Hero of the Pacific_ The Life of Marine Legend John Basilone - James Brady [3]
Basilone was a smash hit. In his halting but modest and untutored answers, he responded to the shouted questions of cynical reporters who had seen it all, and won them over with his sincerity. In the end he had them queuing up to shake his hand and say thanks. And so the road show began.
If the press and just plain civilians were impressed by their first glimpses of the heroic Marine, and they were, Basilone was overwhelmed by the enthusiastic “well dones” of his fellow Americans. In the next few months of 1943, he would learn just how supportive they were. General Douglas MacArthur, who had long ago been Basilone’s commanding officer in Manila—where the young soldier achieved a first small fame as an undefeated Army boxer, earning the sobriquet “Manila John”—was jollied into issuing a statement calling Basilone “a one-man army,” a brand of enthusiastic cheerleading the general usually reserved for his own greatness.
Dozens of press conferences, some orchestrated, others ad hoc and on the run, were laid on with their hurled questions: “Hey, John, how many Japs ya kill?” New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, “the Little Flower,” welcomed him to city hall, asking where his father came from in Italy. The New York Times did an interview. Damon Runyon wrote a piece. Life magazine did an elaborate photo spread. John would be photographed wherever he went, often out of uniform and in cock-eyed or clowning poses to please the cameramen, and appeared on magazine covers, bare-chested and firing a heavy machine gun cradled in his arms. One of these pictures, a painting on the June 24, 1944, issue of Collier’s (ten cents a copy), was the most lurid, in the grand tradition of the pulp magazines.
Basilone was trotted out by his military handlers (peacetime press agents and Madison Avenue ad men in wartime uniform) to one radio station interview after another. Famed, best-selling war correspondent Lowell Thomas, who spent World War I trekking Arabia with Colonel T. E. Lawrence, got into the act, talking about Basilone on the newsreels, mispronouncing his name to rhyme with “baloney.” The sergeant was saluted from the White House by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in whose name the medal had been awarded.
As Basilone read, rather bashfully, a canned speech cobbled for him by the handlers, he got a standing ovation from nineteen thousand at Madison Square Garden on Eighth Avenue, where he had once hoped to box. He was headlined in newspapers large and small, often as “Manila John, the Jap Killer.” Newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan, always on the lookout for a new sensation to co-opt, took him up, wrote a piece, and did a radio show, basking in the hero’s reflected glory. Celebrity saloonkeeper Toots Shor, a notorious front-runner, got on board the “Basilone Express,” buying the drinks and glad-handing him around, introducing the kid to the athletes and glamour girls, the wealthy debutantes and chinless wonders of Café Society, the showbiz people and literary types among his boldface regulars. The Navy Department and Marine handlers got him past the velvet ropes and maîtres d’hotel of the Stork Club, “21,” and El Morocco, and under the El on Third Avenue, Johnny was welcomed by the barmen and serious drinkers of P.J. Clarke’s. Everyone wanted a piece of Manila John.
To the people of Raritan, though, Basilone was already theirs and always would be. They renamed streets and the American Legion post, and in time they would erect a magnificent bronze statue of him holding his favorite weapon, the heavy water-cooled Browning .30-caliber M1917A1 machine gun, which he had loved to the point of obsession.
The Basilone family was transported into Manhattan to be interviewed. A