The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969

by Christopher Isherwood

  After a dip, during which it seemed that this might be the end at last, Gerald is a tiny bit better. We saw him today.

  December 31. Chilly but beautiful. Don is in Pasadena, drawing two people, both for Irving Blum’s show. There has been a big earthslide on the Golden State Freeway; hope he wasn’t held up by it.

  I’ve been to the gym; was there yesterday too and the day before. Weight still just over 150. Did some more work on the introduction to Narada this morning and will now try to start chapter 10 of Kathleen and Frank.

  Nothing from Clement Scott Gilbert, nothing from Tony Richardson and nothing from [Daniel] Selznick about our play; he asked us for a copy to show to Irene Selznick in New York.925

  Don’t know if we’ll spend this evening with Jack and Jim or just watching T.V. in bed. Jim is full of rehearsals; his film starts almost at once.926

  Ted may be starting another attack.

  Swami is mildly sick, at Santa Barbara, but it’s thought to be no more than the usual congregation fatigue.

  Acknowledgements

  Don Bachardy has shown extraordinary patience in waiting for me to edit this volume of diaries, and all the while he has continued to answer endless questions, to share with me his astonishing knowledge of the movies, and above all to unfold in long conversations his understanding of and love for Christopher Isherwood. Needless to say, these would be different diaries without Don, and certainly I could never have completed my task as editor without his help and encouragement. I thank him for continuing to trust in me over the years, for the excitement we have shared about this material, and for his friendship.

  Through the Hollywood Vedanta Society, I was introduced to the sunny energy of Pravrajika Vrajaprana, a Californian nun of the Ramakrishna Order and an open-hearted scholar. She has spent many hours teaching me about Vedanta, clarifying terminology, and setting Isherwood’s practices and beliefs in a broader context. She has even hunted through this volume for mistakes in the footnotes and glossary. Any that remain are mine, not hers. I am extremely grateful to her, to Eduardo Acebo, to the late Peter Schneider, and to the many other nuns and monks at the Vedanta Society of Southern California who have generously answered a wide range of questions.

  I have had research assistance from Douglas Murray, Anne Totterdell, Gosia Lawik, Christopher Hurley, and many other members of the staff at the London Library, and I thank each of them for their skill and tenacity. Christopher Phipps also helped with research before going on to create the detailed index without which this diary would be a disappointment to many readers.

  Others who have answered myriad questions along the way, and with whom I have shared often delightful exchanges, include Kathy and Jeff Allinson, Paul Barber, the late Thomas Braun, Charlotte Brown of the UCLA University Archives, Patrice Chaplin, Robert Craft, Tom Devine, Jane Faulkner of the UCSB Library, Robin French, Ronald Frost, P.N. Furbank, Grey Gowrie, Don Graham, Stephen Graham, Richard Grigg, John Gross, Pat Hardwick of the UCLA History Project, Nicky Haslam, John Heilpern, Nancy Hereford of the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, Sue Hodson of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, Samuel Hynes, Shayna Ingram of the UCSB English Department, Evelyn Jacomb, Frank Kermode, Vijay Khan, Robert Maguire, Lucy Maguire, Edward Mendelson, Breon Mitchell, Anthea Morton-Saner, Araceli Navarro, Axel Neubohn, John Julius Norwich, Richard W. Oram, Peter Parker, Geraldine Parsons, Christopher Pennington, Jan Piekowski, Sherrill Pinney, John Rechy, Andreas Reyneke, John Ridland, Andrew and Polly Robison, John Sandbrook of the UCLA vice-chancellor’s office, David Segal, Michael Sragow, Walter Starcke, Rupert Strachwitz, Geoffrey Strachan, Hugh Thomas, Daniel Topolski, Annu Trivedi of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in Delhi, Roy Turner, Swami Tyagananda, Hugo Vickers, Bettina von Hase, Grace Wherry, Edmund White, Swami Yogeshananda, and John Zeigel.

  I would like to thank my agent Stephanie Cabot for her thought ful advice and continuing support, and I would also like to thank Caroline Dawnay for setting me up in this project years ago. For their forbearance as well as for their enthusiasm, I would like to thank Isherwood’s most recent publishers, Alison Samuel, Jonathan Burnham, Clara Farmer, and Daniel Halpern. And to their colleagues, Lizzie Dipple, Dr. Anthony Hippisley, Rowena Skelton-Wallace, Amanda Telfer, Alison Tulett, and Terry Karten, thank you for your hawk eyes, your nerve, and your stamina.

  A few trusted friends generously read and commented on parts of this book. Thank you Al Alvarez, Richard Davenport-Hines, Isabel Fonseca, John Fuller, Bob Maguire, Bobby Maguire, Robert McCrum, Blake Morrison, and Erik Tarloff.

  I am also more than grateful to Jackie Edgar, Vilma Catbagan, Felisberta Rodrigues, Charlie Watson, Katrina Johnston, Elizabeth Jones, and Susan Mellett, for clearing the way to my desk. To my family, for permanent safe haven, joyful distraction, and leaving me alone over many, many long hours, I can never offer enough thanks.

  Glossary

  Abedha. American disciple of Swami Prabhavananda, born Tony Eckstein. He spent many years at Trabuco and at the Hollywood Vedanta Society, but never took sannyas and eventually left to work for Parker Pens.

  Acebo, Eddie (b. 1940). American Vedanta devotee, born in Los Angeles of Mexican parents. When he was just fifteen, he saw Gerald Heard moderate a television program called “Focus on Sanity”; later he read essays by Heard, Huxley, and Isherwood, which guided him to Vedanta, and he spent six years living as a monk at the Hollywood Vedanta Society and at Trabuco studying Indian philosophy. In 1968, he moved to Mexico and settled there for many years, but eventually he returned to Trabuco.

  Ackerley, J. R. ( Joe) (1896–1967). English author and editor. He wrote drama, poetry, fiction, and autobiography, and is well known for his intimate relationship with his Alsatian, described in My Dog Tulip (1956) and We Think the World of You (1960). Other books include Hindoo Holiday: An Indian Journal (1932) and My Father and Myself (1968). He was literary editor of The Listener from 1935 to 1959 and published work by some of the best and most important writers of his period; Isherwood contributed numerous reviews during the 1930s. Their friendship was sustained in later years partly by their shared intimacy with E.M. Forster. Ackerley was also close to his sister, Nancy West, who was a great beauty and a drunk, as Isherwood records. Ackerley appears in D.1 and is mentioned in Lost Years.

  ACLU. American Civil Liberties Union, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization founded in 1920 to protect and preserve individual liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and its amendments.

  Alan. See Campbell, Alan.

  Albert, Eddie (1906–2005). American actor, on Broadway from the mid-1930s. his films include Carrie (1952), Roman Holiday (1953), Oklahoma (1955), and The Heartbreak Kid (1972), and he played Oliver in the T.V. series “Green Acres,” which first aired in 1965. His wife of forty years, the actress and dancer Margo (1917–1985) was born in Mexico City as Maria Marguerita Guadalupe Teresa Estel Bolado Castilla y O’Donell. She had a brief first marriage. Her films include Winterset (1936), Lost Horizon (1937), and Viva Zapata! (1952). She sat for Bachardy in 1973.

  Albert, Edward (1951–2006). American actor; son of Eddie and Margo Albert. He appeared in his first film when he was fourteen. Later he went to UCLA and Oxford. He starred in Butterflies Are Free (1972) and eventually became a photographer. He sat for Bachardy in 1973.

  Aldous. See Huxley, Aldous.

  Alec. See Beesley, Alec and Dodie Smith Beesley.

  Allen, Alan Warren. Isherwood’s general practitioner from April 1961; he was then about forty, tall, handsome, soft-spoken, easygoing, and married. As Isherwood tells in this diary, his first wife committed suicide and Allen later remarried.

  Allen, Edwin (Ed). American librarian, at Wesleyan College; once a salesman for Oxford University Press. He met the Stravinskys in 1962, when he was about thirty, and cataloged Igor Stravinsky’s library. He also helped with errands and domestic tasks in California and New York, becoming a weekend fixture in the Stravinskys’ Fifth Avenue apartment when they moved permanently to New Yo
rk.

  Altman, Dennis (b. 1943). Australian academic, author, gay activist. He did graduate work at Cornell in the mid-1960s and published one of the first accounts of the gay liberation movement in the U.S., Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation (1971), followed by many books on sexuality and political culture. Later, he became a politics professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne and President of the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific.

  Amiya (1902–1986). English Vedanta devotee, born Ella Sully, one of ten daughters of a handsome Somerset farm laborer whose upper-class wife chose scandal and poverty in order to marry him. Amiya travelled to California in the early 1930s with an older sister, Joy, who married an American artist named Palmerton. She was hired by Swami Prabhavananda and Sister Lalita as housekeeper at Ivar Avenue. By the time Isherwood met her at the end of the decade, she had received her Sanskrit name from Swami and become a nun. She became a particular friend of Isherwood’s when he lived at the Vedanta Society during the 1940s. She had married in the late 1920s, becoming Ella Corbin, but the marriage failed; in 1952 she met George Montagu, 9th Earl of Sandwich (1874–1962), when he visited the Vedanta Society. A few weeks later Swami gave them permission to marry, and Amiya returned to England, divorced Corbin, and became Countess of Sandwich. She grew close to Isherwood’s mother and brother. She was also close to her own younger sister, Sally Hardie (1906–1990), over whom she tried to hold sway with her social position, with lavish gifts, and by financing her company, Sphinx Films, which, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, made several travel films about Italy. Bachardy drew Amiya twice. She appears in D.1.

  Amohananda. American monk of the Ramakrishna Order. Until he took sannyas in 1971, he was called Paul Hamilton.

  Anamananda. See Arup Chaitanya.

  ananda. Sanskrit for bliss or joy; an aspect of Brahman. It is used as the last part of a monk’s sannyas name in the Ramakrishna Order, for example, Vivekananda, “whose bliss is in discrimination.”

  Anandaprana or Ananda. See Usha.

  Anderson, Judith (1898–1992). Australian-born actress; she made her first appearance on the New York stage in 1918 and played major roles throughout the 1930s and 1940s, including the lead in Mourning Becomes Electra (1932), Gertrude to Gielgud’s Hamlet in 1936, Lady Macbeth twice, and Medea twice. She also had many movie roles, including Mrs. Danvers in Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) and other often chilling parts. She took the lead in the brief Broadway run of Speed Lamkin’s play Comes a Day at the end of the 1950s. In 1961, Isherwood records that he saw the “snippets” from her most famous shows, which she performed with Bill Roerick on a U.S. tour that included Los Angeles. She appears in D.1.

  Anderson, Phil. A big, dark, good-looking American whom Isherwood and Bachardy sometimes ran into on the beach in Santa Monica in the early 1960s. Isherwood often told Bachardy he found Anderson attractive. He had particularly nice legs.

  Andrews, Oliver and Betty Harford. California sculptor, on the art faculty at UCLA; American actress, his wife until the 1970s. They are mentioned as a couple in D.1 and in Lost Years. Oliver knew Alan Watts well and travelled with him to Japan. Betty acted for John Houseman in numerous stage productions and appeared in a few movies, including Inside Daisy Clover (1965). Also, she was a close friend of Iris Tree and acted at Tree’s High Valley Theater in the Upper Ojai Valley. They had a son, Christopher, born in the 1950s and named after Isherwood. After they separated, she lived with Hungarian actor Alex de Naszody until he died in the early 1980s. Oliver died suddenly of a heart attack in 1978, while still in his forties.

  Angus. See Wilson, Angus.

  Animals, The. Isherwood and Bachardy. Also, homosexuals in general, as against human beings or heterosexuals. Isherwood and Bachardy called their Adelaide Drive house La Casa de los Animales. See also Dobbin for Isherwood in his identity as a horse and Kitty for Bachardy.

  Arizu, Betty. The daughter Jo Masselink had with Ferdinand Hinchberger. She married Fran Arizu, a Mexican, with whom she had two children.

  Arup Chaitanya. American disciple of Swami Prabhavananda, born Kenneth (Kenny) Critchfield. He arrived at the Vedanta Society towards the end of the 1940s and lived there and at Trabuco. He took his brahmacharya vows in 1954, becoming Arup Chaitanya; then in 1963, on taking sannyas, he became Swami Anamananda. He worked for many years in the Vedanta Society Hollywood bookstore, and he died at Trabuco in the early 1990s. He appears in D.1.

  Asaktananda, Swami (1931–2009). Indian monk of the Ramakrishna Order. He was groomed by Swami Prabhavananda to take over the Hollywood Vedanta Society, until Prabhavananda unexpectedly decided that Asaktananda had the wrong personality for the role and sent him back to the Belur Math in India against his wishes and amid much controversy. Asaktananda later headed the Narendrapur Center, an enormous educational establishment of the Ramakrishna Order outside Calcutta.

  asanas. Yoga postures, or the mat on which they are performed.

  Ashokananda, Swami. Indian monk of the Ramakrishna Order. Head of the Vedanta Center in San Francisco, where Isherwood first met him in 1943. He appears in D.1.

  Ashton, Frederick (Freddy) (1904–1988). British choreographer and dancer; born in Ecuador, raised in Peru, and educated in England from 1919. He studied with Léonide Massine and Marie Rambert; Rambert was the first to commission a ballet from him, in 1926. In the late 1920s, he worked briefly as a choreographer in Paris; then, in 1926, he joined the Vic-Wells (later Sadler’s Wells) Ballet, where he spent the rest of his career. The company gradually evolved into the Royal Ballet, and, in 1963, Ashton succeeded Ninette de Valois as director. He appears in Lost Years.

  atman. The divine nature within man; Brahman within the human being; the self or soul; the deepest core of man’s identity.

  Aubrey, James (1918–1994). Film and T.V. executive; born in Illinois, educated at Princeton. He was a fantastically successful president of CBS television, dominating ratings and doubling profits, until he was fired in 1965. In 1969, he took over MGM Studios, but meanwhile, he briefly headed Aubrey Productions, joined by Hunt Stromberg, who had worked closely with him at CBS. Isherwood refers to their producing partnership as Aubrey-Stromberg. Aubrey was said to be the model for the ruthless Robert Stone in Jacqueline Susann’s 1969 novel The Love Machine.

  Auden, W.H. (Wystan) (1907–1973). English poet, playwright, librettist; perhaps the greatest English poet of his century and one of the most influential. He and Isherwood met as schoolboys towards the end of Isherwood’s time at St. Edmund’s School, Hindhead, Surrey, where Auden, two and a half years younger, arrived in the autumn of 1915. They wrote three plays together—The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935), The Ascent of F6 (1936), On the Frontier (1938)—and a travel book about their trip to China during the Sino-Japanese war—Journey to a War (1939). A fourth play—The Enemies of a Bishop (1929)—was published posthumously. They also wrote a film scenario “The Life of an American,” probably in 1939. As well as several stints of schoolmastering, Auden worked for John Grierson’s Film Unit, funded by the General Post Office, for about six months in 1935, mostly writing poetry to be used for sound tracks. He and Isherwood went abroad separately and together during the 1930s, famously to Berlin (Auden arrived first, in 1928), and finally emigrated together to the U.S. in 1939. After only a few months, their lives diverged, but they remained close friends; Auden settled in New York with his companion and, later, collaborator, Chester Kallman. Auden’s librettos include Paul Bunyan (1941), for Benjamin Britten, The Rake’s Progress (1948) with Kallman for Stravinsky, and Elegy for Young Lovers with Kallman for Hans Werner Henze. As this diary records, Isherwood and Bachardy attended the premiere of Elegy for Young Lovers at Glyndeborne in July 1961. Auden is caricatured as “Hugh Weston” in Lions and Shadows and figures centrally in Christopher and His Kind. There are many passages about him in D.1 and in Lost Years.

  Aufderheide, Charles. American technician, from the Midwest. He moved to Los Angeles with Ruby Bell and the From twins in the 1940s and worked on cameras at
the Technicolor laboratories for about thirty years. He was an amateur poet, read widely, liked to entertain, and was a crucial unifying personality in the Benton Way group. In the early 1970s, he moved to San Francisco. He appears in D.1 and Lost Years.

  Austen, Howard (Tinker) (1928–2003). Companion to Gore Vidal from 1950. He worked in advertising in New York and studied singing, then devoted most of his time to Vidal, managing his business and social life. He appears in D.1.

  Ayer, A.J. (Alfred, Freddie) (1910–1989). British philosopher, educated at Eton and Oxford. He married four times and had many affairs. His second (and fourth) wife was American journalist Dee Wells, née Chapman (b. 1925), author of the best-selling novel Jane (1973). They married in 1960 and again in 1989. Ayer’s third wife was Vanessa Lawson, formerly wife of Nigel Lawson; she and Ayer married in 1982 but were involved with each other from 1968; she died of cancer in 1985. Another long affair, in the early 1950s, was with Jocelyn Rickards, who remained a friend. Ayer was also a close friend of Tony Bower, whom he met in New York during World War II, and with whose half-sister, Jean Gordon-Duff, he was briefly involved around the same time.

  Bachardy, Don (b. 1934). American painter; Isherwood’s companion from 1953. Bachardy accompanied his elder brother Ted to the beach in Santa Monica from the late 1940s, and Isherwood occasionally saw him there. Ted first introduced them in November 1952. They met again in early February 1953 and, on February 14, began an affair which quickly became serious. Don was then an eighteen-year-old college student living at home with his brother and his mother. He had studied languages for one semester at UCLA, then transferred at the start of 1953 to Los Angeles City College in Hollywood, near his mother’s apartment. He studied French and Spanish but dropped French for German as a result of Isherwood’s influence. He had worked as a grocery boy at a local market, and, like Isherwood in youth, spent most of his free time at the movies. In February 1955, Bachardy went back to UCLA to begin his junior year and almost immediately changed his major to theater arts. In July 1956, he enrolled at the Chouinard Art School, supplementing his instruction by taking classes with Vernon Old, and within a few years got work as a professional artist, drawing fashion illustrations for a local department store and then for newspapers and magazines. During this period he also began to do portraits of Isherwood, close friends, and favorite film stars, and to sell his work. He drew a set of Hollywood personalities to accompany an article in the Paris Review in 1960, but his first major portrait commission, from Tony Richardson, was to draw the cast of the 1960 stage production of A Taste of Honey. During 1959 and 1960, Bachardy worked a few days a week in a West Hollywood studio loaned to him by Paul Millard. In 1961 he attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London, supported partly by his patron Russell McKinnon and partly by Women’s Wear Daily which, since he had no work permit, paid him generously in cash to be their London fashion illustrator. His work at the Slade led to his first solo shows, in London in 1961 and in New York in 1962. Since then, he has done countless portraits, both of the famous and the little known, and exhibited in many cities. His work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. and the National Portrait Gallery in London, and he has published his drawings in several books, including October (1981) with Isherwood, Last Drawings of Christopher Isherwood (1990), and Stars in My Eyes (2000). Together, Isherwood and Bachardy wrote several stage and film scripts, including their award-winning screenplay for the T.V. film “Frankenstein: The True Story” (1973). He figures centrally in D.1.