Ken Slavin "Dear Folks": The Webster Letters from Arabia 1944-1959 emailed me the other day saying that his mother, Susan, aunt, Judy and grandmother, Mildred Webster were all in the film The Kingdom.
In the 2007 film, Special Agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) assembles his team (Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper, Jason Bateman) for a mission inside Saudi Arabia to find and capture a terrorist responsible for a deadly attack on Americans. However, the agents find themselves strangers in a strange land until a Saudi police captain takes them under his wing and helps them navigate the streets of Riyadh.
In one section of the film that describes the early days of Aramco development on the Arabian Gulf, there is color movie footage of Ken's mother running on the Ras Tanura beach (age 5 and topless), her sister, Judy, and his grandmother, Mildred, wearing a turban on her head. You also see the black baby lamb the men of Ras Tanura presented Ken's mother and aunt when they first landed in Dhahran in 1946. In one chapter of Dear Folks, Ken describes his mother and her sister as one the first children in the Ras Tanura community immediately after the end of World War II. All the men were lonely for their families and gave Susan and Judy the lamb.
Judy Webster, left, and her sister, Susan, running into the surf at Ras Tanura on the Persian Gulf, Spring 1946. Their house is visible on the horizon behind them and seated on the beach are their mother, Mildred, and two unidentified Aramco workers. Just behind the girls is the baby black lamb presented to them as a welcome gift by the men assigned to Ras Tanura.
Photograph by Aramco, courtesy Susan Webster Slavin