The true story of Transatlantic's Mary Jayne and Albert
Transatlantic spoilers follow.
Fresh off the back of smash Netflix hit Unorthodox, creator Anna Winger brings to life the true story of the Marseilles-based Emergency Rescue Committee in the Netflix war drama Transatlantic.
Funded by Mary Jayne Gold's (Gillian Jacobs) vast trust fund, the ragtag group help numerous Europe's refugees, many of them Jewish artists and intellectuals, to flee the Gestapo.
In a series of Sound of Music-style scenes — although with considerably more panting and less singing — the committee use a clandestine escape route across the Pyrenees from France to Spain.
But the real-life Emergency Rescue Committee members Mary Jayne Gold, Varian Fry and Albert Hirschman were eventually forced to flee Marseilles as the Nazis' grip on France tightened.
So how much of Transatlantic is true? And what became of them after their part in the Emergency Rescue Committee?
What did Varian Fry's Emergency Rescue Committee do?
Formed by American journalist Varian, the Emergency Rescue Committee operated out of a crumbling chateau, the Villa Air-Bel, at the edge of Marseilles in the year before the United States declared war on the Nazis in 1941, as is shown in Transatlantic.
The committee recognised the threat of a clause in the Vichy government's laws that could be used to deport activists, artists and free-thinkers to Nazi Germany. Varian compiled a list of those under threat and set to work — but the committee ended up evacuating many beyond that initial list.
Transatlantic captures the continued police harassment the committee genuinely faced as they worked tirelessly to secure exit permits or false passports, where Mary Jayne's wealth proved crucial on the flourishing Marseilles black market. They then used the escape route over the Spanish border for refugees to go on to the US.
The Emergency Rescue Committee is reported to have arranged the escape of 2,000 refugees — including the writer Hannah Arendt and artist Marcel Duchamp — before Mary Jayne and Fry were pushed out of Marseilles.
What happened to Mary Jayne Gold and Albert Hirschman?
Transatlantic ends with an emotional farewell, as Mary Jayne and Albert share a tear-soaked kiss beside her plane. The Chicago heiress is then whisked out of Marseilles, while Albert stays behind.
While there's little indication the real-life Mary Jayne and Albert had a love affair during their scrappy rescue operation, the pair were genuinely forced to flee Marseilles.
The real Mary Jayne did devote a portion of her wealth and took major personal gambles to save Jewish and anti-Nazi artists after she refused to leave France when the US told citizens to do so in 1939.
At one point in Transatlantic, as Mary Jayne is accused of being a prostitute, she says: "I'm not going to apologise for using every tool at my disposal to try to save people's lives." And we see her do everything from pawning her jewellery to sleeping with a diplomat in order to help the Emergency Rescue Committee.
The real Mary Jayne did even donate her own plane to the effort and funded the rental of the group's bolthole Villa Air-Bel, where their group of influential artists and thinkers lived and worked while in limbo.
Peggy Guggenheim, who went on to marry painter Max Ernst after the pair met at the chateau, wrote in her memoir Out of This Century of arriving to find that Mary Jayne and Varian had been arrested and held on a boat for days — longer than the one afternoon that they are shown holed up on the floating makeshift jail in Transatlantic.
When she was forced to leave France in 1941, Mary Jayne returned to the US for a stint before eventually skipping back across the pond to France to settle on the Riviera after the war. She died aged 88 in 1997 at her home near Saint-Tropez, having never married.
At the time of Mary Jayne's death, the Associated Press quoted her friend and documentary maker Pierre Sauvage, saying Mary Jayne "felt that only one year in her life really mattered and it was the year she spent in Marseilles".
Meanwhile, Albert Hirschman was also forced to leave Marseille in 1941, having worked tirelessly alongside Mary Jayne and Varian. Much like in Transatlantic, Albert's false papers allowed him to fly under the radar of officials for a time, but he was eventually wanted by the Vichy police.
After narrowly dodging an arrest at the villa, Albert fled across the Pyrenees to Lisbon, before boarding a ship to New York. After a stint in the US Army's intelligence before the end of the war, Albert went on to become a highly respected economist, holding positions at Yale and Harvard University.
Albert was a faculty member at Princeton for decades before his death at the age of 97 in 2012, just months after the loss of his wife Sarah.
Transatlantic is available to stream on Netflix.
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