Could Clooney's 'Monuments Men' film Include Lane Faison?
When we heard that George Clooney was making a film about the Monuments Men of World War II we immediately envisioned a scene on the Williams campus. Why not? After all, the college's famed S. Lane Faison Jr. was dispatched to Europe by the OSS to help track down treasures looted by the Nazis. He rifled through Goering's art collection looking for pilfered pieces and sniffed out stolen works from the museum Hitler established in Linz.
The Monuments Men were part of a unique effort to find the cultural history of a continent that had been stolen and stashed away. Their job was to protect and return where possible priceless works of art.
According to his bio at the Monuments Men Foundation, Faison's mandate was to write the official history of how Hitler put his art collection together, for which he would earn the French Legion d'Honneur (Chevalier) in 1947. Three years later, the State Department sent him to Munich to supervise the return of art that the Nazis had plundered.
Faison died in 2006 at age 98 after having spent four decades teaching at his alma mater, and another 30 somewhat semi-retired.
So, the founding member of the "Williams Art Mafia" who trained so many museum curators after the war should surely be included in a rip-roaring WWII film?
Probably not.
Clooney's film is based on Robert Edsel's "The Monuments Men," which appears to follow a group that was part of the Army's Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section (we haven't read the book yet). Faison, who enlisted in the Navy, was part of the Art Looting Investigation Unit, which reported directly to a commission in Washington. He's not listed in the book's "cast of characters."
Still, professor Faison could have a walk-on part, a Stan Lee moment. It would have to be memorable. Who do you think could play him?
