“We are being attacked by enemy aircraft…” crackled the last message of BOAC Flight 777, a scheduled civilian flight over the Bay of Biscay on Tuesday, 1st June 1943. Onboard the former KLM DC-3 flying from Lisbon to Whitchurch were four Dutch crewmen and 13 passengers. One of these happened to be Leslie Howard, “easily the most popular British actor”, according to the front page of The Daily Mirror announcing his loss. The death of this actor, writer, and producer was a shock felt across the English-speaking world. He was at the height of his career, with his new film, The First of the Few, still showing in cinemas, a familiar voice on the BBC, and responsible for a string of wartime blockbusters. All of his war work sought to explain why we needed to fight fascism and rally people to the Allied cause. Conspiracy theories about Flight 777 started almost immediately after the news of Howard’s death was announced. Did Goebbels order the death of this important propaganda figurehead? Did the Germans believe that Churchill was on board the plane? Was Leslie Howard a spy working for Britain and deliberately targeted? Or was it just a tragic coincidence that the civilian airliner was shot down, resulting in the loss of 13 innocent passengers and crew?
Image: Still from From the Four Corners (1941). Ministry of Information. (Source: IWM)
Before we explore what Leslie Howard was doing in Spain and Portugal and examine his final flight, let’s remember his life and his contribution to the Allied war effort. Shortly before the outbreak of war, he was in Hollywood, waiting for his next project, having finished filming Gone with the Wind (you may have heard of it?) earlier that year. By the end of August 1939, he turned his back on the studio bosses, sunny California, and several lucrative new contracts in order to return to Blighty. Perhaps it was his Hungarian-Jewish background, his patriotism, or just a deep feeling of injustice, but he felt passionately that his duty was to support Britain’s fight against the Nazis. He explained his decision to his American fans on a BBC radio broadcast in 1940:
“The destiny of Britain we cannot know for certain, but we can guess at it, and pray for it, and work towards it as we find ourselves singled out of all the nations of the world for the rare honour of fighting alone against the huge and ruthless forces of tyranny.”[1]
It was a bold move. On 3 September 1939, Britain’s theatre-land was shut down, along with all places of entertainment, by the Lord Chamberlain. Although they were allowed to reopen two weeks later, audiences remained cautious about returning to theatres with the constant worry of air raids. There was widespread unemployment among performers and those involved in the film industry as Britain adjusted to a war footing and an uneasy government grew to realise that entertainment could be more than just frivolous fun.
Image: Publicity photo of Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind. (Source: WikiCommons)
In October 1939, Howard met with officials at Whitehall and explained that he wanted to help the war effort by making films:
“There is a theme I want to bring home. Let me explain - I am working on a simple principle: that the mind will always triumph over brute force in the long run.” [Colvin, p. 48]
With the eventual support of the Films Section of the Ministry of Information, Howard began working on Pimpernel Smith at Denham Studios the following October.
In the meantime, as a widely recognised voice, Leslie Howard soon found a home at the BBC, appearing on Britain Speaks, the BBC North American Service, and The Brains Trust. He was a household name on both sides of the pond and ideally positioned to serve on the front line of the propaganda war to convince America that Britain would not capitulate to Germany and that the fight against fascism was a worthy cause. With this in mind, Leslie joined an Ideas Committee in the Ministry of Information. By July 1940, the Daily Mail named Leslie Howard as second only to J.B. Priestley (and presumably Churchill) as the most prominent voice on the British airwaves.
What was Howard’s appeal? A Hollywood columnist described the power of his voice:
“Any woman with half the customary quota of vitamins gets electricity of the vertebrae just listening to his voice. When you add the wise, rather tired, twinkle in his eyes, and his beautiful assurance, the total is terrific.”[2]
Leslie Howard was quintessentially English: thoughtful, enigmatic, and slightly removed from what was going on around him. He was able to put listeners of all classes at ease with his self-deprecating humour and thoughtful, intelligent manner. There was an authenticity that he showed that made his audience, whether on screen or on the radio, trust him. I’m not sure you could say that about Noel Coward, even Lawrence Olivier did not have this electrifying combination of qualities. This made Leslie Howard a powerful weapon against the Nazis.
I wrote about two of his films, Pimpernel Smith (1941) and The First of the Few (1942), in a previous post. Both films described the reasons why the Allies were fighting and were careful to separate the Nazis from the German people. In addition to full-length movies, Howard appeared and wrote a number of important propaganda shorts filmed by the Ministry of Information. The 15-minute, From the Four Corners (1942) is a great example and can be seen on the IWM site here:
Aimed at raising support for the cause in Commonwealth countries and America, the film opens in Trafalgar Square, under the gaze of Nelson’s column. A New Zealander, an Aussie, and a Canadian soldier meet a lounging Leslie Howard, smoking a pipe on a bench, who urbanely invites them all for a pint. “Why did they come to London? Was it to answer the mother country’s call to arms?” he asks. Of course not, he tells them before they can answer, because “you are all their own masters and could decide on your own whether to come and fight.” Downing their pints, Howard whisks them off to the top of St Paul’s Cathedral and gives them a history lesson, looking across London towards Tower Bridge. He starts with Alfred the Great, talks of Captain George Vancouver being buried at Petersham, links the Kiwi (who’s a lawyer) to the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede, and, of course, Captain Cook at Greenwich is shown to the Aussie. “You fellows own London as much as we do.” Then, with a nod to our American cousins, points out the mother of all parliaments in Westminster in relation to Washington’s Congress.
Image: Still from From the Four Corners showing a Canadian, Aussie and Kiwi soldier with Leslie Howard looking over London on top of St Paul’s Cathedral. (Source: IWM)
Perhaps the Four Corner’s opening scene in Trafalgar Square coupled with the fact that Leslie Howard's character was called Professor Horatio Smith in his 1941 movie, prompted Basil Dean to cast him as Nelson’s ghost in the ENSA extravaganza, The Cathedral Steps. Read more about this extraordinarily ambitious (and strange) piece of open-air theatre from September 1942 here.
Image: Leslie Henson playing the ghost of Nelson in The Cathedral Steps (1942). (source IWM).
You can see a clip of Leslie Howard’s haunting performance at the top of the steps to the west door of St Paul’s Cathedral here:
After delivering Nelson’s prayer before Trafalgar, he declares, “England expects that every man will do his duty”, salutes, and goes back into the cathedral at the end of his brief speech. The cheering crowds had no idea that this would be the actor’s last public performance in Britain.
Returning to Denham Studios after his lunchtime appearance at St Paul’s, he continued directing his film about the Auxilliary Territorial Service, The Gentle Sex. Howard continued his high work-rate despite experiencing personal loss with the sudden death of his close friend, Violette Cunnington, at the end of October.[3] He produced The Lamp Still Burns in the first part of 1943 and then agreed to go to Spain on a tour on behalf of the British Council. Why did he agree to go after being so adamant that his place was in Britain earlier in the war? Perhaps he was looking for some time to relax, away from the studio and the endless work. More likely, he saw the trip as a chance to extend his crusade against the Nazis and to try to persuade a neutral country to stay out of the war. His tour was ostensibly to provide lectures on filmmaking, but it was undoubtedly a way of exerting Britain’s soft power in the Iberian Peninsula and getting its cinemas to play more of Howard’s films.
In Part 2, we look at the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Flight 777 and consider the reasons why this civilian plane was shot down.
[1] Ian Colvin, Flight 777, First Edition (Evans Brothers Limited, 1957), p. 46.
[2] The Daily Mirror, 3 June 1943, p.1.
[3] Colvin, Flight 777, p. 92.