The Sun and Her Stars
Page 45
Irwin Shaw to Salka Viertel, December 9, 1946: courtesy of Adam Shaw.
hoping to do what he could to help with Salka’s financial problems: P. Viertel, Dangerous Friends, pp. 18–19; KOS, p. 294.
“like a medium size haystack”: KOS, p. 293.
Salka had nearly completed the Deep Valley screenplay…went on strike, preventing the use of the studio backlot: Thomas Doherty, Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist, p. 49.
scrambled to move locations from the Warner Ranch to Palos Verdes: “Daily Production and Progress Report,” Deep Valley, September 27, 1946, to October 12, 1946, Warner Bros. Archives.
“swayed them by insisting that the strikers were just a bunch of communists…to be against them”: KOS, p. 296.
well after Salka’s work at the studio was done: at least through March 1947. The Taft-Hartley Act was passed on June 23, 1947 (Doherty, Show Trial, p. 51).
the Taft-Hartley Act…loyalty oaths disavowing any Communist sympathies: ibid.
“the Gemütlichkeit when Stalin’s staff was dining with their boss”: KOS, p. 297.
Salka may have believed this, but…long lines for inadequate supplies of food: “Liquidation of the Jewish Community of Sambor,” Yizkor Books, NYPL, p. xxxviii.
“Salka is a Communist, Mr. Warner”…As no one could deny that anti-Semitism existed in America, the discussion ended: KOS, p. 297.
The picture did a modest box-office business of $1.4 million: www.wikipedia.com, “Deep Valley.”
“The two of us need very little…perhaps I will even dare to try a book”: SV to BV, May 23, 1947, call # 78.917/9, DLAM.
“the last time I was to work at a major studio, but it took me several years to realize why”: KOS, p. 297.
to the radio broadcasts…in Washington: SV to BV, October 3, 1947, call # 78.917/12, DLAM.
“The Un-American Committee is giving a great performance…could not have done it better and more successfully”: ibid.
he had rather desultorily joined the party in Germany back in 1926: Doherty, Show Trial, p. 90.
The former first lady’s recommendation on Eisler’s behalf…who took advantage of American hospitality during the war: ibid., p. 89.
“it was too late for Hitler to gas him”: ibid., p. 91.
“I could well understand it when in 1933…in this ridiculous way”: www.eislermusic.com, “Hanns Eisler: A Composer’s Life.”
“I am a guest in this country and do not want to enter into any legal arguments”: Doherty, Show Trial, p. 283.
“The Committee was utterly unprepared for this…and even some of Brecht’s friends were surprised”: KOS, p. 302.
Three months earlier…premiered at the Coronet Theatre on La Cienaga Boulevard: The premiere of Galileo took place on July 30, 1947. The Coronet Theatre still exists today.
“so that the audience can think”: Callow, Charles Laughton, p. 188.
“I saw Galileo…a mixture of megalomania and rank dilettantism”: SV to BV, September 1947, call # 78.917/10, DLAM.
“As an American citizen of German birth”: Mann had become a U.S. citizen in 1944.
“What followed was fascism and what followed fascism was war”: Thomas Mann, “All-American Opinion on the Un-American Committee,” The Screen Writer, December 1947, p. 8.
“the ritual enactment of a great Constitutional conflict”: Doherty, Show Trial, p. 103.
“the first ones to be denounced and verboten…and no sorcerer has been able to banish them”: Salka Viertel, “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” The Screen Writer, December 1947, p. 14.
“Democracy is a precious thing…I dare to express the hope that the screen shall remain free of the censorship of moronic haters”: ibid., p. 15.
“It is the beginning of my journalistic career…I will probably work in a restaurant if our film project does not come to fruition”: SV to BV, December 12, 1947, call # 78.717/11, DLAM.
and Laurence Olivier’s production company in London: Swenson, Greta Garbo, pp. 457–458.
“We will not knowingly employ a Communist…by force or by illegal or unconstitutional methods”: Doherty, Show Trial, p. 306.
failed to establish through its surveillance of her house and activities that she was or had ever been a Communist: Swenson, Greta Garbo, p. 457.
“Technically she avoided the blacklist…as long as Salka remained in Hollywood”: ibid.
She explained in her memoir…“even…if it represented 25 percent of the screenplay”: KOS, p. 312.
“I don’t have any credit in the Jean Renoir movie, political reasons”: Prager, “Ich bin,” p. 252, quoting SV to BV, July 22, 1951, DLAM.
“Financially it is bleak…I’m going to starve to death”: Prager, “Ich bin,” p. 252, quoting SV to BV, March 23, 1953 and August 1, 1953, DLAM.
“like a second emigration,…and scarred by a horrible disease”: KOS, p. 306.
“Thirty years ago, when I married you…Nothing will ever change that”: ibid., pp. 306–307.
“You must know that I consider this formality…If only you were happier”…“I never had the temperament nor the leisure to become aware of it”: ibid., p. 308.
“There are no words to describe what this place looks like…The people here pick up exactly where they left off in 1928”: ibid., p. 310.
“the major disagreement between Berthold and me…the anti-Semitic, false, corny city of Gemütlichkeit”: SV to S. N. Behrman, March 2, 1965, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
a diligent father figure to twenty-four-year-old Tommy who was sorely missing Berthold: KOS, p. 309.
“Fascism is here”: SV to BV, June 24, 1950, call # 78.918/7, DLAM.
“I couldn’t give a damn about freedom of the press…But any government is preferable to the one we have here”: SV to BV, July 22, 1950, call # 78.918/8, DLAM.
“seek my fortune or my living there but Mama is weak…Sometimes I think, Thank God!”: SV to BV, January 27, 1948, call # 78.918/1, DLAM.
bailed out at the last minute by loans from Donald Ogden Stewart and Charlie Chaplin: KOS, p. 313.
James Agee, who sat at the piano and played Schubert: ibid., p. 316.
for a trio of Peruvian performers…John Huston, and John Houseman: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 425.
For the actor Montgomery Clift, off-putting to many who met him socially: Isherwood, Lost Years, p. 174.
“He always presses his sex towards me when he embraces me like Francesco”: Tagebuch, August 22, 1957, DLAM.
was not above kissing them impetuously on the lips: conversation with Chester Aaron.
“necking in a rather sexual manner”: Shelley Winters quoted in Michelangelo Capua, Montgomery Clift: A Biography, p. 53.
Once a week Salka picked up fifteen-year-old Arianne…the girl’s hopeless American diction: conversation with Arianne Ulmer Cipes, February 4, 2014.
“Now say faaaaaaahzer…”: conversation with Elizabeth Frank.
At sixty-three she still drove recklessly around the canyon: KOS, p. 314.
who was full of resentment at being taken for a Nazi when anyone could see that he was very nearly a martyr: Palmier, Weimar in Exile, p. 637, citing Klaus Mann, The Turning Point.
“I do not wish to survive this year”: Frederic Spotts, Cursed Legacy: The Tragic Life of Klaus Mann; and www.spartacus-educational.com, “Klaus Mann,” citing diary entry by Klaus Mann, January 1, 1949.
that he might become a propaganda tool of the German Democratic Republic: Anthony Heilbut, ed., Letters of Thomas and Heinrich Mann, p. xvii.
“the most merciful outcome”: Palmier, Weimar in Exile, p. 633; and Thomas Mann, “Letter on the Death of My Brother Heinrich,” Germanic Review, December 1950.
and asked Salka to take her to his funeral: KOS, p. 316.
“He would have approved
”: Thomas Mann, “Letter on the Death of My Brother Heinrich.”
“Hollywood did not recognize his genius and only very few attended his funeral”: KOS, p. 316.
Ilse managed to sell two of her scripts: ibid., p. 313.
refusing to acknowledge that Salka was on any kind of blacklist: ibid., p. 315.
Vicky enrolled in a Swiss school: ibid., p. 317.
on the day of Salka and Berthold’s wedding anniversary: ibid., p. 318.
“I am terribly sorry for Peter and Jigee…that she has inherited your lioness’s strength”: ibid.
Irwin Shaw to Salka Viertel, January 8, 1953: courtesy of Adam Shaw.
“At the horrible moment when one had to leave her in this foreign earth…many Negroes and German refugees and young Americans”: KOS, p. 321.
Berthold at age sixty-eight had recently been hospitalized: ibid., p. 318.
“because it supported the fight against fascism”: ibid., p. 326.
“He had been my constant companion…The shackles of love were falling off”: ibid., p. 327.
“Berthold died last night”: ibid., p. 330.
Hans arrived in Vienna…but in time to carry him to his grave: P. Viertel, Dangerous Friends, p. 195.
“He was the mainspring of my life…I am catching myself writing to him and for him”: SV to S. N. Behrman, January 30, 1964, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
where he had declared with absolute certainty that he was going to marry her: KOS, p. 323.
in a hospital in White Plains, with no visitors allowed: ibid., p. 331.
“The name Mendelssohn obliges”: ibid., p. 299.
“compassionate, unchanged, and very dear”: ibid., p. 331.
“Gruscha” or “Miss G”: from an unpublished reminiscence by Jack Larson, courtesy of Vicky Schulberg. 395 “Ernest C.”: KOS, pp. 331–332.
“the list of my sins…as thick as the New York telephone book”: ibid., p. 333.
Had she said that she’d prefer any form of government to the one in the United States?: ibid.
FBI agents had been opening her mail since the early 1940s: Stephan, “Communazis,” pp. 194–197, see especially p. 195.
he had regained his Austrian citizenship…or a threat to the nation: ibid., p. 197.
would give up her home by the Pacific for good, selling it to John Houseman: John Houseman, Front and Center, p. 447.
“It would be wonderful to know…is a happy home for you and your family”: SV to John Houseman, December 1, 1953, John Houseman Papers, Box 6, Folder V, UCLA, quoted in Saverio Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism: Film and Politics in the Age of the New Deal, p. 189.
The two women lit the candles on a tiny Christmas tree: KOS, p. 334.
10: HOME
She rented an apartment on Veteran Avenue in Westwood: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 467.
After she left London, Salka traveled with Hans and Violette…Prisoner of the Volga: ibid., p. 590.
Violette reluctantly agreed to accompany her: the descriptions of Salka’s and Violette’s trip to Dachau are courtesy of Violette Viertel in a letter to me dated March 9, 2013.
“The world is certainly not big enough for the Jews…only the gas chambers were big enough”: Tagebuch, July 16, 1957, DLAM.
“a small female family”…“held together by our love for Christine”: ibid.
“the last grand passion of my life”: SV to S. N. Behrman, 1957 undated, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
“I am an old woman…it is all my present life”: Tagebuch, June 14, 1959, DLAM.
“my heart bled. Nothing is so terrible to watch than the human degradation of an addict”: Tagebuch, August 1, 1959, DLAM.
“from falling down while drunk”: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 819.
“I went to see her at the hospital Sunday the 24th of January…which I noticed in Mama’s eyes before she died”: Tagebuch, February 24, 1960, DLAM.
Before dawn on February 1, 1960, age forty-four, Jigee died: Nancy Lynn Schwartz, The Hollywood Writers’ Wars, p. 299; Tagebuch, February 23, 1960, DLAM: “Virginia died…on January 31st. No—Feb. 1 4:30 a.m.”
“She was such an audience for me…And now there is nothing left of her”: Tagebuch, March 5, 1960, DLAM.
“she would have suffered beyond words…The whole population turning out to wish Peter happiness with another woman”: Tagebuch, July 22, 1960, DLAM.
the “utter honesty” of Jigee’s decline: Tagebuch, September 5, 1962, DLAM.
and told Sam Behrman in confidence that her purpose for moving to Klosters…had been crushed when the girl was sent away to school: SV to S. N. Behrman, January 18, 1968, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
“I never ceased regretting that I sold 165 Mabery Road”: SV to Vicky Schulberg, February 27, 1969.
“I remember how she sat in my kitchen…BUT she has courage and this I admire”: Tagebuch, March 31, 1963, DLAM.
“The first sentences I put on paper are always horrible”: Tagebuch, February 3, 1963, DLAM.
“I don’t want you to think, Darling, that I was kissed by the Muse ten to twelve hours a day”: SV to S. N. Behrman, August 16, 1966, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
“This is a secret, don’t mention it yet to anybody”: ibid.
“The only thing I can leave to my granddaughters”: SV to S. N. Behrman, July 22, 1965, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
“The content is not gossipy enough…To hell with them”: Tagebuch, April 6, 1962, DLAM.
“politically irreproachable”: SV to S. N. Behrman, March 29, 1963, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
“American, martini-addicted Madison Avenue editor”…met instead a sympathetic Viennese-born Jewish intellectual: SV to S. N. Behrman, October 23, 1967, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
“although he himself is not a pleasant man”: SV to S. N. Behrman, October 14, 1967, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
“Couldn’t you have had those three in one day?”: S. N Behrman to SV, August 25, 1967, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
“he is such a Puritan”: SV to S. N. Behrman, December 14, 1966, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
“One governess and the menstruation are already out”: SV to S. N. Behrman, October 23, 1967, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
“Wallace’s Follies”: conversation with Tom Wallace, September 30, 2018.
“although I don’t think I will get rich…and make it a best seller”: SV to S. N. Behrman, January 18, 1968, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
Isherwood, who praised the book for maintaining a clear narrative line…tended to dissolve into crowds of people: SV to S. N. Behrman, December 3, 1968, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
“in spite of the filthy young people…I love and cherish in my ‘adopted country’ ”: SV to S. N. Behrman, July 3, 1969, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
“the middle-aged ones go around in such fantastic costumes that they reminded me of Purim in Sambor…unbelievable how dirty people are”: SV to S. N. Behrman, November 19, 1968, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
“She was not a person of pretense…and make you feel important”: memories of Salka are from an email to me from Valérie Viertel.
“Everyone, even only fleeting acquaintances”…“spontaneity and especially generosity”: Carl Zuckmayer, foreword to Salka Viertel, Das unbelehrbare Herz: Ein Leben in der Welt des Theaters, der Literatur und des Films (Claassen Verlag, 1970).
The publication of Kindness brought all kinds of correspondence to Salka…to complete strangers: SV to S. N. Behrman, July 3, 1969, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
“all the Poles and Ruthenians had been deported (or killed) during the Stalin era…a party functionary of course”: SV to S. N. Behrman, December 22, 1971, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
“the tenacity is there”: Tom Viertel to Vicky Schulberg, September 7, 1975, courtesy of Vicky Schulberg.
“this gift of love, this passion for
life…all the rest would be vanity”: Harold Clurman, “Salka’s Incorrigible Heart,” The Nation, May 5, 1969.
“is what you did not say”: Marta Feuchtwanger to SV, August 1, 1969, DLAM.
“One knows the working world of Hollywood only from the perspective of glorification or satire, of worship or disgust”: Zuckmayer, foreword to Das unbelehrbare Herz.
“Without Salka’s mind and bravery…would never have been made”: ibid.
“was two years old when he left Europe…means to him and his wife”: SV to S. N. Behrman, April 19, 1971, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
They threw a little party for Salka…she was taken aback to see that a swimming pool had replaced her rose garden: conversation with Judi Davidson, August 29, 2011.
“so shaky and deaf and it is sadly dreary and exhausting being with her…understanding what you’re saying”: Isherwood, Liberation: Diaries, 1970–1983, p. 410.
“The intricate tortures of old age make me indignant”: SV to S. N. Behrman, February 17, 1973, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
Salka had reacted badly to the drugs…“She asked for her comb and slowly and painfully she combed and brushed her hair to receive the gentlemen”: James Bridges to Katharine Hepburn, February 8, 1975, “Bridges, James 1974–1994,” 59.f-740, Katharine Hepburn papers, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
“The new medication seems to work and I am less shaking and stronger…for Americans living in foreign countries”: SV to Vicky Schulberg, January 22, 1976.
“The mere fact that I need a nurse is depressing beyond words”: SV to Vicky Schulberg, February 18, 1977.
“What a dreary way to wait for death”: James Bridges to Katharine Hepburn, February 8, 1975, Margaret Herrick Library.
“made me homesick for my youth…my father liked apples very much and had all kinds of them”: SV to Vicky Schulberg, October 31, 1977.
The sunsets at Wychylowka were blue and golden in summer, and purple-red in winter: KOS, p. 2.
There were hundreds of fruit trees in the orchard: ibid., p. 3.
Papa is feeding Viktoria corn kernels out of his palm as if she were a little bird: ibid., p. 295: “it was the same little Viktoria, who in her nightshirt had followed me to Papa’s room and climbed on his bed and like a bird ate the corn kernels from his hand.”