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In his award-winning “I Was Russell Crowe’s Stooge”, brilliant Australian journalist Jack Marx gives a startling insight into the psychology of the celebrity set, especially their deep-seated insecurity. When the events Marx relates were unfolding, Crowe was one of the hottest stars in the world. Yet, he was also so unconfident that he went to great lengths to cultivate a minor music critic, in the hopes of garnering good reviews for what Marx describes as, “The most charitable thing I could feel about it was that it wasn’t complete crap.”
This, as other writers have pointed out, is a celebrity’s dirty secret. Sure, they may be talented and outrageously good-looking, but so are a million other wannabes hanging around LA waiting to replace them. They’re well aware that the only thing separating them from the waitress who goes to acting school between shifts is pure good luck. If Harrison Ford hadn’t happened to install some kitchen cabinets for an unknown young filmmaker in 1973, he’d never have got the minor part in American Graffiti (1973) that launched him to stardom.
Sometimes this insecurity leads stars to lie about their pasts. Merle Oberon spent years trying to cover up her Indian heritage by claiming she was from Tasmania – apparently the most exotic and unknown place Hollywood could think of at the time. Others resort to ‘stolen valour’, like Brian Dennehy, who claimed repeatedly to have been wounded in Vietnam, when in fact he spent his marine service playing football in Okinawa.
This, as investigators who exposed Dennehy pointed out, is a perfectly respectable military career (the particular investigator is upfront that he spent the entire Vietnam War as a store clerk in the Midwest).
Even some of the most beloved celebrities have a strange habit of trying to big up their war service.
Sir Christopher Lee, who died in 2015 aged 93, knew how to play a part. One of the consummate actors of his generation, whose career spanned nearly seven decades, his versatility on stage and screen was legendary.
At first glance his military career during the second world war was similarly versatile. According to some reports and obituaries in the days after his death, Lee served in the Special Air Service (SAS), Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and Special Operations Executive (SOE).
The only problem is that none of that is true.
In reality he served in none. He was attached to the SAS and SOE as an RAF liaison officer at various times between 1943 and 1945, but he did not serve in them and never, as one paper stated, ‘moved behind enemy lines, destroying Luftwaffe aircraft and fields’.
Contrary to the breathless gushing of his fanbois, Lee almost certainly never “literally killed Nazis”. Not unless they were hiding under his desk. Other of his claims to ‘badass’ status, such as being descended from Charlemagne, are equally spurious. Aside the fact that most native Western Europeans can legitimately claim to be related in some degree to Charlemagne, there are simply no genealogical records that could establish a direct descent.
Other ‘legendary’ achievements are even less legendary in reality: the heavy metal album Lee recorded in his 80s is distinguished only by its awfulness. Perhaps he should have jammed with Russell Crowe.
Some of the outright baloney peddled about Lee – such as that ‘he was the inspiration for James Bond’ (in fact, the closest role model for Bond was Ian Fleming’s brother Peter, among others) – can be attributed to over-excited and all-too-gullible fans (including director Peter Jackson), but Lee himself was not above, at best, leading people on.
When asked about his service record — which it should be pointed out was a fine one, with liaison officers performing a valuable link between the RAF and special forces – Lee didn’t exactly lie, but he did lead us on, encouraging us to believe it had involved more derring-do than it actually did. Asked about his wartime exploits in an interview in 2011 he said: ‘Let’s just say I was in special forces and leave it at that. People can read into that what they like.’
Pressed on the subject, he replied with melodrama worthy of a Hammer film: ‘We are forbidden – former, present, or future – to discuss any specific operations.’
In a particularly famous anecdote, Lee claimed to correct the Lord of the Rings director on the sound a man makes when stabbed in the back. Despite the fact that he very likely didn’t know at all, Lee bamboozled Jackson with his standard, ‘Oh, I can’t about that, Official Secrets Act, donchaknow,’ nudge-wink.
Nonsense. Wartime members of those special forces units are not – and never have been – prevented from discussing operations. A decorated wartime SAS officer, Roy Farran, published an account of serving in the regiment as early as 1948.
When I wrote my own history of the SAS in World War Two, I did so with the full cooperation of the regiment, which put me in touch with more than 50 wartime veterans, all more than happy to talk.
Lee was far from the only person to try and big up their war record.
They follow the same format. In their twilight years these ageing men revealed to their relatives that they had served in the SAS during the war. Blown up Nazi airfields in North Africa, derailed trains in Occupied France, that sort of thing.
Most of these men did their bit. But at some point they decided their war records weren’t dashing enough.
And that is foolish: any war record is perfectly respectable. Wars are won from behind desks every bit as much as on the battlefield. In fact, support roles such as quartermasters outnumber frontline combatants by as much as nine to one. Without them, no battle would ever be won.
No one should be ashamed of serving their country from a desk rather than a trench. It’s as honourable as any other military career.
What’s not honourable, though, is stolen valour.
Sir Christopher Lee had a ‘good war’, to use the vernacular of the time. But it would have been honourable of him to clarify exactly what it was he did. Unfortunately the actor in him couldn’t resist hamming it up. Does it matter? Yes, because his life was already rich in accomplishment and he’d acquired enough fame without having to win still more through the daring actions of others.
Meanwhile, if the fanbois want to celebrate a real badass WWII commando, but who rarely spoke of it, they need only look to the actor who first spoofed Bond: David Niven.
But Niven’s only substantive comment on his war service was this:
I will, however, tell you just one thing about the war, my first story and my last. I was asked by some American friends to search out the grave of their son near Bastogne. I found it where they told me I would, but it was among 27,000 others, and I told myself that here, Niven, were 27,000 reasons why you should keep your mouth shut after the war.
