get a commission, and they tell you to hold yourself ready for active service. While you’re waiting to be called, you apply for flight duty. Send them a certified copy of your licenses, and so on. They’ll probably jump at you. But you do have a senator in your pocket who can do you a favor, don’t you?”
“Do I have to do that?”
“You don’t even have to go in the Army, Stan. You’re a married man with three kids. And movies are going to be declared an essential war industry. I heard that last week. If you want to play Errol Flynn in Dawn Patrol, though, you’re going to need a senator.”
On February 7, 1942, they gave a going-away party at Continental Studios. It was held on Sound Stage Eleven, and Max Lieberman had it catered by Chasen’s, so the people in the Continental commissary could attend. There was one big head table on a four-foot platform built especially for the occasion. It sat sixty-eight people, and it was draped with bunting. Behind it hung an enormous American flag. Everybody else sat at ten-seat round tables.
With the exception of Max and Sophie Lieberman, the guests at the head table were Continental employees about to enter the armed forces.
The honorees were introduced alphabetically, and Max Lieberman made it through best boys and truck drivers and clerks and scenery painters and even two actors until he got to Stanley Fine, who was his nephew—Sophie’s sister Sadie’s boy—and who was the nearest thing he had to a son. That was when he got something in his throat, and then in his eye, and so Stanley took over for him at the mike and introduced the others while Uncle Max sat blowing his nose and wiping away tears.
The founder and chairman of the board of Continental Studios got control of himself by the time Stanley had finished the introductions. He reclaimed the mike and announced that in case anybody was wondering, everybody had his job waiting for him, so they should get the lead out of their ass and win the war. Meanwhile, Continental had movies to make.
Captain Stanley S. Fine, Judge Advocate General’s Corps, had entered upon active duty for the duration plus six months on May 1, 1942.
His initial duty station was the U.S. Army Air Corps Officers’ Reception Station, Boca Raton, Florida. The Adjutant General of the United States Army was led to understand that assigning Fine to the Army Air Corps would please the junior senator from California, and he so ordered.
When Captain Fine reached Boca Raton, he learned that the U.S. Army Air Corps Officers’ Reception Station had only three weeks before been the Boca Raton Hotel and Club, an exclusive, very expensive resort. The Air Corps had taken it over for the duration, rolled up the carpets, put the furniture in storage, closed the bar, installed GI furniture and a GI mess, and turned the place into a basic training camp for newly commissioned officers.
Fine’s fellow student officers had also been lawyers, or doctors, dentists, engineers, wholesale grocers, paper merchants, trucking company executives, construction engineers, or other civilians whose occupations had a military application and who had been directly commissioned into the services.
He had been at Boca Raton six weeks when his senator’s influence was again felt.
Captain Fine was engaged in a class exercise in the administration of military justice. He was playing the role of prosecutor in a mock court-martial when a runner summoned him from the classroom—which had been the card room of the Boca Raton Hotel—to the station commander’s office.
“I don’t understand this, Captain,” the station commander said, “but we are in receipt of orders assigning you to the Three-forty-fourth Heavy Bombardment Group at Chanute Field. It says for transition training to B-17 aircraft. You’re not a pilot, are you?”
“I have a civilian license, Sir.”
“I never heard of anything like this before,” the colonel said. “But orders are orders, Captain.”
When he reported to the 344th Bombardment Group at Chanute, he was sure there was no way he would be permitted to become a pilot.
“The only time you have is in Piper Cubs and a Beechcraft?” the colonel asked.
“I’m afraid so, Sir,” Fine said.
“I hope you can fly, Fine,” he said. “And not just because you know some important politicians and the general told me to give you every consideration.”
“I wanted to fly very badly,” Fine said. “I thought I needed some help. That now seems rather childish.”