Patsy! : The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald

by Douglas Brode

  Their attitude? What we don’t know can’t hurt us. Those in charge know what’s best. Anything they do is for our benefit.

  The mainstream press in those pre-Watergate days? Their job was to rubber-stamp anything the government said, pass it on to readers and listeners, mostly without comment. Already, the newspapers and TV networks were doing precisely that as to yet another theatre of war then developing: Vietnam; southeast Asia.

  And, for the time being at least, the majority of Americans believed whatever they were told. As Lee’s mother liked to say: If it weren’t true, they couldn’t put it on TV.

  At the compound’s main building, an ebullient Cuban came darting out to greet the trio and shake Lee’s hand.

  “Meet Manuel Artime Buesa,” Muse said. “George’s hand-picked choice for this all-important task.”

  “Oh? This one actually has a full name?” Lee asked, the other Cubans at the guard post having remained anonymous.

  Buesa laughed heartily. “We all do, amigo. But it would prove difficult for me to try and keep mine secret. You see, I am Miami’s secretary general for the MRR.”

  Lee knew that to be the abbreviation for Movimiento de Recuperacion Revolucionario, an umbrella title for all those splinter groups that manned the Biscayne recruitment tables; originally united by George, now fully overseen by Buesa.

  *

  “How did they ever make a movie out of Lolita?” billboard advertisements and media commercials for the first controversial film of the new decade asked. There was Sue Lyon, the unknown child-woman picked to embody onscreen the perfect nymphette in red plastic heart-shaped glasses, sucking provocatively on her drink from a straw. Based on a much-banned book that had been subject of heated discussion during the previous decade, Lolita had been considered unfilmable then. No self-respecting L.A. producer was willing to consider such an explosive property.

  Now? This was The Sixties. Things change ...

  Johnny had received a pair of passes to a preview of Lolita and swung by The New Yorker to pick up Lee. In the Corvette, which caught the eyes of every female the two men passed, they headed downtown, arriving early to be sure to secure seats.

  Lee, who had read the book, swept up by its artistic sensuality, wondered how close this commercial project dared approximate the power of Vladimir Nabokov’s prose-poetry. The work analyzed an older man’s fascination with an underage female.

  James Mason, as Humbert, takes one of Sue Lyon’s adorable little feet, gently holding her steady with his left hand while applying nail polish to the other. What a marvelous way for a filmmaker to suggest the man’s obsession that Nabokov relayed in words ... That’s how they made a movie out of ‘Lolita!‘

  “I’ve got a surprise for you,” Johnny said as they exited.

  “I’m almost afraid to ask ‘what’?”

  “How would you like to meet ... ‘Lolita’?”

  Lee stopped in his tracks. “The actress is in town?”

  “Not her. Something even better. The real Lolita.”

  *

  “Absolutely true,” the beautiful twenty-year-old blonde, wearing the satin gown in which she’d performed as headline singer at one of Havana’s night spots, explained after exhaling a mouthful of cigarette smoke. “I was supposed to play Lolita!”

  “What went wrong?” Lee asked, sitting opposite the slender beauty at a prime table while Johnny made the rounds.

  “The whole idea was, Errol would play ‘Humbert Hubert’, and I’d be Lolita. Reflecting, of course, our actual relationship.”

  Johnny says she started sleeping with Errol Flynn in 1958. That would make her fifteen at the time. Lolita’s age, in the film. I gotta admit, she does look the part.

  “Incredible. So?”

  “Just before shooting was about to start, the law came down on us.” She paused for a long swig of her double-Scotch. “Errol was charged with statutory rape with me being so young. His mug was on the cover of every tabloid in the country. No major Hollywood company wanted anything to do with him after that.”

  “But even if they dropped him, why didn’t you—”

  “A package-deal. Without him, I was persona-non-grata.”

  “Such a shame! How amazing it would’ve been for people to see a real Lolita and the real Humbert together onscreen.”

  “Well, actually, they can. I mean, we did make a movie, if not so big a one.” Surprised, Lee asked her to explain. As an inveterate movie buff, he could hardly believe a film had been shot with such a major star that he’d never heard about, much less caught. “It’s called Cuban Rebel Girls. Shot on location!”

  “Must’ve been only a short while before Mr. Flynn died of that heart attack up in Canada.”

  “Bullshit! Errol didn’t drop dead. He was murdered by the Mob. My guess is, your pal Johnny over there likely did it!”

  “Please continue,” Lee begged. “I’m all ears ...”

  *

  The Tasmanian-born, Australian-raised devil-may-care star had always been a closet lefty. Following the war, his Warner Bros. contract finally exhausted, Flynn became an independent producer. For fifteen years he labored, trying to get a film made about William Tell, the great peasant-rebel from Swiss history. Flynn would have starred in the screen-play he co-authorized concerning the overthrow of a tyrant, Gessler. In the film, this would directly parallel current Latin American rebellions against corrupt dictators.

  When Castro, whom Errol adored, appeared likely to succeed, this inspired Flynn all the more to create his movie-metaphor. He hoped his film would win over the American people, terrified of communists, to see the Cuban situation in a positive light.

  During that final year of planning, Beverly Aadland was to have been the female lead. Then, funding dried up in the light of the Errol Flynn/Bev Aadland scandal.

  “Incredible! I’d heard that Flynn was a right-winger, even attracted to Hitler during the late 1930s.”

  Bev roared at that. “No one in Hollywood hated the Nazis more than Errol. He never made a big deal about it because he believed stars should keep their politics to themselves, when speaking in public if not as to what they might slip into any film. Go back and watch Robin Hood from 1936: it’s no accident that the peasants carry hammers and cycles into Sherwood.”

  Of course! That was purposeful. I never realized it until now but, they do just that. Robin Hood as Red propaganda!

  “So one day, Errol got invited to the White House for a special secretive meeting with F.D.R. The German bund was just then forming. The president asked Errol, owing to his Aryan appearance, to join. You can’t imagine how many American lives were saved by information Errol picked up as a secret agent.”

  “He did that, knowing he might later be considered a Nazi?”

  “Errol believed the good of the country was more important than any man’s reputation. Even his own.”

  Just like me! Defecting to Russia, as George requested.

  Acknowledging in late 1958 that the big William Tell epic was never going to happen, Flynn—now nearing fifty, looking decades older owing to years of wine, women and song—decided to use whatever box-office clout he might have left to realize his dream movie, a cinematic tribute to Castro, if on a considerably less spectacular scale. What mattered most, he believed, was the message: To paraphrase FDR we had nothing to fear from communist Cuba but fear itself. Fear would drive them into the enemy camp as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  One night, while lying in bed with Bev after sex, his mind already off and wandering in search of a first tentative step, it dawned on Flynn: Why not go down there, improvise a movie on location? Perhaps even convince Castro to play himself! Such a trip would cost money. Lots of money. Once wealthy, Flynn didn’t have any, his fortune squandered on what he referred to as ‘my wicked, wicked ways.’ Then he admitted to Bev that in his secret life Errol Flynn had always wanted to be a journalist. She gazed on as his eyes, red and blurry, lit up as a scheme hatched.

  Right-wing newsp
aper magnate William R. Hearst, unaware of Flynn’s fellow traveler sensibilities, worshipped the star. The publisher, an extreme right-winger, had like many others heard of Flynn’s pre-WWII era “legend” as an ardent Nazi sympathizer, Hearst secretly supporting Hitler in the days before the America entered the war.

  “You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

  Indeed he was. Flynn called Hearst. Could they meet in the publisher’s office to discuss a unique project? In a half-hour session, Flynn convinced Hearst, in those days leading up to the New Year’s Day takeover of Havana, to send him down as a reporter. Flynn promised to glorify Batista at Castro’s expense while planning to do precisely the opposite.

  Delighted at the prospect, Hearst tipped the CIA off. Aware of the star’s previous Secret Service work, the Company approached Flynn with the idea of assassinating Castro during an interview. They too were unaware of Flynn’s far-left leanings.

  Devilishly delighted at how things were progressing, Flynn gladly agreed. He even went through several weeks of special training, planning to instead kill Batista, who would surely invite the Hollywood star to dinner upon arrival.

  The CIA meanwhile put Flynn in touch with The Mob, already fearful of what would happen should Castro pull off his coup. Knowing the amount of money that the Made Men possessed, and that some, like Johnny Handsome, had once been involved in the movie business, Flynn came up with a far more bizarre concept, one that would realize his secret cinematic project: Talk the Mafiosos into financing a B-budget anti-Castro film while preparing to kill Fidel for the CIA. The idea flew.

  Amazed at how beautifully all the pieces were falling into place, Flynn accepted the deal, writing a script that would instead glorify Fidel. He and Bev left for Cuba and, shooting on a shoestring, did precisely that.

  *

  Lee finally caught the flick about a year and a half later as the third feature on a triple bill at a Texas Drive In. He was with Marina and their daughter June, seated in an old jalopy, never mentioning that he’d met the female lead. So far as anyone could see, they were one more white trash family, out for the night.

  Bev played Bev Woods, a typical American teenager who can’t grasp why her boyfriend would ditch her to run off and join the Cuban revolution. She follows and, shortly after arrival, meets a Vodka-guzzling American movie-star-turned-war correspondent, Flynn as Flynn in a script written by Flynn, he starring in a project produced by Flynn. The old rogue raises the nymph’s political consciousness as together the two trek off into the hills. She strips down to short-shorts, whacking away at jungle foliage and fascistic forces with a machete.

  Flynn planned to end his story with a fictional projection of he, Bev, and Castro making ready for the invasion of Havana. Then he would rush home, edit the film, and release it so the American public might see the event before it could occur.

  Instead, the New Year’s Eve attack took place while Flynn and Bev were still shooting. Improvising, Flynn filmed Castro’s motorcade entering Havana, Bev sitting up on a tank, waving a red victory banner. Bev playing Bev while, adjacent to her, Fidel embodied himself, fact and fiction mingling, blurring, coming together as never before on celluloid.

  The image cut away to Flynn, happily glancing down from his hotel room window. In a voice-over, he explains:

  Well, I guess that winds up another stage in the fight to rid Latin America of tyrants and dictators. The spirit started by this wonderful band of rebels is speedy and growing stronger every day. And all you young men and women fighting for political freedom, your beliefs?

  I wish you good luck!

  Shortly after returning home, having tried but failed on several occasions to shoot Batista, carrying several cans of film under each arm, Flynn was dead.

  He and Bev had on October 9, 1959 flown to Vancouver where Errol hoped to lease his much loved yacht, the Zaca, on which he had spent so many happy days with his underage mistress. Now he desperately needed money so that he and Bev could continue to lead ‘the sweet life’: that emergent 1960s fast-lane style.

  On October 14, the two attended a party at the West End apartment of Dr. Grant Gould. Errol knocked down drink after drink. Shouting “I shall return!” an unbalanced Flynn waved bye-bye and stepped into the adjoining bedroom to crash.

  After an hour or so, Bev—who had spent that sixty minutes conversing with an Adonis-like suited Latin named Johnny—began to worry. She excused herself, rose, and headed into the bedroom to check on her lover.

  Flynn’s face, red as a beet, stared up at her from the bed, his wide-open eyes utterly devoid of life.

  “Oh, my God,” she wailed. “Johnny, I think he’s dead!”

  Johnny, who had followed Bev, leaned over Flynn’s body to check. “Yep,” he said, cradling Bev under his arm. “Errol is with the angels now. Or, heaven forbid, down below.”

  That struck her as a strange comment. Still, Bev needed to be held that night. She went home with Johnny, who made love to her almost as fiercely as her legendary paramour had often done.

  Shortly, all known prints of Cuban Rebel Girls disappeared. Until one eventually surfaced at a rural Texas Drive-In.

  *

  “Hey,” Johnny suavely said, swinging back to the table where Bev held court, Lee gazing at her adoringly. “Shall we go back to my place and pick up where we left off in Vancouver?”

  The heartbreaking blonde considered Rosselli long and hard. “No,” she finally quipped, rising. “I think I’ll go home with Lee. Thank you anyway, though, for a lovely evening.”

  The following morning, after Lee and Bev shared coffee together on his balcony, she prepared to leave.

  “One last question. You said early in the evening that you believe Errol was ... murdered?”

  “I don’t believe. I know! Look, Lee, he took Mob money to make a movie they believed would work to their benefit. Then he went and shot precisely the opposite.”

  “They’d actually kill a guy for making a pro-Castro movie?”

  “Never in a million years. Live and let live. So long as someone does something on his own, that’s his business. This was different. He lied to them. Took their dough and then betrayed their trust. It wasn’t the movie so much ... as ...”

  “I get your drift.”

  “Do you? Then always keep this in mind, particularly if you’re going to hang out with Johnny Rosselli, whom I now hold responsible for the poisoning of Errol’s drink. I never would have gone to bed with him that night if I’d had any inkling—“

  “As you were saying?”

  “Oh, right. Listen to me, Lee, and listen good. You don’t want to play ball with the Mob, you don’t have to. That’s up to you. On the other hand, don’t ever fuck ‘em over.”

  “I hear you.”

  “Good! Because no one can get away that. Understand? And when I say no one, I mean no one!”

  *

  When Johnny swung by to pick Lee up the next evening, the Mafioso found his unlikely pal reading yet another James Bond paperback. Unconsciously, Lee crammed it into his jacket pocket and they took off. Lee felt a little nervous there might be some friction with Bev choosing him the previous night. Rosselli laughed at the idea. He’d spent the night with the Muse, and few women could compare to her. Matter of fact—hey, this is quite a coincidence!—her CIA codename used to be Lolita.

  “Okay. So where we headed for tonight?”

  “Guess you could call it a party. More like what the kids these days call ‘a happening.’ Pretty cool. You’ll see.”

  They cruised down The Strip, that stretch of high-rent property where enormous hotels and glitzy bars awaited the arriving upscale visitors. At least those who hadn‘t yet abandoned Miami for Vegas, where gambling, the final necessary ingredient in such an adult entertainment mix, was legal.

  Feeling like a million bucks, Lee observed in passing ‘The Big Five,’ as the prime resorts were known: The Americana, Carrillon, Deauville, Eden Rock, and Fountainbleau. Sinatra, Ella Fi
tzgerald and Sammy Davis all put in regular appearances. Johnny pointed out another attraction: a houseboat docked at the canal. This was used for all the exterior shots on Warner Bros.’ TV series Surfside Six. Twice a year, sandy-haired youth-idol Troy Donahue would show up and film here for two weeks.

  As to what transpired next? When Lee thought back on it later he could not tell what had actually happened and how much must be relegated to a fantasy concocted by his brain. They arrived at one of The Big Five. As an attendant parked Johnny’s car the two were ushered by a pair of beautiful women in elegant satin sheaths into a large, crowded private hall.

  Before he knew what was happening, Lee had been handed a drink. He sipped it. A double-scotch, of the highest quality. As soon as the glass’ level had diminished, yet another gorgeous hostess appeared, refilling his glass.

  Within minutes Lee felt under the influence. Johnny stood beside him, for the moment. The crowd grew ever thicker.

  “How do you like it?” the man Lee was supposed to address as ‘James Stewart’ while in the Sunshine State asked.

  “Excellent Scotch.”

  Johnny laughed. “I meant the L.S.D. it’s spiked with.”

  Now Lee understood why his head felt as if screwed on backwards. He’d read about the experimental drug known to alter and intensify one’s perceptions. The room appeared to whirl around him, though a strobe up above in the semi-darkness, projecting harsh rays of white light onto each of the partygoers, added to that effect.

  Lee’s rational mind told him to stop drinking. But there was nothing at all rational about the situation he found himself in: a phantasmagoria of lights and shadows, time and space now dissolving; everyone before him moving, as if in a film, in slow-motion one moment, terribly speeded up the next.

  Any final sense of reality dissipated when Lee stumbled into ... himself. For a second, he thought he was about to walk into a mirror and, perhaps Alice-like, pass into a Wonderland.

  There was no mirror. The image facing Lee, a man with his face, sported a different jacket. Unlike lee, he wore no tie.