Olympic Affair

by Terry Frei

  Hitler walked to his desk and picked up a copy of the propaganda ministry’s Der Angriff. Locating a passage, he read aloud with disgust: “We are not only going to show off the most beautiful sports stadium, the fastest transportation, and the cheapest currency. We must be more charming than the Parisians, more easygoing than the Viennese, more vivacious than the Romans, more cosmopolitan than London, and more practical than New York.”

  He slammed the magazine down. “Practical? Practical? Is mongrelizing practical? The Americans will be coming here with their vermin and primitive beasts and we are to be so practical as to act as if they could be so impressed with our hospitality they will want to remain behind and become citizens of the Reich!”

  He ranted on in that vein for about ten minutes, pacing the room, before pausing and then moving back behind his desk, but not sitting down.

  “But you, too,” he said finally, “are going to tell me we now must be hospitable for our guests, that it will be a step forward for the Reich in the long run to do so. Correct?”

  Leni stayed silent. With the Führer, she knew the best strategy was to bide her time.

  “I know that’s what we must do,” he conceded reluctantly. “We must be seen as firm, but reasonable and civilized. If it requires holding our noses a bit, even letting a Jewess wear the German uniform, we will have to accept that for the greater good. I know that.” Pounding his desk with each word, he repeated, “I . . . know . . . that. But those who mistake our hospitality for weakness will do so at their own peril!”

  Suddenly, as if she had just walked in and he had five minutes before a staff meeting, he announced, “What is so urgent?”

  Now.

  As quickly as she could, avoiding any pauses, she explained she needed his blessing and his orders to others to allow the two cameras in his box at the opening ceremonies. Both cameras would photograph him during the entrance of the athletes, nation by nation, and then show him close-up and record him as he stepped to the microphone and declared the Games open.

  “Is that all?”

  “Some thought you would object.”

  “You have my permission. I will make that known.”

  “Thank you,” Leni said gratefully. “I know you will enjoy the Games!”

  “Oh, I don’t intend to be there much after the opening ceremonies,” he said dismissively.

  Leni was genuinely incredulous. “You don’t?”

  “Athletics, sports, such irrelevancies. I truly have more important demands on my time, you understand. And from what I am told . . . I have been braced for this . . . I will be reminded that sport is not always the true measure of worth. I’m told the Americans will turn it into a niggerfest.”

  Leni said carefully, “The German team is expected to make us proud.”

  “Let us hope so,” he said. “And let us hope many winning athletes from other nations will represent the Aryan ideal, too!”

  As Hitler took a step toward the door, a sign Leni recognized as dismissal, she said, “From what I understand, some white Americans will win, too.”

  “I can handle that,” Hitler declared. “Especially if they are impressed enough to go back and tell Roosevelt and those of his ilk that America needs to keep its crooked nose out of our affairs! We will need the young men of their generation to speak up, to say the affairs of Europe are not their own.”

  Leni reached for the door handle.

  “Or even better,” Hitler added, “we need those young white Americans to tell their countrymen and their leaders that we are right.”

  Leni’s next stop was the men’s Olympic Village in Döberitz.

  The two guards at the circular drive entrance stepped in front of the Mercedes convertible. Extending the Nazi salute, the young guard on the driver’s side held a clipboard in the other hand. Then he gazed directly at Leni in the back seat and said deferentially, “Welcome Fraulein Riefenstahl. It is an honor.”

  “Thank you,” Leni said with a half smile, acknowledging the compliment but making it clear it was both expected and commonplace.

  “The supervisor is expecting you.”

  He directed her to a large administration building to the left of the main entrance. There, she was impressed with all the luxuries the organizers were providing for the athletes—a post office, bank, stores, laundry, and travel agency. She marched into the superintendent’s private office alone. The superintendent, Lieutenant Werner von und zu Gilsa, gushed his welcome and said he hoped she took it as a compliment that he couldn’t help but think of her first as The Blue Light’s Junta, not a director.

  “Unlike Junta, I’m wearing shoes now,” Leni said, smiling. She paused, and then abruptly adopted a businesslike tone. “I wanted to meet with you to be assured that I and all on my staff will be granted universal access here at the Village.”

  “We’ve been told to accommodate you, of course,” von und zu Gilsa said. “You and your people won’t be impeded, within reason, of course. Visitors must be ‘authorized,’ as you can imagine. And women? Well, officially, this is off limits to women, so you might encounter some surprise if you visit us. And there will be areas you probably will not want to go.”

  Leni snapped, “I am not planning on storming the shower rooms, so I don’t see that as an issue.”

  She didn’t mention that one of her ideas was to shoot athletes nude but in the mist, in the camp’s sauna.

  The superintendent seemed to be calculating his next words.

  “What is it?” she asked sharply.

  “The forested area by the lake will be guarded.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Before the Games start . . . women of fine German, Aryan stock. As I understand it, some are sports instructors, carefully selected by the Gestapo to be suitable and attractive. Others are from the Band of German Maidens.”

  “The Maidens? Children?”

  “Fraulein, these are the older members or former members. They are old enough to be women. Regardless, these women will have passes and they are only to be in the woods by the lake over there.” He gestured to the east. “It will become known to the athletes—the Aryan athletes—where these maidens are.”

  “For?”

  “For . . .”

  He shrugged.

  Leni scoffed. “Do you have cots set up out there? Or do they just roll around in the leaves?”

  “I have not been involved in the planning, Fraulein. I do know that the women are to have only one encounter, and they are to ask to see their companion’s Olympic identification and write down the information. In case . . .”

  “You are not going to chase down these athletes later and foist a child on them, are you?”

  “Oh, no, it’s so the state knows who the Aryan father is, if that is the result, as the state cares for the child. That’s all. Otherwise, there are no questions asked and we aren’t here to make judgments.”

  “And in another twenty years or so, we have German Olympians?”

  “I have heard that possibility raised, but I don’t believe it’s the purpose.”

  “So you are telling me to stay away from the forest?”

  The superintendent smiled. “Unless you are shooting a very different kind of film than what I have been told.”

  Leni had used the editing rooms at the Geyer Film Laboratories, in the southeastern Berlin borough of Neukölln, as far back as The Blue Light. So she was in a familiar setting there as she went through the footage from the Greece trip with Stephan, her young, but already balding, editing assistant and clerk. With Stephan hovering around to do her bidding, she made no decisions about what she would use—that was a long way off—but she wanted to get a rough idea of what they had, from both the real ceremony and torch relay and from her own versions that paid more homage to antiquity.

  The raw, developed Prologue footage from the Acropolis was confirmation for her: Willy Zielke was brilliant, both as a director and cinematographer. His work would set the tone and the foundation fo
r the remainder of the filming. Still, she had the gnawing feeling that something was missing, a bridge between the shots of the ruins and the sculptures in one segment and Anatol’s torch lighting and her restaged relay segments in the next. Then it hit her: Muses! Sirens! Show beautiful nude women dancing, perhaps with a body of water behind them. And then go to the torch lighting and runners! She resolved to corner Willy during the Games to discuss shooting that sort of additional footage for the Prologue in the coming months. Willy was a strange fellow, but she didn’t think he would rebel about shooting nude women, perhaps even in an exotic location.

  With that weight off her mind, she felt buoyant as she returned to planning the filming of the Games. She had worked with most of the cameramen on other projects. One reason she consented to do another film on the 1935 Party Congress was that she could use it to put together a staff for Olympia and practice for the monumental task ahead in Berlin. Day of Freedom was only twenty-eight minutes long and saluted the career military men of the Wehrmacht, all but ignored in Victory of Faith and Triumph of the Will. It mollified the Wehrmacht, which she knew could only help her. In the finished film, she ignored the announcement of the monumental Nuremberg Laws, which stripped Jews of virtually all their rights as German citizens. She did that for two reasons: One, she considered the film a supplement to the two previous Party Congress films and didn’t want to go over old ground, however justified the message. To Germans, even the Nazi hierarchy, she could say: It was time to give the Wehrmacht its due. Two, as she sought to return to acting and directing dramatic films, she was fine with producing a film that allowed her to say to the rest of the world: See, I don’t get involved in dogma.

  The Reich’s Olympia budget was so extravagant that Leni had no problem rationalizing the huge expense of renting and renovating Castle Ruhwald, an old and unused building in a park on the Spandauer Chaussee, as the Olympia crew’s headquarters. Castle Ruhwald was only eight kilometers from the Reich Sports Field, the site of the Olympic Stadium, swimming stadium, and most of the competition venues.

  All three hundred Olympia-Film employees moved in, including Leni, who temporarily left behind her plush fifth-floor apartment on the Hindenburgstrasse in Central Berlin. Married or unmarried, all the film employees knew they would be working long hours at the event sites and attending late-night planning meetings, so it would be easier to be at the company’s temporary headquarters. Plus, there was a band-together mentality among the filmmakers, carpenters, electricians, drivers, message runners, and even the cooks and janitors, as if the Castle were their own Olympic Village. Leni had the only private bedroom, isolated in one corner. Other sleeping quarters were both in separate rooms—six or eight per room—or barracks-style in vast halls. Lavatory and shower facilities were plentiful. Equipment could be stored, maintained, or repaired in several large shops. Food was served cafeteria style.

  Anatol Dobriansky had his own bed among the runners and drivers. Leni’s Truth was that she gave in to the young Russian’s entreaties to be brought to Germany, much of them pantomimed, and that she told him he could work as one of her message-runners during the Games . . . but then he must go back to Greece. Anatol was enthusiastic, tireless, and now—after settling into Berlin and being excited by what he saw, including the power of her fame—infatuated with Leni.

  With morning light showing between the small crack in the curtain, Leni awakened, looked at the clock and lightly nudged the slumbering Anatol. He moaned, turned back toward her, and then reached for her with one arm. Leni ducked under it, quickly kissed his forehead and rushed out of bed.

  Looking down at him, she smiled indulgently. “Oh, you’re a fun boy, but I just don’t have time.”

  After she bathed and was dressed, she shook him awake again. “You need to be dressed and out of here in ten minutes.” She pointed at her watch and at Anatol, and pantomimed his exit. “Understand me?” Sitting up, he nodded, but still had a vacant look. Leni told him, “When you walk into the cafeteria, you will act like nothing happened.”

  Anatol nodded again.

  “And this is going to be the last time for a while,” she said.

  Maybe ever.

  He understood well enough to look hurt.

  Leni thought: I’m going to be too busy to babysit.

  She said, “And if anyone asks you where you were since last night, you just look at them like you’re an idiot and you don’t understand a goddamn word they said.”

  Starting to walk away, she laughed darkly. Without turning, she added, “You won’t even need to act.”

  As she waited for the stragglers to arrive at the staff meeting, Leni stood next to a meticulously constructed scale model of the Reich Sports Field and looked at the men—all men—seated around the long table in the long, skinny room. Perhaps some changes would have to be made, but as of this moment, she considered the official roster of cameramen—Leni was always thinking of how the credits would look—to be forty-five. Most had assistants, too, so the room was jammed.

  So many old friends, mostly trusted, both personally and professionally—including Hans and Guzzi, who have shared my bed. Hans Ertl, her lover as recently as three years earlier, when both worked on S.O.S. Iceberg, was the mechanical genius. Suggest something and he found a way to do it, as he would show soon when shooting both above and below the water with the same camera at the Olympic pool. Guzzi Lantschner was a handsome skiing star who won a silver medal in the Alpine Combined in the Winter Olympics earlier in the year. Appearing in the mountain movies, he learned how to work the cameras—and was becoming one of the best in the business. Among the others, handsome Walter Frentz was the perfect man to work from the pits at the track and field and know how to shoot the same things as others but get better images. And Heinz Jaworsky, so patient and professional, was such a good soldier in Greece! Most of the rest were veterans, too. She trusted them to adapt to the unpredictable and unscripted nature of the athletic events, such a contrast to either scripted stories or the plodding pageantry at the Nuremberg rallies.

  She handed out sheets with assignments for each of the crews for the week leading up to the Games. The goal would be to become familiar with the sites and, as the athletes began showing up and practicing, to get a better feel for how to film specific events. Plus, they would compile film of likely medalists as they trained, accumulating the sort of close-ups not easily attainable in the real competition. Referring to a notepad, she ran down her list of strategic points. They had heard much of the spiel before, but she wanted it fresh in their minds.

  “We’ll also be shooting material next week at the Olympic Village, both training and in the living quarters, so be on the lookout for anything that gives the film more of an international slant and proves we are not fixated on our own athletes . . .”

  “Once the Games start, shoot everything taking place in front of you. When in doubt, keep shooting . . .”

  “Always wear the all-access armband, but also wave your Olympia-Film card, if necessary, and act as if anywhere you want to go, you belong there. Don’t take no for an answer and tell them to take it up with me . . .”

  “Remember: Film! Art! Not newsreel . . .”

  “Don’t shy away from the winners . . . no matter who they are. We’ll worry about who they are later . . .”

  “Remember, Rolf here”—she pointed at Rolf Lantin, who had one of his cameras on the table in front of him—“will be with me most of the time to shoot still photos for a booklet or other material about the making of the film.”

  “When runners give you communications from me, even if I am being critical, don’t be defensive. Act! As we move along, the best assignments will go to those who are doing the best jobs. . . .”

  “We will hope to assemble here each night at eleven o’clock. We’ll go over general issues, and then I will meet with each cameraman individually to go over plans for the next day. Clearly, some of you will have to wait a long time, so I am asking for your indulgence . . .”


  A half hour after the meeting ended, Ernst Jäger knocked on her half-opened door and came in. “The Olympic programs just came in!” he said excitedly. “They put an American on the cover.”

  “Not one of the Negroes?” Leni asked incredulously.

  “No, no, no,” Jäger responded. “They wouldn’t have been that stupid.”

  “Who then?”

  “Decathlon man. World-record holder. They needed to decide on the cover a month ago, and they told me the Americans picked their decathlon men before the rest of the team, so they were able to get a picture.”

  Jäger returned soon with a copy. Entranced, Leni looked at the dark-haired, chiseled American throwing the shot put on the cover.

  “Glenn Morris,” she said slowly, reading.

  Jäger mused, “Put him in a uniform, and he could have been in Triumph of the Will.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Leni said. She thought of Luis Trenker, her striking costar—and former lover—from her early “Alpine” films and added, “But in The Holy Mountain, certainly. He’s more handsome than Trenker!”

  Jäger said, “You know the winner of the decathlon is declared the world’s greatest athlete, correct?”

  “I didn’t know that,” Leni said, distracted.

  I must meet that man.

  With the Games so close, Leni considered politely declining Air Minister Hermann Göring’s invitation to hear American pioneer pilot Charles Lindbergh’s speech at the Air Ministry, and then attend an afternoon tea honoring Lindbergh put on by Lufthansa, the national airline. But she decided that the opportunity to meet the first man to fly across the Atlantic solo was too compelling to ignore.