One Summer: America, 1927

mentioned at all it was as an example of the fate that no doubt awaited Charles Lindbergh.
     
    With stops at City Hall, St Patrick’s Cathedral and Central Park, the parade took most of the afternoon. It was the start of four days of intense activity for Lindbergh – more speeches, receptions, honours and parades – as well as a belated trip to see Rio Rita at the new Ziegfeld Theatre. For the duration of their visit, Lindbergh and his mother had been lent the use of a large apartment at 270 Park Avenue owned by none other than Harry Frazee, the man who sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees. By coincidence, Frazee’s building had also been well known to Charles Nungesser. His beloved Consuelo Hatmaker had resided there when Nungesser was courting her. It was at Frazee’s apartment that Mrs Lindbergh reluctantly agreed to meet the press in an informal press conference. Herperformance was a masterclass in how not to answer questions.
    ‘What do you think your son will do next?’ one of the reporters asked her.
    Mrs Lindbergh said she had no idea.
    ‘Did he bring you any souvenirs from Paris?’ asked another.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Would you ever like to fly the Atlantic with your son?’
    ‘He hasn’t asked me.’
    ‘What are your plans for the next few days?’
    ‘They are in the hands of the organizing committee.’
    And so it went for half an hour until the reporters were out of questions and there were just long, awkward silences. When an assistant stepped in to end the conference, Mrs Lindbergh breathed an audible sigh of relief. ‘I’ve already said too much,’ she confided.
    There was no getting away from the fact that both the Lindberghs were a little odd, and that the two together were more than a little odd. On the evening of his parade, Charles and his mother, accompanied by Mayor Walker, were driven to the Long Island estate of a multimillionaire named Clarence H. Mackay for a banquet to be followed by dancing. Shortly after dinner, it was noticed that Lindbergh was no longer present. A panicky Mackay instituted a search of the estate, unable to imagine what had become of his prize guest. It turned out that Lindbergh and his mother had departed for Manhattan without saying thank you or goodbye to their host, the governor, the mayor or any of the other five hundred guests. They evidently hadn’t told the mayor that they were leaving him without a ride either.
     
    For three days Lindbergh stories completely filled the front page of the New York Times and most of several pages beyond. On the day of his parade, Lindbergh stories occupied the first sixteen pages of the paper. Such was the intensity of interest in everything to do with Lindbergh that when Mrs Lindbergh went to Pennsylvania Stationon 15 June to catch a train back to the Midwest, 500 policemen had to link arms to hold back the crowds.
    Lindbergh was now the most valuable human commodity on the planet, and he was bombarded with lucrative proposals – to make movies, write books and newspaper columns, advertise products of every description, appear in vaudeville productions, travel the world giving lectures. According to his own recollections, he was offered $500,000 and a percentage of the profits to star in a film based on his life story, and $50,000 to endorse a popular brand of cigarettes. Another company offered him $1 million if he would find and marry the girl of his dreams and allow the whole process to be immortalized on film. Senior figures in Washington urged him to enter politics. ‘I was advised,’ Lindbergh wrote later, ‘that if I would enter a political career, there was a good chance that I could eventually become president.’
    So many parties tried to cash in on Lindbergh’s name without his approval or knowledge that he had to hire a detective agency to track down the worst of them. The New York Times cited the example of an entrepreneur in Cleveland who found a man named Charles Lindberg, a railway mechanic who knew nothing of aviation, and made him the nominal head of a company called the Lindberg Aeronautics Corporation with plans to sell $100 million in stock certificates to a gullible and admiring public.
    The biggest event of Lindbergh’s week – of anyone’s week – was a dinner given for him by the City of New York at the Hotel Commodore. The New York Times put the number of guests at 3,700 – all male since no women were invited. It was the biggest dinner ever given in the city. All the papers enjoyed listing