Altogether it indicated that my Middle Border books and Main-Travelled Roads had taken place in the minds as history and that they had a fair chance of surviving all changes in literary styles. But (as Rogers shrewdly remarked) I suspect that the speakers had not read my other books. However, I cannot complain of any neglect.
HAMLIN GARLAND
1934
I sit here. I have nothing to do. I have had nothing to do for days. I have had nothing to do since I came here. No one opens my office door. No one hints what might be expected of me to earn my handsome salary. No one knows I’m here, or gives a good Goddamn….
I would go home as a final gesture except that I won’t be licked by damned idiocy. I shall now stay here and rot in my beautiful office. My cadaver shall begin to smell. They will think it is just the normal smell of a completed film somewhere. Then, years later, another writer shall be given my office. He’ll find my skeleton here, sitting amid a welter of pay checks I shall never cash….
You wouldn’t believe that a place could be like this. The sham and the indescribable beauty.
That’s the real hell of it. It should be the most marvellous place in the world. You can’t picture it, because California has never told the truth to the world even about California….
When you arrive here, you don’t come to the Los Angeles station. They drive out and meet the train at Pasadena. You are whisked into a gorgeous Cadillac. That’s showmanship! After that you can rot in your office unknown and unsung….
I know that out of all this hodge-podge there must come something. There are men here who know and who long and who desire. They are slowly beginning to outnumber the pants-pressers. Some day they will break through—the total pressure will be too great for the soft surface. And then watch the films. Just as the sun-dried soil of this parched land springs miraculously to bounteous return the moment water touches it, so from the manure and dirt that are these now-reigning moguls will burst marvellous film-growth. The soil is arid and barren now. It needs only the water that courageous men can bring.
ERIC KNIGHT, to a friend
1946
When speech first came into the movies, I felt it was a mistake, as it not only created the barrier of language, thus making Hollywood pictures understood only by the English-speaking peoples, but it also slowed down the telling of stories which had heretofore been projected through emotion and action. I thought motion pictures would benefit more by marrying with music rather than speech.
Not until I saw Dudley Nichols’ The Informer did I realize how effective, though not as universally understood, the combination of the three—music, pantomime and speech—could be.
LILLIAN GISH
SEPTEMBER 15
1908
Sing with the moon. Lots of fish in my trap. Jorgenson building new boat….we catch 2, 5-ft., sharks from our wharf….my great stunt of dictating on the car, going and coming, Brownie got so she could take dictation almost as if at the table.
CHARLES LUMMIS
1938
It is a dark evening, it looks as if we should have rain, but the Japanese gardener is outside the house watering away just as if the sun were burning things up. Mummy is sitting on the sofa reading the evening paper, and I am at the card table writing a letter. Can you guess who I am writing the letter to?
The Good Humor man has gone tinkling by; I think he must be a little surprised that nobody asked him to stop at our house any more; I expect a man who sells ice cream at the Owl Drug Store misses you, too.
OGDEN NASH, to his children
SEPTEMBER 16
1932
Finally had the conference with Mr. Selznick, Adela Rogers St. Johns, Cukor….My ideas for lightening the picture fell absolutely flat….The conference brought on a violent attack of the Hollywood blues….how dangerous to smother one’s talent in cream.
CHARLES BRACKETT
1940
I started to work this morning…got all my notes in order for the book on eating. I don’t want to write it particularly, but I want to write. It is like having the itch. Now that I have started to work again, I am easier, as if I have put ointment on my mind.
M.F.K. FISHER
SEPTEMBER 17
1857
I went necessarily into the City to-day, and chanced to meet but four or five acquaintances, two of them among the French. One managed to get in a word of sympathy; others expressed much even by their manner, as they bowed to me. At different times several of my Jewish friends have addressed me. “It is the lot of all,” they uniformly say, but in a soft tone that makes the words fall gratefully upon the ear.
JUDGE BENJAMIN HAYES, about Emily Hayes
1940
In the evening Fay [Wray] and I went to the house of Dolores del Rio in Bel Air. We were to have dinner with her and Orson Welles, her light of love. She is a typically Mexican woman, charming, feminine, chatting lightly, and feeling about anything that catches her eyes. We drove to a restaurant where Welles joined us later, tired with work [on Citizen Kane]. He was very gracious and articulate, as usual, in fact articulate enough to be very glib. I did not mind this. In fact he is a sort of biological sport, stemming out of Lord Byron through Oscar Wilde, I should say. But he has a peculiarly American audacity. Of other people he said just what he thought of them, with scorn and derision; with us he was deferential, once referring to me as “in the foremost ranks of the talents of the world.”
I liked best when he suddenly said of himself, “I have a touch of rhinestones in my blood,” meaning he is part-charlatan.
This dinner, as I later told Fay, depressed me because I want to do and be all the things he is being and doing. A prime trouble with me is wanting to be all men; wanting, too, as Welles is trying to do, to beat the game. I want to be a poor poet and a powerful businessman, a sensational young man and a modest artist with a secret life. I understand every impulse in the American man because I naturally have the impulses myself.
I found that I disagreed with everything Welles said and I like him in spite of that. He is a very octopus of evil, but for all that there is a good side to him, a sense, for instance, of humble people. A communion of intelligence is possible with him; finally, too, he also is in opposition to the values around him, even though they may finally swallow him up.
CLIFFORD ODETS
1991
Keanu came over and hugged me warmly as if I were a favorite aunt, then he loped back to a place by the table. Maybe it was only a hug for the boss’s wife, but I treasured it. The color of his skin and hair, his height, the width of his shoulders, the casual easy way he wears his wrinkled T-shirt and scruffy blue jeans reminds me so much of Gio. Today is Gio’s birthday. Suddenly I could see the last moments we were together on Mother’s Day 1986, standing on the sidewalk in front of the apartment in Washington, D.C. I could feel our last hug, my right hand touching the thick, dark wavy hair at the back of his neck, my left arm wrapped across his T-shirt against the thin taut muscles in his thin young man’s back.
I realized that while I was thinking about Gio I had unconsciously moved to a chair alone by the costume racks. I thought I was being very calm just reviewing thoughts from the past in my mind when a wave of grief welled up and spread across my chest into my throat and a low animal cry escaped from my lips. My face contorted as I stifled a moan and quickly concealed myself behind a row of hanging overcoats. Finally I regained my composure. I wiped my face on the striped sleeve of a man’s shirt and slipped between women’s dresses to exit by a side door. Outside, Tom Fox, the video technician, was laying cable and waved a cheery “Hello!” I could feel tears choking my voice and hurried across the street and up into the little office apartment where I could be alone. As I stood weeping by the window, watching the school children in the play yard below, deep wracking sobs rose out of my chest. As my body began to unclench I ha
ppened to look at my watch. It was just after 11 a.m., the time of Gio’s birth twenty-eight years ago.
ELEANOR COPPOLA
SEPTEMBER 18
1912
Thank you indeed for the invitation to contribute to the new magazine. I am indeed eager to make good with such a group, and three times interested in such an Illinois enterprise.
I’m emphatically a citizen of Springfield, Illinois, and Sangamon County, and shall return in a year to stay forever more. If I may be confidential I have been horribly homesick for a month—and fear that (spiritually speaking) I shall hobble through the rest of my expedition.
I should probably send you something to be considered for publication in a month or so.
VACHEL LINDSAY, to Harriet Monroe
1978
The Santa Ana winds cleaned the city tonight. Washing the sky with her eastern tails. The moon, two days waning now, still bright and clear. I could see Catalina this morning from Dad’s office….
The Santa Ana keeps blowing—a soft wind from the East—warm, gentle and harsh all at once.
I seem—or feel to be at an enormous crossroads. I’ve so many paths available to me—but no real commitments to any yet. I can do anything—but still again—I know that I must make a choice about which skill—trade (whatever) I shall concentrate on—do for a couple of years. Going away is only postponement….I need to get started. I really do. And waiting in L.A. is just too much for me. Too much pain. Strange emotions. Too much—
AARON PALEY
SEPTEMBER 19
1934
Now I am in our house. We have lived in it ten days and nights, and we are very happy in it. It is a good peaceful little house. We grew tired before we finished painting….
At night we eat a simple but rather large dinner slowly by candlelight. The dining room is white and cool, with the silly yellow organdy curtains with big white polka dots on them moving across the sill silently in the air. Then Al goes to his study and I read or write or bathe. Then we read—now Crime and Punishment—and go to bed.
M.F.K. FISHER
1939
The job at Goldwyn’s lasted one week. Goldwyn and [director Sam] Wood had a fight on the set, and Wood said he’d quit if he had to rehearse the characters in new dialogue. Eddie Knopf told [agent H. N.] Swanson my stuff was grand and that he’ll get me back some way.
Very encouraging. Almost as much fun as the war….And so it goes. I can’t possibly pay Scottie’s Vassar tuition of $615.00. I’m working today on an Esquire story to get her back here.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, to his agent
1965
Eureka!
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
SEPTEMBER 20
1925
Well, it’s Sunday again and I’m at the studio. I was here until 8 last night and before I left, Mr. King asked me if I wouldn’t be so kind as to come in again today and naturally, I couldn’t refuse him. Miss Marion, Mr. King and a special title writer are retitling Stella Dallas so that it will be ready to be previewed tomorrow night at Pasadena. We had one preview of it at San Bernardino last week….However, this doesn’t mean much because most of the people of San Bernardino are ranchers and their opinions count for naught….
The weather here is glorious, but awfully dry. We haven’t had a bit of rain since about the 10th of June. One day is just like the other, hence you can never start a conversation with “Isn’t this awful weather we’re having?” which you must admit is quite a drawback in making new friends, especially with the opposite sex. When I meet a new fellow, all I can say is “Aren’t the stars bright tonight!” or some other such dumb remark—and that ends it. You just have to talk about other things or appear stupid.
VALERIA BELLETTI, to a childhood friend
1945
Actually mailed two copies of the mss. on Southern California book today.
CAREY MCWILLIAMS
1945
I’ll write to Hemingway. Poor bloke, to have to marry three times to find out that marriage is a failure, and the only way to get any peace out of it is (if you were fool enough to marry at all) keep the first one and stay as far away from her as much as you can, with the hope of someday outliving her. At least you will be safe then from any other one marrying you—which is bound to happen if you ever divorce her. Apparently man can be cured of drugs, drinking, gambling, biting his nails and picking his nose, but not marrying.
WILLIAM FAULKNER, to Malcolm Cowley
SEPTEMBER 21
1938
CARMEL HOTEL, SANTA MONICA
To begin with trifles, the grand party on Sunday was all right. Cukor and Helen Westley and even Nazimova were amusing. Millie served champagne to begin with. I had none because I had had some sherry and was a little afraid of getting sick inopportunely. They told some funny stories: of Tallulah Bankhead who insisted that cocaine was not habit-forming and who said she knew because she had been taking it for seventeen years.
CHARLES REZNIKOFF
1946
The famed climate has one flaw—you can’t eat it.
DICKSON HARTWELL
SEPTEMBER 22
1847
We have been engaged for some days in the trial of private John Smith 1st Drags for robbing Lieut Stonemans quarters which I have before mentioned—He was brought into the court room this morning looking very much immaciated—a mere shadow of what he once was—he has not recovered yet from his wound and I think from the hacking cough he has is fast approaching the grave—he plead guilty to all the charges brought against him—
LIEUTENANT JOHN MCHENRY HOLLINGSWORTH
1916
At the Summit of the Cajon Pass our troubles ended.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
SEPTEMBER 23
1846
Captain Gillespie, you are hereby ordered to surrender the fort within twenty-four hours, or you and your men will all be killed. Signed,
GEN. JOSÉ MARÍA FLORES,
to Captain Archibald H. Gillespie of the California Battalion
1923
Los Angeles is silly—much motoring, me rather tired and vague with it. California is a queer place—in a way, it has turned its back on the world and looks into the void Pacific. It is absolutely selfish, very empty, but not false and at least, not full of false effort. I don’t want to live here, but a stay here rather amuses me. It’s a sort of crazy-sensible.
D. H. LAWRENCE
SEPTEMBER 24
1846
Believe the bearer [Juan Flaco, who rode from Los Angeles to San Francisco in fifty-two hours]
CAPTAIN ARCHIBALD H. GILLESPIE, to Commodore Robert F. Stockton
1923
I am setting off tomorrow with Gotzsche down the west coast, by train, to Mexico again. I am glad to go. America drys up the natural springs of one’s soul. But I’ve had quite a nice time here—people are very nice to me.—It’s a very selfish place, Southern California, in a rather simple way. People care about nothing but just the moment. But also that can be pleasant.
D. H. LAWRENCE
1934
A young man, whose name I believe is Nertz, was writing the real screen play behind the scenes. I’m darn sorry I wasn’t able to stagger round the studios some more. It was interesting there though the horrid stalking of intangibles makes it more nerve-wracking, I imagine, than the average industrial plant….
Having been for a few weeks in the big money makes us feel strangely broke and parsimonious. Also we are faced with paying our debts—I don’t think the big money is what it’s cracked up to be.
JOHN DOS PASSOS, to Edmund Wilson
SEPTEMBER 25
1886
Rita de Celis, Cayita and Robert Bettner went to San Vicente with me this afternoon. We brought pears from the trees and ate figs. Mr. Baker and Arcadia came. He s
ays that a vein of gold has been found in the San Vicente hills. Put 2 cans or 10 gals in the gas machine. Cloudy in the morning—clear for the rest.
DON JUAN BAUTISTA BANDINI
1926
At 2:00 p.m. we arrived at Los Angeles. Immediately a whole bunch of delegates led by the mayor entered the carriage. Every delegate wore a ribbon with an inscription in gold: “Welcome Danchenko.” They brought all of us to the platform where a boys’ band played a comical reception on mouth organs and some girls in Egyptian costumes gave out oranges from huge baskets. Then they delivered a speech and presented Vladimir Ivanovich with a golden (cardboard) key to the city. The delegates, among whom were the representatives of the city administration, the press, cinema, theaters, and clubs, all wanted to shake hands with us, to give us flowers and fruit. An enormous crowd of people was standing on the platform; the boys’ band was playing some kind of march. Innumerable shots for newspapers and the cinema were taken. But the most comical thing was that in the heat of the celebration, the United Artists representative took me aside and divulged, “We know that Mr. Danchenko is a great celebrity, and we’ve been given an order to arrange a proper reception for him, but we do not know who in fact he is.”
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