Taylor-made selflessness
QUESTION
Did Elizabeth Taylor offer herself as a hostage during the 1976 Entebbe hijack?
ELIZABETH Taylor converted to Judaism in 1959, thanks to the influence of her third husband, producer Mike Todd, the grandson of a Polish rabbi.
She made frequent trips to Israel and showed her support for Judaism in many ways, including offering herself as a hostage in exchange for the Entebbe hijack victims. The offer was declined.
On June 27, 1976, four terrorists seized an Air France flight, flying from Israel to Paris, with almost 250 people on board. The hijackers – two from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and two from Germany’s Baader-Meinhof gang – diverted the plane to Entebbe, Uganda.
They were joined by three more hijackers and demanded the release of 53 militants in Israeli jails. Ugandan dictator Idi Amin supported the PFLP and supplied them with troops and weapons.
The hostages were moved to a disused airport terminal where the Jewish passengers were separated. On July 1, the hijackers released a large group of hostages, but continued to hold captive 106 Jewish passengers and the crew, who had elected to stay behind.
As diplomatic efforts stalled, Israel launched an audacious rescue. At 1am on July 4 three Hercules transport planes landed after a 2,500-mile trip from Israel and 200 elite troops stormed the airport building.
During the 35-minute battle, 40 Ugandan soldiers and the seven hijackers were killed.
The leader of the assault force, Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan ‘Yoni’ Netanyahu, was shot dead by a Ugandan sentry along with three hostages. Another hostage, 76-year-old Dora Bloch, was later murdered by the Ugandans. Yoni was the brother of the future prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, on whom Yoni’s death had a profound effect.
The Israelis also destroyed 11 Russian-built MiG fighters, which amounted to a quarter of Uganda’s air force.
Simcha Dinitz, Israel’s ambassador to the US, praised Elizabeth Taylor for her offer to save the hostages and said: ‘The Jewish people will always remember it.’
Taylor starred in the film Victory At Entebbe made soon after the real-life rescue.
Peter Green, London E12.
QUESTION
Alec Guinness received a cut of the Star Wars revenue. Was Peter Cushing offered a similar deal?
GEORGE Lucas cast Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin for his 1976 space opera. This relatively minor role required a week’s work at Elstree Studios, sandwiched between The New Avengers and flying to the US to appear in The Great Houdini.
According to The Peter Cushing Companion, by David Miller, the actor was paid a flat fee of £1,000 for a week’s work, completed on May 4, 1976. This figure was confirmed by Elstree Studios historian Paul Welsh, though some sources claim Cushing was paid £2,000. He did not receive Alec Guinness’s famous percentage, which has earned his estate £50million.
The film reunited Cushing with David Prowse (Darth Vader), who had played his creation in Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell in 1973, and with Don Henderson (General Tagge), with whom he had made The Ghoul in 1974.
IP Parsons, Shrewsbury. QUESTION
Why was the body of Anne Boleyn exhumed in 1876?
AFTER Anne Boleyn’s execution on May 19, 1536, she was buried in a communal grave under the chancel of the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula (St Peter in Chains) in the grounds of the Tower of London. Other ‘traitors’ buried in the chapel include the Duke of Somerset; the Duke of Northumberland; another of Henry’s wives, Catherine Howard; Lord and Lady Rochford (Anne Bolyn’s brother and his lady-in-waiting wife); and Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, In the mid-19th century, the chapel was in need of restoration. Historian Lord Macaulay visited in 1848 and wrote: ‘I cannot refrain from expressing my disgust at the barbarous stupidity that has transformed this interesting little church into the likeness of a meeting house in a manufacturing town. In truth there is no sadder spot on earth than this little cemetery.’
In 1876, a major restoration restored the chapel to its original state, creating a place of worship for the Tower garrison.
The ground had collapsed in two areas under the chancel and it was decided to excavate it so symmetrical paving could be laid, aligning it with the rest of the chapel.
All the bodies had to be removed and reinterred. When the flooring was lifted in the area thought to have been the resting place of Anne Boleyn, the bones of a female were found at a depth of about two feet: ‘Not lying in the original order, but which had evidently for some reason or other been heaped together into a smaller space.’
The remains were examined by Dr Frederic Mouat, who confirmed they were of ‘a female of between 25 and 30 years of age, of a delicate frame of body and who had been of slender and perfect proportions. The forehead and lower jaw were small and especially well formed.
‘The vertebrae were particularly small, especially one joint (the atlas), which was that next to the skull, and they bore witness to the Queen’s “lyttel neck”’.
He claimed they were consistent with descriptions and portraits of Anne. The remains of all seven were ‘soldered up in thick leaden coffers, and then fastened down with copper screws in boxes made of oak plank, one inch in thickness. Each
box bore a leaden escutcheon, on which was engraved the name of the person whose supposed remains were thus enclosed, together with the dates of death and of the year (1877) of the reinterment. They were placed in the chancel and buried under concrete.
John Mossiman, Gloucestershire. QUESTION
Are there any parts of London bombed in the Blitz, but not rebuilt?
THE Blitz lasted from September 1940 to May 1941 and was the catalyst for a huge number of changes to London’s streets, including new builds, slum clearance, redevelopments and road improvements.
Most areas were rebuilt, the most extreme example being the dense residential and shopping streets of Cripplegate. With the exception of St Giles Church, it was effectively erased on the evening of December 29, 1940.
So widespread was the damage that by 1951, only 48 people were registered as living in the Cripplegate ward. In the Sixties, it was replaced by the brutalist architecture of the Barbican Centre.
The built-up area between the Old Kent Road and Camberwell Road in Southwark was not rebuilt. The idea of creating a park there came from the 1943 Abercrombie Plan for London’s reconstruction, but it meant demolishing homes that had survived the war. Burgess Park, named after Cllr Jessie Burgess, Camberwell’s first female mayor, wasn’t completed until 1973.
Carole Goodman, Somerset.