Dear Los Angeles
Page 41
HESTON, CHARLTON Actor, star of The Ten Commandments, The Omega Man, Will Penny, and Planet of the Apes. Quoted from The Actor’s Life: Journals, 1956–1976, edited by Hollis Alpert (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978).
HILL, JEREMIAH Indian fighter. Quoted from “Origin of the Trouble Between the Yumas and Glanton. Deposition of Jeremiah Hill,” The Quarterly (journal of the Historical Society of Southern California), vol. 6, p. 62 (1904).
HISA, AOKI Wife, mother, World War II internee, writer. Quoted from White Road of Thorns, edited by Mary Y. Nakamura (Los Angeles: Xlibris, 2015).
HOLLINGSWORTH, LIEUTENANT JOHN MCHENRY A Baltimore-born great-grandson of Justice Samuel Chase, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Later the superintendent of George Washington’s Mount Vernon home for many years. He left a widow, no children, and perhaps our best record of life in Los Angeles on the verge of statehood. Quoted from Journal of Lieutenant John McHenry Hollingsworth of the First New York Volunteers [Stevenson’s Regiment] September 1846–August 1849. Being a recital of the voyage of the Susan Drew to California; the arrival of the regiment in 1847; its military movements and adventures during 1847-1848-1849; incidents of daily life, and adventures of the author in the gold mines (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1923).
HOPPER, HEDDA Gossip columnist. Longtime rival of Louella Parsons. When she typed, Hollywood quaked. Quoted from her column, “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood.” New York: Hearst Newspapers, 1941.
HUGHES, LANGSTON Poet, vital contributor to the Harlem Renaissance. In and out of Hollywood before World War II, working on songs and sketches for liberal revues. Was picketed at a Pasadena Hotel by the evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson and her congregants, then ungently escorted out of a potentially lucrative book luncheon by police. Quoted from Selected Letters of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad, David Roessel, and Christa Fratantoro (New York: Knopf, 2015).
HURSTON, ZORA NEALE Author of the epochal novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, with its ageless opening line, “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.” Born in Notsaluga, Alabama, in 1891, Hurston wanted to write great literature about African American lives, and she succeeded. Came to Hollywood in 1941 as a story consultant for Paramount. Lived in West Adams, almost across the street from the William Andrews Clark mansion, later home to some of the UCLA Library’s rarest collections. Quoted from Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston, by Valerie Boyd (New York: Scribners, 2003).
HUSTON, JOHN Great adapter and director of literature from The Maltese Falcon through The Dead.
HUTTON, WILLIAM RICH Artist and surveyor. Quoted from Glances at California, 1847–1853: Diaries and Letters of William Rich Hutton, with a Brief Memoir and Notes by Willard O. Waters (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library Press, 1942).
HUXLEY, ALDOUS British author of Brave New World, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, and The Doors of Perception. Relocated to Los Angeles originally for eye treatment and eventually for enlightenment, both chemical and not. Quoted from Selected Letters of Aldous Huxley, edited by James Sexton (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2007).
IDLE, ERIC Writer, lyricist, performer, Python. Long resident in Southern California. Quoted from his The Greedy Bastard Diary: A Comic Diary of America (New York: HarperCollins, 2005).
IKEDA, TOMOKO Japanese American schoolgirl, internee. Quoted courtesy of the Japanese American National Museum (2000.378).
IMMEN, LORAINE Elocutionist and clubwoman. Visited California in the winter and spring of 1896. Quoted from Letters of Travel in California (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Privately published, 1896).
ISHERWOOD, CHRISTOPHER Author of The Berlin Stories and A Single Man, screenwriter, with Don Bachardy, of Frankenstein: The True Story, pioneering chronicler of gay life. Even a cursory reading of his work discloses a master stylist whose undeniable importance to gay literature, California literature, and the literature of pre–World War II Germany tends to obscure his contribution to literature, full stop. He caught this place as few have. Quoted from the three volumes of his Diaries (New York: Harper, 1996, 2010, 2012); and The Animals: Love Letters Between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux). All edited and introduced by Katherine Bucknell.
JACKSON, HELEN HUNT Author of Ramona, advocate for Native American rights. Quoted from The Indian Reform Letters of Helen Hunt Jackson, 1879–1885, edited by Valerie Sherer Mathes (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998).
JACKSON, WILLIAM HENRY Saddle tramp, later an influential Western photographer. Quoted from The Diaries of William Henry Jackson, Frontier Photographer, edited by LeRoy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1959).
JAMES, CLIVE Critic, literary essayist, polymath. Here on a visit, filmed for broadcast. Quoted from Flying Visits (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1984).
JARRELL, RANDALL Poet, critic, novelist. Lived here in the twenties with his paternal grandparents. Quoted from Randall Jarrell’s Letters: An Autobiographical and Literary Selection, edited by Mary Jarrell (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985).
JEFFERS, ROBINSON “The great poet of the American West Coast,” per California’s poet laureate, Dana Gioia. Went to Occidental, where he wooed his beloved Una away from her husband, and cribbed the idea for his dramatic Tor House from writer-stonemason Charles Lummis’s “El Alisal.” Quoted from Collected Letters of Robinson Jeffers, with Selected Letters of Una Jeffers, edited by James Karman (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009).
JEFFERS, UNA KUSTER Wife of above; muse, mainstay. An Angelena until she and Jeffers fled scandal to Carmel. Quoted from Collected Letters of Robinson Jeffers, with Selected Letters of Una Jeffers, edited by James Karman (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009).
JOHNSON, NUNNALLY Screenwriter-producer best known for The Grapes of Wrath. Quoted from The Letters of Nunnally Johnson, edited by Dorris Johnson and Ellen Leventhal (New York: Knopf, 1981).
JOHNSTON, ALVA Pulitzer-winning, Sacramento-born, New York–employed, California-posted journalist. Biographer of, among others, Samuel Goldwyn, Erle Stanley Gardner, and, more to the point, Edgar Rice Burroughs (q.v.). He numbered among the generations of East Coast correspondents who really corresponded, writing descriptive letters home to their readers (and editors), taking care not to sound as if they were having too good a time. Quoted in Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan, by Irwin Porges (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1975).
JONES, JAMES Author of From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line. Caught his breath here after finishing Eternity. Quoted from To Reach Eternity: The Letters of James Jones, edited by George Hendrick (New York: Random House, 1989).
JOYCE, JAMES Author of Dubliners, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake. Never visited Los Angeles, but it’s my book. Quoted from Finnegans Wake (New York: Viking Press, 1939).
KAPLAN, SAM HALL Urban planner, first ever architecture critic of the Los Angeles Times. Quoted from his L.A. Follies: Design and Other Diversions in a Fractured Metropolis (Malibu, Calif.: Cityscape Press, 1989).
KAZAN, ELIA Stage and film director of On the Waterfront, East of Eden, and A Face in the Crowd. Quoted from The Selected Letters of Elia Kazan, edited by Albert J. Devlin with Marlene J. Devlin (New York: Knopf, 2014).
KELLOGG, CAROLYN Book editor, Los Angeles Times. Kellogg works in a large for-profit company, the Los Angeles Times, and does a job not commonly thought to be all that creative, i.e., assigning and editing book coverage. But she finds young, raw writers and somehow turns them into cogent, graceful critics. Her matchmaking skills between reviewer and material are impeccable. The indicator species for literary culture, and quite possibly American daily journalism, is book coverage. Kellogg keeps it alive and lively. Quoted by gracious permission.
KEROUAC, JACK Author of On the Road and The Dharma Bums. Rode a northbound freight through town. Quoted from Windblow
n World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947–1954, edited by Douglas Brinkley (New York: Viking, 2004).
KIP, WILLIAM INGRAHAM Yale-educated first bishop of California. Great-great-grandfather of the political financiers the Koch brothers. Quoted from his The Early Days of My Episcopate (New York: T. Whittaker, 1902).
KIRSCH, ROBERT Book critic, novelist. Patriarch of the Kirsch book-reviewing dynasty that includes son Jonathan and grandson Adam. He reviewed a book every morning in the Los Angeles Times for decades and, like his opposite number at the San Francisco Chronicle, Joseph Henry Jackson, read himself into an early grave. Quoted from his Lives, Works & Transformations (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Capra Press, 1978).
KNIGHT, ERIC This Yorkshire-born screen- (and brilliant letter-) writer of the 1930s, after almost losing his sanity doing thankless hackwork for the studios, walked away one day and built a farmhouse with his bare hands in what’s now the San Fernando Valley. His equilibrium gradually restored, he started writing again and wound up turning out an unsung classic noir, You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up, and another novel that became one of the most beloved kids’ movies of all time. Few realize that the Yorkshire-born title character was really based on Toots, the lovable best friend he found in Northridge. We know her better as Lassie. Knight also wrote acclaimed patriotic documentaries for Frank Capra before dying tragically in a World War II plane crash. Quoted from Down and Out in Hollow-Weird: A Documentary in Letters of Eric Knight, by Geoff Gehman (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1985), and Portrait of a Flying Yorkshireman: Letters from Eric Knight in the United States to Paul Rotha in England, edited by Paul Rotha (London: Chapman & Hall, 1952).
L’AMOUR, LOUIS Beloved, prolific author, primarily of westerns, including the influential Hondo, and some early L.A. crime fiction. Lived and wrote here later in life, finally coming to rest at Forest Lawn. Quoted from The Best of Rob Wagner’s Script, edited by Anthony Slide (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1985).
LAWRENCE, D. H. Groundbreakingly frank British novelist. Author of Women in Love, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Rainbow, many others. Cruised through L.A. during his New Mexico years. Subject of Geoff Dyer’s terrific reluctant biography, Out of Sheer Rage. Quoted by Carey McWilliams in “Tides West,” the books column for Westways, the magazine of the Automobile Club of Southern California.
LECOUVREUR, FRANK Prussian immigrant, later a county clerk, surveyor, and businessman. Quoted from From East Prussia to the Golden Gate, translated by Julius C. Behnke (New York and Los Angeles: Angelina Book Concern, 1906).
LENNON, JOHN Musician, poet, Beatle. A regular visitor for concerts, with and without the Beatles. Quoted from John, by Cynthia Lennon (New York: Crown/Archetype, 2010).
LEOVY, JILL Author of Ghettoside, versatile Los Angeles Times journalist, especially about crime. Inaugurated the paper’s acclaimed murder blog, memorializing each new homicide victim in the city. Diary entry originally published in Slate, later included in The Slate Diaries, edited by Jodi Kantor, Cyrus Krohn, and Judith Shulevitz and with an introduction by Michael Kinsley (New York: Perseus Book Group, 2000). Copyright 2000 by Michael Kinsley. Reprinted by permission of PublicAffairs, a member of the Perseus Book Group.
LEWIS, SINCLAIR First American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Author of Babbitt, Main Street, Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth. Debated publicly in L.A. whether fascism could happen here, at the Philharmonic Auditorium for Rabbi Herman Lissauer’s sadly unremembered Modern Forum. Quoted in The War Between the State, by Jon Winokur (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2004).
LINDSAY, VACHEL Major American poet, also author of The Art of the Moving Picture. Wrote his most famous poem, “General William Booth Enters into Heaven,” in Los Angeles. Quoted from Letters of Vachel Lindsay (New York: Lenox Hill Publishing, 1979).
LIVERIGHT, HORACE Publisher and co-founder of the Modern Library. Tried to reinvent himself in L.A. late in life, alas without success. Quoted from Firebrand: The Life of Horace Liveright, by Tom Dardis (New York: Random House, 1995).
LONDON, JACK Author of The Call of the Wild, Martin Eden, and The People of the Abyss. Used to come down to watch prizefights and duck creditors. Quoted from The Letters of Jack London: 1913–1916, edited by Earle Labor, Robert C. Leitz, and Milo Shepherd (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988).
LOPEZ, STEVE Newspaper columnist, novelist. Maybe Northern Californians get L.A. better than the natives do. First there was Joan Didion, blowing south out of Sacramento like some neurasthenic tule fog, writing the books that color how we see Los Angeles even today. Now Angelenos have Steve Lopez, a bread-truck-driver’s son from Pittsburg, California, whose city-side column may be the best thing to appear in the Los Angeles Times since Nixon’s hometown op-ed page demanded his impeachment. Quoted from “A Bright Future Bought with Hard Work and Lots of Tacos,” Los Angeles Times, May 30, 2003.
LOVE, MIKE Beach Boy; songwriting partner and cousin of Brian Wilson. Lyric from “The Warmth of the Sun,” published by Irving Music, affiliated with BMI.
LOWENSTEIN, MANNIE Shopkeeper. Quoted from Mannie’s Crowd: Emanuel Lowenstein, Colorful Character of Old Los Angeles, and a Brief Diary of the Trip to Arizona and Life in Tucson of the Early 1880s, by Norton B. Stern (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1970).
LOWRY, MALCOLM Author of Under the Volcano. Met his wife here. Worked on Under the Volcano at the Normandie Hotel—later a cannabis hostel, now a boutique inn with the storied Cassell’s Hamburgers grilling again on the ground floor. Quoted from Selected Letters of Malcolm Lowry, edited by Harvey Breit and Margerie Bonner Lowry (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1965).
LUBITSCH, ERNST Director of Ninotchka and other sophisticated comic romances. Quoted from The Best of Rob Wagner’s Script, edited by Anthony Slide (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1985).
LUMMIS, CHARLES Newspaperman, city librarian, archaeologist, and founder of the Southwest Museum. Also a booster, self-promoter, windbag, mountebank, and rapscallion. Diaries in the Charles Fletcher Lummis Papers, 1850–1929. Braun Research Library Collection, Autry Museum of the American West; MS.1.
MACDONALD, ROSS Author of The Chill, the surprisingly contemporary Black Money, and other novels featuring detective Lew Archer. Quoted from Meanwhile There Are Letters: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and Ross Macdonald, edited by Suzanne Marrs and Tom Nolan (New York: Arcade, 2015).
MAGAÑA, BENEDICTA M. Eastside Angelena. Personal letter to her brother.
MAGON, RICARDO FLORES Mexican revolutionary and journalist, briefly resident in Edendale. Lived near Red Hill in Echo Park while on the lam from the Mexican government. Did time as a guest of the local constabulary. Quoted from Dreams of Freedom: A Ricardo Flores Magon Reader, edited by Chaz Bufe and Mitchell Cowen Verter (Oakland, Calif.: AK Press, 2005).
MAILER, NORMAN Novelist, journalist, filmmaker, author of The Naked and the Dead and The Armies of the Night—and a Palm Springs–set Hollywood novel, The Deer Park. Covered the 1960 Democratic Convention at the Sports Arena when JFK won the nomination. Returned on book tours, granting voluble interviews to journalists including this one. Quoted from Selected Letters of Norman Mailer, edited by J. Michael Lennon (New York: Random House, 2014).
MANN, THOMAS Nobel Prize–winning German author of The Magic Mountain, Buddenbrooks, and Doktor Faustus. Fled Hitler for Pacific Palisades, where the modernist home he built now houses a cultural center dedicated to democracy. Quoted from Letters of Thomas Mann, 1889–1955, selected and translated by Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Knopf, 1971).
MARCHESSEAULT, DAMIEN Mayor of Los Angeles. Wrote the note quoted here and then fatally shot himself in City Hall. Los Angeles Semi-Weekly News, January 21, 1868.
MARQUIS, DON Creator of the newspaper feature “archy and mehitabel.” Came to L.A. to write scripts. Hated it. Went home. Quoted from Selected Letters of Don Marquis, edited by William McCollum, Jr. (Stafford, Va.: Northwoods Press, 1982).
MCCARTHY, BRANDON Ex-Dodger pitcher, aphorist, and heir to Jim Bouton (q.v.). From his delightful Twitter feed (https://twitter.com/bmccarthy32/status/877412303209021440?lang=en).
MCCOY, ESTHER Architecture critic, author of the indispensable Five California Architects. In Reyner Banham’s words, “No one can write about architecture in California without acknowledging her as the mother of us all.” Quoted from Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader, edited and with an essay by Susan Morgan (Valencia, Calif.: East of Borneo Books, 2012).
MCGRAMA, G. Diarist during what then-Angeleno Woody Guthrie’s great ballad memorialized as L.A.’s “New Year’s Flood” of 1934. Quoted at http://oldmcgramasmohairfarm.blogspot.com/2014/01/memory-is-elusive-capture-it-grandmas.html.
MCKINLEY, WILLIAM President of the United States, assassinated in 1901, succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt (q.v.). Passed through L.A. four months before the anarchist Leon Czolgosz murdered him and elevated Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency. Quoted from the San Francisco Chronicle, May 9, 1901.
MCLUHAN, MARSHALL Public intellectual, professor, philosopher futurist. Courted his future wife, Corinne, while living in Pasadena and researching the Elizabethan pamphleteer Thomas Nashe at the Huntington Library. Quoted from Letters of Marshall McLuhan, edited by Matie Molinaro, Corinne McLuhan, and William Toye (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
MCPHERSON, SISTER AIMEE SEMPLE Evangelist, broadcaster, faith healer. For years perhaps the most famous Angeleno this side of Mickey Mouse. Tarnished by her disappearance and subsequent discovery in a beachfront love nest. Once, no out-of-towner could call a trip here complete without a visit to her Angelus Temple, across the street from Echo Park. Buried at Forest Lawn, supposedly with a telephone for communication from the beyond. Quoted from This Is That: Personal Experiences, Sermons and Writings (Los Angeles: McPherson/Bridal Call, 1921).