From Belgium to Broadway

A button found amongst the possessions of the late Raymond Massey was donated by his estate to the Canadian War Museum in 2009. Unfortunately, the donor was not able to provide any provenance and did not know how Massey came to own this piece of history. The button, which was taken at Ypres as a battlefield souvenir from an unknown German soldier’s uniform, has touched the lives of a prominent general and two gifted and prolific Canadian actors before coming to be in the care of the museum. Its story reveals the intersection of lives touched by the war. Resume : En 2009, un membre de la succession du regrette Raymond Massey remit au Musee canadien de la guerre un bouton trouve dans ses possessions. Malheureusement, le donateur ne fut pas en mesure d’en fournir la provenance exacte et ne savait pas du tout comment Massey avait pu acquerir ce morceau d’histoire. Le bouton, recueilli sur l’uniforme d’un soldat allemand inconnu, apres la bataille d’Ypres, avait un lien avec la vie d’un eminent general et celle de deux acteurs, doues et prolifiques, avant de se retrouver confie aux soins d’un musee. Son histoire illustre comment des vies peuvent se recouper sous les effets de la guerre. Doucette German button.indd 63 6/14/2010 11:56:59 AM 1 : From Belgium to Broadway Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2010 64 war, returned to Canada in 1919, but the war had taken its toll on his health and he died in 1922. Presumably, Watson passed his souvenir button on to Lucile Watson as indicated by the note on the button’s box, having felt it was an important piece of history. The relationship between David and Lucile remains unclear. The two were born in Quebec City ten years apart, 1869 and 1879 respectively, but a search of census records proved fruitless in determining their connection.2 She lived in Ottawa for 18 years, until moving to New York at the age of 21.3 Despite the questions raised by the official records and secondary source biographies, the relationship between the two must have gone beyond the coincidence of sharing a birthplace, a last name, and a button. The most probable explanation is that they were cousins. In 1900, Lucile Watson moved to New York City to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and pursue a career as an actress. In 1903 she married O t t a w a n a t i v e time and in her generation,” observed one film historian, “Lucile Watson was one of the grandest grand ladies in Hollywood.”7 Perhaps David Watson gave the German soldier’s button to Lucile because of her personal connections to the military. Her father had been an officer in the British Army and had a long military career, including coming out of retirement for service in the North W e s t R e b e l l i o n while she was a still a child.8 Her first husband, R o c k l i f f e Fellowes, had s e r v e d f o r two years with t h e G o v e r n o r G e n e r a l ’ s F o o t G u a r d s b e f o r e v o l u n t e e r i n g f o r t h e Canadian Expeditionary Force (Siberia). In September 1919, while en route to Vladivostok, aboard the Empress of Japan, Fellowes and two shipmates produced a small theatrical piece to entertain the officers’ mess – and one of these shipmates was Raymond Massey. Massey later wrote: “Cliff Fellowes had quite a standing as a leading man in what was then a budding Hollywood. He was also married to a well-known actress, Lucile Watson, whose brother, Major-General Sir David Watson, was commanding the 4th Canadian Division.”9 As it turns out, Massey was incorrect about the Watsons being siblings. His error nevertheless indicates that they shared a strong enough familial connection that an outsider mistook them as siblings. Although we cannot say for certain the details of how Raymond and Lucile came to know each other and how the button came to be in Raymond’s possession (she receives only a brief mention in his second autobiography), we do know that even without Massey having met her and fellow actor, Rockcliffe Fellowes,4 to whom she remained married for 25 years before the couple divorced.5 Lucile Watson’s acting career spanned over 50 years, included 52 Broadway productions, 34 motion pictures, various television roles, and earned accolades including an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Watch on the Rhine (1943). 6 “In her CW M 1 99 40 00 188 35 This box, containing a button from the uniform of captured German soldier was originally presented to LieutenantColonel David Watson. He presented it to Lucile Watson but it eventually ended up in the collection of the Canadian War Museum after being donated by the estate of Raymond Massey. Doucette German button.indd 64 6/14/2010 11:57:01 AM 2 Canadian Military History, Vol. 19 [2010], Iss. 2, Art. 6 http://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol19/iss2/6 65 husband on a troop ship to Siberia, the two had plenty in common. Both were expatriate Canadians who became notable actors in both film and theatre, with dozens of productions to their credit, and they shared the distinction of receiving Academy Award nominations (Massey was nominated for Best Actor in 1940 for his role as Abraham Lincoln in Abe Lincoln in Illinois). Although Watson and Massey never appeared in a production together, they were both active on Broadway throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. In 1939, Massey and Watson appeared on Broadway at the same time, in different shows but in theatres that backed onto one another (the Plymouth and the Broadhurst). The two actors may also have crossed paths as a result of their political interests, as both are described in their biographies as political conservatives.10 None of these commonalities offer any explanation as to why Lucile would have given to Raymond a button cut off of a German prisoner’s uniform in the First World War. Perhaps Raymond’s experiences prior to becoming an actor prompted Lucile to give him the button. Raymond Massey was the second son of the esteemed Massey family of Toronto and the younger brother of Charles Vincent Massey. His first career was soldiering, entering into the Canadian Officers’ Training Corps at Victoria College at the University of Toronto in 1914. Frustrated with the slow pace of progress there, he finagled a commission as a lieutenant in the 9th Battery of the Canadian Field Artillery (CFA) early in 1915, and by January 1916 he found himself in France. 11 The next stop was Belgium, where he was assigned to the 13th Battery, 4th Brigade, CFA in the Ploegsteert area, “where some on the heaviest fighting had raged in the first and second battles of Ypres in 1914 and 1915.”12 He survived some very heavy fighting in France and Belgium but was listed as shell shocked after Mont Sorrel and was evacuated to Canada in August 1916, with no memory of the battle or the two weeks that followed it.13 He recovered enough to return to duty a year later, first as a gunnery instructor at Yale University, and then in 1918 as a member of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (Siberia). On this expedition, in the company of Lucile Watson’s husband, Massey was bitten by the acting “bug” which set him on course for a long and outstanding career as an actor. The German soldier’s button must have seemed to Lucile Watson an appropriate gift to give to a veteran of the Ypres battlefields – perhaps she thought he would keep it safe and have an appreciation for its story. He did indeed keep it safe, and after he passed away in 1983, his estate continued guardianship for another 26 years before passing it into the care of the Canadian War Museum. We will never know the precise circumstances under which this button traded hands. It is a relic of Lieutenant-Colonel David Watson, photographed on the Ypres battlefield during the time he commanded the 2nd Canadian Infantry Battalion. CW M 1 99 40 00 188 35 Doucette German button.indd 65 6/14/2010 11:57:01 AM 3 : From Belgium to Broadway Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2010 66 one of Canada’s most famous battles of the First World War, but its significance goes beyond the circumstances of its capture. As an artifact, it serves as a reminder that the impact of the war went well beyond the battlefields to reach the most unlikely places, long after the guns had been silenced.

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