Legend-Slayer Will Bradley Rides Yet Again-Don’t Believe All That Alexandre Dumas Nonsense About “One For All, All For One”- Leonardo DeCaprio, Jeremy Iron, Gerard Depardieu and Gabriel Byrne’s “The Man In The Iron Mask” (1998)- A Film Review, Of Sorts

By Will Bradley

Recently I started back on my now seemingly etched in stone niche of slaying undeserved, false or overblown legends like Robin Hood, Don Juan, early aviator Johnny Cielo and what I consider my greatest achievement, taking down the stinking rank Old West’s desperado bank robber and stone-cold killer Link Jones,  although it still remains to be seen if I can break the spell that the Old West has on the American imagination. I have admitted that I while I have made significant inroads into breaking my following, breaking the general public a little too from the responses our site manager has received, from most of these fakes I have been stalled, have been bush-whacked to use a term I used in the Link Jones piece in the case of Johnny Cielo, the so-called early aviation innovator and test pilot, whose spell still lingers.

The Cielo legend still lingers over the crowd that believe that Johnny hustled guns and supplies to Fidel and his band of hermanos in the hills of Cuba when it counted in the late 1950s and refuse to believe that he was nothing but a two-bit bush pilot and tourist guide. Maybe it is because the demographic of this publication, the now hallowed (and fading) generation of ’68 as Sam Lowell calls his brethren cut its teeth on Johnny’s legend linked together with their starry-eyed admiration for Fidel and Che in the old days watching according to that same ancient Sam Lowell on black and white television those guys riding into Havana on New Year’s Day, 1959. I am far too young to have even heard of Johnny Cielo until a free-lance reporter friend of mine who having been stood up by some people on another story found some guy who knew Johnny in Key West and bought his bull hook, line and sinker. Took the Johnny exploits whole based on some rummy’s DTs story that had so many holes in it that I almost didn’t have to do research on it. For example, I was able to grab the still extant copy of Johnny’s manifest on his last flight which showed him attempting to fly well-heeled passengers from Key West to Naples in Florida before the plane, a Piper Club, fell down in the Gulf of Mexico). Case closed if not the legend.

Now I have I found addition information that part of my problem for not making any inroads in the Cielo legend is that the rummy, Billy Bradley, had been interviewed by Mike Thomas, yes, that Mike Thomas who has interviewed everybody who is anybody somehow read either my reporter friend’s fluff piece on Johnny or my slash and burn on the Cielo legend and decided to investigate (or really have his people do the legwork as far I know he hasn’t done any such work for years since his ratings went from zero to a million when he exposed the famous actor Lenny Grove as a two-bit ex-convict who hustled his ass on the street to make his coffee and cakes before he hit Hollywood ). The problem for me is that letting that rummy spout his bull on the Mike Thomas Show put things up in the air, put “may or maybe not” in play rather than what really happened with documentary proof. It would not be the first time such things have obscured the truth.   

I will keep at it although I have been asked by more than one colleague why I am so intent, other than that holding on to that niche which in this cutthroat business of “you are only as good as your last piece” is not unimportant as even they recognize, on breaking myths, legends and alternative facts. Fortunately, I have another assignment today busting up an old legend that also has refused to die, the baloney about the three musketeers and their supposed exploits and their admittedly clever slogan “one for all, all for one.” Their press agent or publicity people hit pay-dirt on that gem making it that much harder to legend-bust.  That “supposed exploits ” though should alert the reader to more revelations about this crowd of fakers although as usual with this business some people will gladly keep to their silly illusions and believe the legends until the bitter end.    

This musketeer stuff is beautiful, is tailor-made to be busted. I don’t know about the reader but in high school we were required to read this Dumas stuff, The Man In The Iron Mask stuff although it had a different name and was not so unbelievable as the actual legend that has grown since that time. All the musketeers, all four, D’ Artangan (not his real name which would have conveyed the idea that he was some kind of noble, of the sword or of blood, but Jean Rous, a farmer's son in Brittany, plus three other drunks and rowdies, Artemis, Arthos, Porthos which were apparently their real names according to the records of what then was the Ministry of Interior, the cops, were sworn to serve the King of France, and not just any king in their time but the well-known autocrat Louis XIV, the so-called Sun King, philander, despot and grinder of the peasantry whose work kept him in over the top lavish luxury.  And for a long time this quaded (sic)brethren feasted off the crumbs from the king’s larder, his wine cellar mainly. This is the king, this is the crowd in a more democratic time we are supposed to root for, supposed to pay homage to their stellar defense of king, country and wine cellar with a few tavern wenches and off-hand ladies-in-waiting thrown in. Give me a break.   

Apparently though the three underling musketeers had a falling out with Lou, had been cut off from access to the wine cellar and milady’s palace bedrooms and so began the long process of staging something like a palace revolt against the monarch under a banner of “free wine, free wenches” although they masked this in some plebeian “give alms to the people and be nice.” Usual plot, and usual trick up to create that legend. That in this case “all for one, one for all,” which became the exclusive copyright of the three underlings when D’Artagnan decided to stick with the king for his own purposes. For as it turned out filial duties but more on that in a moment.

We all know what a bastard Louis XIV was, how his policies and appetites started the long train wreck that would wind up in the glorious French Revolution later in the next century. How could you possibly defend that bum of the month. That is where the iron mask deal comes in. According to legend Louis’ mother had twins one dying in childbirth leaving only bastard, bastard in more ways than one, ugly Lou. What these musketeers, Artois mainly, figured was to get a guy who looked like Lou and do a bait and switch. As it turned out Lou did have a brother Phil who looked enough like him to pass in the dark although they were not twins. Not satisfied that Phil would play along he found a guy from Brittany who was the spitting image of Lou and so after a little off-hand swash-buckling with Lou’s loyal personal guard the switch was made.

The kingdom prospered, or rather the king and his courtesans prospered, although the new Lou was as much a son of a bitch and as nasty as old Lou. The main thing is that the three musketeers took at the credit for the coup, D’Artangan stuck with the king almost to the end then realizing what a bastard Lou was switched sides. Here is the funny part, Lou was his son as it turned out since he has been going under the sheets with the Queen Mother back in the day and took a hard thrust to the heart for his majesty, his new his majesty, Phil, the rest of the guys had full access to the wine and women under the new monster. Yeah, one for all, all for one. Bullshit.