Member-only story
If You Do Nothing Else in Life, When It Beats You Down, Please, Get Back Up
The story of “The Standing Man”
In 1957, US lawyer James B. Donovan received the most thankless task of his career: Defend Russian spy Rudolf Abel at the height of the Cold War.
Donovan was an esteemed insurance attorney and partner at his law firm. He was 41 years old, married, and had four young children. The last thing he needed was the publicity of defending the most hated man in the country — and thus becoming a close second.
Unlike the many other lawyers the government had asked before, however, Donovan did not shy away when duty came knocking on his door. He agreed to take the case.
As difficult as it would become, one thing was clear from the start: Rudolf Abel was a remarkable man; a man whose only discernible flaw was that he had carried out his profession for a country other than the one he was in.
Abel never divulged any details of his work, never lost his composure, and his only response to Donovan’s repeated inquiry, “Do you ever worry?” was, “Would it help?” At least, that’s how Mark Rylance portrayed him in the movie Bridge of Spies, a dramatization of the real events surrounding Abel’s case.
