The man who would be king

Seventy years ago last month, the King of England, Edward VIII, gave up the throne to marry a twice-divorced American, Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson. I was in London at the time, and in the small office where I worked people crowded around the radio to hear his abdication speech. Two young secretaries listened to the king with tears streaming down their faces.

The king had been carrying on with Mrs. Simpson for two years, and newspapers around the world had been reporting on the affair. The English newspapers kept mum, but in the streets as well as in the drawing rooms, Edward and his mistress were a hot topic of gossip. Hundreds of U.S. newspapers arrived every day at the London offices of American companies and were read by their British employees who naturally spread the word among their families and friends. The other Americans in my office and I liked to read our newspapers on the buses and the underground, making sure we held them high enough for our fellow passengers to gaze over our shoulders at the latest stories on the king's romance.

One evening in Euston station I saw a woman pick up a copy of Time magazine at the news stand and leaf through it until she found a torn-out page. "They've censored it again," she exclaimed. Noting her American accent, I introduced myself and learned that she lived in Cumberland Terrace across the street from Mrs. Simpson. At first she and fellow residents had been excited to see the king walking around the neighborhood, but now it had become routine.

Once when I visited the Black Star picture agency on Fleet Street, I noticed a group of photos of the king's recent vacation cruise on the Adriatic Sea. "We can't use these pictures yet," the manager told me. Most were shots of Edward and Mrs. Simpson mingling with other cruise guests. Only one picture showed the two of them together—he was pulling the oars in a large rowboat while she enjoyed the ride. "Here's the picture the newspapers published," the manager said, and handed me a clipping of the king all alone in the boat. Mrs. Simpson had been airbrushed out of the picture.

A couple of weeks before the abdication story broke, I went to see "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," the Gary Cooper film. At one point Cooper announces, "I've got to go down to Mrs. Simpson's." The audience howled. Years later when I saw the movie on late-night TV, I was surprised to discover the line was no longer there. I figured a Hollywood jokester had inserted the line to amuse British audiences.