August 5, 1962

The city of Cannes, France was the place of Jay’s dreams.  The U.S.S. Randolph, CVS-14 had anchored in the harbor on Thursday evening.  Jay had been an avid movie buff from an early age, and here he was within sight of the famous Riviera beaches and the home of the most famous film festival in the world.  The festival itself was not being held right now, but just the chance to walk the streets and stroll the beaches was going to be the answer to a lifetime of dreams.  Plus, who could tell whom he might chance to meet.

Jay was in the third liberty section, which meant that he had been trapped aboard for two whole days waiting for his chance to tour the city.  The first section had been released at 0800 Friday morning and his chance was finally here for Sunday liberty.

He couldn’t wait to try out his new (new to him) Bell and Howell double 8 mm movie camera.  He had traded his single lens movie camera and an old pawnshop electric guitar for this beauty.  It featured a large turret with three lenses and a viewfinder that automatically changed its magnification as the lenses changed.  He was finally ready to make some quality movies of his own.  As he waited for the word to board the liberty launch, he raised the camera for a nice slow pan of the waterfront and beaches.  His plans also included a train trip to Monte Carlo, only a short distance away.  Who could tell he might get a shot of Grace Kelly speeding by in her sports car.  Then on the way back he planned to stop at Gulf Juan the most popular of Riviera beaches for some cheesecake shots.

His shipmates would appreciate some great bikini shots when they were back at sea again.  Jay had stocked is camera bag with ten rolls of Kodak color double 8 movie film.  He knew that he wouldn’t be allowed in any of the casinos of Monte Carlo or any of the many exclusive hotels or other hangouts of the rich and famous.  These places didn’t allow servicemen in uniform to enter.  Enlisted men were not allowed civilian clothes privileges, only officers had that.  There had been some tailors allowed on board when they visited Naples.  You could buy a made to order Italian silk suit for $30.00, and Jay had taken advantage of the offer, but the Navy had arranged that delivery of the suits would not be made until they returned stateside.  His pal Ron Johnson had agreed to accompany him on this trek.  Ron’s primary goal was to drink his fill of French wine and maybe make contact with some beautiful women.  Cannes was almost as famous for its beautiful women as it was for its film festival.

When they reached shore, they flagged a taxi and headed for the train station.  Their plan was to tour in reverse.  Visit Monte Carlo first just so they could say they had been there.  Then they planned a stop at Gulf Juan at midday, when the beaches would be full.  They had been told that it was common practice for women to arrive at the beach fully clothed and wrap a beach towel around their shoulders and change into their bikini with only the towel for cover.  That sounded like a worthwhile film project.  Then, they would return to Cannes in the afternoon in time to enjoy the nightlife.

The train ticket cost a total of sixty franks for the round trip.  The rate of exchange at the time was thirty franks to the dollar, so they settled in to their seats wearing big smiles.  When they arrived in Monte Carlo they were in for a surprise.  There were virtually no people in sight.  All the businesses were closed.  Not even a café was open.  It would seem that the French took the concept of Sunday being a day of rest very seriously.  They walked the streets for a while and Jay filmed the striking architecture, but it seemed artificially sterile without people.

Finally, they returned to the train station to wait for the next train to Gulf Juan.  You would have thought that Princess Grace would have at least gone for a Sunday drive.  The beach at Gulf Juan wasn’t much better.  None of the cafés were open and Ron and Jay were both hungry and thirsty.  The beach at least was populated.  Jay focused his camera on a tall, lithe redhead wearing a sheer white dress and carrying a tote bag.  She carefully picked her spot on the beach and pulled a beach towel from the bag.  She then laid her bikini on the sand and stood over it and wrapped the towel around her shoulders.  Seconds later her clothes were lying on the beach and she squatted gracefully to pick up her bikini bra and bottom.  Seconds after that the towel came off and she stood there tanned and lovely in her bikini.  She spread the beach towel on the white sand and lay on her stomach.  Then she untied her bra and pulled it out to the side so she would get an even tan on her back.  Jay and Ron were awed to say the least.  But, Jay had the entire episode on film.  He would be the most popular sailor in the 6^th Fleet.

Then he noticed that Ron was engaged in a conversation with a French boy of eleven or twelve.  He was offering the boy a dollar, which he accepted with a broad smile.  Do you have plenty of film in that camera?  Jay had just reloaded after the changing scene.  Ron nodded to the boy and said, Start shooting!  The young boy scampered onto the beach in the direction of the girl.  As he passed her, he swooped up her bra and carried it about twenty feet before dropping it.  She screamed at him but seemed trapped there on her stomach.  She looked around and didn’t notice that anyone else was paying much attention to her predicament and got up and walked to her bra and retrieved it.  Jay suddenly realized that he hadn’t breathed in more than thirty seconds.  Needless to say, the trip to Gulf Juan was a resounding success.

As Jay and Ron returned to the train, they realized that success is not very satisfying to growling stomachs.  Surely Cannes would offer food and drink.  By now they would be satisfied with bread and water.  However, the streets of Cannes were equally vacant of activity.  Then, they spied it.  It was an ice cream parlor, and it was open!  You would have thought that the two men were stranded in the desert and had found an oasis.  As they approached the front of the parlor, a short, chubby Frenchman came toward them with tears streaming down his face.  Neither Jay nor Ron could understand anything that the man was saying, but knew that he seemed to be apologizing for something.  Finally the man held up a newspaper and said; She’s dead!  They couldn’t read anything on the front page except the name, Marilyn Monroe.  While Jay and Ron absorbed this news, the man proceeded to close the ice cream parlor.  Still apologizing, he walked up the street and turned the corner.

Jay, like many other men all over the world, worshiped Marilyn Monroe.  When he had been in the 9^th grade he had written her a fan letter.  She had replied, probably through her press agents office, with a signed picture postcard of herself in a tight white blouse and red short shorts.  The letter portion reminded Jay to see her upcoming movie, “The Seven Year Itch.”  His locker became the most popular tourist attraction in his junior high school.  This was the reason all the businesses had closed.  The French people of Cannes apparently were even more enamored with Marilyn than her own country and had closed their businesses as a sign of mourning.  In all likelihood, she had been a frequent visitor to Cannes and had forged a relationship with its people.

As the two hungry sailors made their way back to the Fleet Landing and ended their liberty early, they saw that they were not the only ones to have a disappointing day in beautiful Cannes.  Sailors from every ship in the task force crowded the pier waiting for boats to take them back to their ships.  The harbor of Cannes was not equipped to handle a Navy task force, which was comprised of a carrier, two destroyers, a cruiser, and two submarines.  The submarines were the only ships that had been able to find berths that didn’t require ferrying their crews to shore.  They waited two more hours to catch a launch out to their carrier, and Jay spent the time shooting the rest of his film of the men boarding the launches and the stream of launches leaving and returning.

The Randolph weighed anchor sometime during the night and by the time that Jay woke they were at sea in the amazing Mediterranean Ocean.  The water was an azure blue and as slick as liquid glass.  In fact, the water was so smooth that their helicopters Doppler radar wouldn’t function properly.  This wasn’t a critical problem, but one that required the pilots to hover and maintain a steady hover manually.  The Doppler radar system controlled the automatic hovering system.  Jay’s squadron was an Antisubmarine Helicopter Squadron.  Each of the Sikorski airships carried two pilots and two crewmen.  They were equipped with dipping sonar.  The plane (the Navy referred to them as planes) would descend to a height of fifty feet above the suspected target.  The crew would lower a sonar transponder into the water to listen for submarine activity.  Three planes would work as a team; one behind the sub, one in front of the sub, and the third plane would take the front position on the projected course while the back plane would retrieve its transponder the take the standby position.  The beauty of this leapfrog system was that subs could be tracked by their sounds without raising the suspicion of the submarine.  If anything, when the pinging started, they would feel that invisible vessels surrounded them.

Jay’s principal job was that of a flight deck troubleshooter.  If a plane had electronic trouble during take-off preparation, Jay would be called in to assist in identifying the problem and fix it if possible.  Then when the planes landed, Jay would approach the planes before they had even shut down to identify any problems that may have occurred during flight.  It was a job that he enjoyed greatly.  Plus flight deck workers enjoyed priority treatment on board a carrier.  Your uniform was different from the dungarees worn by the ship’s company.  Flight deck workers wore colored sweatshirts that identified their job skills.  Yellow shirts identified flight deck directors who were in charge of aircraft disposition, landings and take-offs, brown shirts for mechanics, purple shirts for fueling and hydraulics, and finally, the green shirted technicians like Jay.  These crewmen worked both the flight deck and hanger deck.

When Jay was not on duty he would normally go the 07-deck observation platform.  There crew members were allowed to observe flight operations and take pictures.  Decks on ships were numbered up and down from the main deck.  On an aircraft carrier the main deck was the hanger deck.  Decks above the hanger had a zero in front of the deck number, hence 01, 02, etc.  Decks below the hanger decks (deck 1) were numbered by there deck number, 1, 2, etc.  Very few crewmembers ever became completely familiar with the entire carrier; it was simply too vast.  It often took several days just to find the way to necessary locations, like your workspace, berthing spaces, chow halls, heads, and ship’s stores.

That first morning, Jay packed his ten rolls of exposed film into mailers and deposited them at the ship’s post office.  They would be sent to a land-based laboratory and returned usually in about a week.  Ron had already begun to spread the word on Jay’s Academy Award winning production, or at least you would think that it was that great by Ron’s description of the events.  The Operations CPO even approached Jay later in the day to offer the squadron ready room for the premier showing.  Jay was asked every day by multiple crewmen if he knew when the precious film was due to arrive.  The event was approaching the magnitude of a Hollywood opening.  Jay was beginning to understand the unknown pressures that Marilyn must have been exposed to.  It deepened the grief that he felt for the passing of his favorite movie starlet.

Finally the day arrived.  McBride, the mail PO told him the film had arrived in the post office.  I’ll go right down and get it!  But, McBride said, don’t worry they took it straight up to the operations officer.  The screening is scheduled for tonight at 1900!  The ready room was packed to over-flowing.  Every chair was occupied with the CO and staff on the first row.  The armrests, between each seat, were occupied and every square inch of floor space in front was taken by floor sitting sailors.  More sailors stood at the back and the passageway outside was glutted with disappointed faces.  Jay and Ron were given seats in the front with the officers.  The lights were turned off and the projector flickered to life.  The men were treated to a professional looking slow pan of the Cannes harbor and beaches, and then the screen went white.  Hey! The damn thing broke; fix it!  Someone yelled, others muttered their displeasure.  The projector flickered back to life.  More street scenes and a shot of an incoming train.  Then, more white erupted into view.  Jay was as confused as anyone.  When he looked around he was faced with angry glares.  Then, the awful truth came creeping into his consciousness.  Lens caps!  He had removed the wide-angle lens cap when he shot the harbor, but he had neglected to remove the other two lens caps when he shot the rest of the footage!  It was the first time that he had used the camera and he had never used a camera with three lenses before!  The men were now becoming very surly and the CO stood up and asked for calm.  We obviously have a technical problem here that can’t be solved.  So, if you would please file out in an orderly fashion it would be greatly appreciated.  He then turned to Jay and smiled graciously.  The operations chief then walked up to him and said, don’t worry kid, shit happens!  Anyway, you saw her, and you’ll never forget that.  The ironic thing was that in time he was no longer able to visualize her in his mind.  Jay guessed that Robert Burns was right.  The best laid plans o’ mice and men, gang aft aglee!