Legend-Slayer
Will Bradley Rides Yet Again-Don’t Believe All That Alexandre Dumas Nonsense
About “One For All, All For One”- Leonardo DeCaprio, Jeremy Iron, Gerard
Depardieu and Gabriel Byrne’s “The Man In The Iron Mask” (1998)- A Film Review,
Of Sorts
By Will
Bradley
Recently I
started back on my now seemingly etched in stone niche of slaying undeserved,
false or overblown legends like Robin Hood, Don Juan, early aviator Johnny
Cielo and what I consider my greatest achievement, taking down the stinking
rank Old West’s desperado bank robber and stone-cold killer Link Jones, although it still remains to be seen if I can
break the spell that the Old West has on the American imagination. I have
admitted that I while I have made significant inroads into breaking my
following, breaking the general public a little too from the responses our site
manager has received, from most of these fakes I have been stalled, have been
bush-whacked to use a term I used in the Link Jones piece in the case of Johnny
Cielo, the so-called early aviation innovator and test pilot, whose spell still
lingers.
The Cielo
legend still lingers over the crowd that believe that Johnny hustled guns and
supplies to Fidel and his band of hermanos in the hills of Cuba when it counted
in the late 1950s and refuse to believe that he was nothing but a two-bit bush
pilot and tourist guide. Maybe it is because the demographic of this
publication, the now hallowed (and fading) generation of ’68 as Sam Lowell
calls his brethren cut its teeth on Johnny’s legend linked together with their
starry-eyed admiration for Fidel and Che in the old days watching according to that
same ancient Sam Lowell on black and white television those guys riding into
Havana on New Year’s Day, 1959. I am far too young to have even heard of Johnny
Cielo until a free-lance reporter friend of mine who having been stood up by
some people on another story found some guy who knew Johnny in Key West and
bought his bull hook, line and sinker. Took the Johnny exploits whole based on
some rummy’s DTs story that had so many holes in it that I almost didn’t have
to do research on it. For example, I was able to grab the still extant copy of Johnny’s
manifest on his last flight which showed him attempting to fly well-heeled
passengers from Key West to Naples in Florida before the plane, a Piper Club,
fell down in the Gulf of Mexico). Case closed if not the legend.
Now I have I
found addition information that part of my problem for not making any inroads in
the Cielo legend is that the rummy, Billy Bradley, had been interviewed by Mike
Thomas, yes, that Mike Thomas who has interviewed everybody who is anybody
somehow read either my reporter friend’s fluff piece on Johnny or my slash and
burn on the Cielo legend and decided to investigate (or really have his people
do the legwork as far I know he hasn’t done any such work for years since his
ratings went from zero to a million when he exposed the famous actor Lenny
Grove as a two-bit ex-convict who hustled his ass on the street to make his coffee
and cakes before he hit Hollywood ). The problem for me is that letting that
rummy spout his bull on the Mike Thomas
Show put things up in the air, put “may or maybe not” in play rather than
what really happened with documentary proof. It would not be the first time
such things have obscured the truth.
I will keep
at it although I have been asked by more than one colleague why I am so intent,
other than that holding on to that niche which in this cutthroat business of
“you are only as good as your last piece” is not unimportant as even they
recognize, on breaking myths, legends and alternative facts. Fortunately, I
have another assignment today busting up an old legend that also has refused to
die, the baloney about the three musketeers and their supposed exploits and their
admittedly clever slogan “one for all, all for one.” Their press agent or
publicity people hit pay-dirt on that gem making it that much harder to legend-bust.
That “supposed exploits ” though should alert
the reader to more revelations about this crowd of fakers although as usual
with this business some people will gladly keep to their silly illusions and
believe the legends until the bitter end.
This
musketeer stuff is beautiful, is tailor-made to be busted. I don’t know about
the reader but in high school we were required to read this Dumas stuff, The Man In The Iron Mask stuff although
it had a different name and was not so unbelievable as the actual legend that
has grown since that time. All the musketeers, all four, D’ Artangan (not his
real name which would have conveyed the idea that he was some kind of noble, of
the sword or of blood, but Jean Rous, a farmer's son in Brittany, plus three
other drunks and rowdies, Artemis, Arthos, Porthos which were apparently their real
names according to the records of what then was the Ministry of Interior, the cops,
were sworn to serve the King of France, and not just any king in their time but
the well-known autocrat Louis XIV, the so-called Sun King, philander, despot
and grinder of the peasantry whose work kept him in over the top lavish
luxury. And for a long time this quaded
(sic)brethren feasted off the crumbs from the king’s larder, his wine cellar
mainly. This is the king, this is the crowd in a more democratic time we are
supposed to root for, supposed to pay homage to their stellar defense of king,
country and wine cellar with a few tavern wenches and off-hand ladies-in-waiting
thrown in. Give me a break.
Apparently
though the three underling musketeers had a falling out with Lou, had been cut
off from access to the wine cellar and milady’s palace bedrooms and so began the
long process of staging something like a palace revolt against the monarch
under a banner of “free wine, free wenches” although they masked this in some
plebeian “give alms to the people and be nice.” Usual plot, and usual trick up
to create that legend. That in this case “all for one, one for all,” which became
the exclusive copyright of the three underlings when D’Artagnan decided to
stick with the king for his own purposes. For as it turned out filial duties
but more on that in a moment.
We all know
what a bastard Louis XIV was, how his policies and appetites started the long
train wreck that would wind up in the glorious French Revolution later in the
next century. How could you possibly defend that bum of the month. That is
where the iron mask deal comes in. According to legend Louis’ mother had twins
one dying in childbirth leaving only bastard, bastard in more ways than one,
ugly Lou. What these musketeers, Artois mainly, figured was to get a guy who
looked like Lou and do a bait and switch. As it turned out Lou did have a brother
Phil who looked enough like him to pass in the dark although they were not
twins. Not satisfied that Phil would play along he found a guy from Brittany
who was the spitting image of Lou and so after a little off-hand swash-buckling
with Lou’s loyal personal guard the switch was made.
The kingdom
prospered, or rather the king and his courtesans prospered, although the new
Lou was as much a son of a bitch and as nasty as old Lou. The main thing is
that the three musketeers took at the credit for the coup, D’Artangan stuck
with the king almost to the end then realizing what a bastard Lou was switched
sides. Here is the funny part, Lou was his son as it turned out since he has
been going under the sheets with the Queen Mother back in the day and took a
hard thrust to the heart for his majesty, his new his majesty, Phil, the rest
of the guys had full access to the wine and women under the new monster. Yeah,
one for all, all for one. Bullshit.
