Alan Whicker - Journey of a Lifetime

A stoic health centre patient with hepatitis had been organized to be looked at by Papa Doc, so now he would not dare to die. Across the body I recalled that the President was still a Fellow of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine in London. He was delighted. “Do you know that? Yes, I am surprising, eh? I am still interested in medical matters and until I die I am just an MD and after that President of Haiti. It was the best time of my life, when I was practising medicine.”

I wondered what he now did for relaxation. “My reading and writing, because this is another aspect of Dr Duvalier. He is a writer and a reader. Even when I am going to sleep I have a book in my hand. This is morphine for me. If I do not read I cannot sleep.” Sometimes he was a hard man to dislike.

I had established an unusual relationship with him, and on occasion he could even make him laugh. Despite the fact that I was persuading the grim but courteous Papa Doc to speak English—he was far more comfortable with French or Creole—it seemed he was beginning to enjoy a conversation withsomeone who was not trembling.

Ambassadors and archbishops expelled, ministers sacked, critics shot, yet television entertained and hostile questioning accepted…A strange world.

It was getting stranger, for we were running out of film. We had already shot programmes in Argentina, Paraguay and Ecuador, and our messages calling for the dispatch of further film stock were growing more urgent. Yorkshire Television had only been running a few months and was still not quite sure what owning a major television centre was all about. Our cables were ignored because it was a weekend, and Christmas was approaching.

When stock was eventually dispatched from Leeds it was not sent directly to Jamaica, our neighbouring island, but via PanAm’s notorious Cargo section in New York where, as we feared, it disappeared from sight.

Filming, however, was going brilliantly. All we needed for our documentary was a climax, and we got that when Papa Doc told me that next day he was going Christmas shopping with Mme Duvalier and Di-Di, and would I like to film the expedition? When presidents start suggesting their own sequences, even I begin to feel quietly confident. The prospect of the terrifying dictator taking our film crew shopping around his capital was like a skeleton in a paper hat: macabre, but fascinating. It had to be the televisory situation of a lifetime.

My crew sensed an award-winning programme. This reconciled us wonderfully to the gloom and anxiety, the inedible food and the unpredictable presidential moods, the constant fear that at any moment something could go fatally wrong—and no one would hear a cry for help.

At that moment we ran out of film.

This presented endless new problems. As I had discovered with General Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay, filming a dictator who does not want to be filmed can be quite dangerous. What is even more fatal, however, is not filming a dictator who wants to be filmed. He is not used to arguments or excuses or sweet reason. Dictators can only dictate.

Back at the hotel we had a despairing conference around empty camera magazines. What to do? One way or another he was going to be displeased. This could lead to a sudden restriction of liberty—or even a spilling of blood.

We could hardly say we were not interested any more, thank you, Mr President. We could not stand him up, or we might be escorted downstairs to the dungeons. We could not leave the country without an exit visa—and anyway our movements were followed by scores of eyes.

We had been anxious to establish a relationship, but now it seemed, to my surprise, that one could get too close to a dictator.

On the morning of our Christmas present expedition I was half hoping the guards outside the palace would hold us up again, even more firmly, but of course for the first time we were swept straight in, with salutes. So I handed my cameraman Frank Pocklington the small pocket camera I used, a little half-frame Olympus Pen F, and went on to spend the morning chatting with a marvellously relaxed President in various jewellers’ shops while my cameraman took happy-snaps, in anguish. For a documentary it was a dream situation—except that our cameraman was taking despairing paparazzi pictures, incredulous at what he was missing.

Papa Doc did not notice the absence of our Arriflex, of course. He was far too busy selecting the best jewellery he could find in the guarded shops, while behind him his womenfolk went through the stock with shrewd and practised eyes. I watched Di-Di riffle through a boxful of diamonds; she was surely a chip off the Old Doc.

As our presidential cortège arrived, each jeweller’s face became a study: on one hand, it was a great honour to be “By Appointment” to Dr Duvalier. Such presidential approval had all sorts of side benefits, like the Tontons did not kill you. On the other hand there was one slight but unavoidable snag: he never paid for anything.

He would make his selections with much care and then, instead of handing over his credit card, would shake the shop-keeper’s hand and award him a wolfish smile. He got a few wolfish smiles back, as though the jeweller was going down for the third time, but there was nothing they could do. At least he only took one item from each shop, and, knowing the gift you carry gets home first, Papa Doc always carried his with him, gift-wrapped, when he left. No exchanges required.

Back in our gloomy hotel, beyond caring and defeated by a distant delivery system, we booked seats on the next flight out to Miami. We had not exposed a foot of film on that unreal and unrepeatable scene. It was lost, along with the remainder of our planned programme climax. Papa Doc had been spared my most pointed questions, which I was thoughtfully withholding for the night before we flew away.

For despair and frustration it was my worst television experience. I went back to the palace to say my farewells, tackling the succession of sentries for the last time.

Yorkshire twice transmitted our programme, Papa Doc—The Black Sheep. It was later shown several times by ITV, and submitted by our Controller, Donald Baverstock, for the Dumont Award. This international accolade for television journalism was presented by the University of California and the West Coast philanthropist Nat Dumont. Among the heavyweight judges were the United Nations Undersecretary General, Dr Ralph Bunche, Mrs Katharine Graham, owner of the Washington Post, and George Stevens Jr, Director of the American Film Institute. There were 400 entries and 40 finalists.

Papa Doc won.

The runner-up for this prestigious award was a film by Austrian Television which dealt with the US Strategic Air Force. The awards merited stern West Coast editorials complaining that foreign stations had walked away with US television’s main prizes. The Los Angeles Times said, “What is ironic is not only that foreign television is beating us at our own game—but with our own stories.”

I flew to Los Angeles for the ceremony, where the Univer-sity’s Melnitz auditorium was crammed with distinction and champagne, and received the award from the Chancellor, Charles E. Young. Afterwards there was a grand reception and banquet at Chasen’s attended by stars, network executives and advertising agencies.

Yorkshire had been desperate to break into the affluent American television market and still had not done so, yet on this grand occasion they failed to support me with even one handout. Lew Grade would have sent an army of salesmen and a ton of hard-sell literature. In a golden moment when the unknown Yorkshire Television was the target of every professional eye, I was absolutely alone. I spent most of the evening laboriously spelling my name to reporters who had never heard of me, or of Yorkshire TV.