Many of the pages of this compendium on the Yugoslavian war of liberation dwelt on the German Fifth Offensive against Tito’s army (the encircling of the freed territories of Montenegro and Hercegovina, May — June 1943).
The Axis forces consist of eight divisions, a total of 120,000 welltrained men, including groups of artillery and armoured units, plus a squadron of Luftwaffe bombers. Tito has 15,000 poorly armed soldiers, starving and exhausted, plus another 4,500 injured men in the field hospitals, many of whom are dragging themselves around with open wounds bared for want of bandages. The partisans — including the wounded — are fighting desperately, always hand to hand, running along rough mountain paths in broken shoes. Finally the remnants of two divisions break through the lines, sacrificing almost two thirds of their effective forces, including some of the best officers.
The Fifth Offensive had been defeated. It was one of the most epic and unbelievable chapters of the whole war. No one should have been surprised that they wanted to get a film out of it, but Cary was perplexed about the role he was supposed to play.
The outline mentioned the ‘participation of British personnel’ in breaking through enemy lines. To Cary, such ‘participation’ seemed relatively insignificant, at least from the military point of view. The British mission consisted of six men, including Major William Stuart and Major F. W. Deakin. They had parachuted into Tito’s headquarters on the night between 27 and 28 May.
In response to Stuart’s question, ‘Where’s the front?’ Tito had replied, ‘Wherever the Germans are.’ Stuart had said, ‘And where are the Germans?’, to which Tito had shot back, ‘Everywhere.’
On 9 June, during a German bombing raid, Stuart had been killed and Deakin had been injured in the foot. On the same occasion a piece of shrapnel had wounded Tito in his left arm, and another had killed his dog Lux.
Who were they suggesting he play, Stuart or Deakin? There wasn’t much to go on in either case, unless the scriptwriters were going to rely on fantasy. Who knows, perhaps they would introduce an imaginary character, to inflate and glorify the ‘involvement of British personnel’. It seemed like a lunatic idea.
. Until he moved on to the long historical and biographical section on Josip Broz, otherwise known as ‘Walter’, ‘Zagorac’, ‘Novak’, ‘Rudi’, ‘Kostanjsek’, ‘Slavko Babic’, ‘Spiridon Mekas’ and above all. Tito. Pseudonyms and false names adopted during his long periods underground.
There were various photographs attached to the seventy pages. All of the pictures taken during the war showed Tito in uniform. A hard expression, features sculpted from marble. Bolt upright, every inch the part. With his arm in a bandage. Thoughtful, smoking a Bent army pipe, slender and curved. With his glasses on, studying topographical maps. Meeting his senior officers. With Winston Churchill in Naples, in 1944. With Stalin the following year.
The photographs from the period after the revolution were very different: Tito was almost always shown in the peace and tranquillity of his own various residences scattered around the country.
On the Brioni islands in June 1952: half-length portrait. Pale suit (beige, perhaps; linen, at a guess) with a narrow lapel, very probably two-buttoned. A lighter-coloured shirt with a tab collar, a tie with a large polka-dot pattern knotted in a tight triangle, (and probably without a loop, given that he wore a tie pin). An unmistakable Panama hat on his head. A sardonic smile, a smug expression directed at the lens. A cigarette smoked with a long holder. He looked a bit like a gangster, but he showed a certain style.
What the document said: the leader of Yugoslavian communism was proud to have done it on his own. He would never have authorised any narrative strategies that took a sixteenth of an ounce of merit from him and his soldiers.
What Cary thought after reading the file: he liked the sound of Josip Broz.
What he concluded after an hour of free association: he and Tito had a great deal in common.
Above all there was his obvious interest in matters of grooming and clothes. According to the file, Tito had personally designed the uniform of the Yugoslavian national army. There was also an anecdote: on 25 May 1944, just before the Normandy landing, the German Oberkommando had unleashed its final attack on Tito’s general staff, which had its headquarters in Drvar, in Bosnia. The officers had made it to safety, but the Germans had stolen a very stylish uniform designed by Tito, to be worn on the day of victory. The high-ranking officials of the Reich must have been au fait with their arch-enemy’s dandyism, since they had displayed the uniform as a war trophy in a gallery in Vienna.
And then there was the fact they had both become famous with a name other than their given name. They had both passed through different identities. Cary for his work, Tito. for the same reason. Wasn’t he a ‘professional revolutionary’?
And also: they were both well known for having indefinable accents.
Cary was born in Bristol, he had spent his adolescence travelling all around England, he had disembarked in New York (where he had socialised with people from all over the world), he had travelled all around the States on long theatrical tours and finally he had pulled up roots and moved to Hollywood, the centre of a multinational community of deracinated artists, refugees, the mentally stateless. All that before the age of thirty. His English intonation was a synthesis of all those experiences.
Tito was twelve years older, and of Croatian origin, but he had been an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army on the Russian front, and had been taken prisoner in 1915. After the Revolution, having joined the Bolsheviks, he had fought against the White Russian armies. Returning to Croatia in 1920, he had pursued underground political activities. Between 1928 and 1934 he had been in prison. He had spent most of the next few years in Moscow, during the time of the great ‘purges’, which he had survived by the skin of his teeth. Then there was the return to Yugoslavia, the war of liberation and the assumption of power. As a result he spoke a strange mixture of Croatian, Serbian and Russian. He had excellent German, and could get by in French and English.
But what fascinated Cary the most was the perpetual quest for independence, both personal and national. During the days of the Fifth Offensive, when Major Stuart had told him that no RAF planes would be covering the breakthrough, Tito had said, ‘It’s better that way. We’ll do it on our own, and after the victory, we won’t have run up any debts with anyone.’ The next thing he had done had been to break with Stalin and the Soviet Union, provoking a real schism within the communist camp.
Cary, for his part, had been Hollywood’s first freelance actor. From the thirties onwards he had freed himself from the grip of the studios. The first actor to win 10 per cent of takings. Cary discussed contracts in person even though he had both an agent and a lawyer-manager.
He was mulling over all this on the back seat of an official AMG car, while his new escort (the changing of the guard had occurred when they touched down at the tiny airport) showed him the city of Trieste, the sole concession to any form of amusement before crossing the border and placing him in the hands of one Major Alexander Dyle. The envelope also contained a file on him, but he hadn’t yet got around to.
‘One moment, gentlemen!’ exclaimed Cary, reading his own name in a newspaper headline. The paper was the Daily Telegraph, which the bodyguard sitting next to the chauffeur was perusing.
‘Is anything wrong, sir?’
‘Could you lend me that newspaper for a moment?’
‘Exclusive interview with CARY GRANT: Now I am a happy man! ’ was the headline. The various subtitles combined to form this message: ‘A year after his retirement from the cinema, we asked the world’s most famous British actor a few questions — in his Palm Springs residence: “I am devoting myself to my wife” — But there are some who swear: soon he will start acting again.’