-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
Confessions of a Scoundrel
Guido Orlando©1954
as told to Sam Merwin
John C. Winston Company
LC Card # 54-11107
-----
20
A Pair of Princes
ONE THURSDAY EVENING IN MARCH, 1952, I decided to take an evening off in
Paris and enjoy myself. I had just received a commission of 400,000
francs—about $1,000—for the Italian rights to Pepe le Moko, the Jean Gabin,
French-original version of what Hollywood made as Algiers with Charles Boyer
and Hedy Lamarr.
Since I was dateless, I decided to take some of the money I'd made that day
and try my luck at the tables of the Casino Club on the Champs Elysees. Not
that I am much of a gambler. My roulette is totally lacking in system and I
have neither the patience nor the interest to memorize the various
combinations needed for any accepted form of card playing. I'd much rather
gamble with people.
However, lacking anything else to do that evening, I decided to play—and
found myself sitting across a chemin de fer table from novelist William
Saroyan. Please don't ask me to explain the game—I play by the seat of my
pants. In this instance I managed to acquire a personal kibitzer, who stood
at my elbow and told me how to bet and play my cards properly.
As so often happens to a player who doesn't care, I won. Thanks to luck and
my kibitzer's sound advice, I ran a hundred thousand francs to half a
million in less than an hour. This plus the fact my consultations with my
kibitzer before were both noisy and game-delaying, began to annoy Saroyan,
who was losing heavily.
He began to fidget and stew and glare at me. Now and then he'd mutter, "How
can anyone hope to play with this loudmouthed Italian lousing up the game?"
As he continued to lose, he stopped muttering and began to make his
complaints out loud. This made my kibitzer nervous, so much so that soon my
half-million francs dropped to 280,000—about $700. But since Saroyan lost a
lot more in the same time, his anger got louder and unfunnier.
At this point, Tommy O'Callaghan, an Anglo-Irishman who had known me for
years, came in and got the picture. Sensing Saroyan and I were on the verge
of coming to blows, he patted me on the shoulder and said, "You're still
ahead, Guido. Why don't you quit while you still can?"
I protested. "But, Tommy, I've just dropped a wad and I want to win it back."
Tommy, who proved himself a true friend that evening, went to work on me. He
had just come, he said, from a showing of Bob Hope's The Lemon Drop Kid, and
Hope, at one point, had used a gesture which might have been copied from one
of my own.
He said, "No fooling, Guido. Hope ran his hand through his hair in front of a
mirror and said to his reflection, 'Don't ever let anything happen to
you!'—just the way you did with me in London, three years ago. You ought to
trot over there and catch it tonight."
Tommy's pitch worked. By this time I had lost interest in the game and
decided to go to the movie, which was only a little way from the Casino Club.
After all, I didn't want to get into a fight with Saroyan, and I was still
180,000 francs—about $450—ahead.
While squeezing my way past the already-seated customers on my way to a
nonaisle seat, I had the misfortune to step hard on the foot of the lady
sitting next to me. I apologized, of course, and sat through what turned out
to be the last third of the picture. When the house lights came on at the
finish, I looked at my victim, saw she was blonde, attractive, obviously a
lady. I decided to apologize again.
One thing led to another, and a few minutes later I found myself sharing a
table in Fouquet's with the lady and her husband, who had been sitting on the
other side of her. His name was Charles W. Guhl. He was a German who had
spent much of his adult life in London and spoke excellent English. His wife,
I found out, was the daughter of Arnold Becker, owner of a chain of forty-two
department stores in Western Germany—and a niece of Richard Becker, who owned
30 per cent of all the vast Saar industrial complex and was rated as
fifth-ranking capitalist in the country.
I asked my new friends what they were doing in Paris. They told me they were
staying at a small hotel near Maxim's, while seeking an appointment with Lord
Layton, director of the London News Chronicle and pro tem head of the Council
of Europe. He added, "We've been in Paris three days so far—and no luck."
This, despite the fact that a niece of Anthony Eden had been trying to
arrange the meeting for them. Guhl, I learned, was anxious to put before Lord
Layton some proposition prepared by his in-laws, the Beckers. It began to
look like a spot for me, so I invited them to have tea with me at the Prince
de Galles the next afternoon.
They arrived with their chins dragging-no nearer contact with Lord Layton
than the night before. I decided it was time for me to step into the picture.
I said, "Very well then, let's try the direct approach."
I picked up a phone and called the Astor, where Lord Layton was staying. Lord
Layton, I was told, was out. So I left a message, stating it was
imperative—repeat, imperative!—His Lordship call Guido Orlando at the Prince
de Galles the moment he got back to his own hotel.
Guhl shook his head and said, "Nice try, but he won't do it."
I said, "You don't know Guido Orlando"—not having the least idea whether Lord
Layton would call or not. Then, to change the subject, "Another cocktail,
perhaps, Madame Guhl?"
I had barely time to fill her glass before the phone rang. It was Lord
Layton. When I reiterated the importance of his seeing me, he offered to
receive me at the Astor at once. I begged off, knowing this to be premature,
made a date for ten o'clock the next morning. My purpose in stalling was to
have time to get something ready to talk to him about. After I hung up the
phone, I turned to the Guhls. and said, "You see? Sometimes the direct
approach is simplest after all."
"My God!" said Guhl, mopping his brow.
I have always been a sucker for royalty. Blame it, if you will, on my having
spent my first eleven years in a Monarchist Italy—or blame it on an incurably
romantic nature. Take your pick. Just a few weeks earlier I had tried to
stir up a deal with Crown Prince Louis Ferdinand, oldest son of the late
Crown Prince Wilhelm, grandson of the Kaiser and pretender to the throne of
Germany. Even though a member of the Prince's household had chased me all
over Europe by phone and run me to earth in Madrid—he wanted my advice on
whether or not Louis Ferdinand should attend the funeral of his cousin,
George VI of England, and I advised against it barring a royal
invitation—nothing had come of it.
Now, thanks to the opportunity the Guhls had dropped into my lap, I decided
to tackle the idea from another angle.
Lord Layton received me promptly at ten o'clock in the lobby of the Astor. He
turned out to be a lean, tight-lipped British gentleman with lean, clipped
accents and a lean, swift promoter's brain.
He said, "Mr. Orlando, you say it is imperative that I talk with you?"
I told him it was and sprang the Royal Council for Free Europe on him,
full-blown.
There were, I told him, eleven monarchs or former monarchs in Europe who
ruled, or had ruled within living memory, some 300,000,000 people. At the
moment, in spite of almost forty years of war and revolution, their devoted
followers still numbered 100,000,000. The idea behind the Royal Council was
to unite these monarchs and ex-monarchs, with their followers, in a concerted
propaganda drive against the encroachments of Russian communism.
Lord Layton, being a Liberal, was intensely interested. He wanted to know how
I proposed to make the project work.
My preliminary plans were simple. I hoped to get Louis Ferdinand to write to
the other ten kings, suggesting the Council. Once they agreed, as they were
certain to, I knew there would be little trouble in raising sufficient funds
to build a Royal Council Headquarters in the tiny principality of
Liechtenstein—where all the postage stamps come from. There, if all went
well, the Council could build a capital of sorts, as well as a radio station
to flood Europe, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, with anti-Communist
propaganda.
Guido Orlando, of course, would be on the payroll—although it was too early
to mention this pertinent (and impertinent) fact.
Lord Layton began to make suggestions. Being British, he- wanted to
break the story from London, with a contrived leak of Louis Ferdinand's
letter in the press—preferably, of course, the News Chronicle. The leak would
then be confirmed by release of the reply from ex-King Peter of Yugoslavia.
He pro-posed no less a person than Lady Astor for Council secretary, said,
"She'd love to do it and she has so much energy!" And he suggested Queen
Juliana of Holland as Council chairwoman, adding, "She's a neutral and such a
lady, of course."
I then suggested Mayor Lauro of Naples, an immensely rich supporter of the
Italian Monarchists, might be induced to supply a yacht on which our eleven
royal heads could meet, the following summer, on the neutral blue waters of
the Mediterranean. All very E. Phillips Oppenheim—and all very sound from a
promotional point of view.
Meanwhile fifty-five minutes had passed and Lord Layton was looking at his
watch. He had an eleven-o'clock appointment to keep. So I rose and walked
across the lobby with him—and by the strangest of coincidences bumped into
the Guhls, whom I introduced to His Lordship. Seeing they were well launched,
I ducked across the street to a bistro.
Their business with Lord Layton quickly concluded, the Guhls joined me there,
according to plan. They were excited, not only at having obtained their
objective but at Lord Layton's reaction to me. Charley said, "What the devil
did you tell him, Guido? I never knew an Englishman of his type could get so
steamed up."
I gave them a run-through, stressing Lord Layton's insistence on giving the
entire scheme a British slant. As I'd expected, Guhl felt just as strongly,
since Louis Ferdinand was to be kingpin and the whole project Continental, it
should be basically a German deal. He said, "I'm going to talk to my wife's
family. I feel certain they'll be happy to back such a scheme. How much will
it cost to get the ball rolling?"
I mentioned $12,000, which, I pointed out, would be needed merely to set up
the preliminary groundwork. I didn't tell him "preliminary groundwork" was a
mere nom d'argent for Guido Orlando. Guhl said he'd try to get it for me. The
next day he and his wife returned to Frankfurt. I got a wire from him a few
hours after his arrival there and caught the night train to Frankfurt the
next evening.
Arnold Becker, Guhl's father-in-law, proved more than receptive. He saw fine
promotional possibilities in linking his department store chain to the Royal
Council, however indirectly, in a Western Germany still largely
pro-Hohenzollern. And he added, "It would be better still if we get my
brother interested." Brother Richard, of course, was the industrialist with
the vast Saar holdings.
I managed to get brother Richard interested, though it took a lot of doing,
involving a side deal with my old friend Charley Poletti and a lot of steel,
to turn the trick.
In the meantime, I found myself ascending a sort of ladder of Prussian
nobility and lesser royalty on my way to Louis Ferdinand. I was awash in Von
Schlabbrendorfs, Von Heuducks and Von Hannovers for days. Finally, at the end
of a week, I was invited to an imposing schloss, or castle, belonging to
Prince Christian zu Schaumburg-Lippe, outside the village of Staat
Delmenhorst, where Prince Louis Ferdinand and his wife, Princess Kyra of
Russia, were staying.
There I was received by quiet, powerful Graf Hardenberg-Neu-Hardenberg, Louis
Ferdinand's seneschal and one of the few key conspirators to survive the July
20, 1944, bomb revolt of the German generals against Hitler. I felt certain
success or failure of the whole campaign hung on his decision.
So I approached him warily, fearing the worst. Unexpectedly, he greeted me
cordially and said, "I've been hearing a great deal about you from my
daughter, Herr Orlando."
For once I was speechless. I hadn't the slightest idea who his daughter was
or when, where and under what circumstances she knew me. All I could do was
hope for the best.
Then it came out. Just a few weeks before my meeting with the Guhls in Paris,
my little office was snowed under with paper, work. Claude del Rue, my
secretary, got so far behind he could hardly find his desk without radar,
thanks to the correspondence piled upon it. I had sent out an SOS for a
temporary secretary who could read and write Italian and English as well as
French. And somebody had said, "I know a German girl who might help you.
She's got some sort of title, but she's qualified and can do the work."
I had hired her, found her satisfactory, paid her off when the work was
cleaned up—and now my emergency secretary turned out to be the Graf
Hardenberg's daughter! I hadn't even remembered her name. But, fortunately,
our relationship had been pleasant, if brief. An exceedingly lucky break for
me.
I outlined my scheme and added an embellishment., To create further good will
toward the Hohenzollerns in Western Germany, I proposed we break a story
which had Stalin offering the late Crown Prince Wilhelm a crown in the
Eastern Zone, a crown Wilhelm turned down rather than become a mere puppet
prince under Russian control.
This seemed to amuse Von Hardenberg, who took me to another part of the
schloss and introduced me to Louis Ferdinand and the Grand Duchess Kyra—a
charming lady with a very pretty face but too much figure. He repeated what I
had told him about my scheme.
During the 1930's Louis Ferdinand, a tall, handsome man of imposing presence,
had spent two years in the United States, working for Henry Ford. He listened
with interest and approval till Von Hardenberg told him of my proposed story
about the late Crown Prince Wilhelm.
Then he protested, "But that never happened—my father did no such thing!" He
looked appalled at the very idea.
Von Hardenberg smiled and said, "It all happened in Herr Orlando's head, Your
Highness."
"Ach, so?" said Louis Ferdinand, looking relieved.
I was in.
I promised to deliver 98 per cent of the popular vote of Western Germany in
favor of a restoration of the Monarchy, once we took the idea to the polls.
Thanks to the reputation I had won in the Italian elections, I was at least
partly believed.
My name went down on the payroll at $1,000 a week. Working out of Frankfurt,
I got busy setting up a straw vote, which was conducted by key newspapers
throughout Western Germany. Their readers gave 33 per cent of their votes for
Louis Ferdinand and a Hohenzollern restoration. I told Von Hardenberg, "This
is just the beginning. Remember, Your Excellency, we have done nothing as yet
to promote the Prince. When we do, the remaining sixty-five per cent I
promised will fall into our hands."
I feel certain it would have, too, had I been allowed to go ahead with my
campaign.
But there were delays. First, Louis Ferdinand asked for a ten-day
postponement before writing his fellow royal heads. Then he asked for thirty
days' delay—then for forty more. Which was okay with me, since I was being
paid every week. And I kept busy earning my money. I drafted the letter for
the Prince and won tentative support for the program from key members of the
Bonn government—including a carefully worded statement from Chancellor
Adenauer. As a result of my activities, Louis Ferdinand's memoirs were sold
to a major newspaper syndicate for a whopping fat fee. And I got a number of
side promotions going in Liechtenstein, where the proposed capital of the
Royal Council for Free Europe was to be located.
Ultimately, though, undercover opposition by the high brass of the Occupation
powers caused the whole campaign to be dropped. But I had a wonderful time
and made good money during my three and a half months on the project in
Germany—as did everyone else connected with the deal. Thinking back, it would
have been nice to be the General Monk behind a Hohenzollern Restoration.
About the time the Royal Council died, I learned Margaret Truman was planning
to visit Vaduz, Liechtenstein's capital and only city. Since I had met Miss
Truman in Washington, during my campaign for Jean Tennyson, I decided a
renewal of this contact might be both pleasant and profitable. Especially
since all sorts of important folk were bound to be floating in the backwash
of Margaret's tour.
This time, however, my luck was out. Despite my most earnest conniving, I was
unable to get within megaphone-hailing distance of Miss Truman. No Persian
potentate of yore was ever so well guarded as this young lady from
Independence, Missouri.
So I worked on another scheme. Through Herr Frick, the Premier, and Prince
Franz Josef, the hereditary ruler of Liechtenstein, I hoped to promote a
parliamentary battle over my dying Royal Council. After a headline-making,
all-night battle, the Chamber was to vote against letting either Monarchists
or Communists use Liechtenstein as a base of operations.
Thus Liechtenstein would win world-wide reputation as a tiny country whose
integrity and rugged independent spirit could be a shining example to the
free world. It would bring money to Liechtenstein banks, tourists to
Liechtenstein hotels and, I hoped, dollars to Orlando's wallet.
Unfortunately, the Chamber was not in session-nor could it be called in time
to stage my carefully planned all-night charade while Miss Truman's visit had
the international spotlight focused on the tiny country. Prince Franz Josef
and Herr Frick were most regretful; they saw the possibilities clearly. But
there it was . . .
And there I was, in Vaduz, with nothing to promote.
There was one minor job for me, however, of a caliber I would not have
considered a week earlier. A Herr Wieser, of Innsbruck in Austria, a real
Charles Atlas-Lionel Strongfort muscle man, wanted me to help promote a
resort spot, the Grand Hotel at Iglerhof, just outside of Innsbruck. Wieser
was employed there as physical director, and the idea was not only to
increase the hotel's patronage but to win him enough backing to build a
gymnasium there. In it he hoped to torment the paying guests in the name of
good health.
He made me an offer and I said, "Very well, I'll put the Grand Hotel on the
map—in one week." I didn't think I could stand the place much longer than
seven days.
So I did a little spadework in Vaduz. Thanks to Herr Frick,
I met Senator Homer Capehart, of Indiana, who was then touring the Continent.
The Senator, I soon learned, was en route to Innsbruck, too.
I did my best to get him to stay at the Grand Hotel, but he had reservations
at another hostelry. But I felt certain I'd be able to use him somehow before
my one-week campaign was ended.
When I reached Iglerhof, I found I was in luck. Jacob Kaiser, then Foreign
Minister for German Affairs in the Bonn Government, was staying at the Grand.
Needless to say, it didn't take me long to arrange an "important"
international conference at my hotel, between Kaiser and Senator Capehart of
Indiana.
On the afternoon of Capehart's arrival in Innsbruck, I had a chauffeur-driven
limousine bring him in luxury to Iglerhof for the meeting—a meeting which was
bound to get the Grand Hotel free publicity from Lisbon to Istanbul. In the
lobby I went into my best major-domo, master-of-ceremonies act, bustling
about, introducing the principals, seeing the cameramen got the pictures they
wanted.
Once I had brought it all off smoothly, I mopped my brow and looked around
for a coke—and a feminine voice behind me said, "Hello, Guido, haven't
changed a bit, have you?"
Startled, I turned around and recognized a German beauty I had met in Paris
about a year before. At that time she took with her everywhere a toy poodle
of detestable habits, who made a mess of my Prince de Galles apartment. But
here, in the Grand Hotel, she had apparently turned in her poodle for an
elegant, elderly gentleman, who turned out to be Prince Alfred zu Lippe, a
cousin of Prince Bernhard, consort of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands.
He was, he told me, involved in a deal with Prince Bernhard for the financing
of an Austrian lead mine. The United States Government had offered $500,000
for an option on the entire output of the mine for the next ten years.
Another half-million was needed to get things rolling and Bernhard, who had
already given Prince Alfred $50,000, was willing to go for $200,000 more if a
backer or backers could be found to put up the other quarter-million.
It looked like a made-to-order deal for me. I said, "I'm interested. When and
where can we arrange to meet Prince Bernhard?"
Bernhard, he told me, would be in Amsterdam in forty-eight hours-which gave
me just time to wind up my week at Iglerhof. I put my pretty secretary and
myself into the sky-blue Consol sports car that was part of my profits on the
Royal Council of Europe and headed for the Netherlands when the job was done.
We reached Amsterdam late Saturday morning. Prince Alfred, who came by train,
arrived that afternoon.
We made ourselves known to the right people and, Sunday afternoon, a royal
limousine and chauffeur picked me up at my hotel and drove me to the horse
show, where I was, to meet Bernhard. It turned out to be quite an occasion,
since Bernhard received me in the royal enclosure. His mother and
fourteen-year-old daughter, Princess Beatrix—a lovely little girl-and his
aide, Major Curtsema, were the only others present.
Bernhard was in mufti, but Major Curtsema wore a magnificent blue dress
uniform. He turned out to be a bright, likable young man, whom I liked
especially because he was scarcely taller than my own five feet five. I hit
it off with him right away, as well as with Prince Bernhard.
Bernhard is probably the most engaging of all the royal personages I have
met. He is polite, considerate, has a fine sense of humor, speaks a
half-dozen languages fluently, is a fine aviator and all-around sportsman-all
in all, a very swell Joe. He was exhibiting some of his own horses in the
show that afternoon and was as happy as any young countryman when they won
their share of cups and ribbons.
We discussed the lead mine, and I told him how Lord Layton had tried to have
his wife, Queen Juliana, made head of the Royal Council for Free Europe. He
said, "I feel sure Juliana would have liked to do it—but Parliament would
never have consented."
He said he was ready to put up the remaining $200,000 he had promised for the
Austrian mine as soon as the rest of the capitalization was forthcoming and
told me to go ahead and see what I could do to raise it. He even wrote out
for me his itinerary for the week ahead, so I could get in touch with him
instantly if necessary. I still have this bit of paper, in his handwriting.
After a five-hour meeting, we left when the horse show ended, passing through
the ranks of a guard of honor, which presented arms smartly. Bernhard bowed
to the cheering crowd and said, aside, to me, "You see, Mr. Orlando, they
still like royalty in Europe."
He escorted me to my limousine amid popping flash bulbs. It gave me an odd
sensation to find myself getting the celebrity treatment, after the hundreds
of times I'd arranged such occasions for others. At the moment I felt a
little like royalty myself.
And I thought, How am I going to use Prince Bernhard? And how am I going to
make myself so valuable to him that he'll use me?
That afternoon was a high point in my life thus far.
But I could not afford to let myself be carried away. There was a little
matter of raising a quarter of a million bucks if I was to be useful to
anybody, including myself.
>From Amsterdam I drove back to Liechtenstein on Monday, to wrap up my affairs
there. This took a few days. In the meantime, I was on the phone to Paris,
tracking down my money man and convincing him I was onto a good thing.
This man is an American and will have to remain nameless. He is middle-aged,
a native New Yorker, a veteran international financier of the old school-in
short, a gentleman. We arranged to meet that weekend at the Hotel Metropole
in Brussels, since Bernhard was to be visiting royal relatives in Ostend.
There, however, we ran into all sorts of schedule trouble with the Prince. He
was all tangled up with the Belgian Royal Family and was unable to see us in
time. My money man had to return to Paris, then go to London on another deal.
We made what arrangements we could by telephone and Bernhard agreed to meet
us in Holland the following weekend.
"Come to think of it," said my American friend at the hotel, "there's one
angle of this deal that could bear looking into, before we get too involved."
I said, "What's that?"
He said, "The attitude of the American Government. They offered that option a
couple of years ago when lead and its byproducts were scarce. They're not so
scarce now. I'm going to check on it."
I said, "Go ahead. I'll keep my fingers crossed."
Probably I should have braided my toes as well. For, in London, the following
Wednesday, my friend made inquiries of a high American Army officer and
learned our Government had no longer an urgent need for lead and had no
intention of picking up the option.
We returned to Amsterdam the next Saturday with our sad news, and were met by
Major Curtsema, who took us on a three-hour tour of the city's canals that
afternoon, in a gleaming royal barge.
Bernhard received us in Soedyck Palace that evening and heard us out. When we
were finished, he smiled and said, "I owe you gentlemen a vote of thanks. If
you hadn't dug out the truth and told me, I'd have been out another $200,000.
Shall we have a drink?"
I said, "A coke, please." He laughed, and ordered it for me. It occurred to
me then that even though I had yet to show a financial profit on the deal, I
had managed to make myself useful, to Prince Bernhard much sooner than I'd
expected to.
But I came out ahead in the end. My American friend, to show his appreciation
for my having put him in touch with Bernhard, arranged for me a five-thousand
retainer to do public relations work in behalf of a Canadian mining
enterprise engaged in drilling for oil in Israel.
A wonderful man-in fact, two of them! Which is more than par for the course
in any one deal, no matter how it comes out.
pps 248-261
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
