reid were his real name. It also occurred to me that, despite his blond good looks, he might carry another secret. As Ludecke points out in his book, the worst kind of anti-Semite is that wretched creature the Halb-Jude, or even a full Jew who so hates himself he is more vitriolic in his expressions of disgust than any Rosenberg or Streicher.

My own understanding of the Jewish problem is, like Strasser’s, entirely rational. I have nothing against them as a people. I merely believe they thrive best in their own desert fiefdoms or the heightened atmosphere of stage, salon and studio! Just as my blood sings to the winds from the steppe and the roaring of the Dnepr, so must theirs long for souk and sand dune.

Reid was no fan of Goebbels, Göring or Hitler but we had a mutual acquaintance in Otto Strasser. He approved of the Strassers and of Röhm. He understood Röhm’s reputation as a swaggering adventurer was merely a persona the Stabschef adopted. At heart Röhm was an honourable member of the Reichswehr and wanted nothing more than to be reunited with the army he regarded as a mother and father. He was the right kind of Nazi, said Reid, basically a gentleman. ‘Those others, including Himmler, are gangsters with one solution for all problems.’ He drew his fingers across his throat. ‘Simple, effective, but bad economics. It would be foolish to deny a country the benefits which Jews can bring. Cromwell understood that. We should profit from the positive side, as in mathematics and music, but they should not be allowed disproportionate political influence.’ There should be citizenship requirements. An oath. Even in America, the cradle of liberty, Jews did not stand for Congress.

Reid had bought the English newspapers before he arrived in Munich and allowed me to glance through them. The first story I read in The Times caused me to gasp in horror. I had never hoped to read such a thing, but now, under the headline TRAGIC DEATH IN WEST END, I learned of the fall of Frau Oberhauser from a fourth-floor hotel window! My heart went out to her as a human being, but I must admit that the black shadow which had hung over me since Röhm had visited me last at Corneliusstrasse suddenly lifted. The paper spoke of her recent distress at the failure of Hitler to become Chancellor. There was a hint, in the English manner, that she had committed suicide.

I thought of Kitty, now an orphan, and wondered how she would take her mother’s death. And what of the boy who had been with her in London? Had his father come for him? The paper said nothing. In other circumstances I would have been at Kitty’s side as soon as possible, but I knew Prince Freddy had the means of comforting her.

I showed Reid the piece in the paper. I told him that I had known the lady and had once been of service to her in getting her out of Russia ahead of the Reds. Reid sympathised with me. Had she been depressed? I gathered, I said, that her ambitions had been thwarted lately. It was always the same with those Russians, Reid informed me. They were an emotional lot of buggers. All soul and no sense. Lenin’s rhetorical rubbish seduced them into Bolshevism, perhaps the most senseless political system ever devised and one of the cruellest. The whole country was run by Jews. That was what he meant when he talked about disproportionate influence! Control the Jews and there would be a Tsar back on the throne in weeks!

I wished I shared his optimism. He slapped me on the arm. ‘Cheer up, old man. Someone should point out to that chap Nietzsche that all his tosh sounds just fine in the abstract, but it doesn’t work out at all in real life. Hitler’s problem is he has no sense of the practical. How are you going to stop millions of Jews just by snapping your fingers? It can’t be done. As long as Jews are identified, we have no problem! It’s so much simpler than he makes it out to be.’

Doctor Hugenberg found these views reasonable. Jews should not be allowed disproportionate control of the media, either as producers or contributors. He agreed with me that landscape as well as race memory is in one’s blood. The forests and mountains of Germany were as natural to him as were jungles and rivers to an Amazon native.

Mr Mix of course was not with us, so I could not ask his opinion, but I was sure the same held true for the black race. The real abomination of slavery is that it uprooted the Negro from his natural habitat and put him down in a place where he could never feel at ease, never flourish. Place him in the Congo’s forests, for instance, and he becomes a different person. The same slouching, mumbling fellow one sees on a St Louis street corner transforms into the healthy, natural man Schweitzer so admired and wrote about. Transported to the Congo, American blacks would bring a level of civilisation which could only raise the region, as Doctor Schweitzer already hoped to do. I knew a number of idealistic young medics in Munich who spoke of joining Schweitzer. While most subsequently joined the SS, one man did go to Africa. His name was König. He died of dysentery within three months of taking up his post with Schweitzer. Doctoring, as Baldur von Schirach said, was a profession any man of sympathy and conscience might choose, just as lawyering was the careerist’s first choice.

During lulls in political life, Schirach again began to seek me out. That young man had grown a little estranged from the rest of his family, especially his sister, none of whom were great admirers of Hitler. He loved to talk with someone of genuine scientific imagination. I must say it gave me enormous pleasure to discuss my advanced ideas and the needs of the future with a fellow spirit who similarly brooded on the nature of technological progress.

Zoyea and I, meanwhile, continued our ‘romance’ with the Kino, under her father’s benevolent eye. Only when absent from the city itself did I abandon my Italians. Even when there was nothing to repair, they were pleased to see me. I revelled in the ambience and stuffed myself with their cooking. And, of course, I continued to indulge my little princess and became expertly familiar with the film careers of Art Accord, Jack Hoxie, Yakima Canutt, William S. Hart, J. B. Warner, Tom Mix, Ken Maynard and an entire posse of minor cowboy heroes. I saw my own films rather more often than I cared to. We went to triple features with titles like Branded a Bandit, Hell Hounds of the Plains, Blue Blazes Rawden, Behind Two Guns, The Thundering Herd, Ace of Cactus Range, Jesse James Under the Black Flag, Ranchers and Rascals, Wild Horse Mesa, Fighting Jack and Romance of the Wasteland. I remember those particular titles well. We saw them so many times I could no doubt repeat the captions word for word!

I consoled myself that I would be far more familiar with the genre when I came to play my own part. When making the Masked Buckaroo films, I was unfamiliar with the other cowboy pictures produced in such numbers. I knew many of these heroes to speak to but did not know why they were heroes. Now I saw familiar face upon familiar face, which deeply impressed my Zoyea.

In America the Western was already fading in popularity, not reviving until the singing cowboy created an even stranger version of the myth. But Westerns remained the German favourites.

I loved the boisterous version of The Taming of the Shrew with Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Their first talker together was a great success. Unfortunately the real-life marriage of the nation’s sweetheart and the nation’s dashing hero was rumoured to be over, Mary having discovered evidence of Jewish blood in ‘Doug’s’ recent past! Suffice to say Fairbanks was not his original name.

Good as they were in their own engaging way, few American films contained the spirit of Karl May I knew ours would have a quality even the best of Tom Mix’s films lacked — a philosophical depth and moral dimension on a different level entirely.

For a while I lost touch with Kitty. She disappeared from Munich as mysteriously as she had appeared. I heard she and Prince Freddy were back in Berlin. I took two short trips to Berlin by train but made only desultory attempts to contact them. At that stage in my life I was rather glad to have some distance between us. I was fairly sure how Doctor Hugenberg would view our association.

I kept to myself in Berlin. I was unimpressed by a city seeming to embody the most grandiose and vulgar characteristics of Chicago and Communist Moscow. A mélange of beaux-arts classicism and municipal functionalism, it reminded me of a vast Prussian barracks. The studio complex, a short car ride from the city, was bigger than anything I had seen in Hollywood. To demonstrate how deep Jewish culture ran in Berlin, the studio complex was called Neubabelsberg, in honour of the famous Russian low-life writer Isaac Babel who came there once from Paris. I met him casually, and he reminded me of someone. I asked him if he knew Odessa. He had spent some little time there, he said. He had ridden with the Red Cossacks. UfA had some idea of employing him as a scriptwriter.

UfA had made most of the famous German films of the previous fifteen years. Neubabelsberg film city was UfA’s pride and was now equipped with a superb sound system, as I knew from films like Der Kongress tanzt and Walzerparadies.

Here I first met Doctor Goebbels in Hugenberg’s private office. He was courting Alfred Hugenberg. The good opinion of my employer’s press and newsreels were crucial to the NSDAP cause. Because Hugenberg was a prominent Catholic he could therefore help them gain the blessing of the Church. In spite of his ugliness, Goebbels had a certain charm. I soon found myself telling him how I had seen him speak in Munich, how impressed I had been by what he had to say.

He had a way of taking you by the elbow and seeming to draw you into his confidence. Certain kinds of women were fascinated by him. Many years later Jack Trevor told me his technique for picking up women. He cultivated an interesting disease or wound. Women were always attracted to medical conditions. Far from being a handicap, Goebbels’s twisted foot was a sexual asset! It always struck me as odd that he should be such an enthusiast for euthanasia, a sign, no doubt, of his euphoric retreat from reality. This was a characteristic in almost all the Nazis after 1934. The world began to slip out of their control almost as soon as they thought they had it. That was why they had to demonstrate control more and more, to prove their power to themselves. That mindset simplifies the world in order to understand it, thereby understanding less and less. By use of force they can for a time prove their version of the world. As the world refuses to comply, throwing up more and more surprises, they are forced to grow increasingly violent to sustain their ‘truth’.

Such men rarely understand how large a part luck has played in their careers. That failing becomes almost every eminent man’s Achilles heel.

I think Hitler realised his luck. He was a natural chancer, as Mr Mix put it, the ultimate opportunist, like a flea who lies dormant until a lucky wind or a useful rat comes by. Then he jumps, hoping for the best. Hitler remained in bed, reading light novels, listening to operetta on the gramophone, until his instincts recognised an opportunity. A chameleon, he would say anything, take any position, certain that the Führer Principle or blind instinct directed his changes of approach. A beautifully simple system needed a beautifully complex man like Hitler to run it. Terrified by his own complexes, Hitler disguised his fear well in company. ‘That ‘Itler could seduce ther Archbishop o’ Canterbury, slimy bugger. Ol’ Gobbles is in love wiv ‘im,’ thought Mrs Cornelius.

Doctor Goebbels had no idea, of course, that I was familiar with his leader’s foibles. Like a loyal, half-despairing wife, he retailed much gossip with a kind of mocking admiration of Hitler. This made a fellow conspirator of you, drawing you in until you were involved in supporting Hitler in spite of knowing the reality.

‘The Little Doctor’ had been talking to Schirach about me. He knew I had invented the famous Violet Ray of Kiev. Some thought that story a myth, he said slyly. I laughed. A few more watts and we should have wiped out the Reds in minutes. The power station was the first thing they hit. We were overwhelmed. While admiring my acting, Goebbels was especially interested in my engineering projects. He and Göring were great champions of air travel. Again I glimpsed a golden future for myself. I was the twentieth-century Leonardo, as familiar with the arts as I was skilled in the sciences. Goebbels clapped me on the shoulder. Men like me were flocking to Berlin because they sensed their bold ideas might at last become reality. ‘I’m so glad you’re one of us.’

He must have had my background checked out, discovering not only my political stance but my ancestry. I had been circumcised for clinical reasons but had to explain, for simplification’s sake, how I had been forced to convert to Islam by the Tuareg in the Sahara. My enforced captivity by the Mussulman and his imposition on me of his religion and its practices was, for some reason, a more acceptable explanation than the simple truth. At least I did not have to mention my dastardly father forcing his scientific notions on me. No wonder I have been suspicious of abstraction and perverse idealism all my life! I prefer actions, not words, to speak for me!

In spite of Goebbels’s invitation to his parties, I did not engage with Berlin’s infamous demi-monde. I had been kept far too busy by Munich’s. My Spartan visits to the capital helped demonstrate my conservative values to Doctor Hugenberg, who became less and less suspicious of me and much happier about leaving Mrs Cornelius in my company. I sensed my ambitions coming to fruition, even by such a strange route. The cinema had always been good to me. Ultimately it would lead me back to my true destiny. I remained baffled about who had been responsible for blocking those same ambitions in Italy! Happily, I had never turned over to Il Duce the full details of my inventions.

As a press tycoon, Doctor Hugenberg’s friendship also promised to stand me in good stead. As I built up my career again, I intended to renew my acquaintance with Goebbels and Göring. Perhaps after a decent passage of time, I might even show my ideas to Hitler. Hitler, however, was not yet in full control of Germany. Few these days understand how he worked his way through the democratic system, taking full advantage of the German constitution, to gain what he wanted. If the German people had not been encouraged to fear interference from outside, they would never have given him so much power.

The atmosphere of intrigue in Berlin was palpable. I myself again felt I was being followed. At least once in Leipziger Platz I saw Brodmann in a small cafe drinking a Berliner Weisse mit Schuss. Munich had by now become my natural home. I was relieved to learn I would not have to spend too much time in the capital.

Doctor Hugenberg announced that he had decided to produce the ‘Shatterhand’ series himself, since he had promised May’s heirs faithful renditions. I was delighted he decided it was more economical to base production at the Munich studio. I would not have to run the risk of encountering old, unwelcome faces. Of course Frau Oberhauser was no longer a threat, but I could not help wondering about that child of hers. How old was he now? How much might she have told him? Did he, for instance, believe that I was his father? Before I left Berlin I did try to find Kitty again, but she and Prince Freddy were not easy to contact. Many had heard of them. Few had met them. I did not look too hard, fearing the news would get back to Hugenberg. But I longed to know if the boy had gone to other relatives or was now with his half-sister.

Hugenberg explained again how Munich was closer to where he planned to film our outdoor scenes and location shots. The Croatian Alps would stand in for the rocks and rivers of Winnetou’s ‘Sacred Land’.

Old Shatterhand, exploring the unmapped West, would come upon this Sacred Land, defended by the Red Gentleman, and at first they would clash. Then Shatterhand would begin to understand Winnetou’s values and ride side by side with him to evict the alien invaders, sending them back to the East where they came from. The films would have a solid budget, but on no account were they to overrun it. If a film went beyond budget, the extra money needed would be taken from the next film’s budget, thus encouraging discipline in actors and directors.

Increasingly, von Schirach visited me there in Corneliusstrasse. Sometimes I stayed overnight with the Fraus but generally I slept in my little apartment. Seryozha was forever offering to put me up in his hotel suite, but I knew what that would lead to. To be honest, I was not really looking forward to travelling with him. He had become part of the film team along with Mr Mix. Mrs Cornelius had insisted on it. She was not one to leave old friends behind.

Our location work would be something of a timely vacation. Mrs Cornelius was less enthusiastic. Croatia was a backward country. She was afraid she would have to ‘rough it’.

The day of departure arrived. Doctor Hugenberg’s people determined our locations, booked our lodgings in Zagreb and Split and then wished us ‘bon voyage’. Taking the train from Nice, our director would join us in a few days.

On that beautiful May morning shortly before I was due to leave Corneliusstrasse, suitcase in hand, I received a note in the mail from Kitty in Berlin. She was coming back to Munich and looked forward to seeing me. I was even gladder to be leaving. Some sense of gathering darkness was now associated with that young lady. I remained uneasy about the circumstances of her mother’s death and still wondered how much she had told the boy. At the station I joined the rest of the party. Mrs Cornelius had also had a letter to say Doctor Hugenberg would come as soon as possible. He was dealing with yet another government crisis. Hugenberg’s Reichstag duties, the unstable nature of the government together with the Berlin elections, required more of his attention than he had estimated.

Mrs Cornelius was in two minds whether we should board the train, but Reid persuaded her. Hugenberg had had the first three scripts drafted. We had gone through them in a rough rehearsal. With the May company’s agreement, one or two modernisations and romantic love elements had been added to give them the wider appeal to the American market. Hugenberg would be with us in a few days. I was inclined to agree with Mrs Cornelius’s reservations, especially since the love interest between her and Reid was not in the original books. Hugenberg had reminded me that the films could be pointers to the books whose sales were bound to rise. Nothing a film did would alter the book!

In May 1932 the weather was glorious. Hawthorn blossomed everywhere. Daffodils and wild flowers bloomed as the snow melted on the mountains’ lower slopes. Suddenly everything was brilliant green. The train journey from Vienna to the warm, glowing stone of timeless Zagreb was delightful, with sparkling rivers and stately mountains on all sides, the countryside growing steadily more magnificent and wild as we entered a world where the battle between Islam and Christendom was still undecided, though peace of a kind reigned in the new federal kingdom of Yugo-Slavia.

A poor country, Croatia was generally unspoiled. Gypsies in brilliant traditional costumes washed their clothes in the rivers, waving as our train passed. Peasants wore elaborately embroidered blouses, trousers, skirts and boots. Many had a slightly Turkish cast which distressed me until I realised how long this region had been polluted with Ottoman decadence. They would make excellent ‘extras’ when hordes of Indians were required!

All other considerations aside, the Dinaric Alps, and especially the area known as ‘the Devil’s Garden’, was going to be a perfect location for our films. The snow still lay on the picturesque Croatian peaks. I looked forward to seeing the local beauty spots, the famous lakes and cascades. These were what had first attracted Doctor Hugenberg when he came here as a young man during his ‘wandering days’, as he called them. In 1932 the area was still mainly known only to hikers and climbers.

While we waited for our director, we were based in Zagreb, a medieval German town in everything but name, with much of the charm of Nuremberg but on a more human scale. The citizens were delighted to entertain international celebrity. They spoke perfect German which made everything easier for us. The old-fashioned town bore only a few signs of twentieth-century improvements. In atmosphere it reminded me of the prosperous country centres of my native Ukraine. I was now in fact closer to Odessa than Berlin!

Croats were often inclined to deny they were Slavs. The middle class all spoke German and disparaged their Slavic peasants. They and the Germans enjoyed a common culture. The Mayor and all his officials turned out to greet us, giving us free meals in admittedly unexceptional restaurants and asking us to sign menus and pose for photographs. Mr Mix was of considerable interest to them, as most had never seen a Negro. They were delighted when, good-heartedly, he entertained them on his banjo. They called him ‘Uncle Tom’ perfectly innocently, after the character made famous by Louella May Alcott.

With the habits of professionals, we eased ourselves into our work. To look at the glories of the scenery where we would be filming our outdoor shots, we were taken by local trains, carts, bumpy charabancs and even, over unmade roads, by sedan chairs, escorted by a variety of Croatian ‘characters’, every one of whom had a different favourite place they insisted on us viewing. Poor land supported a few goats, but other parts were dramatically beautiful, with waterfalls and deep turquoise pools formed by local geological phenomena. Sometimes our explorations required us to travel by horseback or on donkeys. Mrs Cornelius made two such journeys before announcing she would be quite happy to agree with whatever scenery we selected. Filming was going to be hard enough when it started. Only then would she be prepared to sit on a horse all day. She said she hadn’t been bounced about so much since she was with that Persian bloke. ‘Builds yer calf muscles, Ive, but it’s more like physical jerks than a bit o’ the ol’ wotsit.’ All we were waiting for now was our mysterious director Peter Saxon, supposedly on his way from the South of France. He had decided to take the Orient Express as far as Budapest and change there. He sounded like another of that languid English breed to me. I prayed he would do nothing to harm our project.

He did not arrive, in fact, for two weeks, by which time we were all word-perfect and ready for the microphone and the camera. Perhaps Mr Saxon planned his delay?

Mr Mix and I went to meet our director at the train in Zagreb. Any deception ‘Mr Saxon’ might have hoped to maintain was immediately lost. As the few passengers disembarked, one descending the steps was immediately recognised by Mr Mix. With a huge welcoming grin he sprang forward. ‘Howdy, Mister Rex!’

Rex Ingram stood there, elegant in his evidently American camel-hair coat. His wide-brimmed soft hat in one hand, a cigarette in the other, he smiled broadly and shook his head as if telling himself he had been a fool to try anything on! He remembered me when I reminded him where we had met in Beverly Hills. He spoke of Mucker Hever and his recent death in Italy. I had not heard. An aeroplane accident, apparently, with a young woman. His parachute had failed to open, and he had disappeared into the Mediterranean. I was Christian enough not to mention that the man had received his just deserts.

Before we rejoined our party at the hotel, Ingram asked us a favour. ‘If it’s no skin off your nose, boys, would you mind keeping it buttoned about this? It doesn’t suit me for anyone to know who I am. Doctor H is in on it, of course, but I made it a condition he doesn’t tell his press people.’ Ingram assured me that he had long since forsworn the decadent liberalism of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and even wondered if he had not gone too far in the tango scene. Had he, inadvertently, precipitated Valentino’s tragically early death? He remarked on my resemblance to ‘that poor little wop’.

We were only too pleased to share the great director’s secret and spent the ride back to the hotel talking about old times and agreeing what stiff, serious devils the Krauts were. He was rather relieved to hear Hugenberg had been delayed as he would have a chance to work without looking over his shoulder all the time.

Ingram was sick of himself, he said, after his last picture. Nothing had worked out. Mr Mix knew what a lousy movie it had been. The director couldn’t believe his own crassness in trying it. As a result he was seriously short of dough and needed some fast, easy work which would give him experience with sound. Otherwise he might have to go back to Los Angeles and earn his living painting movie posters. We assured him he would have our very best performances and we would make sure our fellow actors offered the same! Both of us knew the film was in safe hands with ‘Peter Saxon’. (As ‘Peter Saxon’, of course, Ingram would build another reputation as a novelist. He led a productive life and returned to Los Angeles where he died.)

A personable Irishman, Ingram immediately won our goodwill. He had taken the trouble to read the ‘Shatterhand’ series in their French translations. Indeed, his pronunciation of the names gave them their own charming sound. I found a little bit of his Franco-Irish lilt creeping into my own major soliloquies.

In Winnetou: Der Rote Gentleman, I extolled the virtues of the natural life and the open air while Desmond Reid learned the lore of the West at my side and fell in love with my adopted sister Nosha Tishi, who was actually the only white survivor of a Kiowa raid which killed her parents. She had been rescued by Winnetou’s father and raised as his own daughter until she ran away to find herself and become, in the course of time, White Queen of the Kakatanawa Apache. This last was an Ingram touch. He said that an American audience could not accept a love interest between a white man and an Indian, unless she was aristocracy and really white.

Ingram’s next act was to change the names of Sam Hawkens, Dick Stone and Will Parker to Davy Crockett, Kit Carson and Calamity Jane, names which would mean more to Americans. We should note that Old Shatterhand’s rifle was named Henry, after the famous buffalo gun. Creighton had no problem with his new name, though he was not the Crockett later reinvented by Disney’s Fess Porker, a smooth-faced Valley boy who would have looked better advertising hair oil. Carson, too, was more hirsute than he is nowadays depicted, and Calamity Jane was a buxom local character actress who specialised in playing comic parts. Her oddly accented English made her even funnier. Since she had an unpronounceable native name, Ingram rechristened her Bessie Bunter. Plump and content as a pumpkin, Bessie appeared on the screen under that name. She played the comic love interest against the serious romantic story of Mrs Cornelius’s unspoken love for Old Shatterhand. Kit and Davy became in Ingram’s expert hands a kind of Laurel and Hardy in identical coonskin hats, forever getting into hilarious scrapes, both rivals for the favours of Calamity Jane. He convinced us this was a necessary element in any successful adventure film. For a while he toyed with putting Bessy in blackface to play against Mr Mix, but her make-up somehow clashed with her accent. Mr Mix had to be content with a smaller part as the funny cook.

So that summer, while the NSDAP made wonderful gains across the country and Hitler became a name on everyone’s lips, we all moved down to the Dalmatian coast and the fairy-tale town of Split, with its views over the Mediterranean. Dr Hugenberg had still not joined us, but telegrams arrived regularly. The political situation demanded his full attention.

In Split we put up by the station at the Bellevue, a popular five-star hotel only a short walk from Diocletian’s Palace. Now a bizarre quarter of its own, its rooms and corridors had been added to over the centuries until the entire complex was a teaming warren of resident families and bawling merchants. Founding the settlement when he had divided the empire into three, Diocletian retired here not far from where he was born. As he sat dreaming in his vast palace, the empire broke into warring factions. In Rome his own daughter was despoiled and destroyed and the true Church exiled to Byzantium. In a fit of conscience, knowing that he had set the scene for centuries of conflict, that his own failure of responsibility would mean Chaos descending like a black fire upon Europe, Diocletian took poison not a quarter of a mile from our hotel. Rex Ingram was intrigued by the story. He started to make notes for a script and planned to talk Hugenberg into financing another film once the Winnetou pictures were in the can.

Split would be the base from which we would shoot our location scenes for Winnetou: The Red Gentleman and two planned sequels. Hugenberg saw no point in spending money on a similar trip for every movie. The rest of the films would be made either in the studio or in closer Bavarian locations where the German Alps could substitute for the Dinaric Alps, in turn substituting for the Texas Mountains. Split, while scarcely more convenient than Zagreb, had the advantage of good hotels, decent restaurants and fresh sea breezes. When we were not filming, we found it extremely easy to relax there. Ingram, Reid and myself spent several happy evenings in the company of the youngest of the city’s rather attractive whores. But gradually fun turned into obsession as Ingram began to display iron control of his camera, which needed little sound work in these scenes. All the dubbing would be done in the Berlin studios, which had the most advanced sound effects equipment.

The movie we eventually shot starred Desmond Reid as the greenhorn ‘Old Shatterhand’, Gloria Cornish as Nosha Tishi, Winnetou’s adopted sister (and actually the Baroness Henrietta Stark), Lon Creighton as Davy Crockett and Seryozha stained a dark red and in full war paint as Winnetou’s Kiowa enemy, Chief Tangua, who also becomes Old Shatterhand’s enemy. Thankfully, Seryozha’s vanity still gave him a muscular appearance. Stripped and with his hand movements restricted, he was perfect for his part. Even Mr Mix, Ol’ Shine, the comical Negro cook, made his role into a substantial one.

In real life Seryozha also doubled as our SS guardian angel, having been given the authority by Himmler. Heaven help us, I thought, if he were called upon to use a real revolver in our defence! With luck he would be the first to be shot!

The second film was to be called Winnetou: Prince of the Sacred Land. The same character actors continued their ongoing subplots, but now Winnetou, Old Shatterhand and his beloved Nosha Tishi must face more Eastern invaders, rascally speculators whipping up trouble among the Kiowa and Kakatanawa in the hope of starting an Indian war which would bring the army in and allow them to steal Winnetou’s traditional tribal homelands. By the end of the film our band of brothers, standing side by side, had driven out the Eastern invaders, shown them for the scheming crooks they were and reclaimed their whole tribal homeland. Something about this story struck a deep chord in my soul. I gave what were without doubt my greatest performances as the philosophical Apache warrior, whose simple words carry profound wisdom. Here was the epitome of the natural man, the soldier-poet of the plains, a samurai of the rocky deserts. Through all his vicissitudes, you were constantly aware that Winnetou was the superior human being.

At Nuremberg Doctor Hugenberg was later to suffer accusations of racism. Evidence was given in his favour, however, that he had encouraged his company to depict a Red Indian as an example to young German manhood! A strange and complicated form of racism, I think! Similarly there was not a hint of caricature in the depiction of Ol’ Shine. The Germans had no tradition of casting darkies in demeaning roles.

What so few people seem to understand is that those who warned of the Jewish threat were not racists. They had nothing against the Turks or the Japanese. Why should they have? The Turks and the Japanese had not taken over their culture and their financial institutions, sending a generation to die in the trenches in order to line its own pockets. Mr Kamitami had not changed his name to Mr Campion, and Mr Atatürk was not demanding that we call him Mr Atkins. I am not an anti-Semite - I am an anti-hypocrite!

By July we had completed most of our location work. The weather was becoming too hot to work. Doctor Hugenberg had failed to join us. We shot some interiors in Split and the villages of the hinterland and then took the train back to Zagreb and from there via Vienna to Munich where we immediately began the sound scenes. Many of these were set against subtle back projections of waterfalls, forests and scrubland, so that while the camera itself had little movement, there was always action in the backgrounds, themselves often reflecting the moods of the characters. Hugenberg, making a dashing visit down to Bavaria, was delighted. Ingram was a master of layered visual narrative and silent meaning. Many of his highly developed skills were now useless to him, yet he did his best and it was wonderful to see him work. I began to entertain thoughts of directing my own film one day. This, of course, led me to consider a new kind of projector and camera, and my brain raced off along another inventive road!

As soon as I was back in Munich I went to the market. I shook hands with a rather gloomy Signor Frau. Zoyea was delighted to see me and pouted that I no longer loved her. To prove it, of course, we must go to see the latest Tim McCoy and Buck Jones as soon as possible!

I found a note in my Corneliusstrasse rooms. Kitty had come and gone from Munich and now returned again, staying at Prince Freddy’s apartment. The Hungarian was at the moment, she said, in the Middle East. Some business interest, she thought. So we had the exotic flat and its stores of stimulants to ourselves since Prince Freddy had given her freedom to use whatever was his and do whatever she liked. At that stage in my life, relaxed and no longer feeling dogged by fate and my enemies, I was glad to see her. Since she said nothing of the boy, I asked nothing. Clearly the little chap was in good hands.

Kitty and I enjoyed some extraordinary parties which, after a week or two, I was forced to abandon. Work and duty called. The day’s shooting schedule now began at seven in the morning. To keep my concentration I drew more frequently on Prince Freddy’s first-quality cocaine.

Our group acted excellently together now, functioning as a near perfect team, save that Seryozha had to be replaced in close-up. He spoke every language with a sibilant Russian accent. Although he was given very little dialogue, he had one or two fairly important speeches, so Hans Greisenbach became his substitute. Greisenbach turned out to be a member of the SA and a colleague of Seryozha’s. He told me the SA were not being properly paid. While the men had every faith in Röhm, they were growing impatient, wanting to take with force what Hitler insisted on winning through the ballot box. They were giving Hitler every chance to deliver but, if he couldn’t they would transfer their loyalty to new leaders. Strasser and Röhm were a better alternative anyway, declared Greisenbach. The power of the SA was the power of the National Socialist movement. Even at that early stage I foresaw the fault lines which would result in a terrible martyrdom.