The Sixties

by Christopher Isherwood

  Have just seen Gerald. He had another stroke about two weeks ago and has now been fitted with a catheter. Michael says this is really a good thing because Gerald doesn’t wake up (and thus doesn’t wake Michael up) in the night to pee. Gerald was cheerful and quite articulate; we talked a lot about volcanoes.

  (Which reminds me that there was an earthquake in California in April. It happened on April 29, during the afternoon, on the north shore of the Salton Sea. A lot of windows were broken in Indio. The shock was quite considerable (six on the Richter Scale, I think) and it was felt in Las Vegas; and the girls in the French office in Beverly Hills were quite scared, the building rocked so. The extraordinary thing is, I didn’t feel it at all down here; I had just come in from jogging on San Vicente with Jim Bridges.)

  Haven’t seen Peter Schneider and Jim Gates since I took them to Black Girl on May 1. I suppose they won’t call me, they are waiting for me to call them. And now I’m embarrassed to because I want to; I would love to see them. There is something strangely delightful in being with them. I find I haven’t recorded our visit to the so-called theater in Venice, The Walrus. It’s really a dance hall, part of what must once have been a very big apartment in an old building in the hippie section of Washington Boulevard. All sorts of people come, all ages, black and white, and they dance and there is a light show. Everybody dances, it seems, in the way he or she feels; there is no question of “knowing how to” and in this sense it is like the kingdom of heaven, everyone is equal and happy. Quite young boys flutter around like moths, flickering their arms; and old women do a sort of hula; and young couples perform various rituals. Cop cars are cruising below and two narcotics squad plainclothesmen came upstairs and mingled with the dancers; they looked disarmingly benevolent. But Peter didn’t perform after all. He felt the atmosphere wasn’t right for his magic, the audience wasn’t in the mood for it. And I think his instinct was correct. Anyhow we hung around there for about four hours, and Jim gave me a letter, saying, “We know so much about you, I think you should know something about me.” From the letter I infer that Peter is definitely not queer and that Jim isn’t in love with him. But the funny thing is, I haven’t had one moment alone with Jim since then to ask him all the questions which arise from the letter. The evening was most enjoyable (though Peter was sulky and morose) as far as I was concerned—this was on April 26. One thing which Peter and Jim said to me that night I remember because it flattered me: “You’re not like a writer.” They meant that I seemed to them to have a life apart from writing. Their little house is in a part of Venice I’ve never visited before, with very steeply arched bridges over the canals, which are surprisingly clean and have ducks swimming on them. At the back of their lot, near the canal bank, is the shed where they meditate; it is much tidier and cleaner than their house, with mats spread on the floor and a little shrine with a picture of Ramakrishna. They have a girlfriend whom they jokingly decided to both of them marry, calling themselves “Schnates.” Her name is Allyn [Nelson], she was there when I visited them. I thought she was pregnant but it turned out that she just had a huge stomach. The boys thought this wildly funny when I told them.

  Don is supposed to come back tomorrow. I have a sort of sickish premonition that he won’t. Not that it really matters, and if he has got some extra work that’s all to the good; but now the idea of postponement in itself upsets me, because of the other times. It’s a sort of death image.

  Igor has had an operation in New York, the blood clot was removed from his leg. His condition is very serious but he is still alive, or was when the last telephone call came through; Igor’s secretary keeps in touch with them and phones Bill Brown who phones me. He is so tough that you never know.

  Swami called this morning to say that they all loved Black Girl. It’s too bad that it has to come off, because there has been a real word of mouth success for it, these last few weeks. And they have been having discussions after the show. Susan Batson answers questions with a good deal of intelligence. Of course the blacks simply cannot get it through their heads that Shaw wrote this more than thirty-five years ago and that anyhow he was definitely not writing about the Negro Problem as such—much less the Negro Problem in America in 1969. There was almost a minor riot when a white man in the audience objected to the end of act one, the black dancers sneering at the audience as whites. The blacks told him he was full of shit, and a lot of whites took their side, and a lot more whites didn’t. The final performance was last night.

  I got a sudden fit of irresponsibility and spent most of yesterday out at shows. Saw Cocteau’s The Testament of Orpheus, which I liked very much except for the long yakky part during the trial. And Fortune and Men’s Eyes for the second time, because I was curious about the changes they’ve made. In the rape scene, Sal Mineo takes all of his clothes off before going into the shower room and shows his cock; and then in the shower-room he pulls Don Johnson’s shorts off and you see his cock too. And at the end of the play, when Mona is being beat up by the guard offstage and you hear his cries, Don Johnson gets sadistically excited, puts his hand inside his pants and mimes jacking himself off, with gasps of lust. When he is supposed to have come, he slowly brings out his hand, evidently full of semen, and stares at it in horror like Lady Macbeth. Blackout! The audience was mixed and predominantly hetero. A few went out but many frankly loved it. A much younger boy played Queenie and a much prettier boy Mona; Don Johnson’s body is really beautiful, so was the Queenie-player’s, and even Sal Mineo still looks pretty good with his clothes off. This helped a lot. But oh dear most of the play is so hysterically silly.

  May 6. Woke up with an absolute certainty that Don was going to postpone, but he hasn’t, and it’s twenty of twelve this morning and he’s scheduled to arrive (early) at 4:55 p.m.

  Forgot to mention that, when I was about to go into the theater to see Fortune and Men’s Eyes, Don Johnson arrived in a sport car driven by a girl whom he proceeded to embrace and very publicly and repeatedly kiss, as if to warn us all not to get any wrong ideas about him.

  Two earthquakes yesterday, very mild and I felt neither of them. But one had its epicenter in downtown Los Angeles!

  Also forgot to mention Gerald’s astonishing violence when I happened to refer to Napoleon. It seemed so odd that he would still feel such a very long-range resentment in his present condition.

  Had supper with Bart Johnson last night. A boy was there who collects desert junk—for example, a can of Log Cabin syrup in the form of a log cabin, no longer marketed, he says. It was completely rusted over. He claims that you can actually sell this stuff. Tried to see it aesthetically but couldn’t. The boy’s name: John Ingraham.

  On April 27 I had supper with Jennifer (another “forgot”); a very nice evening, sort of Persian. She wore a brocaded robe and we sat on a divan in beds of cushions, eating our supper out of doors by candlelight. While I was waiting for her I looked through her books and discovered that Jung’s essay on synchronicityfn809 which I’ve always wanted to read is in volume 8 of his collected works. Yesterday she sent me a copy and I was so delighted; how seldom one gets a really thoughtful gift.

  May 31. This is a madly compulsive period. We finished the rough draft of the Cabaret film treatment on the 27th and are now well into the rewrite. I think it’s really very well constructed and quite a bit different from novel or play—you can’t be different from the musical because you can’t be different from nothing. But the instant our half day of work is done on Cabaret there’s Don’s painting for him (it looks like he will have a show before long, after all) and for me Kathleen and Frank. (On May 19 I finished chapter 7; this one took thirty-seven days! Since then, with immense toil and the aid of three books, Churchill’s,fn810 Rayne Kruger’sfn811 and Kearsey’s,fn812 I have managed to write just under two pages, describing the battle of Spion Kop!!) And then, if any time remains over, there’s letter writing to be done and this diary to be kept (which is why it hasn’t been) and the guilty urge to work out, either a
t the gym or jogging or at least doing my minimum schedule of isometrics; haven’t been too bad about this.

  On the 28th, Tony Richardson called, wanting me to do a rewrite on the script he already has for I, Claudius. I said yes, we would; but am still not sure he really understands about my partnership with Don. He is leaving very shortly for Australia to make the Ned Kelly film, that is, if Mick Jagger can be sprung; he is to play Kelly and has just been arrested again on some narcotics charge.fn813

  Saw Swami this afternoon. He is still in this marvellous state; not merely in excellent health and spirits but able to convey, as almost never before to the same degree, an absolute spiritual guarantee: this thing is true. He tells the same stories, that’s beside the point; because, when he’s like this, the story is spiritually fresh each time. Today, he told how Maharaj had commanded him three times: love me. And today this made my flesh creep and my eyes water. Swami wouldn’t have needed to explain, even to an outsider, that it didn’t mean “love me, Brahmananda”; his tone and manner made that obvious.

  Yesterday afternoon I went down to Peter and Jim’s shack on the canal. Jim is away up north in Washington with his sister. When I came in, Peter was playing his guitar and mouth-organ combination (it has become somehow protocol not to greet one another). He likes to get into a conversation and then discuss why we are talking about what we’re talking about. He also wanted to know, did I think him attractive. (Leading up to making me answer this never spoken question took him about an hour.) Told him he was attractive and that Jim was beautiful. None of this was flirting, exactly. Flirting means trifling with somebody and we were neither of us doing that; we were sincerely curious and our motives weren’t ulterior. I still feel that they are both of them altogether unusual creatures; so does Don. He has already drawn them.

  When I said my motives weren’t ulterior, I must confess that I am beginning to wonder if Jim and Peter can’t somehow be brought into my projected novel about the two old men, the Swami and the Writer!

  June 1. Another thing Swami told me yesterday was that he has come more and more to realize that Maharaj, Swamiji, Holy Mother and Ramakrishna are all the same. He says it was a long time before he could feel the presence of Ramakrishna but that now this comes to him very strongly.

  Talked to Peter Schneider this morning. He is getting terrible stage fright about his engagement to do his magic act in Bel Air next weekend before an audience of six hundred people. He had a nightmare about it last night in which he told the audience he was going to vanish and then simply walked right out of the hall, and walked and walked until he got to the freeway—and it was on fire! He is also puzzled and worried because Jim has never written to him since he went up north, and Jim is such an ardent letter writer; wondered if he could be sick, dead, or what.

  Last night Don and I had supper with Jo. The six kittens of her cat are now quite big and running about everywhere. Jo’s latest self-pity ploy is to ask us about our movie collaboration and then murmur tearfully that it must be so wonderful to do things together. The curry she had cooked was too watery and not nearly hot enough, and this she excused by saying how she hates to cook alone. Poor dreadful old Jo! How she degrades herself by talking like this, and degrades us too by drying up our compassion (such as it is!) and making me write this bitchy note about her. The best thing about the evening was that we trotted all the way down to her house and I wasn’t the least out of breath. That’s what stopping smoking does for you! As Don said, I couldn’t have done that when he first met me.

  June 12. Just as an exhibit of my “public relations” self, here’s a postcard I wrote to a college boy named Robert Cullinane who asked me “what or who it was that inspired you to become a writer and how you made headway in your calling”:

  My father told me stories, my grandmother talked about the theater, so it seemed the most natural thing to me, as a child, to act and write—it was play, as opposed to work. It has remained play, more or less, except for a few breadwinning chores. Certainly I have never thought of it as a profession; it is far too important to me. As for the acting, that turned into lecturing which is much more fun because you speak your own lines and hog the stage! As for getting ahead, that’s a matter of luck and not stopping. Ambitious people are actually more likely to give up, they get so discouraged. If it’s play, why stop?

  The various shades of falseness in this are material for a whole autobiographical essay—maybe something I could work into Kathleen and Frank. And yet, overall, it’s an approximately true statement.

  We sent the treatment of Cabaret off to Tony Harvey in England on the 9th; haven’t heard yet. Robin French says he likes it. Meanwhile we are playing around with ideas for I, Claudius. Shall we do both of them, or neither? Shall we go to Berlin, England, Australia? All is uncertain.

  There’s also a production of A Meeting by the River which Nicholas Thompson is “putting together” in London. We suspect that he and Robin are in favor of pushing Jim Bridges out of directing this, and he is making it easy for them by taking on all this other work; directing Jack’s Cherry, Larry, Sandy… for the Edinburgh Festival, writing a film for Leslie Caron and Michael Laughlin and directing his own screenplay, The Babymaker. Nevertheless, Jim keeps saying how excited he is about our play, how he wants to go to India before he does it, etc. He simply has the rush bug, like all of us nowadays.

  Jim Gates is coming back from Washington tomorrow, recovered from his appendicitis operation. Peter’s magic-making on the 7th was a fiasco because they made him perform to an audience which was mostly drunk and didn’t particularly want to hear him and couldn’t anyway, because the mike didn’t work and the tables at which they were sitting were back inside a sort of porch, looking through arches into the room where he was. Don and I went. It was horrifying to see all these Others, nine hundred of them, most fairly elderly and compulsively determined to enjoy themselves; when they danced it was macabre. The party was given by a rich man named Jack Ryan who has a huge house and big grounds on a hilltop in Bel Air.fn814 He gives lots of parties. While they are going on he retires to a tree house and drinks with his friends. Peter behaved very well. He stolidly went through with his act and didn’t complain. The lady who had invited him decided that he had better not appear again; he was originally supposed to give three performances that evening. (I met her two evenings later when I had to be on a round table discussion for the ACLU at the Stage Society Theater. I was with Susan Batson, who has just married Kaye Dunham from our Black Girl cast, and Susan was quite shocked because I acted so “coldly”; but it was good I did, because next morning, the lady phoned Peter and apologized for having involved him in this mess!)

  June 24. Yesterday we got this note from Tony Harvey: “Thank you for the treatment received today. It is interesting but I am afraid it only confirms my original feelings about this subject working for an audience today. I realize you have devoted much time to it and I am grateful. I wish I could be more cheerful about the whole thing but I must be honest and tell you that I have grave doubts about repeating something which has been done many times.” The whole tone of this silly cunt’s note is infuriating of course, but what really matters is, will he try to blame us and our treatment for his decision not to go ahead with the picture? This will be seen within the next few days, as he’s on his way to New York by boat and will meet Beckerman and Joe Wizanfn815 there.

  This next exhibit needs no comment. It is a Life Magazine ad published in The New York Times on June 10. Jack Larson organized a letter of protest against it signed by a lot of the younger dramatists and he himself wrote a poem abusing Life which does more honor to his heart than his Muse. The ad is full page and includes a photograph of Tennessee which is obviously chosen for its expression of cocky idiocy:

  “Played out? Tennessee Williams has suffered an infantile regression from which there seems no exit. Almost free of incident or drama … nothing about In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel deserves its production.” That’s the kind of play it
is and that’s the kind of play it gets in this week’s Life. From a theater review that predicts the demise of one of America’s major playwrights to a newsbreaking story that unseats a Supreme Court judge, we call it a bad play when we see it. And that’s the kind of strong stuff in Life’s pages that gets us a major play from 36.5 million adults. Every week.

  And now, just to take the taste away, here’s a couple of lines from the play about the life of Buddha which the children performed at the Father’s Day lunch at the Vedanta Center on the 21st. Siddhartha’s favorite horse Kanthaka and his charioteer Channa are waiting to say goodbye to him.fn816

  Channa: “I did not know a horse could cry.”

  Kanthaka: “Do not be surprised when my heart breaks. It will make a very loud noise, because it is bigger than yours.”

  Dobbin wept a few tears at this.

  July 4. We are just back from visiting Paul Wonner and Bill Brown at their new house in Montecito. God knows why they chose to move into it; it’s dark and beset by neighbor noises, but it was nice seeing them, I miss them both around here and next time they’ll probably move even farther off. Soon they are leaving on a trip to South America and will meet up with Jo in Rio.