Speaker 1: Pushkin. I always flatter myself. I think I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: able to play it that fast, and I actually can.
Speaker 1: So take it from your introduction again after the three
Speaker 1: chords a little slower. If you ever want to treat
Speaker 1: yourself to something wonderful, type in the name Adler and
Speaker 1: the word harmonica on YouTube. This is from an Australian
Speaker 1: program called four Corners in nineteen sixty one. There are
Speaker 1: a hundred videos like this. Do people take you seriously
Speaker 1: with this? Well? N ask you question? I do I
Speaker 1: take myself so serious? And you take it well? If
Speaker 1: Rowan Williams writes for the Mouth Organ, he's not doing
Speaker 1: this for a joke. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and Misunderstood.
Speaker 1: This is the first of two episodes about memory, about
Speaker 1: the myths we hold about it, and the games are
Speaker 1: Memories Playing. This one is about an argument between two
Speaker 1: old friends over what supposedly happened or did not happen
Speaker 1: during a raid on a house supposedly full of Nazis
Speaker 1: in July nineteen forty five, or maybe April of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty six. I have no idea. This is an interview
Speaker 1: with Larry Adler by Dorothy Horowitz on February the fifth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six. And Larry Addler is the virtuoso hand
Speaker 1: organ player. Is that correct title? Did you say hand organ?
Speaker 1: Mouth oregan? Because the hand organ is what you've grown from.
Speaker 1: By the time Larry Addler sat down to tell his
Speaker 1: life story to a historian with the American Jewish Committee,
Speaker 1: his reputation was well known, perfectly all right, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no, no mouth organ player or harmonica quay. I
Speaker 1: use the word mouth organ, but the people who manufactured it.
Speaker 1: And I might add a rac hunteur par excellence. And
Speaker 1: we hope you're going to indulge in a lot of
Speaker 1: that because we're going to want to know all about you.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know that raconteur is a very polite
Speaker 1: word for liar. Racconteur is a very polite word for liar.
Speaker 1: That could easily be on Larry Addler's tombstone. Larry Adler
Speaker 1: was the greatest harmonica player in the world. Your grandparents
Speaker 1: would know exactly who he was. I have to admit
Speaker 1: I'd never heard of him until I was rooting around
Speaker 1: one day in the Oral History archives at the New
Speaker 1: York Public Library. I ran across his interview, listened to
Speaker 1: it for a few moments, and was about to give
Speaker 1: up when Adler began to tell the story of his
Speaker 1: affair with Ingwid Bergmann, back when she was considered the
Speaker 1: most beautiful actress in the world. They met while Adler
Speaker 1: was on tour at the end of the Second World
Speaker 1: War entertaining the troops in Europe. Late one night, He's
Speaker 1: in a bar in Augsburg, Germany, playing the piano, and
Speaker 1: she came into the room where I was playing, like
Speaker 1: what I was playing, asked me what it was. I
Speaker 1: said there was something I made up, and she said,
Speaker 1: have you written it down? I said no, I can't
Speaker 1: write music. He said, you're very smug, aren't you. You're
Speaker 1: not only ignorant, you're proud of your rooms. Now I'm
Speaker 1: at Ingland Bergmann. Addler tells his interviewer that he'd just
Speaker 1: recently read a biography of Bergmann in which Bergmann's husband
Speaker 1: claimed that he Larry Addler had come to him and
Speaker 1: confessed their affair. I know I wouldn't have done such
Speaker 1: a thing, because I wouldn't have done that to England.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have named what was happening to her husband.
Speaker 1: However it is in the book, and I can't deny
Speaker 1: that he said that to the author of the book.
Speaker 1: But as I say, I can't see me doing it.
Speaker 1: It is against my nature and my principles. Just to
Speaker 1: be clear, Larry Addler was having an affair with one
Speaker 1: of the most famous actresses in the world, and the
Speaker 1: actress's husband says Addler confessed it to him. You would
Speaker 1: think that would be a memorable event, but Adler's response
Speaker 1: is maybe, I guess it could have happened. By the
Speaker 1: way is war and peace. And I'm paraphrasing, of course,
Speaker 1: because you can't remember tall Stoy word for wood. There's
Speaker 1: a sequence where a young man who's been at a battle,
Speaker 1: I think the Battle of Borodino, is in Moscow in
Speaker 1: a drawing room telling these very attractive young ladies about
Speaker 1: his war experiences. But he was behind the lines. He
Speaker 1: didn't see action. He only heard about action from other soldiers.
Speaker 1: But he saw that he was losing his audience because
Speaker 1: he couldn't give them any tales of battle action. So
Speaker 1: he began to use the story that other soldiers had
Speaker 1: told him, but making it personal, as if he had
Speaker 1: experienced that action. And then Tolstoy has a line very
Speaker 1: much like this, and he realized as he spoke that
Speaker 1: the truth was slipping away from him, and soon he
Speaker 1: would no longer know what the truth was. Now. I
Speaker 1: think that applies very much to anybody telling any story
Speaker 1: about anything. The officer in Tolstoy's War in Peace tells
Speaker 1: a story that isn't true, and from then on forgets
Speaker 1: that it isn't true. Larry Addler doesn't call the officer
Speaker 1: a liar or say he shouldn't make things up. Addler
Speaker 1: says that's the way memories work. They're up for grabs.
Speaker 1: In fact, throughout the oral History, Addler keeps summoning memories
Speaker 1: and simultaneously discounting them until he has completely convinced you
Speaker 1: that that's the way we all ought to act. The
Speaker 1: interview culminates in the story of the raid on the
Speaker 1: Munich boarding house full of Nazis with his old friend,
Speaker 1: the dashingly handsome spy named Hans Werner aka John Whites.
Speaker 1: But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Larry Adler was born
Speaker 1: in Baltimore in nineteen fourteen to Jewish immigrants from Ukraine.
Speaker 1: His dad was a plumber. At the age of two,
Speaker 1: he wandered away from home and was later found at
Speaker 1: a local bar, standing on top of a pool table
Speaker 1: and singing I've got the profiteering blues to wild applause.
Speaker 1: He was a prodigy. At fourteen, he took his harm
Speaker 1: on the train to New York City and talked his
Speaker 1: way into performing on Broadway. I passed the Paramount Theater
Speaker 1: and Rudy Valley's name was on the Marquis. Rudy Valley
Speaker 1: was basically the jay Z of the nineteen twenties. So
Speaker 1: I got off the streetcar sneak passed the stage door
Speaker 1: man found Rudy Valley and started to play for him,
Speaker 1: and he interrupted me. He's look, I'm just a master's
Speaker 1: ceremonies her kin. I'm not an agent. Valley put him
Speaker 1: on that very night. It was obvious even then that
Speaker 1: Adler was something special. He had perfect pitch, an astounding
Speaker 1: musical memory. He could make the harmonica sing in a
Speaker 1: way that no one else has ever done. If you
Speaker 1: watch any of those old videos of Addler on YouTube,
Speaker 1: he's mesmerizing, slender, long, thin fingers, huge forehead, oversized eyes.
Speaker 1: There's a wonderful story about him in The New Yorker
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty two, which describes him as resembling a
Speaker 1: very young and slightly sinister kitten. Once, when he's living
Speaker 1: in Beverly Hills, Addler gets a call from Charlie Chaplin.
Speaker 1: Chaplin says, please come over and make a fourth for tennis,
Speaker 1: because Bill Tilden can't make it. Bill Tilden argued with
Speaker 1: the greatest tennis player of all time after Roger Federer.
Speaker 1: Addler goes over. There's a woman there with badly combed
Speaker 1: hair and black sneakers and a man with a weird mustache.
Speaker 1: They hit for a while and he realizes, Oh, the
Speaker 1: woman is Greta Garbow and the man with the weird
Speaker 1: mustache salvad O'dolly Tilden, Garbow, Dolly Chaplain. This kind of
Speaker 1: thing happens to Addler all the time. He wanted to
Speaker 1: subtitle his autobiography name drops keep falling on My Head.
Speaker 1: He was friends with the legendary composer Frank Lesser, but
Speaker 1: he hated Lesser's wife, whom he called, wait for it,
Speaker 1: the Evil of two Lessers. I mean, how much do
Speaker 1: you love this guy. Prince Philip wrote me a wonderful
Speaker 1: letter when my father died from Buckingham Palace and said,
Speaker 1: you know how close they were. That's Peter Addler, Larry's son.
Speaker 1: Prince Philip, of course, is the Queen's husband. Where there
Speaker 1: were both members of an infamous club called the Thursday Club,
Speaker 1: and I think there were only thirteen members, and they
Speaker 1: would meet every other Thursday at Wheeler's Restaurant and all
Speaker 1: get very drunk and tell tales and whatever they did.
Speaker 1: And we were living in Grosvenor's Square at the time,
Speaker 1: and in the middle of the afternoon, my father arrives
Speaker 1: without warning, totally drunk with Prince Philip. They'd come straight
Speaker 1: from a Thursday Club lunch. And the fact that my
Speaker 1: father had never given my mother any warning he was
Speaker 1: arriving with the Duke of Edinburgh and the Chief forgave him.
Speaker 1: But the greatest Larry Adler's story comes earlier. Adler is
Speaker 1: in Germany entertaining the American troops. He's touring with Jack Benny,
Speaker 1: one of the most famous entertainers of the day, and
Speaker 1: Ingrid Bergmann, who has just met at the Piano Bar
Speaker 1: in Augsburg and is possibly already sleeping with and the
Speaker 1: story is Jack Benny Ingrid Bergmann and I were in
Speaker 1: Munich July nineteen forty five and we met this young man,
Speaker 1: John Whites, who was the commander of an OSS unit.
Speaker 1: John Whites the second old friend in this story. From
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties to the nineteen eighties, John Whites was
Speaker 1: a successful high end men's fashion designer. He made the
Speaker 1: kind of clothes you would put it in an overnight
Speaker 1: bag before jumping on the concord to make a lunch
Speaker 1: date at the Savoy in London. In shirts, Whites favored
Speaker 1: what was known as the European cut, which, as a
Speaker 1: fashion critic once wrote, disqualified anyone without a perfectly flat stomach.
Speaker 1: Whites was six ft two, insanely handsome, raced sports cars
Speaker 1: at Lamont and Cebrin, wrote best selling thrillers and scholarly biographies.
Speaker 1: Educated in exclusive English boarding schools, aristocratic bearing, married to
Speaker 1: a stunning actress, Susan Kher. He was basically James Bond.
Speaker 1: What was the world that your father was? Father and
Speaker 1: mother inhabited in sort of sixties and seventies in New York.
Speaker 1: I was a pretty um, you know, kind of Beautiful
Speaker 1: People set. That's John White's son Chris. He and his
Speaker 1: brother Paul are both filmmakers in Los Angeles. There's actually
Speaker 1: there's a book called The Beautiful People in which by
Speaker 1: parents are featured along with the rest of their bunch.
Speaker 1: You've probably seen some of the Whites brothers films about
Speaker 1: a boy, The Exquisite in Good Company, American Pie if
Speaker 1: you're wondering their father was a big fan of American Pie.
Speaker 1: But I really loved it, love it. Yeah, he defended it,
Speaker 1: depended on the falcomers. Yeah. So I remember him saying
Speaker 1: that he was in a coffee shop and some old
Speaker 1: guy said, damn well, sarcastic. I bet you really proud
Speaker 1: of your kids for making his horrible film. And I
Speaker 1: don't know where he came up with this, but he said,
Speaker 1: haven't you ever masturbated in your life? John Whitz was
Speaker 1: German born in Berlin in nineteen twenty three. Is Hans
Speaker 1: Werner Whitz. He was also Jewish and of that class
Speaker 1: of wealthy assimilated German Jews for whom those two identities
Speaker 1: were not a contradiction. His father, Robert, had fought for
Speaker 1: Germany in the First World War, and won an Iron Cross,
Speaker 1: vacations in the north of Germany and kind of a
Speaker 1: beautiful life. Then Hitler took power. Whitz's family fled in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty eight, then onto Shanghai where he waited for
Speaker 1: his American visa and played rugby on the side, and
Speaker 1: finally to America. In nineteen forty one, John Whitz joins
Speaker 1: the US Army and gets recruited by the legendary wartime
Speaker 1: spymaster wild Bill Donovan into the USS, the forerunner of
Speaker 1: today's CIA. Then he sent Canto occupied Europe as an
Speaker 1: undercover spy. Because of course he doesn't have to pretend
Speaker 1: to be German, He's actually German. He's dropped into France,
Speaker 1: makes contact with the resistance. He's part of the group
Speaker 1: that liberated one of the most infamous concentration camps, Daco.
Speaker 1: He told me about when he was in dark house
Speaker 1: seeing a gas chamber and there was a little window
Speaker 1: whereby the operator could tell whether the people inside were
Speaker 1: dead or not, and next to it was a picture
Speaker 1: of of his little child. He described it as being
Speaker 1: the way that you know, a taxi driver would have
Speaker 1: a picture of his family and children taped to the dashboard,
Speaker 1: but that really stuck with him. After the war, Daco
Speaker 1: was turned into a holding pen for prisoners of war.
Speaker 1: Whites was sent into the camp to spy on the
Speaker 1: captured German soldiers to impersonate a German pow. Some German
Speaker 1: soldiers after the war ended would burn off the SS
Speaker 1: tattoos with the end of a cigarette. White's got a
Speaker 1: tattoo and then burned himself as well to make the
Speaker 1: impersonation real. Now you'd say he had PTSD actually, but
Speaker 1: nobody talked about it in that way. So he was,
Speaker 1: you know, a drinker, not a sloppy one, but someone
Speaker 1: who sort of regularly and until he suddenly cut it
Speaker 1: off like cold turkey at some point in our childhood.
Speaker 1: He didn't sleep well. He woke up very early in
Speaker 1: the morning. He had incredibly regular habits born of the
Speaker 1: Army of kind of keeping things in order. He was
Speaker 1: if he was crossed by a stranger, someone was rude
Speaker 1: to him or impolite, he would be very scary and dangerous.
Speaker 1: He definitely seemed from the war someone who had no
Speaker 1: physical fear of other people, and that was really scary
Speaker 1: as a child to watch. White told his sons that
Speaker 1: he didn't know whether he could ever be a good father.
Speaker 1: The war had changed him too much. Chris and I
Speaker 1: used to talk about our childhood is growing up in
Speaker 1: a behind the iron curtain. You had to have sort
Speaker 1: of surreptitious modes of self expression, and humor was a
Speaker 1: big aspect of that. The fact that we ended up
Speaker 1: working together is partly because we sort of developed a
Speaker 1: shared sense of humor, and it was kind of like
Speaker 1: a Samon's Dat method of maintaining our autonomy with a
Speaker 1: very sort of domineering dad who was always ready for
Speaker 1: things to lapse into complete Yeah. Yeah, a dad who
Speaker 1: was always ready for things to lapse into catastrophe. Back
Speaker 1: to Munich, the war has just ended. Whites is now
Speaker 1: running an undercover operation against a German guerrilla group called Werewolf.
Speaker 1: It's made up of ex Nazi soldiers who were causing
Speaker 1: trouble across liberated Europe. A Werewolf's cell had holed up
Speaker 1: in a Munich rooming house not far from the Deutsche Theater.
Speaker 1: John Whites has infiltrated the group under the name Hans Werner.
Speaker 1: Then work comes in from the Allied Brass round up
Speaker 1: the Werewolf members and just as the order is issued,
Speaker 1: Whites runs into Larry Adler, Ingrid Bergmann, and Jack Penny,
Speaker 1: and he said that they had found a house where
Speaker 1: they knew there were eight German soldiers. Now the war
Speaker 1: was over. Therefore these soldiers had neither surrendered nor been captured.
Speaker 1: John and his OSS unit were going to raid them,
Speaker 1: and were Jack, Ingrid and I like to come along
Speaker 1: with Jack? And Ingrid refused. They were terrified at the idea.
Speaker 1: I loved it. Now let's just pause here while I
Speaker 1: not the obvious. A twenty something John Whites, the dashingly
Speaker 1: handsome undercover spy, runs into, respectively America's most famous actress,
Speaker 1: America's most famous comedian, and the world's greatest harmonica player,
Speaker 1: presumably at a nightclub, and he invites all three of
Speaker 1: them to join him in raiding a house full of
Speaker 1: Nazi guerrillas, and one of them, the skinny harmonica player
Speaker 1: from Baltimore, says, yes, the Whites brothers disciples of Hollywood,
Speaker 1: do not find this as odd as I did? Does
Speaker 1: it strike you? What are the really weird things with
Speaker 1: that story? Is the notion that you are an OSS
Speaker 1: officer in Munich, You're going to do this bus and
Speaker 1: you bring along a famous harmonica player's what's strange about that?
Speaker 1: I guess it's a testament of the power of celebrity.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a ride along, you know, like
Speaker 1: Kevin Hart nice cue. So Larry Adler pairs for his mission.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing he's lying in the arms of the world's
Speaker 1: most beautiful actress. He gets up, puts on a helmet
Speaker 1: and goes off to capture some Nazis. So I met
Speaker 1: these oss men at four thirty in the morning. We
Speaker 1: got into a jeep, went to this house and according
Speaker 1: to John, the oss men burst into the house. Two
Speaker 1: of the Germans fired back at them and were killed.
Speaker 1: The other six were captured Keiphras. According to John, John
Speaker 1: Whites remembers a gunfight, but Addler remembers something completely different.
Speaker 1: My story is when we got into the house, there
Speaker 1: were two old ladies. There was no firing, no one
Speaker 1: was heard in any way. And so there are these
Speaker 1: two diametrically opposed stories by two people who were there.
Speaker 1: In John Whitz's memory, a house full of Nazis, a
Speaker 1: nasty battle, death drama. In Lariato's memory of the same night, nothing,
Speaker 1: no Nazis, no gunfight, no one dies. They burst in
Speaker 1: and all they find is a room full of harmless
Speaker 1: old women, presumably knitting. But wait, there's another version, same characters,
Speaker 1: same setup, only it's supposed to take place almost a
Speaker 1: year later, in April of nineteen forty six. I told
Speaker 1: this story to a group of publishers in London when
Speaker 1: I made a speech, and one of the publishers told me, after, what, mister, Radlers,
Speaker 1: did you know that the raid you're talking about is
Speaker 1: mentioned in another book? And John White is mentioned, but
Speaker 1: not by name. He's called Werner because that was his
Speaker 1: name as an agent to infiltrate the German lines. John
Speaker 1: under the name of Werner is leading the raid. You
Speaker 1: are with him, and now there are eighteen Nazi soldiers.
Speaker 1: The house is surrounded by armored carriers and floodlights. And
Speaker 1: I still remember two old ladies. So the question is
Speaker 1: who is right? Exactly who's right? For the rest of
Speaker 1: their days, Adler and Whites will argue about it, and
Speaker 1: rare Larry bringing up the story to Needle, Nada and Ida.
Speaker 1: But the funny thing is my father could be very,
Speaker 1: very forbidding and peremptory with people who sort of crossed
Speaker 1: him for some reason. He had a saft spot for Larry.
Speaker 1: Everyone hit a saut spot for Larry. What I heard
Speaker 1: at lunch was you were rounding up these Nazis and
Speaker 1: all I saw was old women. Oh Larry, you were
Speaker 1: so shut up and have another champagne. There's a very
Speaker 1: specific idea about memory embedded in the story Larry Adler
Speaker 1: tells from War and Peace, the story about the soldier
Speaker 1: entertaining a group of young ladies in Moscow and the
Speaker 1: Battle of Borodino. The officer wants to impress the people
Speaker 1: around him, so he moves himself to the front lines,
Speaker 1: and once he makes that improvement on the truth in
Speaker 1: the service of his own ego, what actually happened slips away.
Speaker 1: He becomes the victim of his own self deception. That's
Speaker 1: the theory Addler believed in he tells another story about
Speaker 1: the time he was in Newfoundland during the war entertaining troops.
Speaker 1: He needs to get back to Gander Airport because he
Speaker 1: has a nightclub appearance scheduled in New York. He finds
Speaker 1: an airman who has a cargo plane which is going
Speaker 1: to be towing a glider, and he says to Addler,
Speaker 1: you can ride in the glider. I within the glider,
Speaker 1: the captain, within the front plane, and how exciting it
Speaker 1: was for me being in the glidder being towed, and
Speaker 1: how the most exciting part came when we were over
Speaker 1: Gander Airport and he cut the glider loose by a
Speaker 1: release mechanism and we floated down in this heavenly feeling
Speaker 1: I had of escape that I never wanted to land.
Speaker 1: Addler tells that story for years. Well, my daughter found
Speaker 1: a diary. It covered my trip to Newfoundland. I wasn't
Speaker 1: in the glider. I was in the front plane. Now
Speaker 1: you see how that took over. It's a better story
Speaker 1: being in the glider. It makes if you say to somebody,
Speaker 1: I was in the first front plane, but we were
Speaker 1: telling a glider, that's no story. There's the eye was
Speaker 1: in the glider and that was very exciting. That's more
Speaker 1: of a story. So that after a while the wish
Speaker 1: to be in the glider took over and became fat
Speaker 1: and put me in the glider. And the truth is
Speaker 1: that I've never been in the glider in my life.
Speaker 1: That's what I mean by self deception. Adder knew he
Speaker 1: had a big ego, and he simply assumed that his
Speaker 1: ego was out in the world rewriting history on his behalf,
Speaker 1: which seems to make sense. Addler is the compulsive storyteller,
Speaker 1: right the name dropper. In his New Yorker profile, there's
Speaker 1: this line. The most casual request for information from a
Speaker 1: newspaper reporter or interviewer will often bring in reply a
Speaker 1: twelve or fifteen typewritten single space narrative composed and typed
Speaker 1: by Larry in person and containing dialog and anecdotes. I
Speaker 1: think that whenever we run across someone telling a false story,
Speaker 1: we assume that this is what's happening, but the lie
Speaker 1: is driven by ego. In the next episode, I'm going
Speaker 1: to talk about an instant that you'll almost certainly remember.
Speaker 1: A modern version of Adler's glider story. Somebody famous was
Speaker 1: caught saying, in effect that they were in the glider
Speaker 1: when they were actually in the plane pulling the glider,
Speaker 1: and the overwhelming assumption was that the storyteller changed the
Speaker 1: details of what happened because he wanted to look better
Speaker 1: braver bolder. But here's my question, why do we always
Speaker 1: have to frame memory disagreements and errors in terms of character.
Speaker 1: Why do we always need a culprit because I'm not
Speaker 1: sure Addler can be explained away as an egotist. There
Speaker 1: were all kinds of ways in which he was anything,
Speaker 1: but at what point, I know, life became somewhat complicated here.
Speaker 1: Addler was part of a group that went to Washington
Speaker 1: in the middle of the McCarthy era to protest the
Speaker 1: anti communist h steria sweeping through Hollywood. Then he got
Speaker 1: accused of being a communist. He went bankrupt fighting McCarthyism
Speaker 1: at the height of his career, he was blacklisted, lost everything.
Speaker 1: Then Roy Cohen, who was McCarthy's adviser, offered me a deal.
Speaker 1: He had arranged that I would give testimony secretly before
Speaker 1: the McCarthy Internal Security Committee, and he said, what we're
Speaker 1: going to do is I prepared a list of names
Speaker 1: for you. All of these people who have been named
Speaker 1: by others, they've already been named, we know their names.
Speaker 1: Who just read their names off, and you're not hurting
Speaker 1: anybody in the middle of a national hysteria, one that
Speaker 1: would end up ruining countless lives. Addler is offered a
Speaker 1: get out of jail free card. He won't take it.
Speaker 1: Nice of mister Khane, what the houses sends of meaning
Speaker 1: me reading a list of names that you already know.
Speaker 1: So he looked out of the window and he spread
Speaker 1: his hands and he says, go fight, Sidney Hall. We're
Speaker 1: all trying to get you back to work, Larry, and
Speaker 1: you're not helping us. So that was that. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have given the name of an enemy. I just am
Speaker 1: against the principle of the informer. I always have been.
Speaker 1: I still am. Addler ended up moving his whole family
Speaker 1: to London. He gave up their house in Beverly Hills,
Speaker 1: the beach house in Malibu. The tennis matches with the
Speaker 1: Stars started over. Chris White says his father liked Addler
Speaker 1: not just because of his musical genius or his hilarious stories,
Speaker 1: but because he had and I'm quoting a major set
Speaker 1: of balls. Here's Peter Addler again. He would really chake
Speaker 1: huge risks on principle. He was a very, very principled man,
Speaker 1: and I remember him doing it, which terrified me. He
Speaker 1: did a public reading of the Satanic verses with various
Speaker 1: other artists at the time that Salmon Rashti had de
Speaker 1: Fatoa put on him. You know, simply to protest against
Speaker 1: this kind of nonsense. And he would do a lot
Speaker 1: of things like that, and he wasn't doing it for publicity.
Speaker 1: He's doing it because he really cared about it. So
Speaker 1: maybe when the young John Whites asks Larry Adler if
Speaker 1: he wants to do a ride along on that raid
Speaker 1: in Munich, it's not a lark. Maybe he's serious, and
Speaker 1: maybe Adler volunteered because it was important. Remember he's a
Speaker 1: Jew in Munich, the birthplace of the Nazi Party. If
Speaker 1: it's all a lark, then the grandmother version is funny.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of punchline you can imagine landing well
Speaker 1: at a Hollywood dinner party. Larry Addler, the compulsive storyteller,
Speaker 1: wins over another crowd. But if he's serious about the raid,
Speaker 1: then the grandmothers aren't funny. They're not a punchline. They're
Speaker 1: a sad and awkward ending. My story is duller when
Speaker 1: never even tells such a story, and I would tell
Speaker 1: it only because that is my memory of it. He's right,
Speaker 1: But then consider his companion. John Whites would go on
Speaker 1: to write many books, among them Friends in High Places,
Speaker 1: a thriller with a really complicated core. The main character
Speaker 1: of somebody who is in the auto industry and was
Speaker 1: joining the Nazi Party in order to get ahead in
Speaker 1: his career. I think he felt about himself that he
Speaker 1: hadn't in Jewish. Maybe there, but for the grace of
Speaker 1: God would go his moral center. When John Whites turned
Speaker 1: to writting serious historical biographies, his subjects were rans from
Speaker 1: the same class he had come from, wealthy cosmopolitan intellectuals
Speaker 1: who ended up serving Hitler. You don't have to be
Speaker 1: a psychoanalyst to make sense of these stories. There Whitz's
Speaker 1: attempt to sort through the conflict between his love of
Speaker 1: his native Germany and his devastation about what his Germany
Speaker 1: had done. It's long ago, now, I know. But well,
Speaker 1: I was young and I could. I could wear all
Speaker 1: sorts of clothes and make them look real. In nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven, Whites went on the Charlie Rose Show. He
Speaker 1: and Rose talked happily about Whites's new biography until Rose
Speaker 1: started to ask Whites about White's own experience during the war.
Speaker 1: Did you go into Germany? I was in Germany? Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: When I after, I want to pull this out of you,
Speaker 1: John the journalist. Yes, Whites doesn't want to talk about it.
Speaker 1: I started in France during the general time of the invasion.
Speaker 1: Plans plans, yes, by parachute into No? No? Oh? Never
Speaker 1: did you get in there? You have many ways of
Speaker 1: being delivered, but not by parachute because they can see
Speaker 1: you come. Okay, So how did you get in? Oh,
Speaker 1: you can go in by both. Did you by a
Speaker 1: small plane? How did you get in? Well? By by
Speaker 1: my small air plane. Small airplane, small that landed. There
Speaker 1: were many beaches. Small plane landed on the fly, you
Speaker 1: know the dead. This goes on and on. How many
Speaker 1: trips did you make in and out of France? I ten? Oh, god, no, no, no, lesser,
Speaker 1: oh much less lesson, lesser than one, less than four?
Speaker 1: All right. Finally Rose just gets exasperated. Tell me why
Speaker 1: you're so at this late stage? What is the code?
Speaker 1: What is the code that keeps you from being more forthcoming? Well?
Speaker 1: General Donovan issued a memoris Bill Donovan, yes, our boss,
Speaker 1: head of which said, for as long as there are
Speaker 1: people alive. I spoke to one day before yesterday on
Speaker 1: the phone, an eighty nine year old ex Colonel of
Speaker 1: Panzas of Armored Forces, ninth crosswearer, who was a resistance officer.
Speaker 1: As long as there are people alive, you'd be amazed
Speaker 1: at how many Germans, stupid ones would still be angry
Speaker 1: at somebody who brought some form of resistance. This is
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, the war has been over for more
Speaker 1: than half a century, and Whites refuses to give anything
Speaker 1: more than the barest details of his experience because of
Speaker 1: a memo written by his former boss, who, by the way,
Speaker 1: has been dead for decades. Whites and Adler are principled men.
Speaker 1: It's just that their principles take different forms on matters
Speaker 1: of emotional significance. One man shrouds his memories in a
Speaker 1: blanket of chatter and whimsy. The other falls silent and retreats.
Speaker 1: When we encounter conflicts in memory, we want to label
Speaker 1: one party as a liar. We want to make a judgment.
Speaker 1: This strategy is authentic. This strategy is dubious. Adler is
Speaker 1: the egotistical one, Whites is the evasive one. But why
Speaker 1: why can't we just accept that all of us deal
Speaker 1: with the uncertainty of our experiences in different ways. Memory
Speaker 1: does not reveal character. That's our mistake. In the early
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, John White's talked to a historian named Perry Biddascombe,
Speaker 1: who was working on a book about the werewolf movement.
Speaker 1: Biddascomb found White's name in the phone book and called
Speaker 1: him out of the blue. This time, Whites told yet
Speaker 1: another version of the raid. In this version, there was
Speaker 1: no shooting, no resistance, no one died. The members of
Speaker 1: Werewolf were all punks too young to a fault in
Speaker 1: the war full of false bravado. Whites and his team
Speaker 1: of Allied soldiers surrounded the housing complex where a werewolf
Speaker 1: lived and arrested them. Then, and I'm quoting now from
Speaker 1: Bitterscombe's notes, the scene was invaded by forlorn mothers and grandmothers,
Speaker 1: each insisting that her lad was really a good boy
Speaker 1: and could not possibly be mixed up in this werewolf nastiness.
Speaker 1: Do you see what Whites did? He took his version
Speaker 1: and combined it with Larry Adler's version. There were arrests,
Speaker 1: and they were grandmothers. I have no idea whether it
Speaker 1: was conscious or not, but at the end of his life,
Speaker 1: Whites decided that friendship was more important than memory. He
Speaker 1: decided not to be a memory fundamentalist. Larry Adler for
Speaker 1: his heart. Gave his last concert in May of two
Speaker 1: thousand and one at the Royal Albert Hall. It was
Speaker 1: Prince Philip's eightieth birthday celebration and the Duke wanted his
Speaker 1: old friend to play for him. Addler was near the end.
Speaker 1: His son Peter knew he wasn't well. Now he was ill.
Speaker 1: He was in hospital, and he, much to my horror,
Speaker 1: had himself checked out and he was wheeled onto the
Speaker 1: stage at the Royal Albert Hole by a nurse in
Speaker 1: a wheelchair. If the past is hazy and uncertain, then
Speaker 1: all you have as a present. That's what propelled Larry
Speaker 1: Adler to seek his fortune on Broadway as a kid,
Speaker 1: to give the harmonica its due to risk at all
Speaker 1: fighting McCarthy to leave ingland Bergmann in the early morning
Speaker 1: hours to go round up some Nazis. Even at the
Speaker 1: very end of his life. He wasn't going to stay
Speaker 1: in the hospital, was he. He privileged experiences over memories,
Speaker 1: and he played the harmoniker from the wheelchair and blew
Speaker 1: every other artists off the stage, and he was wheeled
Speaker 1: off to a standing ovation who was looking straight into Cameron.
Speaker 1: I'm sure at me going you do not tell me
Speaker 1: what to do and died a few days later. I
Speaker 1: checked he actually died two and a half months later.
Speaker 1: Somewhere Larry Addler is laughing. Revisionist History is a panoply production.
Speaker 1: The senior producer is mil Lo Bell, with Jacob Smith
Speaker 1: and Camille Baptista. Our editor is Julia Barton. Flawn Williams
Speaker 1: is our engineer. Fact checking by Beth Johnson. Original music
Speaker 1: by Luis Guerra. Special thanks to Andy Bowers and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 1: I'm Malcolm Gladwell. I tell a story about getting to
Speaker 1: these to Israel. Just after the Sixth Day War. Special
Speaker 1: service officer met me at the airport. I even remember
Speaker 1: his name, Major Zaffreer, and he told me that an
Speaker 1: Israeli soldier had written the song Charmel schaff So I
Speaker 1: learned it was damn good tune. I played at first
Speaker 1: at Larish in the Sinai and there were about two
Speaker 1: hundred tangs, about two thousand, so General Rabine, who was
Speaker 1: then Chief of Staff, he was there. I played and
Speaker 1: the awnings went mad, the applause went on and on.
Speaker 1: I played it again and made me play it six times,
Speaker 1: and I then said, my friends, I haven't got the
Speaker 1: vocabulary to describe the emotional experience of this moment. I'm
Speaker 1: never get it. But there are other artists who've come
Speaker 1: down to the Sinai. They're waiting to entertain you. I
Speaker 1: don't hold up the show. Please don't ask me to
Speaker 1: play Charmel Shaik again and an Israeli soldier close out.
Speaker 1: You'll play it till you get it right now? Isn't
Speaker 1: it a great story? But of course it's not true.
Speaker 1: It's an opera story. This is the tenor singing Palianchi. Now,
Speaker 1: all the details that I told you, major software, the
Speaker 1: Charmel Schaef playing it at La Reach. That's all true,
Speaker 1: but believe me, I only played it once. However, twisting
Speaker 1: that opera story around makes it a much better story.
Speaker 1: I agree,