Fighting the Nazis with Celluloid Bullets: The Mystery of the Death of Actor and Filmmaker Leslie Howard
The story surrounding Leslie Howard’s death seems to be one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in cinema history. Leslie Howard died aged fifty after his plane was shot down on the 1st of June 1943 by the Luftwaffe.
The plane was a passenger carrier from Portugal, thus in this instance the Nazis violated an unwritten yet informal treaty to not shoot down civilian planes from neutral countries – Portugal being neutral at the time. There are many reasons to believe that the plane, which was headed for landing at a small airfield near Bristol, was shot down because one of its passengers was none other than actor and filmmaker Leslie Howard.
At the peak of his Hollywood popularity, having starred in such classics as Of Human Bondage, Pygmalion and Gone With the Wind, with the outbreak of World War II, he bought himself out of a lucrative contract and returned to his native Britain to contribute to his war effort. Of course, being the filmmaking expert he was, Winston Churchill thought well of using him as an ‘agent of influence’, one of the theatricals who went around the world and spread the British doctrine trying to convince countries to join its cause in its fight against the axis.
Howard met Churchill back in 1937, in occasion of some discussions regarding a possible film version of the story of Lawrence of Arabia that never materialised. In the occasion, however, Howard took the opportunity to tell Churchill of his anti-Nazi views – something that the future Prime Minister would keep in mind when it looked like propaganda would play an important role in this global conflict.
Fast forward to 1941, when Howard made and released ‘Pimpernel’ Smith, his second feature as a director, three years after his admirable and celebrated debut Pygmalion. Here, Howard also stars as the titular hero, who whilst very unassuming, rescues victims of Nazi prosecutions during the conflict that was taking place in the ‘real world’. A year later, he would shoot The First of Few, now renamed Spitfire, about the designer of the Spitfire – a film which has been credited with highly boosting the morale of the people during the most heated stages of the Battle of Britain.
Reportedly, these two films alone particularly infuriated Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, who most probably saw the famous film star as a direct rival. Of course there was more that would infuriate him and members of the Nazi parties, such as his broadcasts to the USA, trying to convince them to end their neutrality and join the Allied forces in the war efforts. He also promoted Irish war involvement when somewhat audaciously meeting Irish Prime Minister at the time, Eamon De Valera, who was notoriously anti-British at a time when Ireland had reason to think any British vulnerability during the war an opportunity to seize in their own fight for independence.
Before the fatal flight back to Britain, Howard had been on a tour of lectures in Portugal and Spain. As mentioned earlier, Portugal as at the time neutral, while Spain – helmed by right-winged dictator Gerenal Franco – was more likely to be convinced by Hitler’s Party to quit licking their post-Civil War wounds and join the Axis in the armed conflict. Howard became convinced he should end his Portuguese-Spanish tour early, and ended up on the flight that would be his end.
But that is not all. There are more mysteries and conspiracies that spin out of an intricate web, and the more one stops to examine the circumstances the more one realises what a delicate stratagem it all was. For starters, it must be said that Howard had reason to hate the Nazis because he came out of Jewish background. This is perhaps what fuelled his determination in spreading his anti-Nazi doctrines so fearlessly. Despite all this, Howard remained flawed by a weakness that may have contributed to his end – women.
One conspiracy in particular sees a sudden trip to Iberian beaches to recover after the emotional shock experience after the death of his mistress Violette Cunnington – whom he had met during the shoot of The Scarlet Pimpernel. An established philanderer, while his wife sat at home, Howard enjoyed gaming women left and right and this trip was no exception. Like a true spy, a James Bond figure never off duty, he would meet an old flame named Conchita Montenegro, an actress who also just so happened to have been an ‘acquaintance’ of none other than General Franco himself! There is hence reason to believe that Conchita served as the right connection for Howard to contact Franco directly and try to convince him to join the war on Britain’s side. Was this the ultimate factor that left him exposed? After all, it hadn’t been too long before when Britain had fought against Franco’s Fascist faction in the course of the Spanish Civil War, and a chance to back stab an old enemy was too good to miss at this moment in time.
Another conspiracy that is quite plausible is that the real target of this vile Nazi attack may have been Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself. Churchill at the time of the event was in Algiers to survey the progress in the Mediterranean, and was due back to Britain by air flight any day. Adding to the suspicions may have been Howard’s close friend and tax advisor, a man who resembled an uncanny resemblance to Churchill. His name was Alfred Chennels. He was a chubby bald man and, heck, even smoked cigars just like the big man himself!
Of course, every mystery has other suspects, and this flight is no exception as there were other passengers who may have been the prime target. Among them mining engineer Ivan Sharpe whose activities in Portugal were seriously affecting Germany’s armaments industry. Another, was Wilfried Israel, Scion of the Berlin Jewish Dinasty and - guess what! - his story of the rescue work with the Kindertransport had inspired Howard’s film ‘Pimpernel’ Smith.
No matter what, there is no doubt about the fact that Leslie Howard was fearless in his exposure to German hostility in the hope of helping Britain in any way possible. By acting, in fact, like a true suave spy, and speaking so loudly and effectively in favour of Allied mentality, he put his life in tremendous risk.
So, why did he do it? Well, let’s go back to the point we made earlier. Leslie Howard’s personal Jewish connections came from his own father. Leslie Howard may have looked like a true British gentlemen as much as his ‘Pimpernel’ Smith co-star David Niven, but he was the son af a Hungarian Jew who had emigrated from Vienna to Britain in the late 19th century. When he was only five years old, his family too had had to escape the stronghold of the effects of Anti-Semitism. Perhaps this was the actor’s main drive to his fearless tactics and behaviour that sadly led to his heroic death.
(There’s a film in there somewhere.)
