by Siân Evans
Needless to say, the limited opportunities for women hoping for careers at sea in German-owned ships rapidly diminished under the Nazi regime. In 1937 the Daily Telegraph reported that:
Great indignation has been aroused in conservative German shipping circles by the news that a woman, Fraulein Annaliese Sparbier, formerly a schoolmistress, is working for a master’s certificate, with a view to becoming a captain in the German mercantile marine. Fraulein Sparbier is now serving on board a trawler as an ordinary seaman. The ‘Deutsche Seeman’, the official organ of the German merchant service, asks severely whether such activities will help Fraulein Sparbier to ‘do her duty as a woman and bring healthy and strong children into the world’. Her ambitions, it adds, are incompatible with the ideas of womanly tenderness and sense of duty. ‘When Fraulein Sparbier doffs her thick shoes and stockings and her oilskins, and enters the haven of marriage, she will be sorry to find she has lost some of her charm. Surely, if her love for the sea is so tremendous, she could become a stewardess in a liner.’6
In Britain many women who had avoided entering ‘the haven of marriage’ were now gainfully employed aboard the Queen Mary, including the resourceful Edith Sowerbutts, who had been recruited as a stewardess for the Cunard flagship in 1936. Edith was offered the job because she was very experienced, competent and, incidentally, fashionably slim, despite her enormous appetite, in the same way that air hostesses were required to be glamorous and soignée in the Jet Age two decades later. As the Evening Standard had reported, the Queen Mary employed an unparalleled number of women working on board: among the ship’s company were swimming instructresses, hairdressers, a masseuse, nurses and female switchboard operators, and there was considerable prestige in working on the Mary, as it was known informally. The stewardesses were managed by a chief stewardess who in turn reported to the purser. Their working conditions were now far better, as they had a simple rota system, with more time off during the working day. In addition, after four or five return transatlantic trips, there was a month ashore for rest and recuperation, during which the seawoman could sign on for fifteen shillings a week on the dole. There was always a risk that any resting stewardess might be ‘crimped’, that is posted to a lesser ship of the same line, if the company was unexpectedly short of personnel, but generally the Queen Mary maintained the same staff, and morale was high. Edith was always relieved to get back on board her favourite ship, as it carried the most prestigious and wealthy passengers, and the tips were excellent, as much as £20 per month.
Apart from the launch of the Queen Mary, 1936 was a tumultuous year. With the death of King George V in January, the Prince of Wales became Edward VIII, a prospect he viewed with dread. After a suitable period of court and public mourning, preparations began for his coronation, which was planned for May 1937. However, the illicit relationship between the prince and Mrs Wallis Simpson was already known to those in society and government circles. Within months the impasse would result in the constitutional crisis of the abdication. Meanwhile, the British press maintained a stout code of silence, though British subscribers to American journals were puzzled as to why large rectangles had been cut out of their magazines by the scissors of the censors. That momentous year ended with the abdication of Edward VIII, who rather melodramatically broadcast to the nation that he could not continue as king ‘without the support of the woman I love’. Most of the British public were completely nonplussed; they had never heard of Mrs Simpson, but the story erupted in the press on both sides of the Atlantic and the American journalist H.L. Mencken described the romance as ‘the greatest story since the Resurrection’.7 Winston Churchill, himself the product of a marriage between an American femme fatale and a British aristocrat, wondered out loud why the king should not be allowed to have his ‘cutie’. Noël Coward, acerbic as ever, replied, ‘Because the British people will not stand for a Queen Cutie.’8
Wallis’s countrywoman, Lady Astor MP, was in New York with her long-suffering maid, Rose Harrison, when the news of the abdication broke. Nancy was livid; as an eminent society hostess, she had long been aware of the romantic relationship between the prince and Mrs Simpson, and had tried to persuade the future king against continuing it. But Rose found her mistress’s unsympathetic attitude difficult to understand. Both Wallis Simpson and Nancy Astor were ambitious American-born women, who had reinvented themselves by entering British society, finding acceptance in elite drawing rooms and royal circles. Both women had undergone the considerable stigma of divorce, having previously been married to volatile and violent drunks, before finding more gentlemanly second husbands through their travels across the Atlantic. But Nancy Astor was vehement that Mrs Simpson should not become queen, and cried bitterly when told what the New York paperboys were shouting below in the street as the news first broke. Perhaps she was concerned that the British public might now see her too as an ‘upstart’ divorced American woman. On her return to Britain she was asked to make a radio broadcast to the United States and she was at pains to explain that the abdication occurred because Wallis could not marry the future king as she was a divorcee, and not because she was American.
Rose speculated that it was some consolation later to Lady Astor that her great friends, the Duke and Duchess of York, were to accede to the British throne in place of Edward VIII. The coronation was still planned for May 1937, even though the dramatis personae had changed. Cunard embarked on a major promotional initiative to bring thousands of Americans to London to attend the celebrations, and, perhaps wisely, their marketing literature featured an impressionistic scene of the famous gold coach pulled by horses, with a tactfully indeterminate (though presumably regal) figure inside.
Meanwhile, Cunard pressed ahead with another giant ship for the transatlantic route. The new vessel was intended to be a replacement for the venerable Aquitania, which was due for decommissioning in 1940. Hull 552 was laid in December 1936 at John Brown’s, and, following the abdication, it was given the name of the Queen Elizabeth, the new title of the Duchess of York. Queen Elizabeth had been furious when her brother-in-law abdicated as she had never intended to undertake the very public life expected of the consort of the monarch. When Elizabeth had finally agreed to marry Bertie in 1923, after turning him down twice, it had been assumed the couple would lead mostly private lives – a necessity given his shyness and bad stammer. Nevertheless, she took to the new role with as much grace as she could muster. At the height of the Munich Crisis at the end of September 1938, Queen Elizabeth travelled to Clydeside with her two young daughters to launch her namesake, with 300,000 people watching the ceremony to dedicate the world’s largest passenger ship. The queen spoke of ‘the great ships that ply to and fro across the Atlantic, like shuttles in a mighty loom, weaving a fabric of friendship and understanding’.
Such a benign, constructive image was conjured up despite the darker and starker global realities of the late 1930s. The inexorable rise of the dictators in the Old World – of Mussolini, Stalin, Franco and Hitler – was creating vast ripples across Europe. Those with foresight and overseas connections assessed their options, and some decided to leave their homelands by crossing the Atlantic. One woman who made her escape was the film actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr, whose real name was Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler. She was born in 1914 in Vienna to a wealthy and cultured family of assimilated Jews. Her flourishing career as an actress attracted notoriety in 1933, when her fifth film, Extase, was criticised for its nudity and frank sexual content. When Hitler came to power in neighbouring Germany in 1933, the film was banned on the grounds of public morality. Hedy resumed her stage career, and the following year, when she was nineteen, she married an Austrian armaments manufacturer, Fritz Mandl, fourteen years her senior, also of Jewish ancestry. He tried to buy up all surviving copies of Extase in order to destroy them, though this merely inflated their price on the black market. Mandl was obsessively jealous about Hedy, his beautiful and elegant spouse, and constantly imagined that she might have an affair wit
h another man. He insisted that they live in a grand but remote country house where he could entertain political and military contacts such as Mussolini. Hitler, however, would have nothing to do with Mandl because of his Jewish origins.
In 1937, months before Austria became part of the Third Reich, Hedy escaped. Her marriage to Mandl had become odious to her, and the political situation in Austria and neighbouring Germany was increasingly threatening people of Jewish origin. Those Jews and anti-Nazi activists who could were leaving in droves, and many creative people were heading to America, seeking work in Hollywood, including Billy Wilder and Fritz Lang. Hedy longed to resume her career as an actress; she loathed her husband’s political machinations, his pro-Nazi contemporaries, and she disliked being a trophy wife, required only to look beautiful and say nothing, ‘standing still and looking stupid’, as she put it.
The various accounts of how Hedy managed to escape her husband’s surveillance read like the plots of 1930s thrillers. One story is that she drugged one of the housemaids who resembled her, and while the servant slumbered in her bed, Hedy dressed in the girl’s uniform and escaped on the maid’s bicycle. She reached a station and took the train, eventually reaching Paris where she filed for divorce, before slipping across the Channel to London, where Mandl’s influence was less strong. In truth, following a furious argument about her wish to return to the stage, her husband stormed out to spend the night in one of his hunting lodges. Before he could return, Hedy quickly packed some clothes and furs, and her jewellery, though she had very little cash. By her own account, ‘I managed to leave Vienna that night, veiled and incognito and with all the trappings of a melodrama mystery. And I went straight through to London.’9
At a small party in London, she was introduced to the head of MGM Studios, Louis B. Mayer. He was scouting for new talent, recruiting talented actors who were keen to leave Europe because of the political situation, and naturally he knew the banned film Extase. He was impressed by Hedy, but only offered her a contract worth $125 a week, and that on condition that she paid her own way to America. She suavely declined his offer, but devised a plan to obtain a better deal. Mayer and his wife had already reserved their return passage to the States on 25 September on the elegant French ship, the Normandie. Hedy booked one of the more affordable cabins on the same voyage. Wearing a succession of gorgeous evening gowns, and her best jewellery, night after night she made the grande descente down the mirrored staircase into the first-class dining room, accompanied by a succession of wealthy and ardent young men. The glamorous setting of the Normandie showed her beauty to its best effect, and jaws dropped at her elegance, deportment and evident ‘star quality’. Douglas Fairbanks Jr, a fellow passenger, accomplished actor and an important player in the film industry in his own right, could not take his eyes off her. As a result, Mayer scrambled to sign her up, this time offering her a starting contract of $500 a week if she could master English, and was willing to change her surname to something less Teutonic and more euphonious.
This voyage and her decisive action changed Hedy’s life. She escaped her marriage, her old life and the repressive atmosphere of Austria. She had staked everything she possessed on a single transatlantic ticket, in order to try to secure a film contract. By the time she arrived in New York, aged just twenty-two, she had a new name, Hedy Lamarr, and was hailed as MGM’s latest discovery, greeted by a barrage of press interest and flashbulbs. By October 1937 she was living in Hollywood; she starred in a film, Algiers, with Charles Boyer which was a huge hit in 1938. She was courted by John F. Kennedy, among others, and became friendly with the maverick millionaire Howard Hughes, but she married a much older screenwriter, Gene Markey. Her film career took off spectacularly, though her marriage foundered in the early 1940s.
It seems fitting that the splendid setting of the Normandie, with its mirrors, uplighting and grandstanding opportunities enabled Hedy Lamarr to secure a lucrative film contract. She exploited the dramatic potential of the grande descente, just as a consummate actress would time and judge her entry on stage. By the mid-1930s the ocean liner had become a potent symbol of the glamour, modernism and chic lifestyle perpetuated by the blockbuster movies of Hollywood. The theatrical interior design of the vessel appealed to the international set and the ‘beautiful people’ of Hollywood, influencing the set design of movies. Indeed, there were even movies set on ocean liners: the 1937 musical comedy Shall We Dance stars Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, who become romantically involved on an ocean liner on its way to New York. In a ‘mixed race’ dance number considered daring for its time, Fred Astaire encounters a group of African-American crew apparently holding a jam session in a spotlessly clean, art deco-style ship’s engine room, and tap dances to their music, with rhythms inspired by the vessel’s engines.
There was a real symbiosis between Hollywood, the heart of the movie industry, which acted as a ‘dream factory’ in the inter-war years, and the ocean liner, which on every voyage carried people full of hopes and aspirations. Not only did actors and actresses regularly travel the Atlantic to appear in films and stage shows, but there were also movie moguls seeking lucrative deals, theatrical impresarios and talent scouts who were travelling to other countries to find the ‘next big thing’. Naturally, the publicity departments of each shipping line were glad to supply flattering photos and benign press stories about celebrities and royalty, free of charge, to newspapers and magazines, to persuade less well-known mortals to travel on their vessels in future.
Wise stars knew how the PR machine worked and played along with it; Mae West was considered a ‘good sport’ because she would willingly pose for press and in-house photographers. Marlene Dietrich was another much travelled celebrity during the 1930s and was frequently photographed and filmed on board ship. Glamorous and elegantly draped in furs, she was willing to co-operate with the press, seeing her public persona as part of her job. A thorough professional, while on board ship she never appeared in public for breakfast, rarely at lunchtime, but would make a spectacular entrance at dinner. Her favourite table in the Queen Mary dining room was the most prominent, the one preferred by her friend Noël Coward, but fortunately they never travelled on that ship at the same time.
Edith Sowerbutts met many celebrities including Robert Taylor, David Niven, Gary Cooper, Doris Duke and Douglas Fairbanks Snr. She described Paul Robeson as ‘every inch a gentleman’, and he was a regular on the Queen Mary. He remembered the names of the crew, and often mingled with them in the Pig & Whistle, the crew’s after-hours bar, even performing there during one voyage. Edith recalled his beautiful speaking voice, and she regretted missing the chance to hear him sing, as female crew members were not allowed to join the men in the Pig & Whistle.
For the women who worked on board the great ships, proximity to glamour was one of the appeals of the job. In an era when film stars and actors were international household names, there was considerable cachet to being intimately involved in caring for the requirements of these stellar figures when they travelled by ship. Of course, despite their glittering careers and constant appearances on the silver screen, the ocean-going famous were mere mortals, constantly ringing for a hangover cure, breakfast in bed, a massage in their cabin, an attractive snack on a tray, advice on avoiding seasickness, the marshalling of their entourage, and the endless bringing and despatching of messages, flowers and gifts.
Celebrities had their own favourite ships. Film star James Stewart, French-born novelist Colette and Josephine Baker loved the Normandie. The French Line’s Île de France was the favourite of Gloria Swanson, Yehudi Menuhin and Arturo Toscanini. Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington preferred the Queen Mary, which Cary Grant called the Eighth Wonder of the World. Bing Crosby was also a regular traveller on the Queen Mary and he was a keen photographer. He became friendly with the on-board Ocean Pictures photographers and would often join them in the darkroom as they developed that day’s crop of images.
Until 1939 Edith Sowerbutts worked on the Queen Mary
as a stewardess. The ship was a great improvement on her previous vessels: there were service lifts between the kitchens and the small deck pantries where each stewardess was based, and a phone linking the two so that passengers’ food orders could be relayed to the kitchen clerk. Edith noted that the ship’s designers had obviously never tried to lay a silver service tray for breakfast in the tiny pantry, but otherwise the labour-saving devices were appreciated.
Edith’s own breakfasts on the Queen Mary were brought to her by the deck waiter. She usually had orange juice, coffee, bacon and eggs, toast and marmalade – she had a big appetite. She consumed it standing up, between responding to early morning passenger calls, taking breakfast trays to her passengers, and bedmaking and dusting her cabins once her passengers were safely out of the way. At mealtimes Edith and her shipmates would often find an unoccupied cabin where they could eat a snack, and they would meet again later for a clandestine cocktail and cigarette before starting their evening’s work, which involved tidying staterooms, putting away clothes, and turning back bedcovers while the passengers were dining or dancing. Their own supper would be between 8 and 9 p.m. The quality of the food was excellent but stewardesses rarely had a chance to eat a whole meal undisturbed.
Until 1939 stewards and stewardesses on the Queen Mary worked every day while at sea from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m., and would usually have two hours off in the afternoon. This was an opportunity for the women seafarers to mingle socially; they might sit in deckchairs on a small closed-off section of the crew’s deck, with a packet of cigarettes, some knitting and plenty of ripe gossip. There was occasional friction: some were former domestic servants, such as housemaids, parlour maids, or ladies’ maids, and those who had previously worked in grand households were sometimes suspected of suffering from ‘folie de grandeur’.