Lost in Shangri-la

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  “He swung in a vast arc from one edge of the chute to the other,” she told her diary. “We were terrified that he would swing all the way over, spill the air out of his chute and plummet to earth.”

  Walter and his men yelled frantically to the human metronome dangling above them.

  “Pull your legs together!”

  “Check your oscillation!”

  “Pull on your risers!”

  No response.

  Margaret joined the chorus, repeating the paratroopers’ expert shouted advice, all of which went unheeded by the falling, swinging, apparently lifeless man.

  Somehow, the parachute held its air. The parachutist landed, spread-eagled on his back, in a clump of tall briar bushes some distance from the base camp. Fearing that he was dead or seriously wounded, several paratroopers raced through the high valley grasses to his aid. First to reach him was Sergeant Javonillo.

  After a momentary inspection, Javonillo popped up from the bushes—“looking as if he’d seen a ghost,” Margaret wrote. He called to Walter.

  “Captain, sir?” Javonillo said. “This man is drunk!”

  McCollom arrived in the bushes moments after Javonillo and confirmed the diagnosis: “Drunker than a hoot owl.”

  When they pulled the man out of the thicket, Walter took stock of the filmmaker in his midst. After confirming the diagnosis of alcohol-impaired descent, Walter radioed a wry message to the departing supply plane: “The valley is going Hollywood—and fast.”

  Walter had no idea how right he was.

  THE PRONE, BESOTTED man in the shrubbery was Alexander Cann, a dashing forty-two-year-old adventurer who’d taken an unlikely path from respectability to Shangri-La.

  Alexander Cann. (Photo courtesy of B. B. McCollom.)

  Born in Nova Scotia, Alex Cann was the eldest child of a prominent banker named H. V. Cann and his wife, Mabel Ross Cann, whose father was a member of the Canadian House of Commons. Mabel Cann died when Alex was young. When the boy was seven, H. V. Cann moved the family from Canada to Manhattan, where in 1914 he helped to launch the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The family spent seven years in the United States before returning to Canada, when H. V. Cann became a top executive with the Bank of Ottawa.

  Alex Cann attended the Royal Naval College of Canada, then returned to New York to study structural engineering at Columbia University. His timing couldn’t have been worse: when the Great Depression struck, new building stopped, which made structural engineers as unnecessary as stockbrokers.

  Adding to his misfortune, he proceeded to gamble away his sizable inheritance on poker. “He was very roguish, my father, and hopeless about money,” said his daughter and namesake, Alexandra Cann, a London literary agent.

  But being broke didn’t mean he didn’t have assets. Tall, dark, and hazel-eyed, deep-voiced, handsome, and powerfully built, funny, cultured, and charming, the well-bred young Alex Cann drifted west to Hollywood, where those qualities retained great value despite the Great Depression. Worried about sullying his family’s good name, he took the stage name Alexander Cross—literally a cross between his surname and his mother’s maiden name, Ross.

  In no time, Alexander Cann/Cross found his way into small movie roles. In 1936 he won parts in half a dozen studio movies, including roles as a watchman in Fury, a Spencer Tracy film directed by Fritz Lang; as a detective in Smart Blonde with Glenda Farrell; and as a crew member in China Clipper, starring his drinking buddy Humphrey Bogart. His acting run stretched into 1937, including a part playing a prison guard in the movie San Quentin, again starring Bogart. He moved up the Hollywood food chain by landing roles with more lines, playing characters with actual names, such as Bull Clanton in the 1937 western Law for Tombstone. His star kept rising, as he won the role of bad guy Black Jack Carson in the Hopalong Cassidy series of films starring William Boyd and Gabby Hayes.

  But just when the actor Alexander Cross began to hit his stride, his real-life alter ego Alexander Cann disproved the old Hollywood adage, “Any publicity is good publicity.”

  On March 28, 1937, the Los Angeles Times featured a can’t-miss “Hey, Martha!” story on page one, headlined “Actor Confesses Theft of Gems at Palm Springs.” The story explained that a “film character actor” whom police identified as Alexander Howard Cross Cann had confessed to stealing a diamond bracelet and a bejeweled ring from Alma Walker Hearst, the beautiful ex-wife of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst Jr. The story went on to describe possibly the worst-planned jewel heist in history.

  Cann, a ladies’ man who’d met the former Mrs. Hearst a month earlier in Sun Valley, Idaho, attended a small gathering at her Palm Springs home ten days before the Times story ran. Late in the evening, the party moved to downtown Palm Springs. Somewhere around one in the morning, Cann doubled back to Alma Hearst’s home and pocketed her jewels. Later that day, Cann walked into a Hollywood pawnshop and sold the gems, which were valued at more than $6,000. He negotiated a terrible deal, collecting just $350.

  “In his confession,” the Times story said, “Cann . . . told the officers he had been losing heavily in horse race-betting, and was hard pressed financially when he took the jewelry. He also said he had been drinking at the time of the theft.”

  When Alma Hearst noticed her jewelry missing, she provided police with a list of her servants and guests. Investigators focused quickly on Cann, and a deputy sheriff called his home. Cann admitted the crime over the phone and told the officer where to find the jewels, which were recovered from the pawnshop and returned to their owner. At the officer’s insistence, Cann went to Palm Springs and turned himself in. He was charged with burglary and hauled off to jail.

  With her jewels in hand, Alma Hearst decided that she’d had enough of the attention and of Alex Cann. The following day, the Times ran a second story reporting that charges against Cann would be dropped if he made restitution. Netting only $350 turned out to be a small bit of good luck; it was relatively easy for Cann to repay.

  An officer quoted Alma Hearst as saying: “Nobody likes to prosecute a friend. But when people do such things, they must expect to pay.”

  Before the story—and Cann—disappeared, the wire services had a field day. Newspapers far from Hollywood ran headlines such as “Host’s Jewels Are Stolen by Thespian.” Even The New York Times couldn’t resist a story about a Hearst and a heist.

  As Alexander Cross, in 1939, Cann appeared in one more Depression-era film, The Human Bomb. He played the title character—an unnamed bomber. The role was a fitting coda to Alex Cann’s Hollywood years; his arrest blew his movie career to smithereens.

  Cann shrugged it off as best he could and kept moving. By the end of 1941, he’d been married and divorced three times, though he hadn’t yet fathered any children. With no spouse, no dependents, and no immediate prospects, he returned to his roots and joined the Royal Canadian Navy. But his fortunes didn’t change.

  En route to the South Pacific, Cann’s troop ship was struck by a Japanese torpedo that blew him into the water. He survived, but with a broken back that would pain him the rest of his life. In 1943, while recuperating in Australia, Cann washed up regularly in local nightclubs. A convivial drinker and gifted storyteller, he’d tell tales of his Hollywood days. “He managed to convince several people that he knew a great deal more about filmmaking than he did,” said his daughter.

  Through his nightclub connections, Cann learned that the Dutch government-in-exile in London needed correspondents and filmmakers for its newly created Netherlands Indies Government Information Service, an agency whose aim was to counter Nazi propaganda and keep Dutch concerns on the world stage.

  Based on Cann’s exaggerated claims of filmmaking expertise, and also, presumably, on the limited military use for a forty-year-old sailor with a broken back, the Canadian Navy “loaned” Cann to the Melbourne-based Australia section of the Netherlands Information Service, as the agency was known. He gained the title “War Correspondent and Cinematographer,” acquired a
35mm camera, and used his charm and Canadian accent to cadge hard-to-get film from the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

  Cann threw himself into his new role, fearlessly covering combat throughout the Philippines and the Borneo campaign. During the Allies’ October 1944 invasion of Leyte, in the Philippines, Cann found himself aboard the heavy cruiser HMAS Australia when it came under fire from a Japanese dive-bomber. The Japanese plane, a model known to the Allies as a “Betty,” slammed full-speed into the Australia, mortally wounding the captain and the navigator and killing or mortally wounding twenty-eight others. Numerous accounts declared it the first successful kamikaze attack of the war. But as an eyewitness and a survivor, Cann challenged that claim. A week after the attack, he told a reporter for The Associated Press that the pilot was already dead when the plane struck the ship. “The Jap Betty came through a terrific barrage, out of control and with smoke already pouring out,” Cann told the reporter.

  By that point in his life, Cann had survived gambling away his inheritance, three divorces, an arrest as an actor turned jewel thief, a torpedo attack that broke his back, and a Japanese plane crashing into his ship. In that light, an uncontrolled, drunken skydive into Shangri-La seemed an almost predictable next step.

  When the news stories by Walter Simmons, Ralph Morton, and other reporters spread word about the survivors, the paratroopers, and the Stone Age tribe in Shangri-La, Alex Cann decided to try his luck once more. He flew from Melbourne to Hollandia on June 17. The next morning he hitched a plane ride over the crash site before returning to the Sentani Airstrip to request a parachute. He received a few pointers from a captain in the 1st Recon named Isaac Unciano, but Cann apparently spent his brief lesson joking around. Unciano best remembered Cann for promising “six quarts of whisky and a party” if he returned safely.

  “He knew it was obviously dangerous,” said his daughter. “But he wanted to go in, so my father volunteered. He’d never parachuted in his life. They offered to train him but he said, ‘No thanks, I’ll only do this once. If I don’t jump, push me.’ ”

  CANN NEVER PERSONALLY confirmed the drunken jump story, but he came close. In an account distributed by The Associated Press, he wrote: “I don’t know whether I jumped or was pushed at the ‘go’ signal, but I was busy shooting pictures on the descent after the chute opened. Then I landed unhurt, flat on my back in some bushes.”

  After Javonillo and the others untangled him, Cann put a dent in the camp’s aspirin supply, then found himself propped up at a dinner of Filipino-style chow mein and fried potatoes. When Cann sobered up enough to talk, Walter inquired how he ended up in the valley anaesthetized.

  “I drank a full fifth of Dutch gin before I jumped,” Cann said, according to Walter.

  “Why’d you do that?” Walter asked.

  “I didn’t want to hesitate.”

  Walter considered that explanation and rendered a verdict: “You ought to be a paratrooper.”

  Later, Major Gardner asked Walter via walkie-talkie whether Cann was hungover. Walter answered: “He says he’ll never do that again—at least not until another story comes along.”

  When Cann regained the ability to focus, he got his first good look at Margaret Hastings. His eye for a beautiful woman was unaffected by his crash landing. Cann asked Walter to relay a message to the AP’s Ralph Morton: “Corporal Hastings is the most magnificent survivor that I have ever seen.”

  He added: “To the boys in the rescue party, she is known as the Queen of Shangri-La.” Asked about the royal title, Margaret finally responded: “I am ready to go, and will give up my crown at any time.”

  Walter and Cann became fast friends. The captain soaked up the wisdom and the lessons that Cann had learned from what Walter called “experience and hard knocks.” They spent hours talking, playing poker, swimming in the river, hiking around the valley, and arguing about sports figures and military policies. Cann believed that the military shouldn’t censor reporters’ stories from war zones. Walter disagreed, vehemently. “I like to get a man like that riled up,” Walter wrote in his journal, “as I can then really learn something.” Walter paid his highest compliment to Cann, declaring him “one hell of a swell egg.”

  With Cann’s arrival, the camp that Walter renamed “United States Army Outpost at Shangri-La, D.N.G. [Dutch New Guinea]”—“Camp Shangri-La” for short—reached its full and final complement of fifteen people: commanding officer Captain C. Earl Walter Jr.; ten enlisted paratroopers; three crash survivors; and one Canadian-born engineer-turned-actor-turned-jewel-thief-turned-sailor-turned-war-correspondent.

  Alexander Cann filming in “Shangri-La.” (Photos courtesy of B. B. McCollom.)

  They settled into a “pretty little city,” in Walter’s phrase, spread out in the shadow of the mountain wall, on a mostly flat area of the valley floor. The three sergeants who’d stayed behind organized the camp as a cluster of canopies and tents, including a red one for supplies and a pink one for a mess hall.

  The camp also featured an improvised pigpen made of rough-cut branches, filled with seven pigs that Abrenica, Baylon, and Velasco had “purchased” from the natives with cowrie shells dropped by the supply plane. One pig was a runt, “cute as a button,” Margaret wrote. The sergeants named it “Peggy” in her honor.

  “Peggy must have thought she was a dog,” Margaret wrote. “She followed everyone around, and the moment any of us sat down, climbed on our laps. The paratroopers scrubbed Peggy every day until she shone.”

  The most elaborate structure was a pyramidal tent outfitted as VIP and officers’ quarters. One section, partitioned off for Margaret’s privacy, had a deep bed made from dried, golden valley grass, over which hung a canopy made from a yellow cargo parachute. Artfully arranged mosquito netting completed the fit-for-a-queen decor. Lest her feet touch ground without shoes, empty parachute bags became a bedside rug.

  “I was so touched I wanted to cry,” Margaret wrote in her diary. “Everything about the camp was deluxe, including a bathroom! The three sergeants had even made a tub of empty, waterproof ration cartons. They had dug a well nearby, and filling the tub was very easy work.”

  Young warriors from different worlds. The Filipino-American soldiers are (from left) Camilo Ramirez, Custodio Alerta, Don Ruiz, and Juan “Johnny” Javonillo. (Photos courtesy of C. Earl Walter Jr.)

  As officers, McCollom and Walter were assigned bunks on the men’s side of the pyramidal tent. But Walter insisted that his bed go to Decker, to speed the sergeant’s ongoing recovery. Walter and his men strung up jungle hammocks, amusing Margaret with the sight of the oversize captain pretzeling his frame into the hanging sack.

  On the first full day that all fifteen of them were together at the base camp, the paratroopers celebrated by roasting two suckling pigs in a Filipino lechon feast, slowly turning them on spits until they were golden brown. Margaret made sure that “Peggy” was spared that honor. The meal reminded Walter of his boyhood; almost a decade had passed since his last lechon. “After making a pig of myself (on pig), I staggered over to the supply tent and laid down in agony,” Walter wrote in his journal. “The boys are really great cooks.”

  The following day, the survivors and paratroopers indulged Alex Cann in his role as filmmaking auteur. Although he was supposed to be making a fact-based documentary, Cann wasn’t above a bit of Hollywood staging. He’d missed the survivors’ entrance into base camp, yet he wanted the arrival as a plot point in his film. He persuaded everyone to re-create the last leg of the journey. No one wanted to lug a seventy-five-pound backpack up and down the mountain, so they filled their bags with empty ration boxes that gave the appearance of bulk without the weight.

  This time they skipped the Kotex pads.

  Chapter 23

  GLIDERS?

  AFTER THE INITIAL exhilaration about the discovery of the survivors wore off, Colonel Elsmore and his staff at Fee-Ask struggled to devise the best way to empty Shangri-La of U.S. Army personnel and, now, a filmmaker for the Dutc
h government.

  Throughout their deliberations, the planners’ top priority was safety. Fifteen lives depended on their judgment. More, really, taking into account the risk to pilots, crew, and anyone else who took part in the operation. Yet the planners also must have known that success or failure would affect their own lives as well, personally and professionally. They cared about the survivors and the paratroopers not just as soldiers but as individuals, and they were responsible for Alex Cann. Also, they knew how the military worked: there’d be hell to pay if the widely publicized story of Shangri-La ended tragically because of a poorly planned or executed rescue effort.

  Elsmore and his team debated numerous possibilities, rejecting one after another as impractical, illogical, impossible, or just plain doomed to fail. After crossing off rescue by blimp, helicopter, amphibious plane, PT boat, and overland hike back to Hollandia, they briefly debated dropping into the valley members of a U.S. Navy construction battalion—the Seabees—with small bulldozers to create a temporary landing strip. That plan foundered when Elsmore decided that landing a C-47 at high altitude on a short, improvised airstrip, then trying to take off again over the surrounding mountains, carried too great a risk of becoming a Gremlin Special sequel.

  Next they discussed using a small, versatile plane called the L-5 Sentinel, affectionately known as the Flying Jeep. Used throughout the war for reconnaissance missions and as frontline airborne ambulances, Sentinels had what the army called “short field landing and takeoff capability.” That meant they might be useful on the bumpy ground of the valley floor, without the need for a Seabee-built runway. But Sentinels had drawbacks, too.

  One concern was that a flight from Hollandia to the valley would take a Sentinel approximately three hours and consume all its fuel. Cans of fuel would have to be parachuted to the valley floor for each return trip. Also, each Sentinel could carry only a pilot and one passenger, which meant that fifteen round trips would be needed, with each flight carrying the same risk. Still, the planners kept the L-5 Sentinel under consideration.