The Churchill Series – Dec. 20, 2006

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Actor Robert Hardy, who memorably played Churchill in The Wilderness Years and War and Remembrance, recalled:

I was filming for the historical contributions to the series for television, "War and Remembrance," and on this day we were to shoot scenes around the meeting of Franklin D. Roosevelt and WSC aboard the British warship Duke of York. That ship, like so much of our past, has long been broken up, so the mighty USS New Jersey, a battleship of the same vintage, stood in for her, loaned by the U.S. Navy to the film company.

My make-up for WSC took anything up to five hours. It was marvelously done and once finished, perfectly comfortable, though the ordeal of such a long operation, so intimately interfering with one's concentration and relaxation, is pretty taxing. But it was done, and I was carefully padded to represent WSC's rather nobler embonpoint than my own, and then dressed in an authentic reefer jacket with Trinity House buttons and cap, and given a large cigar to put into my reconstituted face. (I have seen the stills and the makeup achievement is remarkable.)

I was ready to go, and the call came, and I was escorted to the gangway of the great ship, at the top of which stood a small party of U.S. Navy people; genuine people, not actors. A lieutenant stepped forward, saluted smartly and said "Well. sir! No need to ask who you are! Welcome aboard, Mr. Roosevelt!"

It’s an interesting recollection ending with an amusing anecdote.

A word of caution: I’m fairly sure Hardy is wrong about Churchill and Roosevelt meeting aboard HMS Duke of York. In Dec. 1941, Churchill and some of his chief war planners sailed for America on board Duke of York. They arrived off Hampton Roads, Virginia on Dec. 22. Churchill then flew on to Washington’s National Airport (now Reagan) where Roosevelt met him. (See Conrad Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom. (p. 703)

Other than the Dec. 1941 crossing, I’m not aware of Churchill ever sailing on Duke of York. He returned to England in early 1942 by what in those days was called “a flying boat.”