Madeleine Carroll supports the Merchant Marine
according to columnist Ed SullivanNew York Daily News, Sunday, December 13, 1942
By ED SULLIVANExpendables
Her husband is in the United States Marine Corps, a "boot" at Parris Island.. Her last flicker was "My Favorite Blonde" and she doesn't intend to make another picture until the war has ended, so if the war continues for many years, in her next picture, Madeleine Carroll will probably be playing mother parts or character parts.... Once upon a time, and that recently Miss Carroll's streamlined figure rarely was seen in New York City; now she's here all the time.... I see her at charity luncheons, at bazaars to raise money, at the China Relief show with Bob Hope.... But her main purpose in life is to raise money for and drum up public interest in the United Seamen's Service.... None of the services has a better salesman: the streamlined Miss Carroll has energy, and refuses to be crushed or even subdued.
Madeleine Carroll
"Down to the Seas" [at right]"The public apathy toward the American Merchant Marine is dreadful," she tells you, her eyes actually flashing. "Of course I'm angry. But what makes me still angrier is the answer I get everywhere to my solicitations: 'Well,' a banker told me a few days ago, 'after all, they are well paid, so why should we help them?' I told him: 'So they do get good pay, but did you ever think that they could get much better pay in defense factories and industries, where they wouldn't have to risk their lives every time they go out on the job? Soldiers and sailors can take out $10,000 insurance for the benefit of their families, not so the merchant seaman, which indicates the risks he takes. If he's maimed in line of duty, the merchant seaman does not qualify for a pension which men of our armed forces rightfully receive.' ....
She was getting madder by the minute, so I asked her what the banker had said to that. She smiled: "He gave me a check, and said he hadn't thought of it that way before."
Presently, to take care of the men and boys of the Merchant Marine, the United Seamen's Service has opened combination canteens and rest homes for them.... One is the old Dartmouth Club here in N. Y; Mrs. Kermit Roosevelt's place on Oyster Bay has been taken over and is in full operation; ditto the Cutting estate on Long Island.... There's still another at Baltimore, Md., and one at Philadelphia.... Ultimately, there will be places at Murmansk, Russia; Alexandria, Egypt; Iceland and every other port to which the star-spangled ships carry their cargoes.
"When a boy gets ashore in some strange port, far from home," Miss Carroll explains, "do you think it's fun having money in your pockets when you have no place to go? How do you think these men feel when they see the men of other services being feted and partied, while the Merchant Marine heroes are ignored? And what good does his money do when he's drifting for days on a raft after his ship has been torpedoed?"
Neurologists to treat those men of the Merchant Marine who have been shell-shocked are an immediate necessity.... The United Seamen's Service already has a staff of them headed by Dr. Blaine. There are other practical necessities: getting new papers for men who lost everything when their ships went down, clothing them, contacting relatives....Robert Carse, in "There Go the Ships," published by William Morrow & Co., tells the story of the merchant mariners.... It is not a pretty story, the story of the ships slogging through mountainous seas. The story of submarines lying in wait, Nazi planes overhead. But it's a great story because the able seamen, like Carse, refuse to be outgamed.... His spirit is implied in his dedication: "To My Wife, Janet, and the wives of all free men who take the ships to sea."
It was on a trip to Murmansk that Carse saw one of the convoy in its death struggle.... He was to see many more, but this was his description of his first mortality:"It was over on our starboard hand. Fog was close about her, dimming her, but her hull still showed black against the gray shoulders of the sea. That hull was in two pieces. She had broken in half 'midships, was sinking. The explosion we had fully heard as we ran up the ladder was her cargo of T.N.T., and she carried a lot of the stuff. Vapor, in a low and white and then broad and high cloud, rose from her as her cylinder tops and boilers gave. She sank, and those black halves went into the sea like swiftly withdrawn fingers.... Uncle Charley had skippered that boat. In our last port, he'd been singing 'The Halls of Montezuma.' Now he was dead and his crew was dead."
It is men like that, and men like Carse, in whom Madeleine Carroll is interested.... It was inevitable that the sea should claim her allegiance. She's from English sea stock. Her husband, Stirling Hayden, up until he joined the Marines, was carrying government cargoes in his own schooner across the Caribbean. She went with him on one trip. They listed her on the crew as sailmaker.
Against that background, you can understand her anger at apathy on anyone's part toward the seafarers of the Merchant Marine. . . . She shot a sharp letter to a girl in Indiana who had threatened to call off her engagement to a boy who was joining the Merchant Marine. The father of the girl wrote to Madeleine and asked her if she wouldn't persuade the girl to realization of the heroic part this branch of the service was playing.... Madeleine did, bawled the life out of her. "If this letter doesn't change your mind," she added in a postscript to the girl, "I'll come right out to your town and give you a spanking."
It is a vital and important service that Miss Carroll is performing. There is no doubt at all that these men who go down to the sea in ships are of heroic breed, a 1942 throwback to the men who once went out on the Clipper ships that dominated the seas out of New England's ports. "Out of this war," predicts Miss Carroll, will come a permanent American Merchant Marine. We have the ships, the men -- let us not beach them this time."
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Submitted by Les Tisher and Bud Schmidt, WWII Mariners, American Merchant Marine Veterans, SS Juan de Fuca Chapter, State of Washington
3/21/01
