Sir Anthony Jenkinson @ Flemington Trial
Sept 10, 2023 14:04:25 GMT -5
Michael, Joe, and 1 more like this
Post by Sue on Sept 10, 2023 14:04:25 GMT -5
America Came My Way
by Sir Anthony Jenkinson
1936
Chapter XXVII
"Press Parade at Flemington"
Pages 220-228
Any one who followed the course of the six weeks' trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, the German carpenter found guilty of kidnapping and murdering the two-year-old son of Colonel Charles Lindbergh on the night of 1st March 1932, will appreciate how difficult it was for those present in court to realise that a man's life was at stake. A sensational-loving world, by focusing its attention upon the drama enacted in the little court-house at Flemington, New Jersey, saw to it that what was in fact in all-important murder trial was turned into a sort of glorified Barnum and Bailey show.
At each session the stuffy little court-room was crammed to capacity with some three hundred and fifty persons, most of them perhaps newspaper men and women, and the rest either celebrities of the screen, stage, radio, and social register, spending a day at the trial because it was "the thing" to do, or else bulging-eyed members of the public who had taken the trouble to secure their seats by standing in line outside the courthouse for many cold and weary hours. In the corners of the room camera-men stood by waiting to pounce upon the principals of the trial. Immediately Judge Trenchard called a recess; and in the gallery the operators of a giant movie camera, one of the two allowed in the court-room, disobeyed all orders by shooting scenes during the actual testimony. For their best shot--showing Hauptmann on the witness stand--they planted the microphone underneath the Judge's chair! A few yards from where the prisoner sat between his guards, a well-known cartoonist--Paul Frehm of the New York American--sketched serenely, unconcernedly. Even Bruno Hauptmann himself, wooden-faced and phlegmatic, seemed scarcely to realise the significance of the trial. Only once, when he rose to his feet and shouted at a witness in angry guttural tones: "You are lying, Mister!" did he show any emotion. Aside from that one outburst he remained cold and impassive--an attentive, almost polite listener to the testimony that was to sentence him to the electric chair.
Directly the Judge called a recess or adjournment there was a general rush of activity. Without waiting for the jury to file out, or for Hauptmann to be led away between the two blue-uniformed State troopers who guarded him, camera-men would leap forward and loose off flashlights with the speed of firework operators at a Fifth of November display; reporters, gathering up their copy in their hands, would cluster in tightly-compressed groups around the defence and prosecution lawyers, and bombard them with questions; publicity-seeking witnesses would scamper round in the wake of the flashlights like moths in pursuit of a Will-o'-the-wisp; radio commentators, prohibited from broadcasting from the court-room itself, would dash out to the studios which had been temporarily rigged up for them in odd corners of Flemington; and spectators would file out, leaving behind them a well-blazed trail of broken peanut shells, discarded newspapers, and empty pop bottles.
Outside the court-house, the waiting, half-frozen crowds (for most of the trial there were 15 inches of snow in Flemington, and the temperature registered around zero!) pushed and struggled to catch a glimpse of the trial celebrities as they left the court. First would come the jurors, ten appropriately nondescript people, save for two huge women and an elderly man who showed signs of being about to die at any moment and so cause a mis-trial. As they walked across the street of the Union Hotel--the only hotel of which Flemington boasts--they would button up their coats against the cold, and photographers and newsreel men, perched high on the roofs of taxicabs, would record their movements for posterity. After them would come others of the trial principals--Edward J. Reilly, the red-faced, bluff chief defence counsel, prosperous looking in his astrakhan-collared overcoat; David Wilentz, the dapper young Jewish prosecuting attorney, deep in conversation with Walter Winchell, the famous Broadway columnist; C. Lloyd Fisher and Frederick Pope, counsels for the defence; Mrs, Anna Hauptmann, white-faced and sorrowful, closely attended by those newspaper men and women assigned to cover her during the trial; Judge Trenchard, bespectacled and benign; Colonel Charles Lindbergh, quiet, unruffled, unobtrusive.
Here let me say that Colonel Lindbergh, besides winning the nation's sympathy during the trial, also won its admiration. His calm, dignified manner provided a striking contrast to the other person's connected with the case--with the notable exception of Judge Trenchard. Motoring every morning sixty miles to Flemington from the home of his in-laws, the Dwight Morrows, he missed only one session of the trial. His courageous and exemplary bearing through all this harassing period made it simple to understand why Americans regard him as a national hero.
Incidentally, he caused no little astonishment by stepping out of his car each morning without either an overcoat or a waistcoat--in a temperature of below zero! Whilst every one else arrived muffled up to the eyebrows, Lindbergh looked as though he was trying to keep cool.
Thirsty for circulation-building news, the American newspapers "milked" the Hauptmann trial with ruthless and untiring efficiency. Their organisation at Flemington was one of the most remarkable features of the trial. To the little town's normal population of 3500 were added about 800 newspaper men and women. Many of the big newspapers in the country, especially those of New York, set up regular bureaux in various parts of the town--over drug stores, bakeries, garages, and in the back rooms of houses rented from opportunist Flemington citizens. From these impromptu bureaux and from the Western Union and Postal Telegraph offices installed in the court-house and in the Union Hotel, over three hundred thousand words a day were transmitted to city desks in New York and elsewhere. At times it seemed as though the fragile little court-house, insecurely built and over a hundred years old, would be shaken to bits by the ceaseless pounding of typewriters and telegraph transmitters. Its life surely must have been shortened by the Hauptmann trial.
Everything possible was done to help the correspondents covering the case. Instead of difficulties being put in their way, as usually happens in England, they received co-operation at all points from the authorities. Inside the court-room the technique of getting hastily-written copy to the telegraph transmitters was developed to a fine art. Lines of Western Union and Postal Telegraph boys stretched from the Press benches to the exits, so that all the reporter had to do was to hand his finished copy over the heads of his neighbours to the nearest boy, who passed it on down the line with commendable rapidity. In a few minutes it was being flashed to its destination.
The truth is, of course, that the Press dominated the Hauptmann trial. With a few notable exceptions, the principals of the case were all out to get publicity for themselves. Some of them had political ambitions, and looked upon the trial as a medium through which to make themselves known to the greater voting public. Others, notably of course the witnesses, hoped to get fat-salaried jobs--perhaps even movie contracts (the jury obtained a Broadway cabaret engagement after the trial). A few just enjoyed to see their names in print, to bask in the limelight. For one reason or another, there were enough influential people at Flemington eager for publicity to enable the Press to have a big say as to what should happen, and what should not happen, at the trial.
For instance, I recall seeing a number of newspaper men go up to Wilentz at the end of an exceedingly dull day's hearing, during which a depressing series of handwriting experts, devoid of news interest, had occupied the witness stand (during the trial the expression "as boring as a handwriting expert" was coined) and warn him that unless he called some one other than a handwriting expert next morning the trial, together with Mr Wilentz, would most certainly not make the front page. The next witness was a good-looking young lady--a mannequin!
Again, I was informed on good authority that the New York Evening Journal paid one of the defence counsels a substantial sum of money to give that paper exclusive news and photographs during the trial, and also to arrange for it to have exclusive interviews with the chief defence witnesses. Whilst, of course, there is no proof attached to this statement, it is interesting to note that whenever a defence witness mentioned a newspaper in his testimony-- perhaps as the one he was accustomed to read, or the one in which he happened to see a photograph of Hauptmann--it was almost invariably the New York Journal. Moreover, throughout the trial Mrs. Anna Hauptmann, who was, after all, the chief defence witness, was shadowed by a Journal newspaper woman, an attractive girl named Jeannette Smits. Out of curiosity I kept a file of news photographs taken of Mrs. Hauptmann during the trial, and in practically every one of them Miss Smits appears close alongside her!
Not unnaturally the presence of so many newspaper correspondents at the trial added to its atmosphere of unreality. For although they were not unreasonably "hard-boiled," the fact remains that they were working at such high pressure that they had little time to waste over the consideration of niceties and the expression of personal sentiment. After the first few days they settled down to a regular routine. To see them scrutinising the trial principals, as the latter arrived at court in the morning, in order to ascertain the state of their health, the clothes they were wearing, and how they had been sleeping, was to be reminded of a zoo keeper checking up first thing on the condition of his animals.
"My, Anna's looking pale this morning," you would hear. "I guess she's due to crack up any minute now." And whenever the prisoner took it into his head to lean over to his wife and mutter a few words, at once there would come from the back Press benches the hoarse whisper: "Hey, what's Bruno saying?"
During the long and agonising period that the jury was out considering their verdict, newsmen sat around the court-room shooting dice and playing poker. And the Defence and Prosecution Counsels joined in the fun!
Curiously enough, the newspaper women covering the case appeared to be more hard-boiled than the men. Probably the reason for this was that their assignments were usually of such a distressingly personal, intimate nature that they were obliged, for their own sakes, to cultivate a certain toughness of manner. Certainly they did some fine reporting during the trial. One of the best stories I read was by Dorothy Kilgallen, of the New York Journal. It dealt with the testimony of the skittish mannequin witness, and it was headlined (the headline, of course, was not the work of Miss Kilgallen):
"Laundry Model Smiles At Wilentz, But Reilly Is Just A Buyer From Denver To Her."
American girl reporters--I believe they are no longer known as "sob sisters" -- have a way of being remarkably beautiful and, what is still more surprising considering the stuff they write, veritable pictures of girlish innocence. Indeed, it seems to me that most of the real good-lookers in America, either go into the movies, pose in "Lucky Strike" advertisements, or else become newspaper women. At one point the Flemington trial practically broke up because two exquisite creatures, one representing a Chicago paper and the other a Philadelphia paper, suddenly announced their intention of packing up and going home.
One of the most entertaining newspaper women at the trial was Dixie Thompson, the wife of C.V. R. Thompson, New York correspondent of the London Daily Express. Dixie, who was one of Hearst's "sob-sisters" before she married (her name was Dixie Tighe), covered most of the trial for the Express--the only London paper, apart from the Daily Telegraph, to be represented at Flemington. She helped greatly to liven up dull periods in the testimony. At one point, however, she developed an unfortunate craze for drawing pictures of the jury; as a result those sitting near her, notably the correspondent of the New York Evening Post and Douglas Williams of the London Daily Telegraph, frequently discovered that their supplies of Western Union paper had dwindled to nothing. Even the celebrated Damon Runyon, who guarded his pile of paper as a lioness guards her young on account of his having to churn out thousands of words a day for the New York American, found on more than one occasion that Dixie had stolen his last sheet, right from under his very nose.
During the weeks the trial lasted, a certain amount of co-operation developed between the Flemington correspondents to the various newspapers. In most cases the motives for this co-operation were mutual interest and personal friendship. One such co-operative group was formed by the Flemington staffs of the New York Daily News and The Herald-Tribune. The News is a tabloid paper, so that the first edition of, say, its Wednesday's issue appears on the New York streets soon after seven o'clock on Tuesday evening. The more staid Tribune, on the other hand, appears several hours later. Moreover, the characters of the two papers being almost direct opposites, they have to handle their news from entirely different angles. Accordingly there was plenty of scope for co-operation between their respective representatives at Flemington.
The members of the News-Tribune group not only worked in fairly close co-operation, but also spent most of their leisure hours together. I went along to dinner with them one evening. They had managed to secure a monopoly of one of the best of Flemington's little eating-places, and it was their custom to assemble there for dinner after they had sent off their various reports. I was amused by one little incident that took place before dinner. Round about seven o'clock Martin Sommers, of the News, went to the telephone to call up his city office. When he got through I heard him ask:
"Is the first Final out yet?"
It occurred to me that that was an unfair question to ask of any one who was not an advanced mathematician.
In the evenings, when the day's work was done, the Union Hotel became the centre of Flemington's activities. Its lobby, its restaurant, and its bar (nicknamed "Nellie's taproom" early in the trial), filled to overflowing with groups of newspaper writers, local inhabitants, and others, all arguing excitedly about various points in the day's testimony, each person trying to establish himself as a qualified detective. The hotel manager beamed contentedly as hour by hour his steady losses of previous years were wiped out. Newsboys sold their papers, filled with the news of the trial flashed from the court-house but an hour or so before, as fast as they could unload them from the trucks that brought them from New York. The occupant of the telephone booth shouted desperately to make himself heard above the general uproar. Vendors of souvenir postcards, showing news-hawks on the steps of the court-house, Judge Trenchard entering his motor-car, and Mrs. Verna Snyder, mightiest of the jurors, emerging from the Union Hotel, did a brisk and and profitable trade. Every one, in fact, seemed to be having a good time. Every one, that is, except the ten jurors, confined to their rooms upstairs, and Richard Bruno Hauptmann, locked in his cell across the street.
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