Film and the Hamptons - The Saboteur Landing On the Beach and On the Street

49th Parallel / A Rank Organization Film / 1991

The connection between the Hamptons and film goes back to the earliest days of film production. (The Hamptons, of course, had been doing just fine with farming and fishing for almost three centuries before that.) The Sheik, starring Rudolph Valentino, was filmed in part on location in the Montauk dunes-as good a facsimile of the Ara­bian desert as one could expecting those days. Over the years a number of no­table film people, Marilyn Monroe among them, have lived or vacationed in our different communities along the Atlantic shore, and in recent years sev­eral features, including Deathtrap, Masquerade and Sweet Liberty have been filmed here. Per­haps the most odd and fasci­nating association, however, is between a Nazi saboteur landing on a local beach and a pair of World War II films.

By the spring of 1942, local residents, besides hav­ing sent their young men and some women to war, were dealing with the difficult but hardly devastating effects of submarine warfare in the Atlantic: wreckage and debris washing up on the beaches and spilled oil clotting the shoreline and killing off thou­sands of birds. But the dramatic plot really begins on a very foggy June night near the Amagansett Coast Guard Station.

In the early morning hours of Sunday, June 14, a German submarine, U-202, landed four saboteurs by rub­ber boat on the Amagansett beach. Later, people would recall hearing the sound of diesel engines on the previ­ous afternoon.- But it was a lone 21 year-old coastguardsman, a "beach pounder," as they called themselves, carrying a flashlight but unarmed, on patrol east of the station in the envel­oping fog, who spotted the men.

When approached, the men claimed to be fishermen from Southampton who had run aground. One, on the beach, was fully dressed. The other three, partly in the surf, were wearing bathing suits, with one haul­ing a large canvas bag. Their English was fluent-no reason for suspicion there. Their allegation of having clams in the bag, however, aroused some misgivings. No one local would dream of clamming in the surf or at night.

Upon being invited back to the Coast Guard Station to wait for day­break, the men apparently lost their confidence and debated killing the young coastguardsman, but decided instead to offer him a $300 bribe. He wisely took the money and rushed back to the station to report the incident to his commander. Although the beach was combed that night, the infiltrators had vanished. The searchers heard the sound of powerful diesel engines off­shore as the submarine worked its way off the outer bar and disappeared. The saboteurs managed to escape on the 7:10a.m. Long Island Railroad train from Amagansett, where the stationmaster had never been alerted. One of the Germans simply bought four tickets, mentioning he was with a party of fishermen returning to New York be­cause of the weather.

The Nazi agents became the objects of a concentrated national man­hunt. After two weeks they were cap­tured in Chicago - along with $174,000 in bribe money and four other saboteurs who had been put ashore in Florida. All were Bund members who had previously lived in the United States; one was even an American citi­zen. They were tried, found guilty, and after a Supreme Court appeal six were executed. The other two, who had in­formed, were imprisoned and later re- turned to Germany.

Among the items found buried in waterproof tin-lined cases on the Amagansett beach were small incen­diary bombs disguised as fountain pens, TNT, detonating devices and other lethal and sophisticated equip­ment for sabotage; while a swastika ­adorned cap and other Nazi paraphernalia were discarded in the dunes. At the trial, it was determined that the saboteurs had been specially trained in Germany and that they were to carry out an ambitious two-year plan to destroy railroads and bridges as well as in­dustrial plants manufactur­ing aluminum. They also planned panic-provoking bombings of railroad sta­tions and department stores.

In a strange narrative twist, showing how film can both predict and reflect, the real episode was shortly preceded by an excellent 1941 film, 49th Parallel, an English production directed by Michael Powell and star­ring Laurence Olivier and Leslie Howard that won an Oscar for best original story.

In this film, a band of Nazis from a Ger­man U-boat disembark at an isolated Hudson Bay village and make their way across Canada - a plot remarkably similar to the upcoming events. Then, in 1943, Twentieth Century Fox re­leased TheyCameToBlow UpAmerica, with George Sanders, a film based on the actual incident but with some sur­prising modifications: Sanders plays an American double-agent working with the saboteurs, and their mission is to blow up Long Island!

Now, more than half a century later, Long Island is, fortunately, still here. The story of sabotage intrigue has become memorialized in local lore. And the connection between the Hamptons and film has taken a signifi­cant step forward with the first Hamptons International Film Festival.