Politics, Football and Oscar

In football winners are chosen on the field of battle, one team kicks the crap out of the other and winds up with more points on the board.

Politics and Oscar winners are chosen by secret ballot.

Political seasons are too long and too boring.

Oscar season is ok, but that grand night beginning with the red carpet glitz and glitter leads up to an award ceremony that goes on forever.

The Oscars are usually handed out in a traditional and dignified way.

However, most award winners in their acceptance speeches manage to be about as creative and predictable as a trained seal.

Fortunately every now and then you’ll hear a note of sincerity that transcends the acting profession and might even bring a tear to your eye.

Oh! One more thing, the unpredictable. Remember the streaker? Once the roar of laughter subsided, the host, David Niven said with a straight face, ‘Showing off his shortcomings.’

On my Oscar wish list for the up coming ceremony is a host with charm, wit and no political agenda. What a novel idea.

Oscar insider recommends two best films of the year: ‘Doubt’ and ‘The Reader.’

World War II and the story that never ends – Nazi Stolen art.
(Continued from last post)
The Goring Collection selected prologue excerpts.

‘Following the war Rostock became a part of the Soviet Bloc, and as a consequence the children grew up in East Germany.

Jacob was bright and always near the top of his class. He entered the University of Rostock, and as a way to break from the past he immersed himself into his studies and absorbed the indoctrination to the Communist System. Jacob was especially interested in the political, economic, and social theories advanced by Marx and Engel’s. It was during his sophomore year when he first began to think about a possible career in politics.
But while Jacob was consumed by the socialists’ ideology, it offered no appeal to Natalie. During those post war years she was desperately searching for her Jewish roots, and eventually joined a small clandestine group that had begun to study the Torah.

Soon after Jacob’s graduation, from the University of Rostock, Communist Party officials looked at his scholastic achievements and offered him a position with the KGB. He accepted and following his preliminary indoctrination into the agency he was ordered to Moscow for special training.

Jacob’s trip to Moscow was exciting and filled with many challenges and hard work, the kind of environment in which he excelled. He attended classes and participated in exercises taught by instructors that were experts on the subjects. Many of the instructors were internationally known spies that notoriety had forced to retire from service.

By the time Jacob completed his course and left Moscow for his return to Rostock he had every intention of joining the secret world of intelligence gathering and espionage, but those ideas were quickly derailed. For when Jacob returned to Rostock new orders awaited him. He would be moving to the United States and assigned to work with the American Communist Party, from a position, later to be determined, in academia. Jacob didn’t question his assignment, but he was disappointed in the new job since it didn’t allow him to become a part of the Intelligence Service.

Nothing was spelled out about his transfer until a meeting with his regular KGB contact; a heavyset man named Alexei. They always met in a park at the end of a promontory overlooking the Baltic Sea. It was there during a routine meeting when Alexei explained, in great detail, the KGB's plan for Jacob’s defection to the West. The escape would be timed to coincide with the 1960 Rome Olympics. Jacob was given a job as an assistant gymnastics instructor, and following a formal request Natalie was allowed to accompany her brother to the West…’

‘Jacob and Natalie Heimann were granted political asylum, taken to the United States, and spent the next two months answering questions at the CIA facility located in Langley, Virginia. The agency looked into Jacob's background and determined that he was a possible KGB plant. However, the timing was right, they needed someone from the Eastern bloc to penetrate the inner circle of the Communist Party on the West Coast. And in spite of some reservations about his possible double agent status, Jacob was hired as a West Coast operative.

The CIA offered Natalie a job with the outfit, but she let them know that she was not interested. Following their stay at Langley, Jacob and Natalie traveled to San Francisco by train and rented an apartment on Clay Street…’
‘During the early years in America Jacob’s work with the CIA and KGB, lectures and diplomatic functions took him all over the west with Hollywood recurring most frequently on his schedule. Those Hollywood meetings were the most contentious, and oftentimes he found himself in the middle of black list controversies. Although the House Un-American Activities Committee meetings had taken place in the late forties and early fifties the fall out from those hearings was still evident in Hollywood into the late sixties.

Over time Natalie accepted the American lifestyle and even decided to become a citizen. She begged her brother to join her in the Citizenship Program. Jacob argued, but Natalie was persuasive, and eventually talked her brother into going along.

It was during that period when Natalie met and fell in love with Morton Bromfield, a young intern working at San Francisco General Hospital. When their romance progressed toward a wedding, it was decided that the ceremony would be held at Santa Barbara, the groom's hometown.

Jacob took the train down the day before the wedding and arrived in time to attend the rehearsal and have dinner with the Bromfield family. At the end of the evening he escorted his sister to her bedroom, kissed her goodnight and just before he turned to leave said, “Is the family aware of my political persuasion?”

“Only that you are a professor and speaker and that your politics tilt to the left.” Then Natalie laughed. “And I suppose they will stay that way until I can talk some sense into you.”

Jacob grinned. “You never give up, do you, Sis.” Then he walked outside and down the path toward the guesthouse. The smell of night blooming jasmine mixed with thoughts about the day’s activity and Natalie’s joyous laughter somehow gave him a sense of freedom and a feeling of exuberance that he had never experienced before.’

(To be continued)

Writers Notebook:
Somerset Maugham:
‘Truth is not only stranger than fiction it is more telling. To know that a thing actually happened gives it poignancy, touches a chord, which a piece of acknowledged fiction misses. It is to touch this chord that some authors have done everything they could to give you the impression that they are telling the plain truth.’

Truman Capote would probably agree and point to his nonfiction ‘In Cold Blood.’

Hemingway might disagree and go back to his general stand that in fiction you’ll find more real truth than in nonfiction.

As a bystander, I’d just like to see the debate.

Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.

www.tombarnes39.com
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