Chilling Memory of Hitler Was the Genesis of Play

Robert Landis was a 16-year-old American schoolboy on a holiday when he saw Adolf Hitler rumbling through Berlin. The shock of the adulation the crowd held for Der Fuhrer still haunts him.

Fifty-three years later, Landis has written a play, “The Canaris Enigma,” about a real German agent, Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, who helped put Hitler in power and later plotted to bring him down. The show premieres at the Westminster Theatre in Point Loma March 3-19.

Landis, a retired ad executive with the San Diego Union-Tribune, was bicycling through Berlin, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Olympics, when he and a German friend saw Hitler and staff members Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Goering and Rudolf Hess riding in their limousines to the Games.

“The thing that I still remember with great clarity was the mass hysteria of the crowd,” Landis said, taking a break from painting the set of “The Canaris Enigma.”

“The whole town was festooned in blood red banners and swastikas. They yelled ‘Sieg Heil!’ at the top of their voices, thrusting their arms out. As the cavalcade went down the neighborhood, you could hear the sound reverberating. And, in the distance, you could hear it rising and falling. It was electric. It was shocking. It was terrifying because I had no idea people could be so taken by a charismatic leader. There was this sense of impending doom and war all through the city.”

Landis, who later served in naval intelligence, said his German friend did not seem to be taken in by Hitler at the time. But, over the years, as they corresponded, their friendship eroded as the German’s letters grow more strident in defense of Hitler.

“It could be that he wrote those things because of censorship. The Gestapo was reading mail going out to other countries at that time. But it turned me off. He did survive. The last letter I had from him was after the war and he was begging for clothes and help. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t respond. It was the close of a very dreadful war, and I was still angry. All of that is background for my play.”

They did it for Mary Martin, David Bowie, Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Liberace, Lily Tomlin, Raquel Welch, Carol Burnett, Jerry Lewis, Ray Bolger and Howie Mandel.

Now, Flying by Foy, a company that specializes in flying, swimming and weightlifting effects, will be sprinkling the fairy dust on former Olympic medal-winner Cathy Rigby when she takes the title role in the Starlight production of “Peter Pan,” May 24-June 4.

Can a company really make a living making people fly? Since 1950, when British-born Peter Foy helped Jean Arthur soar on Broadway as the boy who won’t grow up, Foy has been the wings behind 3,000 subsequent productions of “Peter Pan.” (In that 1950 production, Boris Karloff made his American stage debut as Captain Hook.) The show didn’t become really complicated, though, until 1954 when it became a musical with Mary Martin. The addition of a 2 1/2-minute song to be delivered airborne created a need for flight choreography.

In between soirees to Never-Never Land, Flying by Foy has worked for “High Spirits,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “The Flying Nun,” “Hair!” “Funny Girl,” “The Fantastic Voyage,” “Disney on Parade,” and “The Ice Capades.”

They didn’t get the “Superman” account, but they’re not complaining.

“We’re busy enough,” said Garry Foy, who minds the Las Vegas shop while father Foy is helping operatic stars in London literally scale new heights. “Half of ‘Superman’ is done with wires and half on film. We usually do things of a more theatrical nature.”

For “Peter Pan,” Peter and the Darling children will wear girdles under their costumes that include a small eye hook between the shoulder blades. A small cable is attached through the hook to a track system 80 feet above the stage floor. The track system, operated by as many as three stage technicians per actor, allows for vertical and horizontal movement. Happy landings.

PEOPLE: “Cousins” opens Friday in San Diego movie theaters, and Old Globe playwright Stephen Metcalfe, who wrote the script, utters the one comment that screenwriters so rarely say: “I enjoyed it.” No wonder. “Cousins” may be based on the French film “Cousin, Cousine,” but the emphasis on generational family interactions in “Cousins” is right out of Metcalfe’s “Vikings.” The La Jolla resident also said he is looking forward to the March opening of “Jackknife,” a film adaptation of his play “Strange Snow,” starring Robert DeNiro and Ed Harris. In the meantime, he is working on the film adaptation of his play “Emily,” as well as a new play. . . . Leon Singer, who plays the cook in the “Lonesome Dove” miniseries, took a break from his restaurant duties at El Tecolote, his Mexican restaurant, to sigh over how much of his part was lost on the cutting-room floor. “After doing ‘Burning Patience’ (at the San Diego Repertory Theatre) and seeing myself here like a shadow on the wall, and you don’t even know who the shadow belongs to, it was disappointing,” he said. He had no complaints, though, about the stars, especially Robert Duvall, whom he described as “a real gentleman,” or the series itself. “The director did a beautiful job, and the cast is perfect. It’s as if I had played a little part in ‘Gone With the Wind.’ I’m proud of it.” . . . Ralph Waite, who played the grandfather in “The Waltons” has signed on for Athol Fugard’s “The Road to Mecca” opening March 4 at the Old Globe’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage. . . . August Wilson’s latest play, “The Piano Lesson,” will have its West Coast premiere when it replaces Martha Clarke’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” at the Old Globe Theatre May 4-28. “The Piano Lesson” is the fourth in Wilson’s projected series about the African-American experience. The others were “Fences,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.”