America (2009) Alan Whicker's Journey of a Lifetime

[Music] this week on my journey of a lifetime i'm back in america looking at some of the people and the stories that were part of wicker's world i suppose it sort of land of make-believe in which you can be anything you like if you can pay for it americans articulate open and generous make for great television [Music] i'm told that you can get someone killed around here for five hundred dollars oh there's any number of ways [Music] and wicker's world has covered their continent from coast to coast during more than half a century look right at the bottom of the canyon cave did it i did it you're great it's a place where you can go anywhere and ask anything as long as you're polite but you see i mean that's about what a pound on each side isn't it you're carrying around no not quite a pound i don't know for sure you know how much you got there no i never i couldn't weigh them [Music] [Music] [Music] our first program on cosmetic surgery in the us went out in 73 when even here in california it was not something you boasted about then harley street which had seen it as piffling and unserious surgery began to change its attitudes in beverly hills the surgeon kurt wagner set the tone and we filmed him in action here in hollywood one sees a lot of women of a certain age who've obviously had a face job and one does detect there's a sort of grin the skin is drawn back it's poor workmanship and as there was a michelangelo and the leonardo da vinci there are different individuals doing plastic surgery and i like to think that my patients don't have those tell-tale signs of cosmetic surgery don't you sometimes feel a bit like dr frankenstein i like to think i that i feel a little bit more like closer to god i like that analogy a lot better i don't like dr frankenstein at dr all most enthusiastic patient was his wife kathy he decided that he would fix my chin he would just add a little tiny silicone insert in there that went in through the mouth just a tiny little snip in there and it will go right in and it would make the chin come out a little will make the cheekbones look better and then he pinned back the ears and for doing that i was able to have this done which is my favorite yes this is my very favorite the the sizes are small petite medium large and extra-large i have the mediums and i think that they're plenty large enough i love them very much yeah the point is you see when you had the wrong eyes the wrong ears the wrong chin and the wrong breasts you got your husband well i was lucky i guess maybe when he looked at me he figured that after he married me he could make these slight adjustments and i would look better and first of all what he always says is that you'll never have to divorce me because he can change me he can change me every year kirk was so pleased with our report that he offered operations to all my crew to tidy us up a bit to understand there was plenty to be done my research is protruding ears the producer's weird nose and because they're not making mirrors the way they used to i needed so much adjustment that kerr didn't know where to stop in truth we were all scared at the sight of his scalpels and knives of course so miss the opportunity of becoming unbelievably gorgeous for free if i have it in my power i received an enormous postbag after that 1973 program most viewers wanting kurtz a dress others suggesting that the only operation cathy really needed was a brain transplant next will be my hips because they're very very large for my frame i really tried to lose weight i still have to lose more weight for years afterwards i was receiving letters from all corners of the globe from viewers transfixed by the pair [Music] seven years later i was back on the west coast where two out of every three marriages ended in divorce any union lasting ten years or more was for the record books oh isn't it heavenly to share every scheme with you to my surprise kurt and kathy were still together after 13 years and kathy was a walking talking advertisement for her husband scalpel so i thought it might be interesting to take a close-up look at marriage through the eyes of this unusual couple what emerged was honest and revealing and to a british audience unused to confessional television quite startly my second film about their thoroughly modern marriage was watched by a staggering 18 million viewers a friend of mine says that she finds it impossible to stay happily married in beverly hills because there's so much movement of beautiful and available people women no longer want to be subservient they're looking for equality they're right up there saying i want what's mine and of course in california it's very well defined uh half is hers if you tell your husband else how wonderful he is and how good he looks and how you you're so pleased that he's helping to make your life better for you and your children and your animals and your homes and things and if you keep yourself a nice pretty cozy kind of person to be around he can still look at all those other beautiful ladies they're about but they don't always have such great things to talk about either 30 years on i wondered what had become of curt and cathy i left california to meet them in florida where kurt in his 50th year as a surgeon is still at the cutting edge of his profession still anxious to help me face the nation my dick haven't changed a bit except you're a bit younger well and you're a big well i recognize you yes yes yes well i've changed a little but uh not much not much no wow so how are you i'm fine all the better for seeing you well that's wonderful this is a great establishment well this is uh this is the spa this is the newest part of our of our establishment yeah we haven't seen one another for how many years 1979 so it's almost 30 years isn't it well time passes even if you're not having fun right but it happens and you know i'm still alive and looking great my arms and legs work and i know it's monday and i can still dance and my teeth are still my own excellent some of my hair is my own so and what about herself you'll see the queen the queen looks better than i but she has an advantage she has a good plastic surgeon you'll never have to divorce me you can just change me every year every few every few years wait a minute come on in excuse me that's [ __ ] great don't have that beyond when we first met you told me he'll never have to divorce me he can always change me exactly it's still it still works it's still working he'd done your eyes your chin your face and your breasts and had pinned back the ears what was it left to do i decided that i needed the entire face the eyes the body the everything done and when i got down to a size eight it was the most beautiful i'd ever been in my entire life i when we came into the parties i felt like the true princess the prettiest girl i had been ever in my whole life what would you have done if you hadn't married your own surgeon i still would have wanted to have things done it just wouldn't have been quite as much all right here you go some of kurt's machines reveal more than his unsuspecting patients expect to see my wrinkles are better than they should be for my age but i've also had a face lift and i've had some work but you can see that there's some skin changes here that ultimately will necessitate some kind of aggressive treatment what is your definition of middle age now alan who is middle aged anybody who's about five years older than me okay uh a good answer a good answer by the time i say goodbye and you say goodbye a middle-aged person will probably be 80. so there we go he tried to make me have a facelift i remember well wouldn't it be bad that was the only promising thing that you said to me and that you'd come and look after me if i had it i really did okay well it could still happen anytime you want i'm absolutely fascinated by what i could do to you in about three or four hours it would really absolutely give me a quick um a quick run down your eyes you incidentally you probably would see better if your bullets were fast a little bit and of course well i don't have as much but of course i've cheated before but you're doing terrifically well that gives me hope for the future why do we live it gives me hope next week next week well you know something you know where i am you can see i've had two facelifts almost three i guess including the laser one in my lifetime now i don't have that tight tight look i have a natural look that's what you want i'll keep on having surgery until until my 90s or i i think i'll live to away in my hundreds i've done something with kathy that i think is truly difficult to do and that is i took a woman who was very pretty and i made her beautiful can you be unfaithful to cathy and would you worry if she was unfaithful to you i'm sure i could do practical anything that i wanted to do okay maybe your husband wants to leave for a while or wants to go away or has to know what other ladies are like or has to feel other things that's all right how would you fare without cassie i must tell you that i feel that i'm relatively self-sufficient and the trouble with my life until recently was i was always looking for my good friend outside of me but my good friend is me i'm my own best friend and you want to know something that makes my life worthwhile this has got something to do with self-satisfaction i would think so if i could say what's wrong i'd be getting a divorce tomorrow because i hate this man i'm living with god damn it he's a goddamn pain yes thinks he's dr god on our last interview when i was getting a little drunk there as you were helping me was my fault too i thought i could keep up with you but i just it's better now i really i have a new respect new love for him since we came here there's been a magic kind of existence how long have you been married now 41 years now that must be a record it almost is we have met a few people around here of their 50 anniversaries but not so many back in la anymore because it's a different world last time you left us we were lots younger but we still look good thanks to plastic surgery for both of us and feeling good about each other and our lives well i like her i like her she's she's good she's a nice person she really is she is you're lucky to have me that's yes i'm lucky to have you live for sure i tell everybody how lucky i am to have you and i tell my lucky i am to be with you too so i guess we're both lucky yeah yeah believe that okay love you no that's true god there's quite enough of that oh sorry i just thanked everybody [Music] thank you both that was very very sickening any time after filming with them during 30 years kurt and kathy are as entertaining and candid as ever a true american story my first major tour of the united states was in 1961 with a director cameraman and recordist with camera gear film stock and luggage we squeezed into one station wagon and set up from houston to film our way through texas new mexico arizona and into california in 10 weeks we drove 7274 miles and at least earned an approving smile from the car rental office could we have done a tour like this today in a world where accountants rule and unavoidable permissions must be sought probably not we met the scientists responsible for the first nuclear bomb at los alamos and penetrated a murder trial in texas this is houston in texas the murder capital of the united states it's been called where among a population of just over a million there are as many murders each year as there are in the whole of britain with a population of 53 million here the law is regarded with a casual nonchalance and life is cheap in a few moments a man will be sitting there waiting to learn whether he shall live or go to the electric chair the most sensational houston police case of the year followed an unusually brutal murder in the office of a suburban estate agency two young killers shot the middle-aged owner fred tones to death set fire to his body and left it burning in a roadside ditch as they escaped in his car and the first lead for the police came with the discovery of the missing car in new york carolyn would you describe for us uh what happened in tone's office oh no was there a fight there yes and how many shots were fired do you know well the newspaper said sick were you firing the shots i tried to fire the five of them who fired the first one i did accidentally and then what happened after the shots were fired he was dead the trial of carolyn lima a teenage prostitute and leslie douglas ashley a female impersonator was a bizarre drama at the outset the judge set a time limit the trial must last no longer than three hours hours become rather tiring the air conditioning whips away the judge's cigars the iced water machine gurgles and throbs the attorneys posture and persuade and plead before their chosen twelve proceedings in the houston courtroom were as dramatic as any hollywood film this real life and death drama was unfolding not just in front of us but in front of millions of viewers uh by then what was douglas doing after he already fell down yes brothers was in panic and everything else is worse i was we both got real scared and i went and checked him if it was dead right on cue the jury all men you'll notice came back with their verdict in this case stand up please we verify the defendant's leslie douglas actually guilty of murder with violence fortnight and assess his punishment both were sentenced to death in a subsequent retrial lima entered a plea bargain and received a reduced sentence as for ashley he was sent to a mental institution but was later pardoned on release he underwent a full sex change and became a gay rights activist absolutely no demonstration you can save whatever emotion gun culture reigns supreme in texas and i wanted to find out what ordinary people felt about this throwback to the wild days of wyatt earth i took my camera into the houston streets one morning and stopped passersby at random to ask whether they owned a handgun every one of them did including a newspaper seller who had a dozen a priest who wouldn't leave home without his automatic and a couple of nuns who carried theirs in the glove box of the convent car sadly this footage has disappeared into a black hole in the bbc archives [Music] revisiting houston in color in 1974 it still had the same frontier flavor riding into town at high noon across a prairie deep in the heart of texas from here on the range the wild west seems tame enough yet it's earned its frontier reputation we're heading for one of the best places in america to get yourself murdered rich and eager and going places houston has grabbed all those texan texans america's fastest growing city the most air-conditioned richest the energy capital the city of tomorrow despite its 21st century air this is still a whiskey and trombone town cherishing old saddle [Music] texas after all has a common frontier with mexico this traditional dish is served by 76 cowboy cooks in a variety of wild west ways under a variety of titles some of them highly resistant the fastest guns in the west leap out of joe bowman's metal lined holsters he's probably the last american hero to make an honest living out of gunslinging all right now watch this very carefully because this is going to happen so fast you won't even see it but it'll be three shots it'll sound like one there you go joe you're fantastic [Applause] the american gun lobby is strongest in texas where bumper stickers worn if guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns you've got bullets many respectable houstonians would sooner leave home without their trousers than their revolvers extend yourself over hey how about that that's i'll write down it i did it you're great having filmed one of the last of the texan gunslingers we drove a couple of miles uptown to discover a disturbing new american phenomena the serial killer years before that chilling phrase became part of our language a youth called wayne henley lived in the suburb and set out upon a most terrible endeavor from this house the space age city of tomorrow character of houston can change rapidly here i'm only two or three miles from the elegant high rises downtown in a small clapboard house area known as houston heights the heights as it's called boasts the largest gathering of churches in the city but today it also holds another record along these streets lived the young victims of america's biggest and most lurid mass murder a horror story even more dreadful perhaps than britain's moore's murders just before dawn on the scorching morning of august the 8th 1973 a young ex-pupil of that school the helms elementary school between 21st and 22nd street this young 17 year old dropout shot and killed dean call call was 33 and homosexual he was also a sadist and a murderer and that killing revealed the deaths of 27 texas teenagers in a confession afterwards retracted henley told a chill tale of two years of homosexual orgies and torture wrecks of strangulations and shootings of burials and the boys who were killed these youngsters were not the riff raff from the runaways as at first reported they were youngsters aged only 13 and 14. at least 17 of them were henley's ex-schoolmates they were his neighbors they died a horrible death and they were all the boys next door the remains of many of them were dug up along this beach a few hours after he'd shot dean call using a car telephone to tell his mother what he'd done wayne henley confessed to murder mama there [Music] mama it's wayne yes this is [Music] after that confession of murder wayne henley went on trial in san antonio he's just been found guilty of six murders and received a typically texan sentence 594 years it is no surprise wayne henley remains in a texas jail to this day in 1977 we took a look at american cities [Music] charleston south carolina for its history anchorage alaska for its pioneering spirit and salt lake city for its mormon roots a couple of hundred miles south of salt lake city i was entertained by a remarkable woman with a life straight out of legend a direct link to the old wild west this log cabin at circleville was the birthplace of lula parker bettinson and her brother butch cassidy both children of a good mormon family from preston in lancashire when we met she was 94 and sharp as a pin she knew that her brother didn't die with sundance in the south american shootout made famous by that superb film i mean his reputation is that he liked children he loved his mother he robbed banks to to help the poor ranks and railroads he was death on them i'll say that but he gave to the he helped people that needed it with what money he ever got he enjoyed doing it at least he never killed anyone did he oh no he said there was better ways than killing people america the united states got too hot for him and he had to go to south america yes and they decided to go straight that's what they went for they made their last big hull and they left and they intended to go straight now 16 years after that he came here in 1925. what sort of a man was he you've never seen him before have you it before oh i don't know he was so we were so happy to have him and father said i'll bet lula that you don't know who this is this is right this is leroy and of course i was i my knees just shook you know i had that feeling of just like i was going to collapse but though he took me in his arms and he was just he's just one of us always but when he left you after two weeks you never saw him again no no now today you know where butch cassidy is buried yes my father said he had hunted him all his life now he's going to rest in peace and that never never yet has been told my children don't know my father always said if you want to keep a secret don't tell it and i find that's the truth have you ever visited his grave no no no i haven't and would you like to i may sometime i don't know i don't know i doubt it shortly after our conversation we lost that last link with the past lula joined butch taking his secret with her both had lived through lawless days when old age was the most unusual condition when butch everybody's favorite outlaw rode out into the pages of legend leaving lula's log cabin we went to meet another mormon whose home life was rather more um how can i put it complicated alex joseph an ex-cop from la had substantial success in the marriage market most men find it hard enough to handle one wife alex had been married 16 times though when we met he was living more conventionally with a modest 12. how does it differ this marriage to just living together endeavors a great deal in that we're we're under a contract of marriage each each one of us is entered into a contract of marriage and our and our behavior is regulated by that contract in other words we're we're a moral family to start with all of our family activities are confined to the family i'm talking about sex yes yes you see to the outside world since you are talking about sex this would look more like a harem than a happy and celestial group i never have worried too much about the outside world you seem to miss the most obvious truth here and the most obvious truth is this that more women than men go for this lifestyle but what are the advantages for your wives the advantage of independence um the advantage of of getting away from the conventional emotional things that are nothing but sand to build a marriage on and and building it on fact the advantage of having a husband is vastly superior in intelligence and ability at governing a family and being a husband than any monogamous ever could imagine to be i get the advantage of his relationship with every other girl in the family which makes him a better husband for me alex joseph died in 1998 leaving behind nine wives four of them have since remarried but admit to a certain nostalgia for the freedom and independence they experienced in their days of polygamy [Music] our next stop was charleston from here we drove 70 miles south to discover a rather alarming group [Music] practicing voodoo [Music] they were willing almost anxious to curse anyone to death for the going price of five hundred dollars and apparently it worked the witch doctor would point the bones at some unfortunate end before the money was in the bank he'd have walked under a truck terminally their chief who was also the senior witch doctor liked england i i believe he'd been a gi during the war and he was full of southern hospitality he offered me a freebie curse which would take care of anyone i didn't like a sample on the house you understand a sort of lost leader trouble was having made me an offer i couldn't refuse i had to produce a suitable victim and people i didn't like suddenly seemed well not too bad and a snuff job can be so final i'm told that you can get someone killed around here for five hundred dollars how would that be done oh there's any number of ways just as there are many ways in uh real life to get rid of people you uh first thing of course is take a reading on the individual and find out what type of uh world he lives in which god rules over the world that he lives in and then makes sacrifices to that god do you want to say you could kill a man in new york south carolina certainly certainly without his knowing about it without his knowing about it you just walk out in the street and get smashed by a truck it's it's cheaper than going to a hitman well it's much more discreet i thought i'd better check this coven with the local sheriff down at beaufort sheriff ed mcteer turned out to be a white witch doctor with a flourishing practice he refused to advise me about his neighbor's black magic because he said it would be unethical for one doctor to criticize another put one thing in the bottom cap let's put one thing in the bottom okay i am known to be one of the most powerful witch doctors in the united states maybe the world puts your hands out on that [Music] hold this in your right hand and close down the title get warm now it takes a little time no one is going to be able to put a spell back on you all spells from you is removed and if anyone tries to this could turn on them now i'm going to seal your force and my force in that image thank you that should be hard it is huh but these people who come here are they really endangered or are they just mentally sick they are entirely normal but their genes from the hundreds of years back of them have carried this superstition and adversity has brought it out in them hold this in your right hand this is the hexo keep it pointed towards this hex style there because that is where your kinetic fluids are going to come through and we will see what happens if we get it in you came in here filled with trouble filled with evil now every piece of evil has gone from you your horror is as clear as my own is it a steak play as long as you believe i suppose the unkind might say sheriff that this amulet and that mumbo jumbo would impress a child but i can't imagine many college professors being impressed by it it's a collection of mumbo-jumbo that comes down from the last four or five centuries driving back from sheriff mcteer i was stopped for speeding by a local patrolman confused by my jersey driving license he sighed i'd like to give you a ticket alan he said but to be honest i wouldn't know how to do it so maybe after all the sheriff's mumbo jumbo had lifted the black magic curse [Music] leaving voodoo behind we flew straight to palm beach florida the ultimate elegant party town the culture shock could not have been greater [Music] i believe television looks best when adventures where no cameraman has trod into upper dock studies say or running the taran feather gauntlet through the tough australian union town of broken hill [Music] displaying bravado beyond the call of documentary i got in and out of palm beach florida a closed society behind high hedges if ever i saw one this improbable sandbar lies 65 miles north of miami but in another world once its hedges had been breached its rare and exotic inhabitants could be fascinating for a century their sandbar had been the mecca of these super rich who faced only one money problem how to spend it and felt improperly dressed without a yacht [Music] palm beach shows what god could do they say if he had money [Music] on this elegant sandbar people ask each other where do you live in real life for everybody's rich here they're all just run of the millionaires [Applause] [Music] nobody who's anybody goes to the beach on this preposterous island which stands for achievement in the society that invented success the wealthy here are not an endangered species they can build two million pound homes like this with 26 000 mosaic tiles in the pool and only one bit i suppose it's sort of land of make-believe in which you can be anything you like if you can pay for it we don't have any old people down here but we call in quotes old there's nobody old in palm beach and you must be white preferably protestant you know but money is the chief thing [Music] i went not to tease them but to enjoy the glittering entertainment of their pageant viewers usual reaction was why can't they act their age as though wishing wheelchairs upon them i know people say to me once in a while just how old are you helene and i say well i'm between 21 and death because that's my own private little secret women don't give in easily to the aging process here now palm beach in its insular way ignores the passage of time if it is ever forced to acknowledge that it is marching on it uses the most personal of calendars now just as china has the year of the snake and the year of the ox farm beach has the year mrs so-and-so's facelift fell or the year madame x had her bottom ribs removed that's done to give a wasp waste and to uh provide an outstanding figure or even the year madame so-and-so went to paris and had all her blood changed she would look in the mirror and you see this this old creep that comes around when you get older if you look at yourself and you look old you think oh dear god you know why even bother i have so many friends who will not tell you one thing they haven't had anything done they've just grown old younger and i course would just love to lie down and have them lift everything from my feet on up to here and whatever's left over tie a little bow on the top [Laughter] i think one of anne's funnier lines is i said to her one day my god you have all these things done and you don't mind talking about but why then why did please don't tell your age anymore and ann says how can i lie about my age when my son needs a facelift that's my oldest buddy i got the balls on dazzling cows attend with diamonds emeralds and handsome in a town with an average age of 60 life was an endless round of parties i mean they get pretty drunk at most parties in palm beach in fact i've never seen a town where people drink more than they do in this in this place unbelievable i mean when you go to count the the butters not the bodies the bottles oh god i can always rely on you to look great the man who's paying for it all doesn't often get in the picture but tonight's fling will cost him ten thousand pounds victor nobody wants you anywhere but on the organ right mary we wanted to organ watching me there's no answer to that question except perhaps a quick flash and victor farris inventor and industrialist is now authentic the most noticeable aspect of life amid such rich and rewarding reconstruction was the shortage of escorts ageless matrons overdressed and over decorated waited in solitary splendor to emerge from their soft lighting needing only an arm to hold a hand to raise them out of the shadows of the cadillac into the fluorescence of life it was said a man only needed a dinner jacket and a little smiling small talk to become a social success why even i was in demand that was a few years ago at the heart of palm beach society it's clubs the harder to join the more prized the membership the beach club confronts the only jewish club where it said you'll not be considered unless you've donated a million dollars to charity despite such discouragements each club has a waiting list of anxious applicants longing to get inside [Music] you can be stymied here most easily by your race or your religion now it's one thing to say that you can't have um a jewish member to your club and they'll blackball him but you can't have a jewish friend to lunch or to dinner and what i think was staggering being a musician is that when leonard bernstein came here with the new york philharmonic to do a tour he they said he they couldn't have a dinner party for the other great club well that's just savagery julia tomasulis is still living in the family home and she offered to give me a whistle-stop tour of palm beach i remember one or two friends of yours were refused to mention yeah you said that savage well it is it is it's ridiculous what you find in palm beach are these cells of society that work in among each other rather like in workings of a clock that people they go round and round and round and never really meet and you can have people live here for 20 years and never have understood quite where some of the other people are most people live here very quietly rather old-fashioned lives and belong to the garden club and play bridge but the whole town has been taken over by developers and mostly speculators this house is the one that's been bought by the russians for 100 million behind this hideous hedge the reason it's so much money is a i suppose the russians just would buy anything and the second is because the property is immense and everything that is slightly artificial is now called muck something and these are muck mansions here's a muck mansion on the left you see how ugly it is huge and clumsy and pretentious palm beach has been invaded by money you're not quite sure where it came from but you'll never know where the russian money has come so that's uh you probably will never know where the russian money came from but all of the money even the american money a lot of it one sort of wonders where it came from that's what's changed in palm beach because in the old days you knew it came from by the names there was a pillsbury from pillsbury flower there was mrs post from the post toasties all there were the lynches from merrill lynch and everyone had a trade name like the fords you knew exactly where the money came from because you're buying their products all the time um a great deal of this new money uh appears with rich men and they always show up with trophy wives and the trophy rhymes are very beautiful and they usually been had a modeling career and they think it's absolutely smashing to have married a rich man and come to such a famous place as palm beach but when they get here they don't know what to do because we don't have a um brilliant nightlife and night clubs or anything of that nature and they they go shopping on wealth avenue and they look about and after a year or so they can't bear it any longer and their husbands take them away again and the houses are put up for sale so what we've seen in palm beach is old names and old money what there is left of it pulling out i'm beginning to think i won't buy a house here no no don't come and stay with me it's cheaper palm beach is a girl's town run by girls for other girls of a certain age so its excitement centers upon the frivolous shopping dressing up parties and going out it's impossible to be overdressed the chicest french hat i've ever seen harry thanks for all you did for us tonight palm beach it seems is no longer the party town that i remember with its cast system of queens and asperant princesses i think the first requisite would would be having been here a long time um somebody can't come in one year and expect to be the queen the next year it's been tried and it doesn't work uh tenure is a very important thing um a big name also makes a big difference i mean somebody with with no name at all isn't going to make it simply because she doesn't have the the clout that goes with it to accomplish what a queen would have to accomplish you can't hide your light under a bushel and become the queen of palm beach you better watch your grapefruit juice thirty years on long-term resident judy schruft is aware that the only thing about life here that hasn't changed is her passion for enormous dogs the queens don't exist anymore he doesn't know no queen anymore well and nobody's even competing to be queen anymore looking back i mean it seems to me that people don't have quite as much fun these days people don't drink as much for one thing that's probably everybody's on some sort of a health kick it's always said about palm beach that the police used to take such good care upon beachers who weren't able to drive themselves home the police would drive them home and leave their cars where they were and pick them up the next day but that doesn't happen anymore everybody's i mean there's sort of a joke about palm beach where you know people will go to great great great lengths to have a magnificent dinner party and at 10 o'clock the whole thing empties out everybody goes home so they don't miss the 11 o'clock news i mean it's kind of come to that there's one final story from the american continent that i want to tell but to do so i'm returning to london [Music] in 1968 i was filming a series about the various rulers of south america starting with alfredo stressner of paraguay and the president of ecuador whose name escapes me although i remember his avenue of volcanoes stretching away from quito touching down in miami i bought a ticket onto haiti everyone thought i was mad and i probably was a bit just a few hundred miles from florida haiti was the poorest most dangerous place in the western hemisphere held under the lash of its tyrannical president francois duvalier known as papadoc filming was an anxious time with the constant fear that at any moment things could go fatally wrong but we came away with an extraordinary insight into life with a real bond villain in 1971 papadoc died of natural causes such an unusual achievement in such a violent country but haiti has never recovered from his nightmare rule still the most violent island in the caribbean and the the kidnap capital of the world now do i really want to pay a return visit to that place i think probably not [Music] you feel his menace in the pit of your stomach you hear his presence in the silence of his subjects on arrival in haiti i was uncomfortably aware that the airport had just experienced a slaughter of three of the regime's opponents they'd been gunned down following a sign from papadoc in full view of the horrified passengers of a flight on route from puerto rico to miami i had not yet obtained the president's permission for my film so first we had to get to the remote and inaccessible papadop by a stroke of good luck we discovered that he was making a very rare excursion outside his palace that day we followed and pushed our way through lines of troops and the donto makut papadoc's fiercer militia which you can do if you don't speak the language and are sufficiently polite do you mind british television excuse us you must push by sorry i'm so sorry just one moment in the scrimmage i got to papadop and explained we had crossed the world to see him he agreed to our request and told us to return to the palace next day hello it seemed that at least we were not going to be shot for now [Music] i just have the most eerie story which does to a degree illustrate the complete unpredictability of president obama and it may be caused i've heard it said because he is a diabetic and therefore subject to extreme fluctuations in the mood anyhow the other day um he was on the telephone himself to a local airline to inquire uh about a certain flight he spoke not to the airline official but to a young haitian who worked in the office and he found this boy so helpful that he inquired and there's no doubt about it papa doc is the most courteous man may i know to whom i'm speaking he said and the boy said my name uh excellence is dupont let's say and the president said dupont dupont does that name mean something to me and the boy hesitated and then said excellence i am the son of major dupont of the presidential guard who disappeared 11 years ago it was incidentally exactly 11 years ago that dr francois dualier was elected president and papadoc said ah yes yes yes i remember i remember well thank you so much for your help i'm so pleased to hear that you've got a good job with the foreign company and that you're doing well uh thank you very much put the receiver down that was that except the next morning major dupa returned home for 11 years he had been a prisoner in one of papadoc's jails and all i can assume is that having put the receiver down the president said uh incidentally um what happened to major dupont did we shoot him uh no excellence he was sent to prison release him crouching behind his tanks in his fortress the palace haitian exiles tried to bomb before one of their abortive invasions the palace many fear to enter papaduck received no one for months his own ministers seldom see him which may be why he's often reported dying or dead but from such seclusion he has agreed to see me so now to try and find out what sort of man is this who can inspire such terror to have peace and stability you you should have a strong man in every country not a dictator not a dictator but a strong man not a dictator not a dictator but a strong man democracy is a word is only a word is a philosophy is a conception what you call democracy in your own country another country can call that a dictatorship [Music] papadoc's reign of terror was probably the most harsh in the caribbean yet he could be courteous he inscribed a book of his poems to me to the friend of the first black republic he had created the tonto makut his private militia who could kill at will since his regular army was neither loyal nor brave the population was also too cowed even to move the bodies of those who had been killed and left in the street the killing of a haitian was unimportant but the death of a white man had to be agreed by the president himself getting to the president up there can be quite difficult mainly because everyone who surrounds him is so terrified of him and there's no doubt that this quiet spoken man does generate considerable fear when i left him the other day he asked that i returned this morning to see him once again and i duly presented myself with my various credentials armed indeed with aleise pase signed by the president himself to all civil and military authorities this lesser passe got me through the centuries on the gate here through a gaggle of guards on various doors up the stairs along the corridor and right to the door of the presidential chambers there i was met by a group of captains and lieutenants of the presidential guard and they said although they'd seen me before and they knew me and they knew that the president was expecting me they had no authority to disturb him he was inside his chambers i was outside and no one had the authority to approach him the only person who could approach him is his secretary uh a rather formidable lady who is related to him and she is away sick so i stood outside and waited and he presumably is in his study there waiting and nobody has the courage to knock on his door the only way out of this silent stalemate was for me to leave the palace and walk to the capitol's telephone exchange there i called up the number that i had noted on papadop's desk 349068 my message direct as it was to dr duvalier was uncomplicated mr president i am waiting outside your door well it worked it got me past a procession of centuries on another day he decided to show me the capital from the comfort of his mercedes 600. he carried with him wads of brand new haitian banknotes which he distributed to the nearest peasants who then carried away a year's wages in one publicized grab [Applause] sometimes he'll scatter handfuls of money through the car window yes it's well worthwhile trying to keep up with the duvaliers and you know believing himself secure from enemies protected by gunmen and by the voodoo power lying within the number two his presidential inauguration was on october 22nd papadoc hushed and curious with that sinister smile seems unconcerned and unaware as his stricken nation sinks deeper into its zombie trance watched by a critical but helpless world there's no doubt about it mr president you have had the worst international press any president i've known that's right yes they consider me like a black sheep [Laughter] all we needed now was a climax to our film next day as we were approaching christmas babatock decided to go gift shopping around the jewellers shops in his capital and when presidents start suggesting their own sequences for wicker's world even i begin to feel confident the prospect of the terrifying dictator christmas shopping had to be the best sequence the situation of a lifetime at that moment we ran out of film papadoc the black sheep was one of my most deported films it won the dumont award at the ucla against 400 competitors from around the world later i had to address the ucla faculty of journalism a most prestigious ceremony the chapter of mast undergraduates were attentive and appreciative about what to them was a new form of signed documentary the dean charles e young made a few graceful remarks and called for questions there was a long silence finally a plump young woman who had been absorbing every word and every scene intently stood up mr weka she began ponderously as i waited nervously for accumulated wisdom is it true that you marry daenerys well as it happens it wasn't but it was in keeping with our whole papadoc experience which had been full of light and shade triumph and fear a black and macabre tragic comedy next time we're going east good morning sir where abouts you flying to today flying in the slipstream of my first ever world tour coming and revisiting some of the most exotic destinations on the wicker's world flight path the sun shines all the time it's absolutely marvelous place to come [Music] [Music] time [Music] you

Channel: Archive_Archive

Views: 5,397

Keywords:

Id: DVxBPtGyHMc

Length: 59min 3sec (3543 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 11 2021