35. Virginia Heinlein, letter to the author, 05/31/99.
36. Heinlein’s production memo critique of O’Hanlon’s script, page 3 of the draft in the RAH at UC Santa Cruz and available online through heinleinarchive.net.
37. Archive manuscript of RAH critique of O’Hanlon script, 35.
38. Brad Linaweaver, “Destination Freedom,” The Heinlein Journal, No. 9 (July 2001): 14.
39. RAH, letter to Virginia Fowler, 09/08/49.
40. RAH, letter to Mary Cole Lincoln, 09/13/49.
41. RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 09/24/49. This letter is the only mention of this occasion, and it does not fix the date, except to say he had forgotten to mention it in his last letter to Blassingame, which is dated 09/22/49.
42. Gladys English, letter to RAH, 09/27/49.
43. Neither the commissioning letter nor the manuscript has been preserved; Heinlein’s archive file consists entirely of clippings of the first publication of “The Historical Novel of the Future” in an unidentified digest-sized magazine’s “Bookshop News” Department for February 1950.
3. Hollywood Shuffle
1. The first mention of Irving Pichel as director of Destination Moon is in Heinlein’s letter to Lurton Blassingame, 09/24/49.
2. This conference is not dated in correspondence or file notes, but must have taken place toward the end of September, as a letter Heinlein wrote to Alice Dalgliesh and Virginia Fowler at Scribner on 10/26/49 speaks of Pichel’s controlling influence as an accomplished fact.
3. Not only did Heinlein continue to have a warm and friendly correspondence with Pichel for the remainder of Pichel’s life, his recollections of Pichel—at a function honoring George Pal in 1969—were warm and respectful of his professionalism and artistic sense, the very elements Heinlein found fault with in the O’Hanlon script. See, “Creativity Is Not Divisible,” Heinlein’s 1969 speech at the Rio Film Festival, in Requiem and Other Stories by the Grand Master, ed. Yoji Kondo (New York: Tor Publishing, 1992), 203; and in the Virginia Edition, vol. xliv, Screenplays 1.
4. RAH, letter to Alice Dalgliesh and Virginia Fowler, 10/26/49.
5. RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 10/01/49.
6. 7729 Hollywood Boulevard, on the corner of Hollywood and Courtney Avenue, just as it winds up into the Hollywood Hills. Courtney Avenue is four blocks east of Fairfax Avenue, in the outskirts of Hollywood, about two and a half miles from the Paramount Sunset-Gower studios.
7. Virginia Heinlein, taped interview with the author, Tape 1, Side B. See also, Virginia Heinlein, taped interview with Leon Stover, 1988, Tape 3, Side A.
8. LA Times West Magazine, 03/29/70, “This Place Looks Familiar—Hollywood left the moon to NASA and truth proved not so strange as fiction,” by Gabe Essoe, quotes George Pal saying he needed the cracked lunar landscape to give forced perspective on the small sound stage. Pal’s comments are also quoted in Gail Morgan Hickman, The Films of George Pal, 42–43.
9. In his 1957 lecture published as “Science Fiction: Its Nature, Faults, and Virtues,” Heinlein remembered that he “sent for a photograph of one of the space suits Sprague de Camp had helped develop, and we copied it as closely as we could for the movie.” The essay was part of The Science Fiction Novel: Imagination and Social Criticism in 1959 and is reprinted in the Virginia Edition, vol. xxxvii, Nonfiction I: Miscellaneous and Juvenilia.
10. RAH, “Creativity Is Not Divisible” as “Guest of Honor Speech—Rio de Janeiro Movie Festival, 1969” in Requiem, ed. Yoji Kondo, 203; and in the Virginia Edition vol. xliv, Screenplays.
11. Heinlein’s initial estimate for the cutting of Farmer in the Sky for serialization in Boys’ Life as “Satellite Scout” was two weeks (RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 10/01/49), but the cut was not actually finished until “shortly after the New Year” (RAH Accession Notes, 1967). Heinlein had intended to draft the book at 40,000 words and then cut and expand for the different publications, but there is no 40,000-word draft in his files and no record of his being engaged in an expansion; the novel-length manuscript must have been his first draft.
12. RAH, letter to Robert Cornog, 10/05/49, and Robert Cornog, letter to RAH, 10/17/49.
13. The four freshmen who interviewed with Heinlein on this occasion were Carl Schwerdtfeger, Sam Horey, Stewart Gothold, and Stephen Ginn, together with their teacher, Mr. Stanton Presnall. The Eagle, 10/14/49.
14. RAH, letter to Irving Pichel, 02/27/50.
15. RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 11/07/49.
16. RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 11/20/49.
17. Ackerman did some freelance reporting for various radio and television outlets and was considered part of the Hollywood press corps for specialized (science-fiction) film projects, as well. He was, for example, at that time promoting two projects directly to George Pal—Hugo Gernsback’s Ralph 124C41+ (which did not get made) and the Wylie/Balmer When Worlds Collide (which did).
18. Heinlein says only that this took place “around 1949” when he was in Hollywood. RAH, letter to Vertex magazine, 11/08/73. It is possible that the incident happened around August 1949, when the magazine came out, but work on Destination Moon slowed down during the filming of The Great Rupert and picked up again in October and November. There were many more opportunities for it to have taken place at this time.
19. RAH, letter to Vertex magazine, 11/08/73.
20. RAH, letter to Vertex magazine, 11/08/73.
21. Forrest J. Ackerman, letter to RAH, 07/22/49.
22. Virginia Heinlein, e-mail as “Astyanax12” to the author, 10/18/01. I believe this was intended to mean something like “she didn’t let the right hand know what the left hand was doing.”
23. Dry wit combined with lively intelligence seems to have been a Heinlein family trait. When the current generation of Heinleins decided to have their family reunion in conjunction with the Robert Heinlein Centennial (July 5–8, 2007) in Kansas City, the author had an opportunity to chat with them singly and in a group. This gathering included many of Heinlein’s nieces and nephews, and the experience felt much like a taste of what family dinners might have been like around the greater Heinlein menage.
That Centennial was also visited by Dorothy Martin Heinlein, then aged 94, wife of Heinlein’s brother J. Clare Heinlein, Ph.D. Coverage of the Centennial program, and Mrs. Heinlein’s participation, was included in The Heinlein Journal, no. 22 (January 2008).
24. Virginia Heinlein, letter to Miriam De Graff, 01/16/97.
25. Virginia Heinlein, taped interview with the author, Second Series, Tape B, Side A.
26. The estrangement came about in about 1939 because Rex thoughtlessly woke Leslyn while retrieving a trunk. The incident is detailed in the first volume of this biography, Learning Curve, at 244–5.
See also, Virginia Heinlein, taped interview with the author, Second Series, Tape B, Side A. In that interview, Mrs. Heinlein maintained that Rex always thought Robert had made more over the 1939 incident with the trunk than the occasion merited, and that Robert came to the conclusion that Leslyn had a habit of fanning the flames. He often in these early years praised Ginny’s policy of taking the high road as having practical good results for him.
27. RAH, letter to Rex Ivar Heinlein, 05/17/48.
28. Virginia Heinlein, taped interview with the author, Second Series, Tape B, Side A.
29. Gail Morgan Hickman, The Films of George Pal, 44.
30. Probably “cherry.” The old sequence of colors for revision pages is white, blue, pink, yellow, green, goldenrod, buff, salmon, cherry, tan, gray, ivory. (Information provided by screenwriter Steve Tymon.)
31. John T. Abbott, Wright-Sonovox, Inc., letter to RAH, 12/01/49.
32. Robert B. Pitkin, letter to RAH, 12/16/49.
33. RAH, letter to Mr. H. A. Rossmeisl, 01/18/50.
34. Even before the Heinleins left Colorado Springs for Hollywood, Heinlein was talking about buying a house there or building one (RAH, letter to Doña Campbell, 12/03/48). By the summer of
1949 this had become a firm intention, mentioned in several contemporaneous letters, but see for example RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 6/14/49.
35. Virginia Heinlein, letter to the author, 11/28/01.
36. Virginia Heinlein, taped interview with Leon Stover, Tape 3, Side A.
37. RAH, “Creativity Is Not Divisible” as “Guest of Honor Speech—Rio de Janeiro Movie Festival, 1969” in Requiem, ed. Yoji Kondo, 204.
38. L. Ron Hubbard, letter to RAH, 12/30/49.
39. Heinlein complained to Korshak many times about his business methods, but see RAH, letter to Erle Korshak, 04/07/51: “Being ‘Korshaked’ produces a nervous reaction much like that of being dumped out of a warm bed into a tub of ice water in the dark.”
40. The Hubbard-Heinlein correspondence about Erle Korshak and Shasta started with a letter from Hubbard to Heinlein, 04/21/49 (when Hubbard is already at work on the book that will be released the following year as Dianetics: Evolution of a Science—and confidently expects an endorsement from the American Medical Association), and continues through May and June. By October, however, Heinlein is asking Campbell what had become of Hubbard.
41. RAH, letter to L. Ron Hubbard, 01/18/50.
42. Rogers Terrill, letter to RAH, 01/05/50.
43. A “treatment” is a narrative description of a film story used as part of the development process.
4. Rent or Buy or Build?
1. Virginia Heinlein, letter to the author, 11/28/01.
2. Virginia Heinlein, letter to the author, 11/28/01.
3. This house was at 1825 Cheyenne Boulevard.
4. RAH, letter to Harry Hinkle, 02/23/50.
5. Irving Pichel, letter to RAH, 02/25/50.
6. Alice Dalgliesh, letter to RAH, 01/31/50.
7. RAH, letter to Robert K. Willis, 12/08/65. “Arroyo” is a Spanish word commonly used in the American southwest, meaning a deep gully across a watercourse; Heinlein uses the term interchangeably with “canyon,” another Spanish word that means a steep gorge, typically formed by a watercourse—as in the Grand Canyon.
8. Virginia Heinlein, letter to Leon Stover, 03/28/89.
9. Virginia Heinlein, editorial note in Grumbles from the Grave, 114.
10. Virginia Heinlein, letter to the author, 12/14/99.
11. RAH, letter to Robert K. Willis, 12/08/65. Most of the detail in this paragraph is taken from this description Heinlein wrote for his first real estate agent, when they decided to sell the Colorado Springs house after moving to California.
12. RAH, letter to Robert K. Willis, 12/08/65.
13. RAH, “If You Don’t See It, Just Ask: A Preview for Playboys.” This long and lively article, about the lifestyle options available to mid-century Americans, was written on spec in mid-1963. The article was never contemporaneously published, even though Heinlein later marked it up for submission to markets other than Playboy. It was first published in the Robert A. Heinlein Centennial Souvenir Book (2007) and, in a slightly different edit, in the Virginia Edition, vol. xxxvii, Nonfiction 1: Miscellaneous and Juvenilia.
14. Discussing the Argosy offer for the novelette, Heinlein said in passing, “I need the money for house building.” RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 01/02/50, and in another letter to Blassingame, 04/24/50, he said baldly, “… I need money so bad that I can taste it…”
15. RAH, letter to Mrs. Douglas, 08/10/49.
16. RAH, letter to Virginia Fowler at Scribner, 04/13/50.
17. RAH, letter to Alice Dalgliesh, 03/11/50. Heinlein never did understand why it was that so many of his readers wanted to know him as a person, why they were psychologically so warmed by the fire of his personality that filtered out through the conventions of his writing—and why this very same phenomenon generated so much critical piffle over the years.
18. For a time, no intact copies of this press book for Destination Moon were known to have survived. A copy used for David Hartwell’s 1979 festbuch for Gregg Press, Destination Moon, was later water damaged beyond recovery. Until 2006, the Robert A. Heinlein Archive at U.C. Santa Cruz had a nearly pristine copy in a map case in the Archivist’s office, but at the time the entire RAH Archive was put in non-call storage while the McHenry Library building was shut down for construction next door, this copy was lost. Two other copies have surfaced in the market since that time.
19. These pre-screenings of Destination Moon “in suburban sites” presumably took place in June 1950. The screenings were reported without identification of sources in “Destination Moon: Robert A. Heinlein, Filmwriter” by Christopher Schaefer, New Libertarian, no. 187 (undated but 1999), 61.
Two sneak previews in average suburban areas were used to test the box-office appeal. Survey results from these two previews showed that 64.4 percent felt the film was OUTSTANDING (or) EXCELLENT. Another 32.l2 percent rated the film as VERY GOOD (or) GOOD. And 94.5 percent said they would recommend the film to their friends.
Comments and reactions from audiences in these two pre-release screenings were all positive. Here’s a sampling of typical comments from the audience that illustrates the enthusiasm with which the film was received:
“The entire picture was remarkable, unusual…”
“Very good!!! Excellent!!! Outstanding!!!”
“Should be a nominee for the Best Picture of 1950. Fine acting.”
“I can sum it up in one word—outstanding!”
“We need more pictures like this.”
“Movies are better than ever!”
“Greatest picture ever seen! Exceptional music background.”
“This picture is in a class by itself … totally different. Most interesting picture I’ve seen.”
“I would like to see a sequel.”
“Your picture was the best I’ve seen in years!”
“It’s a top 4 Star picture in my opinion … it should get an Oscar.”
Eagle-Lion released Destination Moon with the ad lines, “Adventurers Conquer Space With Passenger-Carrying Rocket!”
When contacted in October 2013 about the source documents he used in this article, Christopher Schaefer said these comment cards and such were in the Destination Moon files at the main library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, now on La Cienega Boulevard in Beverly Hills, California.
20. In L. Ron Hubbard, letter to RAH, 12/30/49, Hubbard says he is working simultaneously on a Western and on the “Dianetics book—will send along when it’s done.”
21. RAH, in fact, never discussed his reaction to Dianetics with Hubbard directly. Hubbard obliquely expressed disgruntlement about Heinlein’s silence on the subject in a July 14, 1950, letter: “I guess you waited so long for the book that it just plumb wore out its welcome. If you knew the amount of pressure I had to put on the publisher to get you an advanced copy, you would appreciate it more.”
Heinlein did mention his unsettled disappointment at vagueness and lack of demonstrative rigor to John Campbell, even before Dianetics came out publicly:
Your letter was most interesting re Ron’s forays in therapeutic psychology. I have heard from him several times about such activities and am much interested and have asked many questions—but your letter has been a dern sight more informative than his letters. But he has promised me galleys of his book. (RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 08/01/49.)
Nevertheless, Dianetics remained a subject much of interest and discussion among Heinlein’s colleagues. Campbell, in fact, carried through the psychological experimentation he learned from Hubbard even after leaving the Dianetics movement.
After reading Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (1950), Heinlein commented to Campbell:
Dianetics—I wish to the devil that I knew a lot more about it. Your letters are persuasive but sketchy; Ron [Hubbard]’s book, despite its size, is remarkably vague when he gets right down to cases. I am troubled by the Great Schism and by the spectacular nonsense that accompanied Ron’s troubles with Sara; I am troubled by the number of Simon-pure screwballs t
hat I see associated with it, especially in Los Angeles.… (RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 08/15/51).
A flavor—though not historically accurate—of what Heinlein may have meant by “Simon-pure screwballs” is depicted in the recent film evocation of the early Dianetics-movement, The Master.
22. Sara Hubbard, letter to Robert and Virginia Heinlein, 05/02/50.
23. RAH, letter to Robert Bloch, 11/30/50.
24. Virginia Heinlein, letter to the author, 06/04/99.
25. RAH, letter to Robert Bloch, 11/30/50.
26. John W. Campbell, Jr., letter to RAH, 05/27/51.
27. RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 08/15/51.
28. RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 03/08/50; RAH telegram to Irving Crump, 04/05/50.
29. Lurton Blassingame, letter to RAH, 04/21/50.
30. RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 04/24/50. The relevant portion of this letter was also included in Grumbles from the Grave, 59.
31. RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 04/24/50.
32. Lurton Blassingame, letter to RAH, 02/02/50. In his draft Answers to Interrogatories in the Puppet Masters plagiarism suit against Roger Corman and The Brain Eaters, dated 10/13/60, Heinlein recalled that the germ of the story was jotted down on one of the blank index cards he carried with him “sometime shortly after the end of World War II—probably during 1946. The working title was INVASION BY E.T.” That jotting concerned the image of a mountain lion ridden by what he then thought of as a Martian invader, and was concerned with the damage a large carnivore might do when intelligently controlled—a very Astounding-esque notion. “I recall that I toyed with the idea of having first contact with the invaders be between a hunting party in the rockies … But the hoorah over ‘flying saucers’ gave me a new notion which I added to the growing plot…”
33. RAH, undated story notes for Between Planets in RAH Archive, UC Santa Cruz. Don Harvey is caught up in interplanetary war and joins first the Venus rebels and then his parents’ conspiracy of scientists. Interestingly, the initial workup for the story is focused on a dynamic space captain, based on L. Ron Hubbard—“Captain Dianetic” in Heinlein’s notes. The character completely disappeared from the book when written, as Don took over as the main character.
Robert A. Heinlein, In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 2 Page 65
