Hitchcock's Partner in Suspense by John Charles Bennett

Author:John Charles Bennett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

December 7, 1941: invasion appeared to be only a matter of hours. We waited. Our coastal cities were blacked out from San Diego up to Seattle, and an attack was expected night after day after night. Expecting the worst, everybody was wondering what was holding the Japs back.

I was at work for David Hempstead at RKO, putting the final touches to a good screenplay, Challenge to the Night, not produced. Our greatest challenge was the immediate danger visible to anyone riding in the Santa Monica Mountains overlooking the vast expanse of the Pacific. Out there stretched millions of square miles of ocean, teeming with enemy ships and submarines. And what was our defense? From my interest in aviation, I knew too well how important and undefended was our vitally important Southern California area. It was important because the core of the aircraft industry—Hughes, Lockheed, Douglas—was here. If Japan had seized those plants while the door was wide open, the U.S. ability to produce an air defense or offense would have been sliced by maybe 80 percent.

A resident alien, I jumped at an opportunity to become the acting commander of Company D, 1st Battalion, 39th Regiment, of the California State Guard. We started immediately in December 1941, receiving our License to Bear Arms on December 21, 1942. In 1943, when a California state court held that resident aliens could not serve with the actual State Guard, Company D was split into two sections—Company D remained with the California State Guard, but our alien group became the First Mounted Patrol of the California State Militia, attached to Company D. I remained commander of the First Mounted Patrol until my departure to England in the spring of 1944, turning over its command to a horseman and future president, Ronald Reagan.

Both Company D and the First Mounted Patrol were cavalry, carrying out antisabotage duty around the military aircraft centers such as Douglas Aircraft, and security patrols into the brush-covered Santa Monica Mountains looking for evidence of enemy infiltration. In hindsight it seems ridiculous that our little cavalry troop should stand watch over such facilities. My son John remarked of the patrol: “An immigrant militia toasting martini-filled helmets was polo’s defense of the free.” It’s true.

One time, when commanding the cavalry troop, I came at a full gallop across the extended polo field at Riviera Country Club—twice the length of a normal polo field because a quarter mile or so was kept for practice purposes. Suddenly Mex, the wonderful polo pony that I’d acquired from the car designer Dutch Darrin, became alarmed by something. He turned—and he could turn on a dime, one of the things that made him great in polo circles—and I came off. Why in hell I wasn’t killed, neck broken or something, I shall never know. The speed must have been something over twenty, maybe twenty-five, miles an hour. But I survived. It could be that somehow I instinctively went back to my early twenties, when I was playing Romeo in all the smallest little mining towns in England.

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