I am a longtime Gone With The Wind collector and researcher, and give presentations at GWTW events. I’ve also been the GWTW Answer Lady on several websites. I was recently asked whether Churchill and Roosevelt had read Gone With The Wind. I found that FDR read quite a bit of the novel, but I couldn’t come up with anything about Churchill. I hope you don’t mind me tossing you this question. Maybe you’ve run across a mention of it. I assume that Churchill did see the film as FDR did on 26 December 1939, after the movie opened in Washington. GWTW opened in London on 18 April 1940.  —K.M., Royal Oak, Michigan

On the contrary, your question sent me on an interesting dive through the archives to learn about my favorite character and my favorite novel.

Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes

Before we get started, a side note: Leslie Howard, who played Ashley Wilkes in GWTW, had a business manager, Alfred Chenhalls, who closely resembled Churchill, affecting similar clothing and a homburg hat.

German spies in Lisbon, observing Chenhalls and Howard boarding a flight to London, mistook them for Churchill and his bodyguard. They informed the Luftwaffe, who shot down the plane. Poor Ashley Wilkes, ever the loser!

Churchill wrote of the incident: “The brutality of the Germans was only matched by the stupidity of their agents.”

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THE BOOK

In the late 1930s everybody was reading it, from my mother to Neville Chamberlain. (His biographer Keith Feiling tells us that Chamberlain was “taking delight” in it as the Czech crisis developed in spring 1938.) Churchill was reading it as he wrote the American Civil War chapters of his History of the English-Speaking Peoples (not published until after the war). Thanks to Martin Gilbert’s biography we know quite a lot:

Winston S. Churchill to Brigadier-General Sir James Edmonds, a Civil War authority (Churchill papers: 8/626), 24 March 1939:

When one comes to look at it en bloc, the Confederates never had any chance at all. It was only a question of the North getting under way and the amount of time required to destroy, if necessary, every living soul in the Confederate states. The dramatic point is the wonderful resistance which they made.

Churchill was fearing a new war in Europe at this time:

Have you read Gone With The Wind? It is a terrific book, but I expect you are too pressed with your work to read….I hope you are as sanguine as you used to be about no war and our not getting scragged.

Edmonds quickly replied, still confident of no war in the future:

I have read Gone With The Wind, also Action at Aquia (dealing with the devastation of the Shenandoah valley) and most novels on the war including your namesake’s The Crisis [Civil War novel by the American Winston Churchill]…..Yes, I am still sanguine. Hitler won’t fight without an Ally and Mussolini is “not for it.”

—Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Companion Volume V, Part 3, Documents: The Coming of War 1936-1939 (London: Heinemann, 1982), 1406, 1413.

It would be interesting to re-read Churchill’s Civil War chapters in A History of the English-Speaking Peoples in the knowledge that he was reading GWTW at the time he wrote them. Norman Rose writes:

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples is generally acknowledged to be the least satisfactory of [Churchill's] books. It reads as a kind of pastiche that proclaims his “secular [Whig] faith,” its finest section (written as he read Gone With The Wind) telling the story of the American Civil War….[but] the fact that Churchill was not a trained historian had its merits. As every scholar knows, in research it is necessary to be dogged in pursuit of sources, but also ruthless in sensing when to stop and to start writing.

—Norman Rose, Churchill: An Unruly Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 211

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THE FILM

Gable and Leigh at their height (www.altfg.com)

Churchill was clearly bowled over when he saw the film production. Witnesss the John Colville diary (Colville papers) 15 December 1940, Ditchley Park, Oxford:

We saw Gone With The Wind which lasted till 2.00 a.m. I thought the photography superb. The PM said he was “pulverised by the strength of their feelings and emotions.”

—Martin Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, vol. 2, Never Surrender, May 1940-December 1940] (London: Heinemann, 1994), 1241.

And in his main biographic volume Sir Martin writes:

On Sunday December 15, at Chequers, after watching the film Gone With The Wind, he had sat from two until three in the morning discussing the campaign in North Africa with Eden. As they talked, the total number of Italian prisoners of war captured by Wavell’s army reached 35,000.

—Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 6, Finest Hour 1939-1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), 946.

It has been reported, though I have not run down the source, that Churchill once met Vivien Leigh—and was rendered speechless (rare for him) by her beauty. Apparently this stemmed not from her role as Scarlett O’Hara, but as Nelson’s “Lady Hamilton” (“That Hamilton Woman”)—beyond doubt his favorite film. Norman Rose adds:

Late night films, distracting “the mind away from other things,” were “a wonderful form of entertainment” that he did not forsake. He walked out of a “sentimental” Mickey Rooney picture, but stayed for Bette Davis’s splendid tragedy, Dark Victory, and was “pulverized” by the emotional intensity generated by Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) and Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) in Gone With The Wind. Once, at a showing of Oliver Twist, when Bill Sykes was coaxing his dog to the edge of the river to drown it, Churchill thoughtfully covered the eyes of his beloved poodle, Rufus, who sat on his lap.

—Unruly Life, 283

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IN THE CANON

Margaret Mitchell’s wonderful title inspired Churchill to use it twice. In his World War II memoirs he summed up the results of Appeasement:

Look back and see what we had successively accepted or thrown away: a Germany disarmed by solemn treaty; a Germany rearmed in violation of a solemn treaty; air superiority or even air parity cast away; the Rhineland forcibly occupied and the Siegfried Line built or building; the Berlin-Rome Axis established; Austria devoured and digested by the Reich; Czechoslovakia deserted and ruined by the Munich Pact, its fortress line in German hands, its mighty arsenal of Skoda henceforward making munitions for the German armies; President Roosevelt’s effort to stabilise or bring to a head the European situation by the intervention of the United States waved aside with one hand, and Soviet Russia’s undoubted willingness to join the Western Powers and go all lengths to save Czechoslovakia ignored on the other; the services of thirty-five Czech divisions against the still unripened Germany Army cast away, when Great Britain could herself supply only two to strengthen the front in France; all gone with the wind.

—Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2, Their Finest Hour (London: Cassell, 1953), 271

But it was the march toward Munich in 1938 that saw Churchill’s most effective use of the title:

For five years I have talked to the House on these matters—not with very great success. I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf. It is a fine broad stairway at the beginning, but after a bit the carpet ends. A little farther on there are only flagstones, and a little farther on still these break beneath your feet…. if mortal catastrophe should overtake the British Nation and the British Empire, historians a thousand years hence will still be baffled by the mystery of our affairs. They will never understand how it was that a victorious nation, with everything in hand, suffered themselves to be brought low, and to cast away all that they had gained by measureless sacrifice and absolute victory —gone with the wind!

—Winston S. Churchill, Arms and the Covenant (London: Harrap, 1938), 465: “The Danube Basin,” House of Commons, 4 March 1938.

Churchill and İnönü, 1943 (escforums, Istanbul)

A group of historians asked me about Turkish attitudes to Churchill, which you would think might be hostile—since Churchill’s Admiralty denied Turkey two battleships being built in Britain at the start of World War I, and WSC pushed hard (though did not invent) the attack on the Dardanelles and Gallipoli in 1915.

One historian speculated that Churchill mirrored the courage and resourcefulness of Turkey’s national hero, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Another said there “might be a lingering impression that WSC had helped save Turkey from the red menace by his resistance to Russian demands on the Dardanelles Straits—of course it was Harry Truman who did the heavy lifting there [through the Truman Doctrine]”

The Turks had abundant reasons to feel positive toward Churchill, aside from his personal courage, and his resistance to Soviet designs on the straits (when of course he was out of office and powerless). They dated back to 1910 when Churchill toured the country, partly on a locomotive cow-catcher, and “met many of the brave men who laid the foundations of modern Turkey” (as he wrote Turkish President Ismet İnönü in 1943).

Churchill undertook several risky trips in World War II and the visit to İnönü was one of them, after Casablanca, in a period when he was away from home four weeks. Nor was the meeting entirely in vain, as he told Parliament in May 1944: despite “an exaggerated attitude of caution,” İnönü had personally intervened to halt chrome exports to Germany, which was a lot more important then than it may seem now.

For details of the 1910 and 1943 meetings see the “Dardanelles-Gallipoli 50 Years On” features in Finest Hour 126, including Martin Gilbert’s excellent “What about the Dardanelles?”  (A .pdf is downloadable under “publications” on The Churchill Centre website.)

Churchill had profound admiration for Kemal Atatürk, “the only Dictator with an aureole of martial achievement,” writing in 1938: “The tears which men and women of all classes shed upon his bier were a fitting tribute to the life work of a man at once the hero, the champion, and the father of modern Turkey. During his long dictatorship a policy of admirable restraint and goodwill created, for the first time in history, most friendly relations with Greece.” (Churchill by Himself, 321).

Sir Martin Gilbert’s Churchill: A Life (and his biographic volume IV in more detail) record Churchill’s performance in the 1922 Chanak crisis, which added to his Turkish credits. While persistently arguing, in telegrams, letters and Cabinet meetings ,for a firm stance by Britain and the Dominions, he restrained a bellicose, pro-Greece Lloyd George from acting rashly when the Turks marched near British-occupied Chanak, and eventually there was a negotiated settlement—over which, of course, the Conservatives bolted the Lloyd George Coalition, costing Lloyd George his premiership and Churchill his seat in Parliament. Martin Gilbert concludes (CAL, 454):

Churchill saw the Chanak crisis as a successful example of how to halt aggression, and then embark on successful negotiations, by remaining firm. But “Chanak” had become the pretext not only for the fall of the Government but for one more, unjustified, charge of his own impetuosity.

Gilbert’s Churchill: A Photographic Portrait records WSC’s 1943 letter above, which he handed İnönü when they met. After remembering “the brave men,” Churchill continued:

There is a long story of the friendly relations between Great Britain and Turkey. Across it is a terrible slash of the last war, when German intrigues and British and Turkish mistakes led to our being on opposite sides. We fought as brave and honourable opponents. But those days are done, and we and our American Allies are prepared to make vigorous exertions in order that we shall all be together…to move forward into a world arrangement in which peaceful peoples will have a right to be let alone and in which all peoples will have a chance to help one another.

Not bad for the hoary old imperialist, and a decent improvement on some of the more recent U.S. overtures to Turkey. I suspect the Turks still feel pretty good about the old man, since the Adana, Turkey siding where the İnönü meeting occurred has been turned into a park dedicated to peace.

Obama and McChrystal (White House photo by Pete Souza, Wikimedia Commons).

What can we learn by comparing President Obama’s dismissal of General McChrystal to Churchill’s dismissals of Generals Wavell and Auchinleck, two distinguished commanders in World War II? I hope it will not be another reminder of how standards of conduct have deteriorated.

Differences first. Churchill’s generals were removed for not sufficiently opposing Irwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps. McChrystal was not underperforming, and his situation bears more resemblance to that of General Douglas MacArthur, the Korean commander relieved in 1951 by President Truman for insubordination.

Obama’s critics are looking at that distant episode and expecting a wave of revulsion against the President, as there was for a time against Truman. But McChrystal is not MacArthur, and Afghanistan is not Korea. The entire country was for victory in Korea; scarcely half wants to win in Afghanistan, and MacArthur was a war hero of epic proportions. Even then, MacArthur’s popularity was short-lived. “They started raising money to buy him a Cadillac,” Truman quipped merrily years later, “and you know what? He never got that car.”

Archibald Wavell (British government photo, Wikimedia Commons)

General Archibald Wavell (1883-1950) was relieved of the British Middle East Command on 21 June 1941. In effect he changed places with General Claude Auchinleck, becoming Commander-in-Chief India and, two years later, India’s Viceroy.

General Auchinleck, known as “The Auk” (1884-1981), was relieved of Middle East Command 8 August 1942. Churchill offered him the Iraq and Persia Command, which Auchinleck declined, later reassuming command of the Indian Army.

In relieving Wavell and Auchinleck, Churchill told them that this was a decision of the Cabinet. Obama’s decision appeared to be a personal one, though there is no doubt that his Cabinet would have approved, for whatever McChrystal’s discontent, such statements by military commanders or their surrogates cannot be tolerated under the established doctrine of civilian control of the military. A more interesting contrast may develop through what McChrystal does now.

Churchill wrote that General Wavell “received the decision with poise and dignity….on reading my message he said, ‘The Prime Minister is quite right. There ought to be a new eye and a new hand in this theatre.’ In regard to the new command he placed himself entirely at the disposal of His Majesty’s Government.” (1) Earlier, Churchill had set out an opinion of Wavell that never wavered: “a master of war, sage, painstaking, daring and tireless.” (2)

Claude Auchinleck (Imperial War Museum, Wikimedia Commons)

A year later Auchinleck, his plans against Rommel reaching an advanced stage, was less inclined to accept dismissal. But, Churchill wrote, he “received the stroke with soldierly dignity.” (3) “It was a terrible thing to have to do,” Churchill added later. “He took it like a gentleman. But it was a terrible thing. It is difficult to remove a bad General at the height of a campaign: it is atrocious to remove a good General. We must use Auchinleck again. We cannot afford to lose such a man from the fighting line.” (4)

Wavell remained in the Army until 1943, when he took the civilian post of Viceroy of India. There he served until 1947. Auchinleck declined the Iraq and Persia Command, believing it was bad policy to separate it from the Middle East. He returned to India, and when Wavell was made Viceroy he reassumed command of the Indian Army, retiring in 1947 after forty-three years of military service.

McChrystal and the British generals departed professing esteem for their civilian chiefs, and vice-versa. Wavell and Auchinleck retired years later after illustrious careers, military and civilian. It is as yet uncertain what McChrystal will do now, but that doesn’t prevent people from making guesses.

“I would assume Gen. McChrystal will leave the Army, although his dismissal from command in Afghanistan does not mean he’s been thrown out on the street,” writes John Eipper of Adrian College. “A book and a speaking tour would make more financial sense. Might a political career await him?” (5)

Let’s hope not.

Wavell and Auchinleck, having been sacked, placed themselves “at the disposal of His Majesty’s Government.” Lord Halifax in 1940, finding his ideas of a peace deal with Hitler rejected by Churchill and the War Cabinet, did not offer interviews to air his grievances—nor would such an act of public disloyalty have occurred to him. George Marshall, a distinguished general who later served as U.S. Secretary of State, had many disagreements with his chiefs. After he retired he was offered $1 million for his memoirs; he declined, saying, “I have already been adequately compensated for my services.”

Apparently the President offered no alternative military appointment to General McChrystal, as Churchill—safe in his own skin and disdaining opinion polls—did with Wavell and Auchinleck, believing their continued service vital to the war effort. We must assume it was not Obama’s opinion, as it was Churchill’s, that “We cannot afford to lose such a man from the fighting line.”

So…will Stanley McChrystal now leave the Army, go on a lucrative speaking tour, write a book with a hefty advance, or go into politics? (If the latter, he might want to take a look at what happened to the bandwagon (disavowed) for Douglas MacArthur.

The lessons taught by Churchill, Wavell, Marshall and  Auchinleck about loyalty to one’s chief, and to one’s country, remind us of a standard that was once taken for granted, and is now almost extinct.

Perhaps General McChrystal will defy the odds.

===

Endnotes

(1) Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. III The Grand Alliance (London: Cassell, 1950), 310.

(2) Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963, 8 vols. (New York: Bowker, 1974) VI:6346.

(3) Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. IV The Hinge of Fate (London: Cassell, 1951), 422

(4) Harold Nicolson Diary, 6 November 1942, in Nigel Nicolson, ed., Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters, vol. II 1945-67 London: Collins, 1967), 259.

(5) World Association of International Studies, posted 24 June 2010.

We are happily informed that one of the finest-ever films about Winston Churchill, featuring the late Lee Remick as his mother in Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill, is now available on CD from Amazon. It was originally a television documentary, “The life and loves of Jennie Churchill,” broadcast on ITV in Britain and PBS in the USA in 1974.

On 4 May 1991 the International Churchill Society held a dinner for Lee, then dying of cancer, on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, to present her with our Blenheim Award for notable contributions to our knowledge of the life and times of Winston Churchill. It was a bittersweet occasion, Lee’s last appearance in public. But we did her proud, thanks to the participation of a special guest, Gregory Peck, who started off with a droll story:

It was my privilege to work in only one film with Lee. It was called “The Omen.” It had to do with Satanism. It had some horrifying special effects; it was a spine tingler, excruciatingly suspenseful—and complete nonsense—and a blockbuster! People lined up for blocks to see it. While the studio executives took bows as the money rolled in, only Lee and I knew the secret of the film’s extraordinary success: We did it! It was our special artistry, our sensitive portrayal of a married couple very much in love, to whom all these dreadful things were happening. We provided the human element that made it all work.

He said all this very much tongue-in-cheek. Then he added what he had really come to say:

Lee Remick in London, 1974, photo by Allan Warren from Wikimedia Commons.

There cannot be another American actress so well suited, by her beauty, her high spirits, her intelligence, and more than that, by the mystery of a rare quality which I would call a depth of womanliness, to play the mother of Winston Churchill….Playing opposite this clear-eyed Yankee girl with the appealing style and femininity that graces every one of her roles just simply brings out the best in a man.

Lee was not a Lady Randolph lookalike, wrote critic Stewart Knowles: “What cast the illusion were clothes, wigs, and the talent of a great actress.” She was one of the most remarkable actresses America ever produced—from her debut in “A Face in the Crowd” (1957) and “The Long Hot Summer” (1958) through her Oscar nomination as the wife of Jack Lemmon in “The Days of Wine and Roses” (1962) and her final film, “Emma’s War” (1986). She won seven Emmy nominations for her outstanding roles in television docudrama, including the role of Eisenhower’s wartime chauffeur/mistress, Kay Summersby, as well as Jennie Churchill.

Lee as "Jennie" (1974)

Although it was a great honor to welcome Gregory Peck (and amusing to watch people’s reaction as he walked with us through the ship’s corridors to our dinner), it was a very sad night, for Lee was swollen with medications and just barely able to speak. Her husband, the British film producer Kip Gowans, made sure to tip Greg in advance, for he hadn’t seen Lee in years and would otherwise have been unprepared for the change her illness had wrought—which, great man that he was, Mr. Peck never hinted he had observed.

We played excerpts from “Jennie” before giving her the award, and I noticed when the lights came back on that she was in tears.

“I was beautiful then,” she said wistfully.

“But Lee,” I said, “you still have those eyes…”

"Kip" Stevens with his 1951 Excalibur J

The blogsite of Hemmings Motor News sees fit to post my  1982 article on Brooks Stevens, along with a gratuitous opinion: “Perhaps Richard Langworth’s tendency toward purple prose in this profile of Brooks Stevens in Special Interest Autos #71, October 1982, is appropriate, given the picture he paints of the legendary designer.” Aside from the fact that Hemmings paid only for first rights and is therefore in copyright violation, it’s nice to be remembered.

Reactions: A onetime editor of SIA wrote: “I see nothing purple—it reads like an essay in The New Yorker.” (Ah, if only Hemmings paid New Yorker rates!)  A Packard Club colleague wrote: “Naah, not purple, maybe faint mauve.” A blog reader wrote: “Ugh, I can’t read it. The prose is too purple for me, and the Excalibur J can run with the Jaguar XK120?” Of course it can, replied Tony Stevens: “As the current owner of the first 1951/2 Excalibur J race car, I can personally attest that it can run competitively with an XK120, even more so on a smaller, technical road course.” Right you are Tony. The XK120 was a great car—but the youngsters have swallowed too much purple prose about it.

Herewith I post my (updated) piece on my late friend Kip. Readers may judge for themselves.

BROOKS STEVENS: THE SEER WHO MADE MILWAUKEE FAMOUS © 1982, 2003

“You’ll have to resolve the conflict between Dutch Darrin and Kip Stevens,” I was told after being assigned my first automotive article ever, on Kaiser-Frazer, in 1969. The origins of the landmark 1951 Kaiser were at the time still unclear: both Darrin and Stevens claimed it, and neither was particularly complimentary in describing the efforts of the other. A colleague had warned me that the differences were probably too great to resolve and that it might be best not to press the matter. But my editor said, “Hear both sides and make the judgment of the historian.” I didn’t know I was supposed to be a historian, but I wrote to Brooks at his studio near Milwaukee and said in effect, “Tell me everything you remember about the 1951 Kaiser.”

The gorgeous 1951 Kaiser. The "full-perimeter bumper" was Brooks Stevens' idea dating back to facelift proposals for the '48 models.

By return mail came a large white folder with gilt lettering, containing a thick pile of photographs and a long, detailed letter documenting Brooks “Kip” Stevens’ role as a design consultant to Kaiser-Frazer. Within a year I had met him, and the friendship that resulted withstood the trauma of tracking the 1951 Kaiser’s design, the full story of which appeared in my book Last Onslaught on Detroit in 1975.

The “judgment of the historian” did not satisfy Kip, and in turn produced another white and gilt folder with further documentation. On that subject it would be accurate to say that we had differences but not misunderstandings. Cordiality never suffered, for Stevens was a master of cordiality.

He was a tall, good looking man who belied his age, whose appearance and demeanor reflected accreditation to what Cole Porter would have called High Society. He was, indeed, cast in “Colie’s” image. For Stevens there was only one way to fly to Paris—Concorde—and one way to get to England in the summertime—first class on the QE2. His personal tastes reflected similar standards, producing an effect of refined elegance. He was one of those who took pains about everything. His designer’s background permeated every aspect down to and including those elegant folders (I have quite a collection now) in which he sent his heavier mail. In his presence people were impressed but not overawed, because he was so completely natural and so full of courtesy and fun.

It was never hard to gain Brooks Stevens’ acquaintance, whether one was a coverall-clad mechanic or the President of General Motors. Along with an inborn civility and an interest in others went an all-encompassing enthusiasm and love for everything connected with cars, an encyclopedic firsthand knowledge of the industry, and a streak of nihilism.

1982 Excalibur

Kip once invited my friend Bill Tilden to Wisconsin to drive some demonstration laps at Elkhart Lake in the Excalibur J, his Henry J-based sports car. Brooks phoned me afterward to chat about this adventure. The story involved the helicopter-assisted arrest of the rambunctious Stevens as he charged toward Elkhart Lake in his personal Excalibur, violating most Wisconsin road ordinances plus several they hadn’t thought of yet.

Picture Stevens, trailing a silk scarf, driving a very loud open sports car with what the British call “assurance,” tracked by an army of gendarmerie, including aircraft. After failing to run him to earth in the ordinary way they block the road. Picture next the nearest policeman, seven feet tall as they all are, jerking his thumb at the Excalibur’s sartorially splendid driver and shouting: YOU—OUT! It was a vision. Kip paid his fine. It was substantial.

The world's last great Frenchman: René Dreyfus with brother Maurice at the late, sadly lamented "Le Chanteclair," 49th Street, Manhattan.

He had great generosity, which did not always function in his favor. I remember one press night at the New York Automobile Show, when Kip arrived at René and Maurice Dreyfus’ famous automotive watering hole, “Le Chanteclair,” with a very large retinue of admirers. The brothers Dreyfus were hardpressed to seat such a large assembly, but they eventually did, at a long table with Brooks as centerpiece. Le Chanteclair was never the place for a cheap meal. When the bill came, for what I recall was uncomfortably close to one thousand 1974 dollars, Brooks quietly laid down his American Express card. Those who had no intention of socking him with that bill surreptitiously handed him rolls of bills, but a good half the company didn’t bother. There was no sign that our host was in the least disappointed: a measure of a man who felt no expense unwarranted for the pleasure of an evening among friends, provided your description of “friends” is fairly elastic.

1951 Willys Jeepster

I once stole a line from Schlitz and called Brooks, to his great delight, “The Seer Who Made Milwaukee Famous.” He was one of the ten charter fellows of the Industrial Design Society of America. To the automotive trade he brought impeccable credentials at just the right time. Ultimately he would contribute designs to over forty makes of car. One of his earliest associations was with Willys-Overland, during and after World War II. He conceived of Willys’ most interesting products: the 1946 Jeep, the first all-steel station wagon; and the 1948 Jeepster, the world’s last production touring car.

A contributor to Kaiser-Frazer from almost the outset of that venture, Brooks proposed the first practical facelift for the plug-ugly 1947-48 production cars; management didn’t take his advice, but assigned him to the famous three-way competition for the 1951 Kaiser, against Darrin and the in-house styling team. It is the prevailing judgement today that the basic shape selected was Darrin’s, but it should be emphasized that this was not a direct contest. Kip was simultaneously busy on a score of accounts in a half dozen countries, with corporations like Allis-Chalmers, Miller Beer, Briggs & Stratton, Evinrude, Lawn-Boy, 3M, Outboard Marine Aviation, Sears Roebuck, and Club Xanadu in Costa Rica. At the time of the Kaiser styling contest he was involved with Alfa Romeo on 6C 2500 designs. Darrin had only one project on his plate. Had it been a one-on-one contest, things might have been different.

Alfa Romeo 6C 2500

And many of his contributions were used on Kaiser products. After K-F bought Jeep in 1953, it was a Stevens design which became the Wagoneer, a concept so timeless that the shape has survived thirty years. He always referred to this and his other styling project in the plural: “we” did this or that. This was only because he wanted to make it clear that Brooks Stevens Associates was not a one-man company.

Kip did find time to do a little personal brainstorming on a Kaiser chassis.  While Darrin was placing a pretty fiberglass body over a stock Henry J chassis to create the Kaiser-Darrin, Stevens moved in the opposite direction with the aforementioned Excalibur J—a highly modified dual purpose, road/track sports car not dissimilar in looks or concept to the later Lotus 7. This first Excalibur could pace the vaunted Jaguar XK-120s, and often did in SCCA competition.

In the late Fifties Stevens created the Excalibur-Valkyrie-Scimitar design exercise, which among other things showed what could be done with aluminum. In the early 1960s he revived the Aero-Willys through a reskin for Willys-Overland do Brasil. This facelift persuaded Studebaker president Sherwood Egbert to let him modernize the aging “Loewy coupes,” and the result was the sinfully beautiful Gran Tursimo Hawk of 1962-64. Brooks was even able to apply crisp, modern styling to the dowdy Studebaker Lark, giving it an extra lease on life. He produced the first sliding-roof station wagon in the Wagonaire, and his Studebaker prototypes for a new generation of cars were things of breathtaking beauty. (See “Why Studebaker Failed” on this site.)

Unhappily most of his automotive efforts were for dead or dying companies. Had they been offered at the time to, say, Chrysler, they would be more famous today. Still, he managed to cap his career with an unequivocal success, the Excalibur line of “modern classics” based on a successive series of Mercedes-Benz commencing with the immortal SSK. Among “replicars” the Excalibur was the best selling, best engineered, and most carefully built. Its performance was demonstrated by the successful racing version run by Ecurie Excalibur, the team that Kip and his sons ran in the Seventies and Eighties.

Pintacuda's Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Mille Miglia (now Ralph Lauren Collection)

Automobiles were but one facet of a remarkable, half-century career, but they were certainly his first love. At his offices in Wisconsin he established the Brooks Stevens Automotive Museum, small and select, including some of the finest cars ever to set rubber to road: a Packard Twin Six, a 1925 Duesenberg Indy race car, a Brescia Bugatti, the Mercedes-Benz 500K and 540K, the Cord L29 and 812, the Marmon V-12. His frontispiece was a staggeringly beautiful 1939 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B, Pintcadua’s car from the Mille Miglia, the world’s fastest prewar production sports car. He added many of his own personal designs, like the Jeepster and Brazilian Willys, and the Alfa 6C 2500. The collection was broken up after his death, but those privileged to know it in its prime will never forget  it.

Brooks did not come in for the universal plaudits he deserved. Too often, casual observers saw only his more radical departures and pronounced him a hopeless exponent of chrome and tailfins. This is very short shrift, for it fails to take the total measure of the man.

He was one of the supporting pillars of the automotive community, both manufacturers and collectors. His designs—whimsical, brilliant, imaginative, formal and radical—will live on. His non-automotive designs were created for some of America’s great corporations. More than a few gained international renown.

He was as well a great companion, not at all self-centred (rare among designers). Always he seemed to draw out the best in his friends, be they car nuts who invited him to their gatherings, fellow stylists, or lowly automotive writers. No one escaped his attraction. Everyone became proud and delighted to have their own work so generously encouraged by a man of distinction.

There are many ways to measure wealth, but Kip Stevens banked his greatest treasure in the hearts of his friends. And we will treasure his memory till our time is come.