Mary Ellen Fuller was a pre-teen in the 1960s when her father was at the center of multiple historic events.
For her, attorney James B. Donovan’s exploits as the man who arranged for the release in 1962 of American pilot Francis Gary Powers from the Soviet Union and of Bay of Pigs detainees was somewhat normal.
Five decades later, the Alcolu native knows Donovan’s actions were anything but normal, and she and family members will see that period of their lives come to the big screen later this year when Academy Award-winner Tom Hanks stars as Fuller’s father in “Bridge of Spies.”
The film, directed by Steven Spielberg, features “quite a cast,” Fuller said recently.
“Bono’s daughter is playing my sister,” Fuller said excitedly one quiet afternoon at former Mayor Pansy Ridgeway’s home in Manning. “This movie is just about a portion of his life, just a section of it.”
Fuller was 20 when her father passed away at 53, and she was a “just a little girl when this period of time happened.”
“They will take that period, which from my perspective was when I was 8-13, and squish it into a two-hour movie,” Fuller said. “It will be fascinating to see it. I’m going in knowing that I will see is a dramatization.”
Fuller, a Brooklyn, New York native, has lived in Alcolu for eight years. Her husband’s business – repairs of commercial dryers and washers, quite large machines not equivalent to their residential counterparts – put them just three minutes from Interstate 95, and she enjoys the small town life.
“We really enjoy the area,” she said. “I’ve made great friends, like (Ridgeway), and I really enjoy the small town feel.”
The couple had previously lived in Fort Mill, where Fuller worked as director of design for Springs Industries, a $2 billion company.
But the big city of Hollywood has reminded her this year of her Brooklyn roots, and she’s excited to see that portrayed in movie theaters later this year.
“We’re excited for the premier in New York later this year,” she said. “We’re currently arranging for private screenings for my family.”
BRIDGE OF SPIES
Fuller said she initially didn’t know Spielberg was making a movie about her father, though the famous director has long-claimed in interviews that Donovan is a personal hero.
“Someone called and asked me if I was excited,” she said. “I asked about what, and they told me they were making a movie about my father. I was even more surprised when I found out Tom Hanks was playing him. I mean, you can’t get much better than that.”
Fuller said she has been equally surprised with the film’s production.
“We’ve seen bits and pieces here and there, including the trailer, and I’ve been really impressed,” she said. “Mostly at this point, we’re just excited to see it in its entirety.”
Fuller said the character based on her can be seen in the teaser.
“She’s a little girl with dark hair being held by Tom Hanks in a hallway,” said Fuller. “It’s not a huge part in the teaser, but it’s exciting to see it. My sister is a little more prominent.”
She said she’s ultimately pleased with Hanks’ portrayal of her father.
“If you watch interviews with him, or you watch the sound bites of him portraying my father, it’s almost like he knew him,” Fuller said. “He totally got James B. Donovan. When you see what Tom Hanks says about my father, you just wonder, ‘How did he do that? How did he get to the core of this person?’”
THE STORY
James B. Donovan already had experience with espionage before his involvement in the Powers affair. Five years before Powers’ release, he served as defense counsel for Col. Rudolf Abel, a Soviet spy captured in the United States ultimately convicted of three counts of conspiracy. Fuller said her father’s work helped Abel get a 45-year prison sentence at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, rather than the execution that prominent U.S. leaders were calling for.
“He was the highest-level Russian spy that the U.S. had,” Fuller said. “My father was of the opinion that as a colonel, Abel was a valuable person and that the country needed to be careful. We may have been able to use him in the future.”
And Feb. 10, 1962, Abel became the United States’ most useful tool during an exchange at on a bridge between West Berlin and Potsdam, East Germany, that saw Powers returned to the United States after nearly two years of exile in the Soviet Union.
“Powers was an American pilot who was shot down while on a recon mission over the Soviet Union,” Fuller said. “People knew about it worldwide, and it was a hot-button issue back home. It made headlines worldwide as the ‘U-2 incident,’ of course, named after the U-2 plane that Powers was flying.”
The event made already tense Cold War relations between the world’s sole superpowers even more so, and a summit in Paris was canceled shortly afterward.
And while the Powers incident may have been known worldwide, Donovan’s involvement was a complete unknown to Fuller, her siblings and even their mother.
“We thought my father was on a golfing trip in Scotland,” Fuller said. “It was so secretive that the government arranged for my father to write postcards and they had them postmarked in Scotland.”
While the family thought he was in Scotland, Donovan was really in Berlin meeting with Soviet officials.
“My father was working that entire time after the crash to get Powers’ release, and using Abel as the bargaining chip,” Fuller said. “We didn’t know until after Powers’ release two years later that he was even involved.”
The family found out from reporters.
“Someone called my mother and said, ‘Aren’t you thrilled for what your husband has accomplished?’” Fuller said. “We had no idea. I was 12. It completely changed everything.”
Donovan received the Distinguished Intelligence Medal from the United States government for his work, which didn’t stop with the Powers incident.
FAMOUS FATHER
Until the U-2 incident and her father’s involvement came to life, Fuller just knew her father as a private attorney in New York City. The Harvard Law School graduate had been a commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve, she said, and he worked for the CIA’s predecessor, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, during World War II.
“It’s the OSS that got him started in this,” Fuller said.
In his role with the OSS, Fuller’s father worked in Germany at 27 as an assistant trial counselor during the Nuremberg Trials where former Nazi officials were tried for war crimes.
“He was in charge of visual evidence, and I know that was hard for him,” Fuller said. “It was one aspect of his life that he never really talked about.”
Donovan was also involved in the release of prisoners from the Bay of Pigs Invasion, also in 1962, the year of Powers’ release. Fuller’s brother, John, traveled to Cuba with Donovan during negotiations between the United States and the communist country.
“The U.S. wasn’t speaking to Cuba at all, and then there was the whole debacle with the Bay of Pigs,” Fuller aid. “Kennedy asked my father to get involved, and he met with the parents of the men held captive. He went as a private citizen to represent the United States, and took my brother as a sign of good faith. It was a huge, huge coup to arrange the release.”
At the same time, Donovan was running for U.S. Senate from the state of New York.
“I can remember his campaign team at the home taking calls from (Fidel) Castro (dictator of Cuba),” Fuller said. “There was always a lot of variety in our home.”
That variety included visits from prominent U.S. political figures.
“Shirley Chisholm visited our home a lot,” Fuller said of the first black congresswoman, and also the first black female candidate for U.S. president.
Donovan ultimately did not win the Senate race.
“He also served as the chair of the Board of Education of New York City and as the President of the Pratt Institute, an art school in New York City,” Fuller said. “He died in 1970 while he was at Pratt.”
“It was his third heart attack,” Fuller said. “It was a combination of things. I think it was hereditary, and his brother died at 44 while a senator for New York state. I think a lot of it was life itself. I mean, looking at it, I ask myself, ‘How do you have one man do so many things in one life?’”
Fuller said she feels blessed that her father did so much in his 53 years, even if she lost him while she was just a young woman. Aside from the film, Fuller said her father’s life may be the subject of several productions coming from Able Strangers LLC. Her father’s book, “Strangers on a Bridge,” was re-released this month by Simon and Schuster.
“I just feel so blessed,” she said. “I feel like a daughter of history.”
“Bridge of Spies,” directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks, will be released Oct. 16 in theaters nationwide.
