The Fish That Ate the Whale (36 page)

“Please, Sport, don't confuse me”
: McCann,
An American Company.
Zemurray frequently referred to people as “Sport,” which is only one of the things he had in common with Jay Gatsby.

United Fruit hired the biologist
: Karnes,
Tropical Enterprise.

You see it in the climactic scene
: According to McCann, the company, in exchange for the use of its facilities, asked only that Bogart sit for a short interview, conducted by McCann, for
Unifruco.
Bogart drank all day, was too loaded to do his scene—a stunt double was used—then swore at McCann when he approached with his notebook, saying, in essence, Get the fuck out of here, kid.

Elia Kazan wanted to use the dock
: Watch the movie carefully and you will realize one of the ships unloaded by the dockworkers is carrying bananas, which would give the union boss leverage with the owner, as a delay of even a few hours could mean the ruin of the cargo.

16: Bananas Go to War

War Crops
: Zemurray with Smith, “War Crops from Our Neighbor's Garden.” For further information on United Fruit in the war, see Chapman,
Bananas
; May and Plaza Lasso,
The United Fruit Company in Latin America.

As part of FDR's National War Board
: See “Jamaica Acts to Send Men Here.” This episode shows Zemurray behaving like a banana man in the classical sense. In the first years of the industry, when the Indians refused to work the fields, or were sickened by the work, Minor Keith imported workers from Jamaica and other islands, which is why the Caribbean coast of the isthmus seems less Central American than Caribbean today.

Sam gave everything he had
: Meanwhile, as U.F. diversified away from bananas, executives sought to fix the brand in the public mind. Enter sultry “Chiquita Banana,” the company mascot, which debuted in print ads and radio jingles in 1944. This character, created by Dik Browne, the cartoonist who created Hägar the Horrible, was nakedly based on the Brazilian nightclub singer Carmen Miranda, whose fame (she danced and sang in thickly accented English) had swept the nation. Like Miranda, Chiquita wore a fruit basket on her head; like Miranda, Chiquita high-kicked in heels; like Miranda, Chiquita tossed her fluted skirt, showing the doughboys a little too much thigh as she sang her silly song. (See Pieterse, W
hite on Black
; Jenkins,
Bananas
; Wilson,
Empire in Green and Gold.
)

17: Israel Is Real

“I paid my first visit to New Orleans”
: Am I the only one who finds the phrasing funny?

In 1926, he gave
: “To Aid Power Plant on Jordan River.”

In the early 1940s, Sam used
: On Zemurray's contributions to Zionism, see Feldstein,
The Land That I Show You
; Hammer,
Good Faith and Credit
; Whitfield, “Strange Fruit”; as well as various newspaper articles.

several hundred Jewish refugees
: Most of these émigrés had moved to the United States by 1960. About seventy Jews live in Sosúa today, the remnant of the wartime community. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, “Those who did remain in Sosúa and held on to their land have made a fortune. Erik Hauser, an original settler from Vienna, now owns an entire block of the lucrative downtown area, where hotels and restaurants were built on his original eighty acres. He is Sosúa's wealthiest resident.” (See Lauren Levy, “The Dominican Republic's Haven for Jewish Refugees,” Jewish Virtual Library.)

“the victorious Allies”
: Hochstein and Greenfield,
The Jews' Secret Fleet.

“Zemurray helped raise the purchase price”
: McCann does not have this right. The
Exodus
was turned back, which is what made it such a powerful symbol—these Holocaust survivors were returned to the land of their tormentors. The
Exodus
was the model for the ship portrayed in Leon Uris's book
Exodus
, the basis for the Otto Preminger movie of the same name. I was able to interview the captain of the
Exodus
before he died.

The most famous vessel
: On Zemurray and the Bricha, see Hochstein and Greenfield,
The Jews' Secret Fleet
; Hammer,
Good Faith and Credit
; Skolnik,
Encyclopaedia Judaica
, Vol. 21; Weizmann,
Trial and Error
; Weisgal,…
So Far.
Additional information comes from newspaper stories and discussions with Gadi Marle.

Behind them, behind the creation
: For this section, see Klich, “Latin America, the United States, and the Birth of Israel”; Didion,
Salvador
; Morris,
1948
; Chapman,
Bananas
; Hochstein and Greenfield,
The Jews' Secret Fleet
; Weizmann,
Trial and Error.

18: Operation Success

If you wanted to open
: Sources for this section include Gleijeses,
Shattered Hope
; Schlesinger and Kinzer,
Bitter Fruit
; Cullather,
Secret History
; Grandin,
Empire's Workshop
; Chapman,
Bananas
; May and Plaza Lasso,
The United Fruit Company in Latin America
; McCann,
An American Company.

There were no workers
: See Koeppel,
Banana
; Perez-Brignoli,
A Brief History of Central America
; Gleijeses,
Shattered Hope
; Schlesinger and Kinzer,
Bitter Fruit.

He said he would govern
: Perez-Brignoli,
A Brief History of Central America.

“All the achievements of the Company
”: Schlesinger and Kinzer,
Bitter Fruit.

In return, the company was reportedly paid
: To make a point, Arbenz ordered that his own family estate be confiscated under the decree.

“There's a battle waging”
: Anderson,
Che Guevara
. In addition to books mentioned above, sources include Castañeda,
Compañero
; and Guevara,
The Complete Bolivian Diaries.

“I had the opportunity”
: Anderson,
Che Guevara.

“Right after he became Undersecretary of State”
: On Tommy the Cork and political hires, see McKean,
Tommy the Cork
; Hunt,
Undercover
; Schlesinger and Kinzer,
Bitter Fruit
; Whitfield, “Strange Fruit”; McCann,
An American Company
; “The Cork Bobs Back.”

When Clements died
: See Schlesinger and Kinzer,
Bitter Fruit.

If you want to advance
: Sources on Edward Bernays include Tye,
The Father of Spin;
as well as Bernays's own books, especially
Propaganda
and
Biography of an Idea
.

He took out an ad
: Bernays paid models to participate in his “smokeouts,” assuring that the less attractive would fall in like sheep. I came across the following exchange in John O'Hara's
BUtterfield 8
, published in 1935:

“Didn't you notice that girl that went by with the foreign looking man? She was smoking a cigarette.”

“She gets paid for that.”

“Paid for it?”

“Yes, paid for it. I read that in Winchell's column—”

“Mr. Zemurray sat at a flat-top desk”
: Bernays,
Biography of an Idea.

When the
Times
staffer
: Gruson, “How Communists Won Control of Guatemala.” He actually suggested that Guatemala had gone Red.

“As long as Khrushchev”
: This quote, an expression of a long-held sentiment, appears in Dulles,
The Craft of Intelligence.

Whether he was in Athens
: On Ambassador Peurifoy, see Higgins,
Perfect Failure
; Quigley,
The Ruses for War
; Schlesinger and Kinzer,
Bitter Fruit
; Chapman,
Bananas
; Lewis, “Ambassador Extraordinary.”

“The President stated”
: Kinzer,
Overthrow
.

The ship, a Swedish vessel
: Original documents regarding the affair and the surrounding drama in Guatemala can be found on the website of the State Department's Office of the Historian,
http://history.state.gov
. These events were covered in several of the above-mentioned books, including
Bitter Fruit
and
Shattered Hope
. See also “Swedish Freighter Anchors off Key West”; “Reaction in Other Capitals”; Gruson, “Guatemala Says U.S. Tried to Make Her Defenseless”; Waggoner, “U.S. White Paper Alerts Americas to Aims of Reds.”

He described it as the place
: Anderson,
Che Guevara.

“Our crime is having”
: For Arbenz, see Pellecer,
Arbenz y yo
; Simon,
Guatemala
; Hunt,
Undercover
; Schlesinger and Kinzer,
Bitter Fruit
; Chapman,
Bananas
; Anderson,
Che Guevara
; Lewis, “Ambassador Extraordinary”; Kennedy, “Arbenz Blames U.S. for His Fall.”

“For fifteen days a cruel war”
: See Hunt,
Undercover
; Schlesinger and Kinzer,
Bitter Fruit
; Gleijeses,
Shattered Hope.

He lived in Montevideo
: Arbenz's wanderings were chronicled by the newspapers of the day. See, for example, “Arbenz Would Be Swiss”; Gruson, “Arbenz to Make Home in Prague.” Pictures of Arabella Arbenz can be found on a website dedicated to Jaime Bravo,
http://matadorjaimebravo.com
.

On January 27, 1971
: For recent developments, see Malkin, “Guatemala to Restore Legacy of President U.S. Helped Depose.”

Within a generation
: Standard Fruit, a privately owned company based in New Orleans, was purchased by Castle & Cooke between 1964 and 1968, then renamed Dole. See Karnes,
Tropical Enterprise.

19: Backlash

U.F. was increasingly considered an embarrassment
: For this section, see Ambrose,
Eisenhower
; Tye,
The Father of Spin
; Hunt,
Undercover
; Schlesinger and Kinzer,
Bitter Fruit
; Taylor and Scharlin,
Smart Alliance
; McCann,
An American Company.
McCann is especially good on the twilight years, as he was then working with top management at the company. See also “United Fruit Yields in Suit.”

20: What Remains

He had the melancholy
: Frank Brogan and Thomas Lemann were helpful on Zemurray's last days.

21: Bay of Pigs

Kennedy refused
: Many conspiracy theories regarding the assassination of JFK center around this episode—Kennedy's decision to withhold air power, which meant the death of exiles on the beach at the Bay of Pigs. In several scenarios, the CIA retaliates by recruiting Lee Harvey Oswald, a former employee of United Fruit and a figure in a New Orleans netherworld where Zemurray had been a power. Often mentioned is the fact that in the guest book at the Russian embassy Oswald visited in Mexico City, the assassin's name appears beside the name William Gaudet, suggesting the men came together. William Gaudet, probably a CIA agent, had been publisher of the
Latin American Report
, a propaganda sheet bankrolled, in part, by United Fruit. “When Oswald visited the American Embassy in Mexico City shortly before he assassinated John F. Kennedy, the signature appearing immediately next to Oswald's own on the Embassy visitors' register is that of William Gaudet,” wrote Thomas McCann in
An American
Company
. “As of this writing [1976], the coincidence has not been explained.” If I am not delving into this too deeply, it's because I do not want to chase my tail around the ceiba tree.

It was the company's last attempt
: On the Bay of Pigs, see Kornbluh,
Bay of Pigs Declassified
; Rasenberger,
The Brilliant Disaster
; McCann,
An American Company
; Schlesinger and Kinzer,
Bitter Fruit
; Anderson,
Che Guevara
; Kinzer,
Overthrow
; Dulles,
The Craft of Intelligence
; Hunt,
Undercover.

U.F. sold 37,440 acres
: “Gringo Company.”

22: The Earth Eats the Fish That Ate the Whale

William Claiborne, the first governor of Louisiana
: Information comes from my trip to the burial ground, as well as Gandolfo,
Metairie Cemetery
. Also,
Findagrave.com
.

23: Fastest Way to the Street

In November 1969
: “They Bombed in New York.”

“He was monumental”
: After leaving United Fruit, McCann worked as a movie producer. In 1975, he made
The Watergate Cover-up Trial
, a film about Richard Nixon, using the Watergate tapes as a script. (McCann told me this story.) When he needed a desk for Nixon, he used the furniture from Pier 3. In the film, you can see Zemurray's desk appearing as Nixon's desk, which seems both right and wrong.

Members pledged to tax
: UPEB fell apart when Ecuador, then the largest banana producer in the world, refused to join.