by Terry Frei
Corny Johnson picked up his open case and handed it to Wood, who was wide-eyed.
“Wow,” he exclaimed, taking it out of the case.
Glenn couldn’t resist looking, too.
On one side, next to a Greek figure, the lettering said:
XL
Olympiade
Berlin
1936
Wood turned it over, and there the design showed a Greek athlete being carried off on the shoulders of others, with no lettering.
The three shot-putters—Sam Francis, Jack Torrance, and Dimitri Zaitz—all were there, too, and they were being good sports after missing out on medals themselves. The only complaint came when Torrance joked, “We should at least get little ribbons or something . . . you know how hard that was to make sure we finished fourth, fifth, and sixth, right in a row? That’s almost as hard as you guys finishing first, second, and third!”
Jack Parker pointed to the pot on the table. “Let me be the eighth guy to ask . . . what’s with the plant?”
“You’re not the eighth,” Johnson said, smiling. “You’re about the twentieth. It’s an oak tree. The gold-medal winners are supposed to take them home and plant them. Supposed to be a sign of international goodwill.”
Albritton said, “But there’s a limit to their goodwill, of course. They’ll give you a tree, but not a handshake.”
“Why, what happened?” Cunningham asked.
“Hitler called all the winners up to his box today . . . except us. I know there were only four finals today and a couple of the winners were German, but it’s funny how he had the Finnish runners up there after the 10,000 meters, too, and then all of a sudden he was gone right before we got our medals. It wasn’t that late or anything.”
“Think it was deliberate?” Cunningham asked.
Albritton laughed. “What do you think? Not that I wanted to meet that jerk, anyway, but if it was going to be part of the Olympics here, I would have gone, just to show them we’re not as rude as they are.”
“It doesn’t really bother me,” Johnson declared. “I didn’t want to meet him, either.”
Albritton said, “I even asked the German movie lady—Leni whatever—where her Führer went and if he didn’t like the high jump or something.”
Glenn tried to be low-key. “What’d she say?”
“She said he couldn’t stay any later or he’d be mobbed if he tried to leave when everyone else was. She spoke really good English. But she did ask why we had to take so damn long between jumps and make it run so long. I laughed, but I’m not sure she was kidding.”
Glenn thought: She wasn’t.
Albritton added, “She seems really intense. From what I saw, running all over, giving orders, jumping down at that camera pit with her crew, I’m not sure I’d like to work for her. But she was nice enough to us.”
That’s Leni, all right.
Cunningham jumped in. “Okay, guys, see what you think,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if they say it was an accident or bad timing. If he snubs any more of our winners, none of us—first, second, third, whatever—will go up there, even if invited. Sound right to everybody?”
Glenn joined in the nods and words of agreement.
“Start spreading the word,” Cunningham said. “Now let’s win enough gold medals to make this an issue!”
“Jesse’ll force their hand tomorrow,” Albritton said. “And ours.”
Glenn thought: Better be at the stadium. He knew the heavy part of the track and field schedule the next day—including the 100-meter semifinals and finals and the hammer throw—wouldn’t begin until 3PM, so he would work out in the morning at the Village, and then head over.
20
Leni’s Tantrum
Monday, August 3
Glenn wore his warm-up suit, but not his official uniform, to the stadium. The noncompeting Americans who attended the Sunday events passed along the news that even during the competition, there was room to lounge around on the infield, but more notably, at the open areas at corners of the track. Glenn took one of the tunnels from the dressing-room area under the track and emerged in the infield. The 400-meter hurdle heats had started, and he watched American Dale Schofield—Glenn knew him from his college days at Brigham Young University—run second in his heat to advance to the semifinals the next day.
Then he spotted Leni. She wore trousers, a blouse, and a scarf, and she was watching one of her cameramen—Glenn didn’t know it, but it was Guzzi Lantschner—working a camera set on a cart that was moving on rails, back and forth near the hammer-throw ring. Glenn and the American hammer throwers had joked about which of their events was more obscure in the United States, and the hope was that one of them—Bill Rowe, Donald Favor, or Henry Dreyer—would sneak into the top three and earn a medal.
One of the Germans uncorked an impressive heave, but even he turned before the weight landed when he noticed the furor behind him. A supervising official rushed up to Lantschner and shoved him. “What do you think you’re doing?” the man demanded. “Pick up your toys and get out of here! This is not a playground.”
Lantschner was stunned, and before he could react, Leni had grabbed the official’s coat.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked sharply.
“Fraulein . . .”
“You heard me, you miserable bastard. This was approved long ago. The athletes know about it and are fine with it.”
A second German hammer thrower jumped in. “That’s right, sir, Hein and I knew about this, and we asked the other competitors about it. They all said it was fine. Finns, Americans, Swedes—all of them.” He smiled. The three Americans were lounged on the grass nearby, and the German competitor called out to them in English. “Camera,” he said, pointing, “is all right?”
Rowe laughed and gave a thumbs-up gesture.
Favor said robustly, “Sure!”
The German who had just thrown joined his teammate and the confab. “My throw was awful, but the camera didn’t have anything to do with it,” he said. “Leave it!”
“You don’t run this event,” the official said. “We do. So I must say . . .”
“You must say nothing,” Leni ranted. “Shut your goddamn mouth, let the men throw, and let us shoot them.” She held out an upturned hand, gesturing at the filled seats. “Those people came to watch these men, we came to film them, and nobody gives a damn about watching you be an asshole!”
Glenn was too far away to hear all of that, and he wouldn’t have understood the German, anyway. But he figured out the gist, and he resisted the temptation to rush over and try to help. The official tore away from Leni and huddled with three other men. Leni stayed with Lantschner, glaring at the officials. Finally, the first one returned and said, “Your conduct is unacceptable, Fraulein Riefenstahl.”
At least the miserable son of a bitch knows who I am.
The man continued, “We discussed it and decided that you can use this gadget through the first two rounds of throws here in the semifinals, but then you must get it out of here.”
“No!” Leni said. “I need at least part of the finals!”
“But all distances carry over,” the man said, frustrated. “The winning throw might even be in the first round of throws!” The man pondered, and then sighed. “We need to get moving here,” he said. “All right, you can photograph the six finalists for one throw apiece. We will not go any further than that.”
Leni looked at Lantschner. He shrugged. “All right,” Leni said. “But this is ridiculous. It’s like none of you idiots know who’s in charge, and those truly in charge aren’t around while you clerks try to run things.”
The official walked away. Glenn joined the three American hammer throwers. “What was all that about?” Glenn asked as casually as he could.
“They tried to kick out that camera contraption,” Bill Rowe said. “I don’t think they knew the wild woman came with the camera.”
From her vantage point nearby, Leni turned. Spottin
g Glenn, her eyes widened—at least Glenn noticed—and she walked over to them. “Thank you for supporting me,” she said in English.
She wiped away a tear.
Henry Dreyer told her, “Anything that helps hammer men get attention, we’re all for.”
Leni introduced herself, not making a move to shake hands. Dreyer returned the favor for himself and the other two hammer throwers. “And this,” he said, gesturing at Glenn, “is Glenn Morris, who isn’t talented enough to be a hammer thrower. He is a decathlon man, meaning he’s trying to decide what he’s good at.”
Leni reached out, offering her hand to Glenn. As they smiled and looked in each other’s eyes, Leni thought: Oh, I know what he’s good at.
“Hello, Miss Riefenstahl,” Glenn said.
Leni excused herself, saying, “I must get back to work, with the runners this time. I believe Guzzi has this under control . . . now.”
She backed away, waved, and turned, heading toward the starting line area for the 100 meters.
“Jesus, Morris,” Rowe said, watching her depart, “that look meant to meet her under the stands in fifteen minutes.”
“Oh, come on,” Glenn protested.
As Glenn watched the hammer-throw competition continue, Leni talked with her cameramen near the starting line. A uniformed member of the Honorary Youth Service materialized and handed her a note. She read it, then looked up at Hitler’s box. The Führer wasn’t there, but several men were—and one of them was the gerbil whose signature was on the note—Goebbels. She thought of ignoring the summons, but decided she should get it over with before the 100-meter semifinals began.
Upstairs, in the room behind Hitler’s box, Goebbels went on the offensive.
“I saw that commotion down there and then was told that you had been disrespectful,” he roared. “Who do you think you are? Your crew can stay . . . you can’t.”
Leni’s angry tears began as she said, “I told the idiots there, we had permission in advance from the track and field officials and from the competitors.”
“That’s another issue! You can’t be attacking judges down there on the field as you’re representing the Reich. We can shut down the shooting now!”
“You wouldn’t!”
The tears now were a torrent.
“Oh, Jesus, you’re always performing,” Goebbels said derisively. But then he softened. “You can knock off the crying and go down there and apologize to the judge you attacked, and we will consider it your warning.”
Leni didn’t say anything, but kept sobbing.
“Did you hear me?”
“I will apologize to the asshole,” she said, “but not to you. If we are going to make this film and make the Reich’s investment worthwhile, you will have to support me—not continue to try to fuck me over!”
“Fraulein . . .”
“You heard me! Stop trying to fuck me over. Because in the end, if you do that to me, you ruin the film and I can’t imagine you trying to explain that to the Führer! We can’t be having these ridiculous arguments at every step of the way!”
“You have to stop fighting reasonable limits on your filming! And I will check on this and be watching . . . you must apologize to that man!”
“Why would you sign off on this—with all the reichsmarks involved, I remind you—if you weren’t going to back this? Answer me that!”
“I wish I hadn’t,” Goebbels snapped.
“Are you going to tell me, too, that we can’t come here to shoot the winners the Führer invites up to congratulate them? I will have someone here once the medals start being awarded!”
“That’s moot now,” Goebbels said.
“Why?”
“The International Olympic Committee man has asked—told—the Führer that the tradition isn’t for the heads of state of the host nation to receive the winners,” Goebbels said. “He said that would be all right, but the Führer cannot be selective. Either he greets all the winners or none of them.”
“Because of what happened with the American high jumpers yesterday?”
“Of course. But the Führer now has an excuse—as if he needed one—not to meet with the niggers the rest of the way. No one can whine about him snubbing them.”
“Which, of course, he will be doing,” Leni noted.
“Of course,” Goebbels said smugly. “He’s been diplomatic with the Olympics officials in his presence, but he’s making it clear to the rest of us that the Americans should be ashamed of letting the niggers win for them. We could go to the jungles for slaves, too, and have them win for us here. But that would not be a celebration of our nation’s character, either.”
Leni nodded, and the agreement seemed to lighten the mood.
Goebbels continued, “The Führer said he might still have some competitors come up here, but he will not do so in his loge. It will be here, in this room, and it will not be publicized.”
Leni was halfway out the door and passing the SS guard when Goebbels called out: “Fraulein?” She stopped. “Don’t think I have forgotten,” he said. “I will be watching and checking to make sure you apologize to the official.”
“I should just tell him to go fuck himself,” Leni muttered.
She noticed a hint of a smile on the SS man’s face. It hit Leni halfway down the stairway that the SS man might have thought she was talking about Goebbels.
With a feigned rueful smile, Leni addressed the hammer-throwing judge. “I am sorry I grabbed you, but I hope you understand my passion for this project,” she said sheepishly.
The judge nodded, then they both turned, drawn by the commotion in the stands. Adolf Hitler had arrived in his box.
Next up were the 100-meter semifinals. The top three in each of the two races would make the finals run ninety minutes later. Leni went back to the starting line area and grabbed one of her cameramen, Sepp Ketterer. “Sepp, I want shots of the Negro Owens getting ready to run after digging his holes,” she ordered. “His thighs, his buttocks, all the evidence of a primitive, but powerful, creature.”
Ketterer nodded. Leni scurried along the infield, past the finish line and allowed herself to be helped down a small ladder, joining cameraman Walter Frentz in the pit at the corner of the track, outside the lanes as the lime markings curved into the turn.
In the first of the two heats, Jesse Owens ran from lane seven, with nobody outside him. Frank Wykoff was in lane four. They easily ran one-two, with Owens winning, and he looked to his inside after he crossed the finish line and almost didn’t cut left in time to avoid falling into the camera pit. The track official chasing down Owens to tell him his placing passed the edge of the pit said, “Hey, this might not be a good . . .”
From a few feet away, Owens—while not understanding the German, but getting the gist—called out. “It’s my fault,” he said. “I didn’t follow the curve.”
Satisfied, the official held up one finger for Owens and told him his time—10.4 seconds. Owens looked at Leni, who yelled out in English: “Thank you!”
She meant it. I didn’t need another fight!
Owens waved as Wykoff joined him. Knowing they both were advancing, they patted each other on the back. Five minutes later, Ralph Metcalfe won the second semifinal, but the big news—at least to the crowd—was that German Erich Borchmeyer ran third, qualifying for the final. A German would be running up against the three Americans, including two Negroes, in the race for the medals.
“Drama!” Leni exclaimed to Frentz. “We have drama. The fastest of the white race against the primitives!”
She stayed with Frentz through the first round of 100-meter heats for the women, taking note of the young American, Helen Stephens, who broke the Olympic and world record in winning easily. She was tall, blonde, and flat chested.
“If she ran for us, Goebbels would love her,” Leni said.
“Are you sure? She’s not a beauty.”
“Walter, we all know you have very high standards,” Leni said, smiling. “And compared to the
Pole, she’s a picture of womanhood.” She meant Stella Walasiewicz, Stephens’s major challenger for the gold and a dark-haired runner who—as Leni had heard in her wanderings—was the subject of many raised eyebrows and rumors about whether she should have been in the men’s events. To the Americans, she was Stella Walsh, because she trained in the United States, where she simplified her name.
“I’m also pretty certain Miss Stephens likes girls,” Frentz said dismissively. “And I mean the way I like girls.”
“And we know you like girls . . . especially the Italian runner!”
“Oh, don’t believe everything you hear,” Walter said, smiling.
To Leni, that confirmed the Castle rumor: Walter not only had managed to sneak into the Friesenhaus with a pretty Italian runner, a significant accomplishment amid the security, he had stayed the night with her and got back out the next morning without being detected.
Glenn went to the locker-room area under the marathon tunnel to see if a trainer could rub down his slightly sore right shoulder. A grizzled trainer for the U.S. team named “Sparks”—Glenn wasn’t sure if that was his first or last name; he’d never heard the man called anything else—obliged, kneading out some of the knots. As Glenn emerged in the hallway, he ran into Owens, Metcalfe, and Wykoff heading to the track for the 100-meter final. He joined them on the walk.
“Good luck, guys,” Glenn said. “Hope we sweep!”
To Glenn, Owens seemed calm and relaxed, the other two tense and nervous. At the track level, the first person they saw was Eleanor Holm Jarrett, wearing a skirt, blouse, and hat. She displayed a press card, but Glenn still wondered: How’d she get here . . . on the field?
Eleanor greeted them as a group, and then asked Owens if she could ask him a couple of questions for her column.
“Now?” Owens asked nicely.
“Just a couple. . . . I know it will be messy after and I need to run this by one of the guys writing it for me.”
She had neither a notepad nor pen. Glenn and the other two sprinters left Owens and Eleanor alone. But they were able to hear Eleanor ask her first question, about the sprinter’s reaction to his time of 10.2 the day before not being confirmed as a world record because of excessive winds behind him—winds that weren’t measured, but only vaguely and instinctively judged as excessive by race officials.