I was listening to BBC World News last week, when the entertainment correspondent commenced to interview someone who sounded like an American trying to cop a phony British accent. She said that she had never written a movie script before, and when asked if she had read any reviews of her new film, she giggled that she was afraid to read them. Later she dropped the accent, and telling us how she wanted to tell the story of her subject from a “woman’s perspective.” There was no mention of the subject’s suspected Nazi ties, which if true might prove awkward, given the writer/director’s professed “identification” with her subject, since they were both controversial Americans with British connections through marriage. But in another interview, she claims that “In fact, I thought (she) was a Nazi too, when I started my research. But after years of searching, I could not find any empirical evidence to support (the allegation), (that she) was a Nazi supporter or a Nazi.” In the movie, a character rebuffs the Nazi sympathizer claim, suggesting that it is merely naiveté—as if the murder of 6 million Jews and the killing of 20 million Russians was something beyond the scope of her imagination, and she could not be blamed for that.
Alright, enough of the mystery girl; we are talking about the Material Girl herself, Madonna, and her new film, “W.E.,” sort-of based on the life of Wallis Simpson, who King Edward VIII abdicated his throne for. Madonna claimed that she wanted to discover the “mystery” of how a king could throw everything away for a twice-divorced, fortyish, rather homely woman. Some scandal sheets—then and now—suggested that both had sexual “problems,” and that Edward could only be “turned on” through deviant sexual practices—apparently like his “friend,” Adolf Hitler. This is just innuendo of course, but if this was a problem for Simpson, she never let on. In any case, it was unimportant; the release of previously secret papers from the Royal archives pertaining to the abdication crisis contained a letter from Sir Horace Wilson, in which he said “There was on her side (Simpson) no indication of any affection. On the contrary, her line throughout seemed to be to feather her own nest and to save her own skin…To know all is to forgive all, and all is not known. But subject to that, the conclusion seems to be: selfish, self-seeking, hard, calculating, ambitious, scheming and dangerous."
I have to admit that I haven’t spent years researching the life of Simpson like Madonna did, or claims she did. Maybe it took her that long to read a couple of flattering biographies. I prefer writing from experience, because I don’t have to spend days doing research trying to discover if someone like Madonna actually has a point. I remember her alright; she was born with silver spoon firmly entrenched in her mouth, the daughter of an engineer for Chrysler, and who had a “rebellious” streak; if you are a kid with family money, you can always afford to be “rebellious.” Madonna says she was crushed by the death of her mother from breast cancer, something which she hasn't gotten over to this day; she was only five-years-old at the time. I remember that I did like her song “Like a Virgin,” a catchy little hit single, and I thought that the music video for “Like a Prayer” was worth a few spare minutes. I also remember her “Sex” book with the metal covers (god, I wish I hadn’t thrown that away; it would probably be worth a fortune now), and feeling sorry for good actors like Willem Dafoe and Jurgen Prochnow, doing their best to compensate for the perennial Razzie Award winner for worst actress in “Body of Evidence.” Some people actually thought Madonna was good in her Major Film Debut, “Desperately Seeking Susan,” but she didn’t do any actual acting in it; she was just playing herself, which some people may or may not find appealing. Madonna did inspire a very funny spoof—Julie Brown’s “Medusa.” It includes a scene where “Mr. Actor Man”—apparently based on her then-husband Sean Penn—is engaged in a futile effort to give her acting lessons; she rather he’d suck on her toes.
When I was “furthering” my education in Sacramento, there was a feminist professor in a media studies class who thought Madonna was God-like; I told her that Madonna’s shtick wasn’t exactly new—I seemed to recall Elton John, Freddy Mercury, David Bowie and Alice Cooper. But Madonna was different. Why? Because she was a woman, of course; I wanted to point out that Patti LaBelle (I have nothing to do with these links) wore something like that cone-shaped brassier in LaBelle's stage act back in the mid-Seventies, but I figured I'd "concede" her point for the sake of peace. I did mention that Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You” also had rather strong sexual overtones; yes, but it was Madonna who was controlling the action. OK, but what about Sylvia’s “Pillow Talk” which sounded to me like an older woman trying to push herself on a kid to “Get it On” with her? Madonna was too narcissistic to even come close to matching the simmering sexuality of “Talk.” In the 1990s and beyond, Madonna mainly survived on her own PR; there are still a lot of people who identify with her self-obsessed persona. Of course, not all of them can afford to move to England and pretend they are “better” than you, just because they can fake a British accent.
Back to the present. The Times of London claimed that Madonna's new film was “screamingly, inadvertently funny in parts [that] had ‘em rolling in the aisles at Venice,” while The Guardian opined “Whatever the crimes committed by Wallis Simpson – marrying a king, sparking a constitutional crisis, fraternizing with Nazis – it's doubtful that she deserves the treatment meted out to her in W.E., Madonna's jaw-dropping take on ‘the 20th-century's greatest royal love story.’ The woman is defiled, humiliated, made to look like a joke. The fact that W.E. comes couched in the guise of a fawning, servile snow-job only makes the punishment feel all the more cruel…What an extraordinarily silly, preening, fatally mishandled film this is. It may even surpass 2008's Filth and Wisdom, Madonna's calamitous first outing as a film-maker. Her direction is so all over the shop that it barely qualifies as direction at all.” It was noted by others that the production was “troubled,” and that Madonna’s “unusual” directorial style managed to alienate some the original cast, including Ewan McGregor who subsequently walked-off the picture.
But this is supposed to be a history lesson. British author A.N Wilson, who claims to have been a close friend of Lady Diana Mosley, a Nazi sympathizer even before she married British fascist leader Oswald Mosley (in a civil ceremony in Joseph Goebbels’ home), said that Mosley “knew Wallis and the Little Dook (Edward), as she called them, in their Parisian exile. She had no doubts at all that Edward VIII and Wallis had both been pro-Hitler before, during and after the war. That photograph of Wallis more or less curtseying to the Führer is a chilling reminder of what we were all spared by the crowning of Edward's dull, brave, stammering brother.”
It was common knowledge in London that Simpson was “friendly”—extremely so—with the likes of Herman Goering and Joachim von Ribbentrop, who was the Nazi ambassador to Britain before becoming foreign minister; it was also strongly suggested that she had an affair with Ribbentrop . According to an FBI memo during the period the Duke was “appointed” to serve as governor of the Bahamas during World War II, the former German Duke of Wurttemberg-turned U.S.-based Benedictine monk Father Odo told an FBI agent that "He knew definitely that von Ribbentrop, while in England, sent the then Wallis Simpson 17 carnations every day. The 17 supposedly represented the number of times they had slept together." Simpson apparently continued her contacts with Ribbentrop during her “exile” in France at least until 1940; she was naturally suspected of passing “state secrets to the Nazis,” as was her husband, known for his thoughtless tongue. The Duke had well-known Nazi sympathies himself as early as 1933; because of the “communist threat,” he was of the opinion that Britain had no choice but take the Nazis side in the war. While the war was raging, the Duke/governor of the Bahamas submitted to an interview with an American magazine reporter; he claimed that it would be "a tragic thing for the world if Hitler were overthrown. Hitler, he said, was the right and logical leader of the German people." He even suggested that FDR be prevailed upon to intervene as a mediator between the Nazis and Britain. The opinions expressed were so shocking that the magazine thought the better of publishing it. It might be a matter of debate how far Simpson helped shape his views, but it was also a “known fact” in both London and Berlin that she played him like a puppet on a string. In any case, both the Duke and Duchess—besides being reduced to high society “parasites”—greatly embarrassed the royal family and brought disrepute for themselves by openly cavorting with high Nazi officials (at least before the war), and making ill-advised comments that could be construed as favorable to the Nazis.
A report in The Guardian in 2002 detailed some of the highlights of 227 pages of FBI documents on the activities of the pair:
"It has been ascertained that for some time, the British government has known that the Duchess of Windsor was exceedingly pro-German in her sympathies and connections and there is strong reason to believe that this is the reason why she was considered so obnoxious to the British government that they refused to permit Edward to marry her and maintain the throne…Both she and the Duke of Windsor have been repeatedly warned by representatives of the British government that in the interest of the morale of the British people, they should be exceedingly circumspect in their dealings with the representatives of the German government. The duke is in such state of intoxication most of the time that he is virtually non compos mentis. The duchess has repeatedly ignored these warnings.” In a secret memo dated September 13 1940, an informant had "established conclusively that the Duchess of Windsor has recently been in touch with Joachim von Ribbentrop and was maintaining constant contact and communication with him…Because of their high official position, the duchess was obtaining a variety of information concerning the British and French official activities that she was passing on to the Germans."
Since the British were afraid that the duchess would reveal her Nazi sympathies and support, it was “considered absolutely essential that the Windsors be removed to a point where they would do absolutely no harm," preventing her from being in contact with British officials, or "establishing any channel of communication with von Ribbentrop." In 1941, an agent quoted an informant who claimed that Herman Goering and the duke had reached a deal in which "after Germany won the war, Goering, through control of the army, was going to overthrow Hitler and then he would install the duke as king of England."
The informant also provided a possible motive for the duke and duchess’ seeming treason: “Of course she had an intense hate for the English since they had kicked them out of England." The Duke’s relations with his brother, King George VI (the one in “The King’s Speech”) were forever soured because he refused to confer to the duchess the title “Her Royal Highness.”
So Madonna’s rewrite of history can at least be said to be naïve. Whatever else attracted the pair to each other, one of them surely was their common “appreciation” of the Nazis, and how it would eventually form an “us against the world”—or at least against the British, who treated them so “abominably,” forcing them into permanent exile. England wasn’t, after all, their home anymore. The Nazis, on the other hand, treated them like rock stars. And if Mosley is to be believed, the Windsors remained Nazi sympathizers even after the war. Madonna apparently shoe-horned in a character in her movie living in contemporary New York City who has some “spiritual” connection to Simpson to mirror her own professed “identification” with her subject; obviously, to admit to some rather significant flaw in her heroine’s character would be tantamount to admitting to some rather significant flaw in Madonna.
History certainly has a way of being inconvenient if you are ignorant of it. There was an auction recently in which the wares were jewelry that once belonged to Simpson, all told selling for £8 million, about $12.5 million. Over half that amount—£4.5 million—was for just one item: A bracelet of onyx and diamond, in the shape of a panther. According to the Daily Mail, there was a “nail-biting battle” between two bidders; one of them is believed to be Madonna or her representative. In any case, there is a question about where all this jewelry came from. Before she died in 1986, Simpson’s affairs were controlled by a French lawyer named Suzanne Blum. After the death of the Duke, and in frail condition, Simpson was dependent upon Blum, although it was clear they shared a loathing for each other. After a row over some personal papers, The Mail described what happened next: “Blum never dared enter the Duchess's presence again - at least not until the Duchess could no longer speak. But the Duchess would pay heavily for her scorn. After that day, Blum did exactly as she pleased. She sold jewelry from the Duchess's multimillion-pound collection without her permission, set about publishing love letters between the Duchess and the Duke and appointed herself keeper of the Windsor flame…All the time, the vulnerable Duchess - abandoned by the Royal Family and with few friends to protect her - was held virtual prisoner in her own house. She was helpless, sometimes sedated and hopelessly alone.” According to Blum’s 1994 obituary in The Independent, Blum “was frequently challenged to give evidence of the Duchess' wish and to show that she had a power of attorney to act for her. Blum published virtually everything except that authority. Thereafter it was Blum who organised the sale of the Duchess' jewels in Geneva in 1987 and the donation of most of the proceeds to the Louis Pasteur Institute, many millions of pounds, apparently again by the Duchess' wish.” One senses in the “apparently” that there was some doubt about that.
Does the jewelry that may or may not be in Madonna’s possession also have a sordid “history” to conceal?
No comments:
Post a Comment