Hero of the Pacific_ The Life of Marine Legend John Basilone - James Brady [70]
To those who knew Sullivan, then or later, he was a self-important and rather cynical man mostly involved not with others but with himself. Basilone’s and his family’s impressions of Sullivan’s goodness of heart may say more about Basilone and his folks, their own decency and their essential niceness and authenticity, than about the worldly Sullivan. Regarding Toots Shor, a large, vulgar man who ran a “great joint” (his own description), a Marine enlisted man of Basilone’s age and appearance, without the Medal of Honor, might not have been entirely welcomed by Toots or his doorkeepers. If you were famous, even marginally, it was, “Come right in, pally. The drinks are on us.” Otherwise it might be, “Beat it, Marine. Try the joints under the El on Third Avenue.”
There is a wonderful small and telling scene in Sydney Pollack’s The Way We Were burlesquing popular nightspots such as Shor’s, the Stork Club, and El Morocco during wartime, where the headwaiter at the velvet rope smilingly welcomes the colonels and the ranking naval officers and then curtly dismisses a GI and his girl, enraging Barbra Streisand’s feisty character, the “pinko” scold, who promptly ushers the young couple swiftly past the rope and chews out the flunky, dressing him down as “You fascist rope holder!” That’s how it was at Shor’s joint back then and would have been for Basilone, had he been just a sergeant on his own, without a medal or an escort of military PR flacks.
By this time, Manila John was a star. With Sullivan and Shor, that was the difference. Basilone’s youthful, innocent naiveté was never more evident than in his assessment of these two front-runners, his appreciation of the newspaper columnist and the saloonkeeper, his gratitude and their “sincerity,” for the things they did for him. He didn’t yet realize, and perhaps never fully would, what his heroism and consequent fame did for the sycophantic users around him, the leechlike pilotfish attached to the deadly prowling shark.
As Doorly puts it, “Basilone’s life was no longer private. An article appeared in the Sunday Daily News [whose circulation rose to four million on Sundays] including many things about John’s life, including that John had a girlfriend. The girl was Helen Helstowski of Pittsfield, Massachusetts . . . sister of John’s military buddy Stephen Helstowski.” The surprise here is there was no mention anywhere at this time of Hollywood glamour girl and fellow war bond trouper and reputed love Virginia Grey, the well-known if not precisely famous film actress. Where were gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons at moments like this? Yet here was this publicity about an anonymous Pittsfield girl with a difficult name. John and Helen, with her brother the intermediary, had corresponded, he’d visited her while touring at Albany, not far from Pittsfield, and the two certainly became friends and saw each other several other times. There is no indication it went much beyond that. “While no one said the romance was a wild, passionate affair, John was a celebrity, and the newspapers were going to report and sensationalize the story, writing that, ‘He fell in love.’” Maybe the media haven’t really changed all that much.
Meanwhile, at the little house in Raritan, fan mail arrived in volume. It was mostly from young women. Some included photos. Some were outright proposals of marriage. According to Doorly, one hopeful girl said, “I think you are wonderful. I always wanted to marry a hero.” A writer named James Golden had been trying for some days to get to Basilone and do an interview, to get the hero to talk about himself. When the pestering continued, an irritated Basilone had had enough. “Look, Golden, forget my part. There was not a man