Liberation

by Christopher Isherwood

  Epstein, Barbara (1928–2006). American editor and journalist, born in Boston and educated at Radcliffe. She was one of the five founders, during the New York Times strike in 1963, of The New York Review of Books, and she co-edited it with Robert Silvers for forty-three years. Before that she was a book editor, oversaw Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl (1952) for Doubleday, and worked at The Partisan Review. She was married from 1954 to 1980 and had a son and a daughter.

  Evans, Gregory. Longtime companion and assistant to David Hockney; raised in Minnesota. Isherwood met him in Los Angeles, where he surfaced as a lover of Nick Wilder. He became Hockney’s lover by 1974, his most frequent model and, later, managed Hockney’s studios, travels, and complex array of interests and commitments. He had problems with alcohol and drugs until the mid-1980s, when he joined Alcoholics Anonymous and changed his way of life.

  Exotica. See Ennis, Bob.

  Fairfax, James (b. 1933). Australian art collector and philanthropist, educated at Oxford. He was the last family chairman, from 1957 to 1987, of the Fairfax newspaper empire. He appears in D.2.

  Falk, Eric (1905–1984). English barrister, raised in London. Falk, who was Jewish, was a school friend from Repton, where he was in the same house as Isherwood, The Hall, and in the History Sixth. He helped Isherwood edit The Reptonian during Isherwood’s last term, and they saw one another during the school holidays and often went to films together. Falk introduced Isherwood to the Mangeots, whom he had met on holiday in Brittany. He appears in Lions and Shadows, D.1, D.2, and Lost Years.

  Faye, Alice (1915–1998). American actress, singer, comedienne; born and raised in New York, where she went on the stage at fourteen. She starred in Hollywood musicals from 1933 to 1945—including Every Night at Eight (1935), Poor Little Rich Girl (1936), Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938), The Gang’s All Here (1943)—but quit movies over conflicts with Darryl Zanuck at Twentieth Century-Fox and focused back on radio and stage. She made only a few further films. In 1972 and 1973, she revived the musical Good News on Broadway, then toured in it for a year, including to Los Angeles. She was a childhood favorite of Bachardy. She appears in D.2.

  Finney, Albert (b. 1936). English actor, trained at RADA; son of a bookie. He acted in Shakespeare from the mid-1950s for the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and came to prominence on the London stage in Billy Liar (1960). Afterwards, he appeared in several John Osborne plays directed by Tony Richardson, receiving great praise for Luther in 1961, and taking the role to Broadway in 1963. In 1965, he joined the National Theatre Company and appeared in Peter Shaffer’s Black Comedy (1965) and Peter Nichols’s A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1967); then, after a hiatus, he returned to the company to star in Hamlet, Tamburlaine, Macbeth, and others. His film career was launched with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), and he became an international star in Richardson’s Tom Jones (1963). His other films include: The Entertainer (1960), Night Must Fall (1964), Scrooge (1970), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Dresser (1983), Under the Volcano (1984), The Browning Version (1994), Erin Brokovich (2000), and Traffic (2000). He appears in D.2.

  Finney, Brian (b. 1935). British scholar and professor of literature, educated at the University of Reading and the University of London. He served in the Royal Air Force and worked in the electrical and telephone industry then, in 1964, took an administrative job in the extension section of the University of London, where he went on to teach for many years. He got his Ph.D. at Birkbeck College in 1973. In the summer of 1976, he was a visiting professor at UCLA, and was already at work on Christopher Isherwood: A Critical Biography (1979). In 1987, he emigrated permanently to southern California, where he has taught at U.C. Riverside, UCLA, USC, and U.C. Long Beach. His work on twentieth-century British fiction includes books and articles on Beckett, D.H. Lawrence, and Martin Amis. His first wife, Marlene (1936–1989), a figurative painter, died of cancer. Bachardy drew her in 1976. His second wife is a photographer and floral designer.

  Firth, Peter (b. 1935). British child actor, born and raised in Yorkshire. He starred in Equus on the London stage in 1973, on Broadway, and in the film adaptation. In 1976 he appeared in John Osborne’s BBC T.V. adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray and in Aces High, as Isherwood mentions; during the same year, he made Joseph Andrews (1977) for Tony Richardson. Other films include Zeffirelli’s Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972), Polanski’s Tess (1979), The Hunt for Red October (1990), and Shadowlands (1993). He has appeared often on British T.V.

  Flamini, Roland and Janet. Maltese journalist and author and his British wife, née Morton. He was a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine from 1968 to 1994 and a bureau chief in Rome, Bonn, Paris, Lebanon, Jerusalem, and for the European Community, which he covered from London. When Isherwood mentions him in 1976, he was finishing his tour as Hollywood correspondent and had recently published his first book, Scarlett, Rhett, and a Cast of Thousands, the Filming of Gone with the Wind (1975). He wrote eight more non-fiction books and went on to become Chief International Correspondent for UPI. He and his wife had two children.

  Foch, Nina (1924–2008). American actress, born in Holland and raised in Manhattan. Her films include The Return of the Vampire (1944), Johnny Allegro (1949), An American in Paris (1951), Scaramouche (1952), Executive Suite (1954, Academy Award, Best Supporting Actress), The Ten Commandments (1956), Spartacus (1960), and Mahogany (1975). She had roles on Broadway, was a member of the American Shakespeare Festival, and appeared regularly on T.V. in John Houseman’s “Playhouse 90,” “The Outer Limits,” and others. She also directed for stage and screen and, from the 1960s, taught acting at USC and at the American Film Institute. Her third husband, from 1967 to 1993, was stage producer Michael Dewell (b. 1931). She appears in D.2.

  Fonda, Jane (b. 1937). American actress, born in New York, raised in Hollywood and Greenwich, Connecticut, educated at Vassar; daughter of actor Henry Fonda and his socialite second wife, Frances Seymour Brokaw, who committed suicide in 1950. She worked as a model before studying with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Attracted to the vanguard of cultural trends, she opposed the Vietnam War during the 1960s, toured American G.I. camps with Donald Sutherland and other actors as the Anti-War Troop and, in 1972, travelled through North Vietnam followed by press and making radio broadcasts. In 1988, she apologized publicly for supporting the enemy and allowing herself to be photographed at the controls of a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. Her films include Walk on the Wild Side (1962), Period of Adjustment (1962), The Chapman Report (1962), Cat Ballou (1965), Barefoot in the Park (1967), They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969), Klute (1971; Academy Award and New York Film Critics Award), Vietnam Journey: Introduction to the Enemy (1974), a documentary about her visit to North Vietnam, co-directed with Tom Hayden and Haskell Wexler, Julia (1977), Coming Home (1978, Academy Award), California Suite (1978), 9 to 5 (1980), and On Golden Pond (1981). She married three times: in 1965 to Roger Vadim, who directed her in La Ronde/Circle of Love (1964) and Barbarella (1968), then from 1973 to 1990 to political activist Tom Hayden, and from 1991 to 2001 to CNN tycoon Ted Turner. She had one child with Vadim and another with Hayden. She appears in D.2.

  Fontan, Jack. American actor, artist, astrologer. As Isherwood tells in Lost Years, he became known to queers as “The Naked Sailor” when he appeared in South Pacific in nothing but cut-off blue jean shorts which displayed his magnificent physique. He sprawled center stage during the song “What ain’t we got? We ain’t got dames!” and attracted complaints from ladies in the front rows who could see his genitals, but the director, Joshua Logan, refused to alter his costume. He was photographed in youth by George Platt Lynes. Once a lover of Bill Harris, he spent fifty-three years with his companion, Ray Unger.

  Forbes, Bryan (b. 1926). English actor, director, producer, screenwriter, novelist; born in London and educated at RADA. He worked on the stage from seventeen, had film roles during the 1950s, and appeared in The Guns of Navarone (1961) and A Shot in the Dark (1964). From the 19
60s, he turned mostly to direct-ing—including The L-Shaped Room (1962), King Rat (1965), The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969), and The Stepford Wives (1975)—and contributed some of his own screenwriting and producing. His second wife is the English actress Nanette Newman (b. 1934), with whom he has two daughters, Emma, an actress, and Sarah, a fashion journalist. He appears with his wife in D.2.

  Ford, Glenn (1916–2006). Canadian-born actor raised in Santa Monica. He was already making movies by 1939, served in the marines during World War II, and afterwards became a star opposite Rita Hayworth in Gilda and opposite Bette Davis in A Stolen Life, both in 1946. Among his many other films are The Big Heat (1953), The Blackboard Jungle (1955), Cimarron (1961), The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1963), The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962), and Midway (1976). He also acted in T.V. films and in the series “Cade’s County” (1971) and “The Family Holvak” (1975). As Isherwood tells in D.2., they met in 1960, when Ford was beginning a love affair with Hope Lange. From 1943 to 1959 Ford was married to the American tap dancer, Eleanor Powell (1910–1982); they had a son, Peter Ford. Later, Ford was married to actress Kathryn Hays from 1966 to 1968, and then to actress Cynthia Hayward from 1977 to 1984, and to Jeanne Baus from 1993 to 1994.

  Forster, E.M. (Morgan) (1879–1970). English novelist, essayist and biographer; best known for Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924). He was an undergraduate at King’s College, Cambridge, and one of the Cambridge Apostles; afterwards he became associated with Bloomsbury and later returned to King’s as a Fellow until the end of his life. He was a literary hero for Isherwood, Upward, and Auden from the 1920s onward, and Isherwood regarded Forster as his master. They were introduced by William Plomer in 1932. Forster was a supporter when Isherwood was publicly criticized for remaining in America during World War II. He appears in D.1, D.2, and Lost Years. He left his papers and copyright to King’s College with a life interest to his literary executor, the psychologist and translator of Freud, Professor W.J.H. Sprott (d. 1971). Isherwood was also named in his will, as the heir to the American rights of Forster’s unpublished homosexual novel Maurice, written 1913–1914 and heavily revised 1959–1960; it was published posthumously in 1971 under Isherwood’s supervision. Forster and Isherwood shared an understanding that any proceeds would be used to help English friends in need of funds for U.S. travel; Isherwood assigned the proceeds to the National Institute of Arts and Letters where an E.M. Forster Award was created to support English writers on extended visits to the U.S.

  Fouts, Denham (Denny) (circa 1914–1948). Son of a Florida baker; he worked for his father as a teenager then left home to travel as companion to various wealthy people of both sexes. Among his conquests was Peter Watson, who financed Horizon magazine, and Fouts helped solicit some of the magazine’s earliest pieces. During World War II, Watson sent Fouts to the U.S. with Jean Connolly, and she and Tony Bower introduced Fouts to Isherwood in mid-August 1940 in Hollywood. Fouts determined to begin a new life as a devotee of Swami Prabhavananda, but Swami would not accept him as a disciple, so, after a spell in the East, Fouts moved in with Isherwood in the early summer of 1941, and they led a spartan life of meditation and quiet domesticity. Isherwood describes this in Down There on a Visit where Fouts appears as “Paul,” and there are many passages about Fouts in D.1 and Lost Years. In August 1941, Fouts was drafted into Civilian Public Service camp as a Conscientious Objector; on his release in 1943, he lived with a friend from the camp while studying for his high-school diploma; afterwards he studied medicine at UCLA. In 1945 and 1946, Isherwood and Bill Caskey lived in Fouts’s apartment at 147 Entrada Drive while Fouts was mostly away; eventually, when Fouts returned, Caskey quarrelled with him, ruining Isherwood’s friendship. Soon afterwards, Fouts left Los Angeles for good. He became an opium addict in Paris, and Isherwood saw him there for the last time in 1948 before Fouts died in Rome.

  Fox, James (Willie) (b. 1939). British actor, from childhood; his real name is William; he is a younger brother of actor Edward Fox. Tony Richardson gave him a small role in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), and he later starred in The Servant (1963), The Chase (1966), Isadora (1968), Performance (1970), A Passage to India (1984), Absolute Beginners (1986), The Remains of the Day (1993), The Golden Bowl (2000), Sherlock Holmes (2009), and other films. He left acting for Christian evangelism for a time during the 1970s. He appears in D.2.

  Fox, Lyle. He ran the gym in Pacific Palisades attended by Isherwood, Bachardy, and the Masselinks from the start of the 1960s. He was blond and muscular. In 1967, he married an attractive younger woman called Rez. Eventually he became personal trainer and masseur for Gregory Peck and travelled with Peck on location all over the world. He appears in D.2.

  Frank. See Isherwood, Frank Bradshaw.

  Frankenheimer, John (1930–2002). American movie director, educated at Williams. He served in an air force film squadron during the Korean War, worked in T.V. through most of the 1950s, and became famous in 1962, when he had three films released: All Fall Down, Birdman of Alcatraz, and The Manchurian Candidate. Other work includes Seven Days in May (1964), The Train (1964), Grand Prix (1966), The Fixer (1968), I Walk the Line (1970), The Iceman Cometh (1973), and Reindeer Games (2000).

  Franklin. See Knight, Franklin.

  Franklin, Bill. American would-be actor. He briefly worked as a movie critic. He died of AIDS around the year 2000.

  French, Robin (b. 1936). Hollywood agent and, later, producer and T.V. syndicator; educated at boarding school in England and briefly at college in California. He worked with his father, Hugh, and increasingly represented Isherwood in the film business, taking over entirely in about 1970. He presided over the “incredible rights mess” of the play I Am a Camera and the musical and film Cabaret, securing Isherwood a substantial income for many years. By 1974, he left the agency business to become head of domestic production at Paramount Pictures. He later produced a few films, but worked primarily as a T.V. syndicator; eventually he operated and part-owned several T.V. stations before retiring in the late 1990s. French is mentioned in D.1 and appears in D.2.

  Freud, Lucian (1922–2011). British painter, born in Berlin, a grandson of Sigmund Freud. He emigrated with his family in 1933, and became an English citizen in 1939. He trained at the Central School of Art in London and at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing. His first solo show was in 1944 at the Alex Reid and Lefevre Gallery. He was a foremost figurative artist of his generation, especially of portraits and nudes, and, from the late 1980s, was inter nation ally acclaimed. His second wife, from 1953 to 1957, was Caroline Blackwood, a subject of four early works. They both appear in D.1, but not together. He had two daughters with his first wife, Kitty Epstein (to whom he was married from 1948 to 1952), and a number of children with women he did not marry: a son, Alexander—whom Isherwood evidently met in June 1976—and four daughters with Suzy Boyt; two daughters and a son with Katherine McAdam, from whom he became estranged; two daughters, later well-known as fashion designer Bella Freud and novelist Esther Freud, with Bernardine Coverley. Most of these children were born in the late 1950s and early 1960s; more were reportedly born later.

  Friebus, Florida (1909–1988). American actress and writer. She debuted on Broadway in an Ibsen revival in 1929 and appeared, among other things, in Alice in Wonderland, which she adapted for the stage with her longtime companion Eva Le Gallienne. She also had numerous T.V. roles, notably in “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” and “The Bob Newhart Show.”

  Fry, Basil. A bachelor cousin of Kathleen Isherwood, sixteen years younger than her; educated at Oxford. In 1928, Isherwood made his first trip to Germany to stay with Fry in Bremen, where Fry was British vice-consul. This visit was the basis for “Mr. Lancaster” in Down There on a Visit, and Fry was the model for Lancaster.

  Furbank, P.N. (Nicholas, Nick) (b. 1920). English scholar, critic, editor, author. He was a longstanding friend of E.M. Forster and was asked by Forster to write his biography, which appeared
in 1978. Furbank went on to edit, with Mary Largo, two volumes of Forster’s letters. His other books include a prizewinning biography of Diderot and, with W.R. Owen, a biography of Defoe. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and other publications.

  Gage, Margaret. A rich, elderly patroness of Gerald Heard; she loaned him her garden house on Spoleto Drive in Pacific Palisades, close to Santa Monica, from the late 1940s until the early 1960s. She also provided Will Forthman with a room in her house during the same period. She appears in D.1 and D.2.

  Gain, Richard (Dick). American ballet dancer. He danced in the original Broadway chorus of Camelot (1960) and in Martha Graham’s company and later worked as a choreographer and teacher. He became friendly with Richard and Sybil Burton during Camelot and shared their Hampstead home with Isherwood and Bachardy in 1961, when he toured with Jerome Robbins’s “Ballets: USA.” Gain’s friend, Richard (Dick) Kuch, also danced in Camelot. Eventually the pair moved to East Bend, North Carolina, to teach dance at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where Kuch became an assistant dean. They resigned in 1995. They appear in D.2.

  Gambhirananda, Swami (1899–1988). Indian monk of the Ramakrishna Order; philosopher, scholar, translator. A powerful General Secretary of the Ramakrishna Order for many years, in charge of its practical daily operation. Then, from 1985 to 1988, he was the eleventh president of the order, the spiritual leader, with no role in temporal matters. He appears in D.2.

  Garrett, Stephen and Jean. A British couple, a few years younger than Don Bachardy. He had an administrative job in Los Angeles. After she died of cancer, he moved back to England with their two daughters, and Isherwood and Bachardy lost touch with them.

  Gates, Jim (1950–circa 1990). American non-conformist, violinist, monk of the Ramakrishna Order; born in Washington State and raised in Claremont, California; his father taught Latin and English. He moved out of his parents’ house before the end of his sophomore year in high school and after high school went with Peter Schneider to Los Angeles, where they shared various living arrangements in Venice, San Marino and Hollywood, and where he eventually revealed to Schneider that he was gay. He was obsessed with Isherwood and hoped to run into him on the beach; Schneider looked up Isherwood’s telephone number in the phone book and called him to explain this, and Isherwood invited them to Adelaide Drive. Gates attended Santa Monica College briefly and worked as a bus boy, library clerk, and live-in assistant to the husband of Marlene Dietrich. He also joined the Hollywood Vedanta monastery for a time. He died of AIDS. He appears in D.2.