Was there ever a good communist? Yes. Remembering Sterling Hayden on his birthday
An iconic scene in film history, the turning point in THE GODFATHER when Michael shoots the corrupt cop McCluskey played by Sterling Hayden. He'd been shot at before.
Remembering Sterling Hayden on his birthday. You remember him from Dr. Strangelove, The Godfather, Suddenly! and many other great films. But this is what has been hidden from you. During WW 2 Sterling was in Intelligence and there was a standing order by FDR and the Truman that the military not help the Jewish refugees from Germany. Under threat of a court martial and jail sentence and under fire by Germans, Sterling saved hundreds of Jews and tricked the military. This is how he did it. Now at last, the truth can be told.
Christmas of 1943 John Hamilton landed on a Yugoslav Island on a broken down motorboat right in the midst of a German attack.
John Hamilton was Sterling's spy name.
He was bringing weapons and recon Intel to the communist partisans fighting the Germans and was to report on the strength, size and location of the German troops.
He landed on the island of Korcula but someone had tipped off the Germans. The Germans had set an ambush.
He sat talking to his driver as gunfire tore through the driver. "John Hamilton" leapt from the car along with others and took off as gunshots rang out around them.
This was no movie, this was real life.
How had Sterling Hayden, a Hollywood star, ended up being shot at on an island off Yugoslavia?
Hired to work on his first movie he was excited. Not because he was in a movie, he could care less. Because at the $600 he was being paid a month he knew he could buy one of the best ships within 2 years. ( $600 had the buying power of $10,347.09 today). However, he was about to have the shock of his life.
On the set, a crew member brought him a copy of THE DAILY WORKER, the newspaper of the Communist Party USA. In 1940 Communists supported Hitler and proclaimed him to be a "new form of socialism" and his peace pact with Stalin to be the antidote to the "imperialism" of FDR and Churchill. ( In Germany the Communist Party helped identify Jews and many reds joined the Nazi movement during the peace pact period).
Hayden was in shock. Stunned. He was not the only one however who was shocked. The star of the film, Madeleine Carroll sat in her dressing room horrified. She had been approached by American actors who supported the Hitler - Stalin Peace Pact and could not believe they were telling her what a great socialist leader Hitler was and that his economic miracle in Germany proved socialism worked. Why was she horrified? She was a British actress. London was being bombed.
The Screenwriters had formed an alliance with the notorious pro- Hitler German American Bund group and were carrying out sabotage and fake strikes at defense plants, using connections at the longshoremen's union on the West Coast to report on U.S. military shipments and to try and sabotage as many as possible. (The real reason communists would derail hearings - they did not want this past revealed. Better to go to jail for a year for perjury for not answering if they were communists or not, than to face the electric chair for their actions before the U.S. entered the war.)
Carroll's sister had been killed in bombing attacks on London, and she did not want to hear about what a great socialist leader Hitler was and why she should join "the resistance" to FDR and Churchill.
She was from another country. He had almost no acting experience, so they were both drawn together in a friendship based on being strangers in a strange land. Sterling was the first person she met in Hollywood who did not support Hitler and Stalin. They soon fell in love.
They both made a pledge. They would put fighting the Hitler - Stalin alliance and the "resistance" with everything they had. Sterling abandoned his dream of owning a ship and before we entered the war, he walked out on his contract after just 2 films when he travelled to England to become a secret agent. Carroll went with him, because so many children were becoming orphans in London she wanted to help take care of them.
Sterling Hayden had gone out drinking with Colonel William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan soon to head the OSS (precursor to the CIA) and Sterling again broke all the rules - without military training or experience he talked Donovan into letting him go to spy school in England. He was the only American before the war allowed to do this.
However, Hayden broke his ankle while in training and was bedridden. Carroll married him in secret on Valentine's Day at his hospital bedside. Although men during this period could marry younger women and raise no eyebrows ( Bogart was 50 when he married Lauren Bacall who was barely 21. No one cared), a older woman marrying a younger man was considered shocking ( she was 10 years older than him).
Donovan talked Hayden into joining the Navy but the Navy wouldn't let him join as a Lieutenant so he dropped that idea. But with a draft coming, what could he do? Once again, he thought outside the box.
Carroll put up the money for him to buy the Paramount Pictures schooner SPINNEY and he offered to ferry cargo into dangerous waters.
This was how he ended up in Yugoslavia.
On the islands Jews were hiding from Germans. He got together 4 military officers and asked permission to ferry the Jews to safe regions, but to his shock was ordered not to. FDR had ordered all American troops to not "waste time" saving Jews, bombing German railroads leading to concentration camps ( all other tracks were bombed) and not to get involved with Jewish refugees at all.
Hayden's faith in his own country was shattered. He began to question everything he believed, but again, he also thought outside the box.
He and the 4 officers began secretly transporting Jewish families to safety. When asked what he was doing, he could just say it was classified, that he was in charge of spy operations and therefore not to be questioned, nor were the 4 officers helping. He found a loophole that allowed him to save many lives against the wishes of the President, military and direct orders. He had used their own bureaucratic rules against them.
But he also saw something else. He saw Tito's partisan guerillas die to protect his ship and human cargo, often directing German fire on themselves so that he could get through.
He began drinking with them, and decided he liked their form of socialism better than Stalin's or Hitler's. He would never forget those who died so that he and entire families could be saved.
He became friends with Tito and that friendship would last his entire life.
(Photo: Sterling Hayden with Peter Sellers in DR. STRANGELOVE)
In 1945 Sterling Hayden left the service and reunited with his wife whom he hadn't seen in years. They had little in common, and soon divorced though they remained friends.
But Hayden did not forget the communists in America who had supported Hitler and sabotaged the war effort. He volunteered to speak to the House Of Unamerican Activities and name them.
What he couldn't know was that Democrats heading the committee did not want the public to know how infiltrated the government had been under FDR and Truman, they met behind closed doors and did not act on any information he told them.
This made him cynical about the hearings. He determined they were in fact being used to hide something, though he never figured out what they were hiding. Their own collusion with the enemies of America and their incompetence at dealing with spies.
Hayden spent the rest of his life on water, coming to do a film to get enough money to go back to the water.
He was awarded the Silver Star in secret, and because his testimony didn't result in anyone in Hollywood being arrested, Hollywood kept hiring him whenever he showed up.
He had played life by his rules, bent others to his will and never gave the idiots an inch.
PHOTO: Sinatra and Hayden in SUDDENLY!, a film taken out of distribution for years after the assassination of JFK. It is powerful and compelling.
In the city of Suddenly, three gangsters trap the Benson family in their own house, on the top of a hill nearby the railroad station, with the intention of killing the president of the USA. Director: Lewis Allen Writer: Richard Sale Stars: Frank Sinatra, Sterling Hayden. You can watch this awesome thriller here:
Behind the paywall, an interview with Sterling from 1983.
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