Pictures to Die For: Photos and Stories from the World’S Most Published Photo Journalist

By Ron Laytner

Journalism at its very best: Noel Young, Sunday Mail, Scotland

In search of the worlds greatest stories my hands have held Einsteins brain and Hitlers golden gun. My foot has stepped on the foot of the Queen of England. My body has survived an airliner crash, a submarine accident and beatings after being captured as a spy in Africa. I avoided execution in Syria, Turkey, the Congo and Paraguay. I was ambassador of a country in the South China Sea. In America I faced down the Mafia with a gun in Miami and in Texas convinced the Ku Klux Klan to take off their hoods for the first time. Then I helped change world travel by taking automatic weapons through airport security in many countries without getting caught or shot. (See cover picture) Here is my story.

When Laytner got the first and only photograph of the dread terrorist, Carlos the Jackal, Paris Match Picture Editor Michel Sola shouted, We have James Bond working for us!

You are not just the James Bond of Journalism. You are also Jason Bourne, Phillip Marlowe, Sherlock Holmes and Colombo. John Wellington, Managing Editor The Mail on Sunday, London

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781491794296

Ron Laytner

Ron Laytner began his photojournalism career at the Toronto Telegram and became a globe-trotting journalist for such publications as England’s Mail on Sunday, Paris Match, and Germany’s Stern magazine. His photograph ‘The Brownie’ won the Canadian National Newspaper award (Canada’s Pulitzer) and later ran in LIFE magazine, then The Best of LIFE. It was featured at the New York World’s Fair and was eventually noted in the London Sunday Times as one of the greatest photographs ever taken. He currently resides with his wife, Linda, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

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Copyright © 2016 Ron Laytner.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Unless otherwise noted, all photos copyright © Ron Laytner.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-9428-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-9429-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016906760

iUniverse rev. date: 10/31/2016

Contents

Prologue

1 Shooting at the Ford Hotel

2 Radio Days

3 First Trip to Japan

4 Trapped in a Sunken Submarine

5 Telegram Scoops

6 Picture That Changed My Life

7 Inside the Toronto Star

8 Chasing the Royals

9 Get off the Queen’s Foot

10 Leaving the Star

11 Mideast Adventures

12 Not Better in the Bahamas

13 Riches to Rags

14 Fighting the MafiaI

15 The War in Biafra

16 A Prisoner on Zanzibar

17 Moon Shot Witch Doctor

18 Inside India

19 Tower of Silence

20 Castro’s Hit Man

21 Entombed in a Nazi Flak Tower

22 Hanna Reitsch, German Test Pilot

23 The Sexual Revolution

24 Hugo the Gorilla

25 Inside the Ku Klux Klan

26 To Kill the Pope

27 Saving a Beauty Queen’s Life

28 Ambassador Laytner

29 The Pearl Harbor Spy

30 Crucified Man Nailed to Cross

31 Howard Hughes in Las Vegas

32 Missed My Funeral

33 Robin Hood Priest

34 Meeting Linda

35 Breaking Airport Security

36 The Great Train Robber

37 Tracking Down a Nazi War Criminal

38 Andes Plane Crash

39 Murder in Africa

40 Einstein’s Brain

41 The Andes Monster Interview

42 My Life–Saving Interpol Pass

43 Caught by Alpha 66

44 The Mariel Boatlift

45 Hitler’s Treasure

46 Carlos, the Jackal

47 Super–Race Babies

48 Freedom Press vs. the USSR

49 My Longest Interview–Maria Quisling

50 Death of a US Spy

51 Lost White Children of Africa

52 Breaking into a US Navy Base in Japan

53 Gotcha, Kelvin

54 Loved the Telegram

To Linda

Have I told you yet today that

I love you?

Acknowledgments

My grateful thanks to all those who helped me in my career. They include Linda, my beautiful wife and co-adventurer for most of my life; our two children, Lance and Lindsey; my mother, Sally Laytner, and my father, Sam Laytner; and my sisters, Renee Fleischer, Beverley Janasz, and Heather Sherman. Among the many editors and colleagues in my long list of publications, special thanks to Ray McFadden, who taught me under gunfire how to take pictures. My editors at the Toronto Telegram, Doug Steubing and Bob Vezina, and Russel Cooper, the Telegram reporter who jumped a man about to shoot me. Pierre Berton and Charles Templeton at the Toronto Star and Harry Hindmarsh Jr., Ray Timson, Marty Goodman, and Richard Stolley of Life magazine. Sue Reid, assigning editor, and John Wellington, managing editor, of the Mail on Sunday, London; Noel Young of the Sunday Mail, Scotland; Volker Lensch, Stern magazine, Germany; Dave Rimmel, Cleveland Plain Dealer; Lars Persson, Expressen, Sweden; John Osenenko, the New York Times; Mike McGuire, the Chicago Tribune; and Michel Sola, Paris Match. Interpol Secretary Generals Andre Bossard and Ray Kendal and a mentor and good friend, William Lovelace of the London Express. The Fort Lauderdale Writers Group. Howard Wills, Healer, Hawaii who extended my career for years. Cleveland Attorney Craig Relman, Bill Scott, Executive Vice President WXEL TV PBS. And special thanks to gunman Zorano Borg, who spared my life.

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Ron and Linda commended by Secret Service Director Stuart Knight

Prologue

I’ve lived a life few could imagine. It’s taken me all over the world and allowed me to know many celebrities. I photographed President John F. Kennedy shortly before he was assassinated in Dallas, from a roof overlooking his plane at an airport in the Bahamas, remarking at the time how easy it would be for someone to shoot him.

022KennedyBahamasairport12done.jpg

Then realizing how lax his security was, I climbed down and took a photograph of him again from just a few feet away. His Secret Service agents were drinking cold drinks with Bahamian police.

Later I helped expose the truth behind the Kennedy assassination. Like many journalists in those days, I did favors for the old CIA, starting in pre-Castro Cuba, showed the first faces of the secret Ku Klux Klan in Texas, and covered wars in Africa where I was jailed as a spy and almost hanged. People have tried to kill me from the Bahamas to the Middle East. I even fought my way with a gun off a Mafia hit list in Miami. Then I strengthened world airport security by showing how easy it was to smuggle machine guns and pistols through tough checkpoints.

I started off as a freelance photographer, taking pictures for which I was paid just three dollars for each photograph published and five dollars for a front page.

Before long, I discovered I could publish a picture in Toronto and sell the very same picture in Montreal. There was no crossing of circulation areas. Then I spread it to every city in Canada and New York City. Later I’d sell identical stories and pictures to almost every country in the world.

I did this for years, becoming one of the most widely published photojournalists in history and a millionaire. I had so much success in getting the story, no matter how challenging, that some editors over the years began calling me the James Bond of journalism.

Looking back, I remember the exact day it began …

I stood in the shadow of my tall grandfather, Henry Walton, in the living room of his house in Toronto at 461 Shaw Street. He was totally bald, wearing a dark maroon bathrobe and blue striped pajamas, looking out through glistening glasses. It was early on a Sunday morning. Everyone else in the house was sleeping.

I was seven. He was fifty. We were standing before his prized possession, a large walnut radio console, much taller than me and set with red buttons and black letters reading New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, and Tokyo.

How will we understand people in Tokyo, Papa?

Shush … be quiet. We are going to hear, he paused with reverence, the news.

Through the static, we heard the faraway tolling of Big Ben and the excited but measured voice of CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow saying, This is London calling … He gave news of the war and how the British people were surviving the Blitz and fighting Adolph Hitler.

It was my first taste of the news business, and it would inspire me for the rest of my life.

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LIFE Magazine paid $800

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2 of my first pictures – front page – left and right.

TorontoTelegram paid $12

1 Shooting at the Ford Hotel

HE RAISED THE SHOTGUN and aimed it directly at my chest.

I stood there motionless, waiting to die.

I wasn’t going to be a news photographer after all …

Just a few hours ago, life had seemed so promising.

I drove my red Ford convertible to Bay and Melinda Streets in downtown Toronto one very cold and windy fall evening.

I was carrying a shiny new plastic Kodak Duaflex camera, which I had purchased that day for $3.95. It had a carrying strap that looked like a shoelace. I’d also bought a twelve-pack of flashbulbs and a single roll of 120 mm Kodak black-and-white film. It was October 27, 1955, a day I will never forget.

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Toronto Telegram building

Up a few steps, and I was inside the lobby of the Toronto Telegram. I was met by a barrel-chested old Scotsman, must have been fifty. His name was Jessie, and he was the very first to help me in the newspaper business.

What is it, laddie? Can I help you?

I explained I wanted to take a front page picture for the Telegram. Jessie didn’t laugh or send me on my way, as he should have. He beckoned me into the rattling cage of his old bronze elevator and took me from the dark, quiet Melinda Street to the fourth floor, which was blazing with lights and sound.

I hesitated, but Jessie pushed me off. At first glance, I was in a huge building-wide room, filled with empty desks and surrounded by large windows, a room I would learn to love. At the center was a horseshoe-shaped desk with a solitary man at its middle.

It was night editor Doug Steubing, and he would become the second person to help me that night. Doug was about forty years old and, just like in the movies I had seen, was wearing a green eyeshade on his head.

Across from him, four big gray metal desks were jammed together in a rough square. A group of press photographers, some wearing fedora hats with large press cards on them, had placed their big cameras on the floor at their feet and were busy playing poker.

Mustering all my courage, I went up to the night editor’s desk and stood there speechless until Doug Steubing looked up.

"I’m here to take a front page picture for the Telegram," I announced.

Steubing didn’t laugh, but the sound of chuckling and sarcastic remarks coming from the card-playing photographers told me they had been listening. I didn’t know it yet, nor did they, but after this evening, they would never laugh at me again.

He asked me my name and then said, You be a good boy and sit over there, pointing to a wooden bench beneath a giant wall clock. When something happens, I’ll call you.

04firstcameradone.jpg

My first camera

It was something like being turned away while applying for a job. I felt uneasy.

And that’s where I sat for the next two hours, under the wall clock near the large black loudspeakers as the Toronto police radio calls filled the newsroom with its life’s blood.

Out came some of the most lurid police calls: HJF72 to all cars, any car in the vicinity. At Lawrence and Young Street—report of a man running berserk with an ax … cars report … Silence. No responses. The police dispatcher then asked, Car 71, where are you? He’d get a reply that 71 was checking a driver who might be driving a stolen car. Car 24 was off for a food break; car 19 was checking an open door, possibly a break-in.

A few minutes later came another call: HJF72 to all cars, any car in the vicinity, at Bloor and Bathurst Streets reports of a naked woman on the street, drunk and causing a disturbance.

Immediate responses came: Car 15, car 81, car 12, car 41. I’d been in the newsroom less than ten minutes and already learned policemen liked to go on calls they’d find interesting. Everyone wanted to see a naked woman. Not many wanted to confront a madman with an ax.

I sat watching the card-playing photographers, wishing and dreaming I would soon be one of them, but nothing happened.

My rear end was getting sore on the hard bench. I walked back to the night desk and, trying to lower my young voice, asked editor Steubing, Where can a fellow get a beer around here?

He told me of the Metropole Grill across the street, a Greek restaurant that never closed. I left my coat on the bench. Somehow it made me feel like I belonged at the newspaper.

05FordHoteldone.jpg

Ford Hotel, Toronto

I went down in the elevator. Jessie told me not to worry; something always was happening among the millions in Toronto at night. At the Metropole, I had a cold glass of milk and a piece of apple pie.

I was a thin, almost gangly kid of twenty-one. At the restaurant, I was careful not to get food on my best pants and shirt. Everyone at the Telegram wore a suit. I didn’t even own one.

When I came back and got off on the fourth floor, there had been an electric change. The photographers were gone, playing cards scattered across the desks and onto the floor.

Police radio calls were coming fast and furious, so many I couldn’t understand them. The room was filled with excitement.

Night editor Steubing would tell me years later he remembered I’d come back with milk and apple pie traces around my mouth. I was young and dumb.

Steubing stood up. Do you still want to take a front page picture?

I nodded, unable to speak.

Go to the Ford Hotel and take a picture there of a man on the fourth floor.

I hesitated then confessed, I just bought this camera today. Could you show me how to load it?

He shook his head, muttering, opened the roll of film I’d brought, and loaded it into the camera.

I was running toward the elevator when I shouted back, What’s the man’s name?

I don’t know. But he’s got a rifle, and he’s shooting at people in the street!

My knees almost buckled.

In the elevator, Jessie patted my shoulder and told me to calm down.

I got to my car and drove off at high speed to the Park Plaza Hotel, ran the car up onto the sidewalk (why not? I was now with the press, wasn’t I?), ran inside, and asked the startled front desk clerks where the shooting man was. They informed me I was at the wrong hotel. Then I sped off to Bay and Richmond Streets to the Ford Hotel.

It was a scene out of the movies and my first brush with real news. The street was blocked off. A searchlight was shining up onto a corner window of the twelve-story building.

Only police vehicles could get near the hotel, which had a bus station across from it on one side and a bowling alley in which I’d worked as a pin setter one summer on the other. I found out decades later my parents spent their honeymoon in the Ford Hotel. I parked on a side street.

Instinctively I put the little camera’s shoelace strap around my neck and hid the camera down inside my coat. I walked over and joined a bunch of guests who had chosen to get out of the hotel. There were also some press photographers but they were being kept out of the building.

I moved next to a small group of policemen. In their middle was tall, elegant Toronto Police Chief John Chisholm, who had personally taken charge of the operation.

At that moment, he became another of those who helped my career.

Sir, I offered, my father and I are staying on the eleventh floor. It’s cold, and I’d like to go back to our room.

The chief told me to stay at his side. He was just going into the hotel. If I promised to get off on the eleventh floor, he’d let me in.

Into the elevator we went.

I remember looking at the policemen in the elevator. They had holstered guns they kept touching and were sweating with excitement. They wanted to kill someone. We stopped at the fourth floor. I heard shooting and for the first time smelled tear gas. Like a whiff of lemon pie.

Another warning from Chief Chisholm to stay on and get off on the eleventh floor and keep away from four as he and his men stepped off. I was alone in the elevator and pressed six. I was about to begin my life as a press photographer.

From the sixth floor, I could still hear shots fired two floors below. Pulling out my hidden camera, I ran down the fire stairs to the forbidden fourth.

The smell of tear gas again, and I ran down the hall toward a pair of large shoes sticking out face down from an adjoining corridor. Was it a body? My heart was pounding.

The body turned out to be a news photographer with a press card sticking from the band on his fedora. He had a large and expensive Speed Graphic camera resting before him and an unlit cigar in his mouth.

I plunked down beside him, my little plastic camera looking very cheap.

Who are you? he asked.

"I’m Ron Laytner, and I work for the Toronto Telegram," I replied, unaware he was the Telegram’s chief photographer.

How long have you been with the paper?

Thank God I answered correctly. Ray McFadden, twenty-five years my senior, never lied in all the decades I would know him. He was a straight arrow his entire life and would become my mentor and a best friend for years.

Just a couple of hours.

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Ray McFadden and his Speed Graphic camera

Satisfied, he introduced himself and explained what was going on.

"There’s a man with a gun at the end of the corridor. He’s been shooting down at people in the street. This whole corridor is filled with policemen afraid of stepping into the open; they’ve unlocked all the rooms on either side and are getting ready to rush the gunman when he runs out of ammunition.

A lot of the shooting has been police firing tear gas into the corner window near him, but the gas isn’t working. The wind keeps blowing it out.

I asked him during lulls in the shooting if he could do me a favor.

I just bought this camera. How do I take pictures? He placed his cigar in his mouth, and as we lay on the floor, he took my dinky camera in his hands and pointed out, Your camera is now set for far-off scenes like the mountain showing. See the two men in silhouette talking? That is a medium shot. The one face is a close-up … Here—he moved the little lever—you set the camera to medium. Do you have flashbulbs?

I pulled one from my pocket and handed it to him.

"You stick a flashbulb into this little hole on the flashgun of the camera, but make sure you have a good electrical connection. You’ve got to rub the bottom of the bulb on your wet tongue to make sure.

First you cock the shutter like this. Then you put in a flashbulb, remembering to lick it first. After you take a picture, you must remember to eject the old bulb, then you advance the film by turning this knob until you see the number two. Then for the next shot, you do it all over again.

The camera was loaded and ready.

I felt much better. I had seen the movie The Front Page and thought this was normal; this was how newspaper photographers acted.

I jumped to my feet.

What are you doing? asked McFadden, alarmed.

I’m going to take a front page picture!

In a moment, I was running down the hall, missing the grabbing hands of policemen reaching into the corridor from either side trying to stop me, voices warning I was about to die.

I reached the end of the corridor and turned right into an open door. He was standing inside and turned toward me.

The gunman was totally surprised. He was holding a very long shotgun. There was a mix of spent shell casings and tear gas canisters on the floor.

I aimed the camera and took a flash picture.

He raised the gun and aimed at me.

I jumped back around the doorjamb.

Bam!

Plaster bits splattered off the corridor wall behind me. The air was filled with smoke. He knew he’d missed me. Would he come into the corridor to finish me off?

There was a public bathroom next to his room. I ran inside hoping he wouldn’t follow me, and he didn’t.

Inside, I ejected the flashbulb.

I pulled out a new one, licked it, and plugged it in.

What next?

Oh yeah.

I cocked the shutter.

I remembered to advance the film to two.

I waited for a sound. I heard another powerful shot on the other side of the wall.

I poked my head into the corridor. He wasn’t in the hallway. I stepped out toward his door again. This time I took a picture of him loading the shotgun with more shells.

He was muttering and gasping from the fumes. The gas wasn’t as heavy in the hallway, and I could see him clearly. He was wearing just pants and was barefoot.

Everything seemed in slow motion. Snot was coming out of his nose and down his red and sweating cheeks. His hair was soaked. His eyes were rolling and half-closed from the tear gas.

I took another picture. He raised the shotgun. Police were screaming down the corridor, Get the hell out of there!

As I jumped away from his open doorway, he fired at where I’d been again.

Bam! Plaster bits and powder smoke filled the air.

Scrambling back to the bathroom, I ejected the flashbulb. Licked a new bulb and stuck it in. Cocked the shutter.

Moved the film counter to three and waited to hear another shot.

Nothing … nothing at all. There was only silence. Was he dead?

I waited for a bit. Then I made my mistake. My camera was ready. I wanted to take another picture.

I cautiously looked out the restroom door again and slowly and quietly inched my way toward his door.

He was waiting just inside for me.

His gun aimed directly at my chest.

I stood motionless, choking on tear gas, waiting to die, and closed my watering eyes for the last time. I wasn’t going to be a news photographer after all. There was an explosion behind him, and more tear gas filled the corridor.

I waited and waited and finally opened my eyes for a final look. He was standing there still aiming.

Then the madman did something strange. Perhaps he took pity on me. He looked into my frightened eyes and shook his head sadly.

He decided not to kill me.

He took a step forward and slammed the door shut.

I didn’t know what to do next.

Suddenly a cursing plainclothes cop ran up the hall and grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and ran me down the hall backwards.

A couple of detectives with riot guns and wearing gas masks ran by us in the corridor into the smoke-filled area.

6AFordhoteldrawingdone.jpg

Back up the hallway came the sounds of gunfire. There was a commotion as a bunch of policemen started crawling up the corridor with riot guns and pistols out, aiming my way.

Again, I ejected the flashbulb. Licked and stuck in another.

Moved the film counter to four.

Cocking the shutter, I stepped into the corridor, and took a flash picture of startled policemen crawling toward me, guns aiming, ready to shoot. A detective shouted, Don’t fire! He probably saved me from being shot.

They jumped to their feet and came running up the corridor. I fired off another picture.

Someone shouted, He’s dead!

The corridor now filled with cops stepping over one another to get a better look. No one was paying any attention to me.

I took a picture of the shotgun-riddled hallway wall that had taken the shotgun blasts instead of me.

Suddenly, Ray McFadden was at my side. He grabbed me round the waist and said, Let’s get out of here!

Ray steered me out a window and onto a fire escape.

He half-carried, half-dragged me down the metal steps to the street. He was afraid, he explained, the cops would confiscate my camera.

Ray shoved me into the front seat of his radio-equipped car, reported in, and raced over to the Telegram.

I sat on the hard bench under the clock and waited while McFadden developed my pictures.

The big room was filling with reporters and editors as daylight arrived. I sat there anxiously as the Telegram came to life. Had my pictures come out? Ray came up from the darkroom with a smile. They look great, kid, he said as he hurried over to the picture editors.

Then Ray went home.

There was now a giant man sitting where Doug Steubing sat the night before. His name was Art Cole, and everyone seemed terrified of him. He was the city editor.

He was busy doing the hundreds of things a city editor did, making sure the newspaper would come out correct and on time. But I didn’t know any of that yet.

I couldn’t wait any longer. I marched over to his desk and asked how my pictures had turned out. Art Cole, paused, trying, I would realize later, to decide if he would punch, kick, or stomp me.

He controlled himself and said, We are using four pictures.

A man with a red moustache who I later learned was top reporter Andrew McFarlane pulled me away. He explained the city editor was arranging the last pages of the paper. He told me not to bother Mr. Cole. He might hurt me.

Flushed with success, I indignantly approached the city editor again, wanting to know how much I would be paid.

Art Cole closed his eyes, clenched his fists, and growled, Twelve dollars! It was thrilling. That came to three dollars a picture, a fortune. My camera had paid for itself. But now the city editor was glaring at me, and I was led away.

I sat for another hour.

Finally on my third intrusion, I came in behind the city editor, touched him on the shoulder, and demanded to know when I would be paid. Art Cole jumped up, grabbed my arm, marched me over to the elevator, and ejected me from the building.

I had made a bad first impression on the city editor, which I hoped he would forget, but he never did.

I paced the street outside for a few hours, and then when the trucks began streaming out with the day’s first edition, I bought three copies of the newspaper and went home deliriously happy. I was a success. I had made the front page. I picked up my car and went home.

Thanks. He was twenty-two, and I was twenty-one. His young life ended the night my life began as a newsman. Zarano Borg, a Maltese laborer, was the gunman in the Ford Hotel. I wish to thank him now for sparing my life.

123755.png

Note: I kept a front page and page 3 clipping of the Telegram newspaper of that day, but they finally fell apart with age some twenty or thirty years ago. Researching this book, I located a microfilmed copy of the late home edition.

The newspaper had several editions a day. My picture of the twenty-two-year-old gunman on the front page was taken off the Home Metro full edition on the next press run that day. An editor (maybe the publisher’s wife) thought it was in poor taste to show a crazy person.

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Detective displays shooter’s gun—bottom left

When I saw this picture of Borg’s shotgun, I recalled how unusually long it was. Police said that he had jammed the muzzle of the shotgun to his stomach to end his life.

Impossible! Look at the length of the gun!

He could have killed me or others in the hotel, but he didn’t.

Fired from his construction job, depressed and broke, he hadn’t shot anybody. Borg committed suicide by cop, something the public knew little about in those days.

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2 Radio Days

I EXPLAINED I COULDN’T go home until I got the job.

Four years later, I was walking along Harbord Street in Toronto with my grandfather when something strange happened.

Dozens of cars pulled over to the curb, drivers opening their windows wide and turning up the volume of their radios so pedestrians could hear the big news.

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CBC broadcasting tower

My grandfather told me to stay safely on the sidewalk and walked over to a car. He returned with tears in his eyes, very upset.

President Roosevelt is dead, he told me. It’s very big news!

That upright radio at grandfather’s house had me hooked.

News that could stop people from driving on the street! That was powerful. I wanted to see the world, and the urge ran through my veins and thoughts during all my early years.

In 1951, at seventeen, I told my mother I wanted to get a job as a truck driver. I could travel and see Canada and America. She didn’t like the idea at all. Instead Mother showed me a tiny advertisement in Canada’s biggest newspaper, the prestigious Toronto Star. There was a job opening as a copy boy at the Canadian Press radio division on Jarvis Street.

The building housing Broadcast News stood in the shadow of the giant CBC broadcasting tower. In my farthest dreams, I didn’t imagine that I’d be asked two years later to climb to the top of the tower, get stuck there, and need to be rescued.

Inside, I stood in line for a long time with about eighty other teenagers. I carefully filled in my application form, embarrassed that I had nothing to note about previous experience. Then I walked a long way to a bus and transferred to an electric streetcar. In about an hour, I was home.

Did you get the job? Mother asked.

They said they would get in touch with me.

Then you get right back there and apply again, she ordered.

It turned into a very embarrassing and tedious job. I went through all the steps again and came back home an hour later only to be sent back again and warned I could not come home until I got the job.

This time the man in charge stopped the line and said, Hey! Haven’t I seen you before? This must be three or four times you’ve been in here applying.

I explained I couldn’t go home until I got the job.

He smiled, clapped me on the shoulder, and announced loudly, Okay, fellows. The job has been taken. You can all go home.

The Canadian Press was Canada’s version of the Associated Press. It ran stories feeding newspapers and radio stations with almost everything there was to read or hear in those days.

My first job at Canadian Press consisted of bringing coffee or tea to six editors, but one editor didn’t want any. He had a bottle of whiskey and drank small amounts all night until he fell into a deep sleep. That’s when I would go over the stories to be written and get them in order. The editor with a drinking problem helped me learn to write.

Our offices were in a line of old buildings beside a big new building housing the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s CBC Television studios. I often watched early shows being shot live—no allowed mistakes or backup filming in those days.

I had a friend in Canadian Press, another copy boy with a name I have long forgotten. He was making an absolute fortune writing scripts used weekly on CBC early television shows. He was being paid $900 per script at a time when you could buy a new car for $1,200.

He was just about to begin teaching me how to write scripts when something terrible happened. Rick (I think that was his first name) was in an elevator at the television building when it suddenly stopped.

He told his fellow passengers not to worry, was hoisted up to a small door in the ceiling, wriggled through, and was just about to pull everyone to the next floor when the elevator suddenly started.

Screaming, Rick was carried up and crushed against the roof. That tragedy changed my life and his. He died young and I never wrote scripts for shows.

I did produce news and feature segments and was often interviewed, but Rick has forever remained in my memory.

Then we moved to a new building.

My first day there was almost my last. There were twelve parking spots in front of the modern Canadian Press building on Toronto’s wide University Avenue.

I noticed one spot on the end was usually empty. After work, I dashed home and went to a printer. I had a red-letter-on-white windshield sign made up: Press—Official Vehicle of the Canadian Press. Next day, I parked in the empty spot with the sign on my car.

An hour later, the president of the Canadian Press, one-legged Gillis Purcell, (he lost a leg as a war correspondent) spoke over the loudspeaker to the entire floor: I see something very clever in the parking lot. It’s a press card. Who was bright enough to do that?

When I proudly raised my hand, he furiously limped over and screamed, You bloody idiot! You’ve parked in my spot. Get your car out before I set it on fire!

He was a tough man, but he didn’t fire me.

A few years later, he was the featured speaker at the ceremony in which I won the National Newspaper Award, Canada’s Pulitzer Prize. He mentioned the press card incident again but spoke nicely about my unrestrained ambition, saying he knew I’d get somewhere.

Promoted to full editor at Broadcast News, I worked all night in the new building assembling radio reports about sports, cooking, farming, and the news itself for announcers across Canada. I spent hours when not working at CP driving around with a tape recorder, looking for stories that I offered to radio stations. I was building contacts.

One night, calamity struck! I finished my hours of intensive work early and left for breakfast. An hour later, I returned to find that a cleaning lady had scooped up all the work on my desk and tossed it into the incinerator.

I tried not to panic. I had sixty minutes to replace the irreplaceable. There would be no second chance. I would be fired!

In desperation, I ran to the filing cabinets and pulled out a complete script dated one year earlier. Heart thumping, I raced over to the hungry telex machines and fearfully sent it out to radio stations across Canada. Incredibly, there were no complaints.

People woke, showered, ate breakfast, and listened to news features a year old. Apparently no one even noticed. And I kept my job.

Over the Falls

Hanging around Toronto radio station CKEY gave me the chance to find new stories. One came from a relative, Murray Steinberg.

Murray was a promoter, and his latest project was publicizing daredevil Red Hill Jr., who was getting ready to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

Red Hill lived in the shadow of his famous father, a river man who rescued hundreds of people from the Niagara River and was a longtime hero of Niagara Falls, New York, and Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Steinberg’s job was to get Red Hill Jr. as much publicity as possible. And here I was working part-time with CKEY, one of the largest radio stations in Canada.

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Laytner, Red Hill Jr., Steinberg

I quickly arranged for an interview with Murray and Red Hill Jr. Don Insley, the station manager, made the arrangements. I would be on the air live for the first time.

Someone took a picture, and I didn’t see it again for forty years. I looked twelve years old. Red Hill Jr., who was thirty-eight, looked absolutely bored and was playing with a pencil.

What Murray didn’t know was that Red Hill Jr. talked with me often and alone. Maybe he was trying to stall going over the falls, but he kept telling me of the fame to be earned if I went over Niagara Falls with him.

He had a new kind of barrel, very inexpensive to make. He gladly would make a second new barrel for me.

The daredevil decided to go over the falls on August 5, 1951. He didn’t have much money or backers, so he constructed a cheap barrel, put together unlike any before it.

The Thing, as Red Hill named it, was made of large heavy-duty inner tubes lashed together by wide canvas webbing. All of it was wrapped in thick fish netting, painted silver, and with the name The Thing painted on it.

This new kind of barrel will float, Ron, and if I hit a rock will just bounce off. I can make a second barrel for you, and we can go over together, he’d quietly urged me when his promoter, my relative, wasn’t around. If my mother heard of any of this, she would have shot us both.

I began to think about his idea and must admit the fame part seemed very attractive. I’d be in the history books.

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Red Hill inside The Thing

Courtesy Niagara Falls Public Library

I was there when pictures were taken of him and The Thing at the Niagara gorge.

But the first moment I looked at the raging Niagara River and felt the awesome power of its water moving at over forty miles per hour, and then the fog shrouded edge of the falls, my sanity flooded back in an instant.

The whole idea was crazy. There was no way I could be talked into such madness. I was looking for excitement not death.

And so Red Hill Jr. climbed into his rubber barrel, made sure the netting was securely holding it all together, waved once and smiled, and was pushed into the Niagara rapids.

The Thing moved toward the lip of the Horseshoe Falls, and then suddenly everything went wrong.

Red’s rubber inner tube barrel swung slowly to the left and stopped on the wrong side of the falls, trapped among some rocks at the very edge of the drop.

People thought they could see him trying from its inside to shake the barrel free so it could take the plunge. He stayed that way for two agonizing hours. He must have been terrified. There was no way to save him.

He’d needed more backing money. If he’d placed rescue hoist handles on the tube barrel, perhaps a very brave person like his dead father or someone as brave as Red Hill Jr. himself, dangling from a rope from a helicopter, might have plucked him up from the edge of the falls. Red Hill Jr. was doomed. He’d be going over the rocky side of the falls.

Finally The Thing moved slowly to the edge of the falls and, with a last moment of hesitation, tipped over and began the 160-foot fall. Witnesses on the other side reported seeing the rubber barrel crashing directly onto rocks and the inner tubes breaking and separating. No sign of Red Hill Jr.

The broken body of the daredevil drifted near the Maid of the Mist ferry dock the next morning.

The lower part of his body was crushed, and his forehead had a deep cut. He was buried at Fairview Cemetery in Niagara Falls, Ontario, near his father.

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Niagara Falls Photo by Andrew Porteus

I found out later what a remarkable man Red was. He had helped his father in twenty-eight rescues of people trapped on the Niagara River rapids. He brought out twenty-nine bodies on his own. He also assisted in the recovery of 177 dead bodies of those who drowned or committed suicide. By then, over three thousand people had taken their lives at Niagara Falls. I’m glad I wasn’t one of them.

Postscript: After Red Jr. died so horribly, the premier of Ontario, Leslie Frost, decreed that anyone committing an act of stunting within the properties of the Niagara Parks would be arrested.

His edict lasted many years, but in 2011, a stunter, with permission, pulling himself over Niagara Falls on a wire line, got stuck midway. Struggling to free his harness, he died on the spot of a heart attack.

In 2012, Nik Wallenda of the famous daredevil wire walkers walked successfully on a high wire across the Niagara Falls. As for me, I went on to live a long life of excitement, keeping away from water … except when my airliner crashed into a river in Africa.

First World Scoop

In 1954, while working days at Canadian Press, I moved into radio at night part-time at CKEY in Toronto. I was a newsroom assistant, the lowest job at the station, but it was a start.

The war in Vietnam was going very badly for the French forces. One night a rumor began that the French