Jules dove straight in. He’d never been a timid man; if he had been, he wouldn’t be here walking the Earth. Gently pushing his way through the crowd using his free hand and a few German-accented “Pardon mes” and “Excuse mes”—he was a gentleman after all—he got as close as he could to the commotion. There was the gaffer he had met yesterday, who tipped him off about tonight. They nodded in recognition.
Then the movie director flitted past in his fedora, nervously eyeing the growing throng. His name was Billy Wilder. They were both from Berlin, Jules knew, both escaped Jewish refugees. He caught Wilder’s eye and held it for a moment, long enough to think that maybe Billy, too, knew what they had in common. As if Jules was marked somehow with invisible ink that only the fellow wounded could detect. Billy walked past, and Jules was suddenly reminded of his purpose here tonight. He squeezed his black box between his legs, screwed around with a few knobs, wound a small crank, knelt down into a narrow free space between bodies, and then placed the box up to his right eye. His Bolex 16 mm camera.
It was September 15, 1954, and it was no accident he was here. Jules was a thoughtful man who had always planned everything very carefully. Befriending that gaffer was just one of many steps that brought this furrier and amateur filmmaker to the front row of one of the most iconic moments in twentieth-century film history, one that he—and he alone—would save for posterity in living, moving color.
Jules looked around the artificially lit New York City street corner. Always so much life, so much to capture. He had tasted the bitterness of life, but this, this was the sweet part. He peeked through the lens of his Bolex, focused on Billy Wilder and the crew in front of him. And suddenly, as if she knew he was coming, out stepped Marilyn Monroe. And . . . Action.
For Jules, staring the glamour of Hollywood in the face took more than a ten-block walk. His long, complicated journey to New York City, like those of most immigrant Jews during World War II, had taken bravery and cunning. But, against all logic, here he was, front and center, smack in the middle of the waking dream that was America.
Jules had almost not made it there that night. Had almost not made it to America. The odds had been against him, really. On dark nights when he couldn’t keep the sorrow at bay, he would think of the family and friends he had left behind, many of them dead.
His story included not one but two escapes from Nazi Germany, of lies quickly imagined and creatively told, of ocean liners and fake identities and magic—the never-ending, never-tarnished magic of Hollywood. Some of those who came in and out of Jules’s story—Clark Gable, Billy Wilder, Joe DiMaggio, and Marilyn Monroe—were real, of human flesh, with flaws and imperfections. Like Jules, each had escaped something, wearing a mask to survive, creating an alternate identity, using the powers that they, and only they, possessed. Dreaming and remaking themselves in a country that not only allowed reinvention but demanded it.
#Escaped #Nazis #Night #York #Marilyn #Monroe
