presidential approval had all sorts of side benefits, like the Tontons did not kill you. On the other hand there was one slight but unavoidable snag: he never paid for anything.
He would make his selections with much care and then, instead of handing over his credit card, would shake the shop-keeper’s hand and award him a wolfish smile. He got a few wolfish smiles back, as though the jeweller was going down for the third time, but there was nothing they could do. At least he only took one item from each shop, and, knowing the gift you carry gets home first, Papa Doc always carried his with him, gift-wrapped, when he left. No exchanges required.
Back in our gloomy hotel, beyond caring and defeated by a distant delivery system, we booked seats on the next flight out to Miami. We had not exposed a foot of film on that unreal and unrepeatable scene. It was lost, along with the remainder of our planned programme climax. Papa Doc had been spared my most pointed questions, which I was thoughtfully withholding for the night before we flew away.
For despair and frustration it was my worst television experience. I went back to the palace to say my farewells, tackling the succession of sentries for the last time.
Yorkshire twice transmitted our programme, Papa Doc—The Black Sheep. It was later shown several times by ITV, and submitted by our Controller, Donald Baverstock, for the Dumont Award. This international accolade for television journalism was presented by the University of California and the West Coast philanthropist Nat Dumont. Among the heavyweight judges were the United Nations Undersecretary General, Dr Ralph Bunche, Mrs Katharine Graham, owner of the Washington Post, and George Stevens Jr, Director of the American Film Institute. There were 400 entries and 40 finalists.
Papa Doc won.
The runner-up for this prestigious award was a film by Austrian Television which dealt with the US Strategic Air Force. The awards merited stern West Coast editorials complaining that foreign stations had walked away with US television’s main prizes. The Los Angeles Times said, “What is ironic is not only that foreign television is beating us at our own game—but with our own stories.”
I flew to Los Angeles for the ceremony, where the Univer-sity’s Melnitz auditorium was crammed with distinction and champagne, and received the award from the Chancellor, Charles E. Young. Afterwards there was a grand reception and banquet at Chasen’s attended by stars, network executives and advertising agencies.
Yorkshire had been desperate to break into the affluent American television market and still had not done so, yet on this grand occasion they failed to support me with even one handout. Lew Grade would have sent an army of salesmen and a ton of hard-sell literature. In a golden moment when the unknown Yorkshire Television was the target of every professional eye, I was absolutely alone. I spent most of the evening laboriously spelling my name to reporters who had never heard of me, or of Yorkshire TV.
After watching the programme everyone was most laudatory, once they knew who the hell I was. The Governor of California, Pat Brown, had just handed over to Ronald Reagan and become a lawyer. He asked if he could represent me in America. I agreed to everything, flew home—and was of course instantly forgotten.
Before I started filming again I had to face the ultimate penance of the Dumont Award; a lecture and interrogation before the UCLA Faculty of Journalism. This was the main centre of journalistic instruction in the land and, knowing how intense American students can be, how eager and ambitious, I was anxious not to let British television down before such a critical group.
I boned up on the wider implications of our programme and its background, the position of the United States within its Caribbean sphere of influence. I was apprehensive, but the massed undergraduates were an attentive and appreciative audience: alert reactions, laughter in the right places, endless notes. I completed my tour d’horizon amid unaccustomed applause, gratified by the impact.
The Dean made a few graceful remarks, and asked for questions. This was the testing moment. I braced myself for penetrating and informed demands, probably beyond my knowledge. The prize-winning film-maker at their mercy. After a long silence, a plump young women in the front row edged forward nervously. She had been absorbing my description of that Haitian life of terror with particular concentration.
“Mr Whicker,” she began, weightily, “is it true that…you married an heiress?”
The whole Papa Doc experience had been full of fear and laughter, disaster and triumph—a black and sinister tragicomedy.
In April 1971 President Duvalier died of natural causes—a rare achievement for any Haitian president. He was succeeded by his 19-year-old son, Baby Doc, who became the ninth Haitian since the 1804 Revolution to decide, like his father, to rule for life. That was his intention. He was later dismissed in a standard revolution and retired to live in some poverty in the South of France.
Papa Doc’s fourteen-year rule had been marked by autocracy, corruption and reliance upon his private army of Tontons Macoutes to maintain power. He used both political murder and expulsion to suppress opponents. It was estimated that he killed 30,000 of his countrymen.
In 1986, after Baby Doc’s exile, a mob stormed the Duvaliers’ marble-tiled family vault to look for Papa Doc’s body. The intention was to beat up his corpse to ensure that he could never rise again, even on Judgement Day. The mob was silenced and terrified to find the tomb empty.
They finally exhumed another grave, and beat up that body. Mobs are not selective. But was Papa Doc a zombie, out there working the fields?
3 TWO LHASA APSOS AND A COUPLE OF PANTECHNICONS
If ever there were a true 20th-century chameleon, it was Fanny Cradock. She invented reinvention. She had a number of names, and at various times had been an actress, journalist, romantic novelist, restaurant critic—apart from her own brilliant creation filling the Albert Hall as the original show-biz cook.
She was a television buccaneer years ahead of her time, and we met in her heyday, the time of cooking demonstrations before thousands where she would arrive on stage in white overalls and, just as the audience were sympathizing with her workaday life, strip off to reveal underneath a full-length crimson evening dress and diamonds—like Sean Connery unzipping his wetsuit. In the background Johnnie modestly revealed his white tie and tails.
There was nothing grey about Fanny. Everything was direct and startling: her opinions, her clothes, her generosity, her energy, her friendships and enmities, her impossible manners…This last trait was to be part of her undoing.
Fanny arrived in Jersey with Johnnie, two Lhasa Apsos and a couple of pantechnicons crammed with possessions. Also, strong opinions ready-made about everything and everyone.
They had left their home in Eire in fear after the murder of the British Ambassador in Dublin. She had grown afraid to turn on a kitchen light if the curtains were not drawn, and was scared of people lurking in the darkness around the house. It must have been a very serious scare for Fanny to admit to being frightened of anything. Alternatively it is just possible she had a noisy meeting, not with the IRA but with some inoffensive local shopkeeper who is still stunned by what hit him.
It is not easy to offend everyone in a small and tolerant island like Jersey, but Fanny managed it in a few short weeks. An innocent local photographer would be dismissed with a short sharp scream, a young waiter shyly proffering the Jersey Royals she was supposed to have cooked with her own skilful hands would receive a snarling, “Take those away, we think they’re disgusting”…
