“How long will it take you to pack?” Canidy asked. “That would depend on where I would be going, and how long I would be gone. Will I need my fur coat or short sleeves?”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t leave anything behind.”
“I’m usually not much of a drinker,” Fine said.
“And taking a drink right now probably isn’t very bright, but I’m going to have one anyway. Scotch all right with you?”
“I’m driving, thank you just the same,” Canidy said.
Fine took a bottle of Scotch from a shelf in his closet and poured two inches of it into a water glass. “And if I tell you “Thanks, but no thanks’?” he asked. “They wouldn’t have sent me after you,” Canidy said, “if they didn’t need you.”
Saying that seemed to embarrass him, Fine saw, although Canidy tried to cover it by waving the little American flag again.
I don’t know why I am surprised about this, Fine thought. I should have known that sooner or later the service would require me to do what it wants me to do, as opposed to indulging me in the acting out of my personal fantasies.
On December 9, 1941, Stanley S. Fine, Vice President for Legal Affairs, Continental Motion Picture Studios, Inc.” who had been in New York on business when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, took the train to Washington to see Greg Armstrong, a friend from law school who had given up corporate law to serve his country in uniform. When he found Greg, who was working in one of the temporary buildings-from the First World War-near the Smithsonian Institution, he quickly saw that his friend thought Stanley Fine had gone off the deep end. Even though Greg professed to understand why Fine wanted to come into the service, and even why Fine wanted to fly, it was clear that Greg thought that flying was the last thing Stanley should be doing. But still, he went through the motions.
“There’s two ways you can handle the flying thing, Stanley,” he said.
“You can apply to one of the aviation cadet selection boards. If you’ve got a pilot’s license-what did you say you have?”
“I’ve got a commercial pilot’s certificate with five hundred ten hours, and an instrument ticket, single-engine land.”
“Okay. What I’m saying is that you can certainly get into the aviation cadet program. Which means after you got your wings, you would be either a flight officer or a second lieutenant. Or, Stanley, you can go in the service as a lawyer, With your years of practice, you can start out as a captain. “I don’t want to be a lawyer.”
“Hear me out. You’re a captain. I can have that paperwork for you in THE BECKET WARRIORS N 18T two weeks. You 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 Rat on, 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.