Bangkok Journal



The Legend of Jim Thompson


The man behind the legend (photo of original photograph)

The man behind the legend (photo of original photograph)

BANGKOK—Just about every place has its pantheon of legends, those extraordinary or infamous characters whose deeds and achievements forge reputations that live on long after they’re dead and gone. Ranking near the top of Bangkok’s roster of legendary folk is Jim Thompson, the famous American Silk King of Thailand, who vanished without a trace on Easter Sunday, 1967, while hiking in Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands. Thompson’s mysterious disappearance and the wildly divergent conspiracy theories concocted to explain the still unsolved case have ensured his place in Bangkok’s modern mythology.

Born in 1906 to a prominent Delaware family, Jim Thompson came of age amidst relative wealth and privilege. He graduated from Princeton in 1928, and from 1931 to 1940 worked as a professional architect in New York City. According to his biographer he was considered by some to be a bit of a society playboy, and throughout much of the 1930s he was a fixture at New York’s upper-crust parties and debutante balls. In addition to interests in art and architecture, he was a passionate devotee of ballet, and in the late 1930s he became the director of the Monte Carlo Ballet company. For reasons not exactly clear, however, he gradually grew disillusioned with what he came to consider the frivolous pursuits of high society. Influenced perhaps by this change in world view, as well as by the ominous clouds of war looming on the horizon, he quit his job in 1940 and, at the age of 34, enlisted as a private in the Delaware National Guard, a seemingly radical move for a man of his age and background.

By all accounts Jim Thompson adapted well to military life, and not long after the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor in 1941 he was invited by a friend to join the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner to today’s CIA. At that time the OSS was involved primarily in subversive propaganda and top-secret intelligence gathering missions, often deep within enemy lines, and its ranks were filled to a large extent by wild and flamboyant free-thinkers with a thirst for Hollywood-style high adventure. Jim Thompson, it is said, fit right in.

By the summer of 1945, Thompson, now a major in the Army, had already completed several clandestine campaigns with the OSS in North Africa and Europe. Almost 40 years old, he volunteered to lead an OSS team that was to be parachuted into northern Thailand—still occupied at that time by the Japanese—and soon shipped off to Ceylon for a rigorous jungle warfare and survival training course in preparation for the covert mission. But the mission never happened. In mid-flight their C-47 was ordered back to Burma, as news of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the subsequent Japanese surrender, reached their command. With the mission aborted, Thompson and his team returned to Rangoon to await further orders. It wasn’t long, however, until they were directed to Bangkok, only this time their arrival would not be shrouded in secrecy.

When Jim Thompson arrived in Bangkok in late 1945, the Thai government, recently released from the yoke of Japanese occupation, was in disarray, with rivaling factions jockeying for power. Communist sympathies ran strong amidst a number of pivotal government officials, and Thompson, as the new OSS station chief of Bangkok, found himself responsible for gathering sensitive information related to these issues. The war, though, was now over and despite his duties, he purportedly had plenty of time for socializing and exploring Bangkok, which in those days still retained ample vestiges of its old “Venice of the East” character. He quickly fell in love with Bangkok, but was ordered home to the States in early 1946 to be discharged from the rapidly downsizing post-war military.

Thompson examining raw silk on the canal in front of his house (photo of original photograph)


During his stint in Bangkok, Thompson had been introduced through a friend to the nearly extinct local craft of silk weaving. Mesmerized by the shimmering colors of the delicate fabrics still spun by a few remaining families of Bangkok weavers, Thompson, shortly after his discharge back home, began contemplating returning to Thailand, only this time as a civilian with a mind toward business.

In 1947 he did return to Bangkok. With the financial backing of a group of investors he’d courted in the United States, his plan was to renovate the ailing colonial-era Oriental Hotel perched along the banks of the Chao Phraya river. Once the most opulent hotel in Bangkok, it had been used during the Japanese occupation as an officers barracks, and by 1947 was in a sad state of decay. Realizing the potential tourist appeal of Bangkok in the post-war era, Thompson envisioned returning the hotel to its former glory. The business arrangement soon soured, however, and Thompson backed out, though it eventually went on to become quite successful. With his time and energy freed from the hotel venture, Jim Thompson shifted his focus to the silks he had discovered during his first stay in Bangkok.

Grafting together six Thai houses to make the famous Jim Thompson House (photo of original photogragh)


At that time the Thai silk industry was all but defunct, relegated to the ranks of a cottage industry by the advent of cheap mass-produced fabrics. But Thompson, with his eye for color and his many contacts back in New York, quickly set to work turning things around. Convinced that a market existed for the beautiful silks, he organized the languishing families of weavers, and, armed with several trunks of material, flew to New York to drum up business. Considered by most to be a formidable salesman, he made the rounds of New York society moguls and fashion gurus—many of whom he knew from his former New York days—and spread the word about Thai silk. A couple of months later he returned to Bangkok with a book full of orders, and the Thai silk industry was reborn.

Over the next twenty years Jim Thompson grew his company from a tiny home-based business into a global empire, spawning a worldwide appreciation and demand for the once forgotten fabrics. A shameless self-promoter to some, and a selfless hero to others, his reputation nevertheless grew along with his business, and by the late 1950s he was by all accounts a genuine celebrity, both in Thailand and abroad. Owing perhaps to the alluring juxtaposition of his privileged background and daring wartime exploits, combined with a powerful and charismatic personality, people found him irresistibly fascinating. Countless American and European magazines and newspapers published stories about the “American Silk King” living a strange and exotic life in a little-known Southeast Asian country. Despite his fame—or perhaps because of it—rumors began floating around about the eccentric American, that he was a closet homosexual, and that he was a CIA spy using his silk business as a cover, but neither claim has ever been substantiated.

In addition to his silk trade, Thompson was also well known for his immense collection of Asian art that he housed in his famous and still extant home along San Sap canal. Completed in 1959, Thompson designed and built the structure using a menagerie of half a dozen teak stilt houses—some close to two hundred years old—that he purchased from different provinces across Thailand. Dismantled and shipped to the piece of property he owned across the muddy canal from the homes of his silk weavers, the houses were ingeniously grafted together to make a single imposing teak dwelling, known ever since as the Jim Thompson House.

Possessing an apparent distaste for solitude, Thompson purportedly entertained almost nightly, and the list of his dinner guests is a veritable who’s who of globe-trotting writers, actors, diplomats and society types of that era, all of them eager for an audience with the man behind the legend. Throughout much of the 1960s, it was considered a matter of course for anyone of importance visiting Bangkok to call on Jim Thompson at his famous home. Life appears to have been good for Jim Thompson throughout this period. Despite the war raging in neighboring Vietnam, Thailand remained largely unaffected, and Thompson’s success seemed to increase with every year that passed, at least until the spring of 1967.

The legendary dining room and table where Jim Thompson entertained a long list of celebrities (photo of original photograph)


On Easter weekend of that year, Thompson took a short trip with a group of old friends to the Cameron Highlands, a leftover British colonial hill station in the central jungles of Malaysia. He had been there before, and, as an avid walker and nature lover, claimed to have a fondness for exploring the many trails that wound through the thick tangle of jungle. By all accounts it was a fairly normal weekend getaway, with picnics and leisurely hikes punctuated by cocktails on the veranda of the cottage where they were staying.

On Easter Sunday, at some point in the afternoon when everyone had retired to their rooms for a nap, Jim Thompson stepped out for a lone hike in the jungle and has never been seen or heard from since. A massive manhunt quickly ensued, with whole battalions of Malaysian soldiers and police, as well as teams of foreign experts, indigenous tribesmen, local witch doctors and volunteers from overseas, beating the bushes of the Cameron Highlands for weeks on end. Not a shred of evidence or a single clue was ever turned up. Jim Thompson seemed to have vanished into thin air.

Jim Thompson's house, nowadays a museum and art gallery.

Jim Thompson's house, nowadays a museum and art gallery.

Because of his fame, the case received unprecedented media coverage around the world at the time, but no clues ever turned up. After the initial shock and excitement wore off, the conspiracy theories began trickling through the rumor mill. Some said he was a spy and was assassinated. Others suggested he was kidnapped by communists and held captive in Cambodia or China. Some hinted that he was weary of fame and had crafted his own disappearance, or even committed suicide. Still others pointed to the jungle and claimed he’d had an accident or was eaten by a tiger. Dozens of different angles have been scrutinized over the years, but none can be called anything close to conclusive, as no evidence was ever produced to back any of them up. The media eventually lost interest in the case, only to pounce back on it months and even years later each time a new and even halfway plausible theory was put forth. But again, no evidence could ever be produced to bolster a new claim.

Now more than forty-five years after his disappearance, two things seem certain: that Jim Thompson, whether he died that day or lived a secret life afterward, is long since dead, and that the case will at this point never be solved, thus solidifying his enduring legacy.

As for the latter, perhaps that’s the way Jim Thompson would have wanted it.

Until next time,


Categories: Bangkok

Pickett Porterfield

Pickett Porterfield

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