Meet Leonard Cohen's Mystery Double

 

Just when I thought I'd reached the end of the trail in my quest for 'truth and closure", yesterday I stumbled on this LIFE Magazine image purporting to be of Leonard on Hydra in the fall of 1960. The caption states: "Leonard Cohen walking on a street near his vacation home in Hydra, Greece, October 1960. James Burke/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images."

In fact, I'm pretty sure that's the terrace of Leonard's house on Hydra - with the front door on the left and the library door on the right. However the man holding the keys is not Leonard. He looks like an actor hired to impersonate Cohen for the LIFE feature with the photo spread that was shot in October 1960, but never actually ran in the magazine. Longtime Hydra resident and Australian novelist George Johnston had written for LIFE, and allegedly was about to be interviewed, but for unknown reasons the feature was cancelled. Or so they say at the Leonard Cohen Forum where the photos were first unveiled in 2011.

Many photos were shot on Hydra, all dated October 1, 1960. Very few that I have seen are of George Johnston. Many, on the other hand, show Leonard playing his guitar, standing at the wharf in Kamini with Marianne and a group of friends, or riding a mule up the trail to the monastery of Prophitis Ilias. You might be forgiven for thinking LIFE travelled to Hydra to document the world of Leonard Cohen, who at the time was an obscure young poet with only one book to his credit, published by a small press at McGill - whereas George Johnston was an internationally acclaimed novelist and former war correspondent, who also happened to be a friend of Cohen's.

George Johnson on Hydra.

Marianne on mule-back, but that's not Leonard behind her.

The real Leonard Cohen, with Marianne, George, Charmian (R-L)

The real Leonard with Charmian Johnston.

That mule-back photo above is fake, but not very clear. So here's one that's even more fake, supposedly of Marianne and Leonard on that same outing in 1960. Absolutely fake. It's not either of them. Were they making a bio-pic with actors? What was going on?

The road to Prophitis Ilias. The Double rides ahead of an unknown woman.

Doesn't quite make sense, does it? Many of the LIFE photos of Leonard Cohen taken that day are of him, but others are of the unidentified Doppleganger who, to my knowledge, has never been outed until now. Just take a look and see for yourself. 

In the first place, this interloper is handsomer than Leonard. He's also slightly hairier, better built, with a less expressive face. His hands - particularly his thumbs - stand out as thicker and less elongated than Cohen's. He reminds me a bit of Keanu Reeves - in his facial blankness, that is. Taken altogether, he looks like an upgraded version more in line with standards of male perfection.

This raises lots of questions, but the biggest one is what's he doing on Hydra pretending to be Leonard Cohen in 1960? Why would a Canadian poet who isn't famous yet be gifted with a Double? What were they thinking and planning back then, that we've never been told about? What agenda had come into play?

More than anything I've come across so far, this Double demolishes the official Life Story that has built up around Leonard, as propagated by  biographers like Sylvie Simmons and Ira Nadel. That narrative goes that Leonard wrote and sang his way, slowly, step by step, to gradual fame that first blossomed in the mid-sixties and then, through a combination of lonely discipline, devotion to his craft and a winning personality, made it to the heights of the music world, becoming one of the great composers of the last century. All true, up to a point -- but some of it isn't.

No one who is not famous has a double who stands in for him for photos in LIFE Magazine - and Leonard, definitely, was not famous in 1960. But he had powerful friends, like Jacob Rothschild, and CIA director Allen Dulles. So who was this handsome mystery man holding the keys to Leonard's house? He appears to have come for the shoot, after which he is never seen again. Except on Leonard's Greek drivers' license (which according to Marianne Ihlen also served as a residence permit) where he appears in the characteristic military-style shirt and haircut we associate with our poet. And there's "Leonard Cohen - Kanadas" and the date of birth 1934 - for all to see.

If this were a real Greek residence permit, it would need to have an entry and exit date -

Sorry, but that's not Leonard - that's the Man with Keys on the Terrace. His ears are too flat, his features too regular. Even in his most flattering photos, Leonard never looked like that. 

 

Leonard, early 1960s.

The real Leonard never needed a Greek driver's license because he lived on Hydra, which had no cars, only donkeys, horses and mules. When he travelled into Athens by boat, he took cheap local taxis to get around; buses or trains if he wanted to travel to places like Delphi or Epidaurus.

False Leonard -- let's call him "Flennard" -- needed a car in the autumn of 1960 - if only to drive Marianne back to Norway where her 9-month-old son was parked with his grandmother. Marianne recounts this long trip north, through Yugoslavia and across the Alps and over to Paris, in her memoir So Long, Marianne. It's almost like a scene in a movie, with the lovers traipsing around Paris, at one point Marianne even threatening leap to her death from a window, until Leonard (or Flennard) embraced her, and she "cried herself out." On arrival at Marianne's mother's house, he did the "gentlemanly" thing by checking himself into a hotel for the night. 

Where was Leonard? I'm guessing he took off sometime after the hootenanny photos were shot, and spent time in the CIA training camps where Allen Dulles' CIA Cuban invasion team were training for the Bay of Pigs fiasco the following April.

I'm also guessing the unwanted publicity Leonard received in April 1961 may have had something to do with why the LIFE feature and photo spread never saw the light of day.

Different impostor? Note the 'hidden hand." 

Leonard told a friend, "I have a double who does all the bad things." 

I'd go on to speculate that a Double was created in 1960 for at least two reasons. One, because someone at LIFE headquarters had decided to invest in Leonard's future career as a pop star and they wanted a better-looking image for their pages.

Two, because he was heading off on a dangerous mission and, in case he was killed during the failed coup, arrangements had to be made to deposit his pay in some offshore bank account and compensate his loved ones?

The real Leonard was often elusive, but having his own Doppelganger at age 25? He wasn't even famous. Had he signed up for secret work that required him to disappear?

Think of this: he'd only been on Hydra six months when the LIFE magazine crew arrived. His date of arrival was April 13, 1960. By May, he'd established a cover: he'd met Marianne and her five-month old son, Axel Joachim. By August, Leonard was babysitting baby Axel, while Marianne was away in Athens. Then, in a strange sudden move, Marianne put her 8-month old son on a plane to Oslo. On September 27, Leonard bought the house at the top of Donkeyshit Lane for $1500, paid for with an inheritance from his grandmother. While he wrote, Marianne says she divided her time between his house  and her own place behind the port in Kala Pigadia. But three days after the house was bought, on October 1, LIFE Magazine shot photos of Leonard playing in a hootenanny at Douskos' Taverna. The double shows up in the series, with Marianne riding mules up Kala Pigadia. 

That's definitely Marianne at the head of the mule train in the photo - she was there, yet nowhere in her memoir does she mention being there when those photos were shot. Why the secrecy? And why was LIFE creating a fake story around a group of artists on a Greek island?

There's the double, holding the key, coming out of Leonard's front door on Hydra, wearing Leonard's trademark clothing.  Had Leonard already left for America on October 1? .

Instead of the LIFE shoot, Marianne Ihlen describes an uneventful autumn together with Leonard on Hydra that year - minus her baby son, who was with her mother in Oslo. What was the point of sending her baby away, just as life had settled into a comfortable routine? She says she and Leonard left the island in November and drove north to Paris in the Karmann Ghia she and Axel had bought the year before. But the face in the photo on his Greek driver's license is not Leonard -- it's the double. 

Therefore he, not Leonard, probably drove Marianne back to Norway in November.  It would be easy to introduce the stranger to her mother as 'Leonard.'

Otherwise, that autumn, there would have been two Leonards on Hydra -- needless to say, it would have aroused suspicion.

That's weird, to say the least. It's not what we have been told. Marianne must have gone along with the whole charade, including the trip north with the faux Leonard. An unpublished poem in her memoir appears to describe the real Leonard's sudden departure by night:

For M.

I stayed awake to see you sleep
Some faces die of sleep
Mouths go limp
Gone eyes leave a corpse behind
Maybe I could say goodbye
But you were perfect
You were whole
Your mouth was saying
I won't ever hurt you
Eyelids saying
Be live be still
I got as far as the window
Something was wrong
The houses were too white
Cliffs too steep
What were the yards doing so clear
I wheeled around
I knew I had made a mistake
I tried to walk I ran
Everywhere I bumped my head
I was picking up prayerbooks
I kissed your sleep

1960

(Previously unpublished poem by Leonard Cohen)


 ************

Leonard Cohen had landed in London for the first time, in December 1959, moved into a boarding house where he began to write a novel, and soon got introduced to Jacob Rothschild.

That same autumn, Lee Harvey Oswald, future alleged assassin of John F. Kennedy, defected to Russia where he would remain for two and half years. Oswald likely was a double agent employed by the CIA to spy on the Russians. He arrived in Moscow on October 16, 1959.

This card, which connects Oswald to the CIA, was used to forge a selective service card for Oswald's double, Alex James Hidell, while Oswald was in Russia as an American civilian defector. Later he worked in New Orleans, posing as a left-wing Castro supporter, while hanging out with anti-Castro extremists. While Oswald was in Russia, in 1960-61 his alleged double was involved with activities connected to the Bay of Pigs invasion, including collecting armoured vehicles for CIA-sponsored landing on Cuba in April, 1961,


In April 1961, almost exactly a year after he had landed on Hydra, a bearded Leonard Cohen was arrested in Havana, Cuba, as a suspected CIA agent. This must have been the real Leonard Cohen, because he wrote a poem about his experience. He was released and escaped the country on a plane he managed to sneak onto at the airport. The incident got into the newspapers, embarrassing for Leonard. He claimed to have been in Havana as a tourist - although at the time he was short of money and could not afford to live on Hydra. His arrival in Cuba just happened to coincide with the American invasion.

***********




FURTHER RESEARCH:

Tina Foster, The Splitting Image: Exposing the Secret World of Doubles, Impostors and Replacements

John Armstrong, on how the CIA created and managed Lee Harvey Oswald's double identity.

H.P. Albarelli Jr. on Oswald's childhood in MKULTRA 

  

Two Went to Sleep

Two went to sleep
almost every night
one dreamed of mud
one dreamed of Asia
visiting a zeppelin
visiting Nijinsky
Two went to sleep
one dreamed of ribs
one dreamed of senators
Two went to sleep
two travellers
The long marriage
in the dark
The sleep was old
the travellers were old
one dreamed of oranges
one dreamed of Carthage
Two friends asleep
years locked in travel
Good night my darling
as the dreams waved goodbye
one travelled lightly
one walked through water
visiting a chess game
visiting a booth
always returning
to wait out the day
One carried matches
one climbed a beehive
one sold an earphone
one shot a German
Two went to sleep
every sleep went together
wandering away
from an operating table
one dreamed of grass
one dreamed of spokes
one bargained nicely
one was a snowman
one counted medicine
one tasted pencils
one was a child
one was a traitor
visiting heavy industry
visiting the family
Two went to sleep
none could foretell
one went with baskets
one took a ledger
one night happy
one night in terror
Love could not bind them
Fear could not either
they went unconnected
they never knew where
always returning
to wait out the day
parting with kissing
parting with yawns
visiting Death till
they wore out their welcome
visiting Death till
the right disguise worked

Leonard Cohen ~ 1964