Bernie Gunther's Women

Anyone who might be paying attention to these posting will remember when I wrote I was getting a kick out of reading books with Philip Kerr's character Bernie Gunther, the SS investigator who is not a Nazi, and who solves crimes while still pissing off those around him, especially the ones in authority. He is a also private eye, of course. And of course there are women.

From the title alone, 'The Lady from Zagreb' promises lust. And with a cover that shows a blonde looking over a rainy nighttime scene in a foreign country, you can guess that Bernie sometimes has his clothes off. But the novels are not filled with such activity; just when it fits the plot.

Consider 'The Lady from Zagreb,' where a young film star named Dalia Dresner possesses such beauty that Joseph Goebbels is gloriously smitten. Bernie is entrusted by Goebbels to seek her out and get her to return to Berlin to make a movie. She's playing hard ball about making the next film. She's now in Switzerland. Bring her back to Berlin and get her on the set.

Mr. Kerr at the end of his novels gives the reader an update on the real life characters Bernie encounters. Mr. Kerr admits the The Dalia Dresner character is a composite of Pola Negri and Hedy Lamarr, two screen sirens, from different eras, of Polish and Austrian ancestry that made heads spin.

Most film buffs would easily recognize Hedy Lamarr's name but perhaps not Pola Negri who was from the silent era who did transition to talkies. By all accounts Pola made the rounds of bedding the best, Charlie Chaplin and especially Rudolph Valentino. She is described as being of exquisite beauty who passed away at 88 in 1987. She was a favorite of Hitler's to the point that he overruled Goebbels who thought her to be not a pure Aryan.

Hedy Lamarr, who passed away in 2000 at 86 was another film siren who starred in a movie called 'Algiers.' She blew smoke so seductively that Charles Boyer, as Pepe le Moko, a figitive jewel thief, was impossibly smitten, so smitten it made him drop the protection he was enjoying living in the maze of Casbah area of Algiers and venture out to his eventual capture and death. Cherchez la femme and you die.

There is so much smoking in 'Algiers' that you feel you might have to open a window. In real life, Hedy was credited with working with her husband (first of 6) as they developed an anti-radar jamming device. The device received a United States. patents, but never proved lucrative for the couple. The United States used the concept after the patent expired.

Mr. Kerr creates the perfect composite character in Dalia who is sultry and brainy, who desires to quit film making and go off to the university to study mathematics. Her math skills are shown off when she provides the answer to the sum of the numbers between 1 and 100 by quickly calculating it in her head. ((101...(1+100...2+99...)...times 50 pairs, equals 5050.)) So simple it could make you cry.

The Pola Negri reference struck a chord. I heard of Pola from an early age in the 1950s when the Greek school my father placed me in for 5th grade was located in a repurposed house in Beechhurst, a section of Queens not far from where we lived in Flushing, a house reportedly lived in by Pola Negri herself.

My father was smitten. Whoever told him Pola lived there made his day. Beechhurst was a pretty upscale section of Queens, not far from Astoria, where they did make films back in the 20s, 30s and 40s and have since started making TV shows at Kaufman and Silvercup Studios. Pola would have a short trip home by limo after a hectic day of looking great. And by all accounts she did look great.

By the time the house, which was a bit of a mansion on 11th Avenue off 150th Street was repurposed, it was a bit dilapidated, but served the function of becoming a school with a tiny enrollment. A room had even been converted into a small Greek chapel.

My education at St. Andrew's was basically my middle school years. The school grew in enrollment to the point that a second mansion was purchased, on Riverside Drive in Beechhurst, where the upper classes were held. Since the mansion was on the water, the Long Island Sound, the school came to be pretentiously called "St. Andrew's Academy On-the-Sound," complete with breast pocket patch on the blazer. We were marked.

It turns out a good number of movie stars of the era lived in the area. The mansion that was Rudolf Valentino's is still in Bayside, refurbished into a restaurant and catering venue, initially called Cafe on the Green, now Vivo's.  When we closed on selling our house in Flushing in 1995 our agent took us to lunch at Cafe on the Green.

Mr. Kerr has thus created a movie star Dalia that not only grabs Goebbels by his club foot, but Bernie by his lips.

Bernie of course nearly gets killed, but it is always dangerous when you're around pretty women in a novel.

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