Coombs, Don. Instructor of English at UCLA during the 1940s and, as Isherwood tells, a librarian there from 1967. He was a sex friend of Isherwood’s beginning in 1949. He appears in Lost Years.
Cooper, Gladys (1888–1971). British stage and film star; she was a teenage chorus girl, World War I pin-up, and silent film actress before establishing her reputation on the London stage. As Isherwood tells in D.1, he first met her in Los Angeles in 1940 when she was past fifty and had made few films. She had a supporting role in Rebecca that year and afterwards appeared in The Song of Bernadette (1943), Green Dolphin Street (1947), The Secret Garden (1949), Madame Bovary (1949), The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955), Separate Tables (1958), and My Fair Lady (1964), among many others.
Cooper, Wyatt (1927–1978). Actor, screenwriter, editor, from Mississippi; educated at Berkeley and UCLA. He appeared on stage and T.V., had a small role in Sanctuary (1961), and wrote the screenplay for The Chapman Report (1962). In D.1, Isherwood describes meeting Cooper when he was involved with Tony Richardson. He became the fourth husband of Gloria Vanderbilt (b. 1924), the only granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt and in girlhood the subject of a headline-making custody battle between her widowed, reportedly lesbian mother and her forceful, richer aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, who raised her in lonely splendor on Long Island. At seventeen, Gloria married Pasquale “Pat” DiCicco, a Hollywood agent; at twenty-one she inherited four million dollars. Her two other husbands were conductor Leopold Stokowski and film director Sidney Lumet. She again made her name a household word with her designer jeans in the 1980s. She had two sons with Cooper, the younger one, Carter, committed suicide in 1988; the older one is CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. Cooper also wrote Families: A Memoir and a Celebration (1978).
Cordes, Ted. A companion of Ted Bachardy, and the last steady partner he had. He was a few years younger than Bachardy and worked in advertising or publicity. They lived together for several years in the late 1960s, and Cordes weathered at least one of Bachardy’s breakdowns. Eventually the relationship collapsed over Bachardy’s mental health, and Cordes asked Bachardy to move out of the apartment which they shared. Don Bachardy did several portraits of Cordes.
Coricidin. A brand-name cold remedy. Some versions contain a cough suppressant (dextromethorphan) attractive to recreational drug users and dangerous in combination with the antihistamine ingredient (chlorphenamine maleate). When Isherwood used it, Coricidin contained a decongestant (pseudoephedrine) and not an antihistamine. Some versions also contain an analgesic (acetaminophen), for fever and pain.
Cotten, Joseph (1905–1994). American actor. He worked on Broadway from the early 1930s and played the lead opposite Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story in 1939 and 1940. He was also a member of Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater from 1937 to 1939, and Welles brought him to Hollywood to appear in Citizen Kane (1941). He went on to star in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and Journey Into Fear (1943) for Welles and then, for Hitchcock, in Shadow of a Doubt (1943). His many other films include Portrait of Jennie (1948), The Third Man (1949), and Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). He appears in D.1 with his first wife, Lenore Kipp; she was wealthy in her own right and a friend to Isherwood and Bachardy until her death from leukemia in 1960. The year Lenore died, Cotten married British actress Patricia Medina (b. 1920), who was in The Three Musketeers (1948) and Welles’s Mr. Arkadin (1955) and starred with Cotten on Broadway.
Coulette, Henri (1927–1988). American poet; born in Los Angeles, educated there and at the University of Iowa where he taught for several years in the Writers’ Workshop. He contributed to The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Hudson Review, various anthologies, and published two volumes of verse, including The War of the Secret Agents (1965), which won several prizes. He was a professor of English at L.A. State from 1959 until his death, and, briefly, Isherwood’s colleague.
Craft, Robert (Bob) (b. 1923). American musician, conductor, critic, and author; colleague and adopted son to Stravinsky during the last twenty-three years of Stravinsky’s life. Isherwood first met Craft with the Stravinskys in August 1949 when Craft was about twenty-five years old and had been associated with the Stravinskys for about eighteen months. Craft was part of the Stravinsky household, and travelled everywhere with them, except when his own professional commitments prevented him. Increasingly he conducted for Stravinsky in rehearsals and supervised recording sessions, substituting entirely for the elder man as Stravinsky’s health declined. In 1972, a year after Stravinsky’s death, Craft married Stravinsky’s Danish nurse, Alva, who had remained with Stravinsky until the end, and they had a son. Craft published excerpts from his diaries as Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship 1948–1971 (1972; expanded and republished 1994), edited three volumes of Selected Correspondence by Stravinsky, which appeared in 1981, 1984 and 1985, and produced other books arising from his relationship with the Stravinskys as well as articles, essays, and reviews on musical, literary, and artistic subjects. He appears in D.1 and in Lost Years.
Crawford, Linda (b. 1938). New York writer. She shared a house in Malibu with Camilla Clay from 1967 to 1972, then returned to New York and began to publish novels in the mid-1970s; they include In a Class by Herself (1976), Something to Make Us Happy (1978), Vanishing Acts (1983), and Ghost of a Chance (1985).
Cuban Missile Crisis. Isherwood first mentions this on September 12, 1962, a week after President Kennedy revealed on September 4 that the Soviets had shipped surface-to-air missiles and large numbers of military personnel to Cuba; the Russians insisted they were supplying only defensive weapons. Isherwood mentions it again on October 23, the day after Kennedy announced on October 22 at 7 p.m. that there were Soviet nuclear missile launch sites and nuclear-capable bombers in Cuba. Kennedy explained that he was establishing a blockade 500 miles off Cuba’s coast to prevent the arrival of more weapons, and he warned that nuclear weapons launched against any country in the Western Hemisphere would be regarded as an attack on the U.S. and would bring full retaliation.
Cukor, George (1899–1983). American film director. Cukor began his career on Broadway in the 1920s and came to Hollywood as a dialogue director on All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). In the thirties he directed at Paramount, RKO, and then MGM, moving from studio to studio with his friend and producer David Selznick. He directed Garbo in Camille (1936) and Hepburn in her debut A Bill of Divorcement (1932) as well as in Philadelphia Story (1940); other well-known work includes Dinner at Eight (1933), David Copperfield (1934), A Star is Born (1954), and My Fair Lady (1964). Isherwood met Cukor at a party at the Huxleys’ in December 1939; later they became friends and worked together. Cukor appears in D.1 and Lost Years.
Curtis Brown. Isherwood’s first literary agency in London and in New York, from the mid-1930s. In September 1935, Curtis Brown’s London office oversaw the contract committing Isherwood to deliver his next three full-length novels to Methuen; 1935 is also the year Isherwood first appears on the books of Curtis Brown in New York. (At the time, Isherwood was still being published by the Hogarth Press, but Methuen began publishing him with Prater Violet after the war.) Isherwood evidently formed a relationship with Curtis Brown’s play department for The Ascent of F6 in the mid-1930s, and Curtis Brown also represented Auden from about this time. In the New York office, Alan Collins was Isherwood’s agent until 1959 when Perry Knowlton took over and continued as Isherwood’s American agent until 1973. Cindy Degener, head of the dramatic department (film, television, stage), worked with Isherwood and Auden on plans for a musical based on the Berlin stories; at first, in 1959, Frank Taylor wanted to produce it, but he wasn’t confident Auden had the popular touch, and so he tried to match Isherwood with a professional musical comedy writer; Isherwood writes about this in D.1. At the end of 1960, Oscar Lewenstein—who had worked with Charles Laughton and Tony Richardson and shared offices with Richardson in Curzon Street, London, around this time—became interested in the musical, and Isherwood, Auden, and Chester Kallman again considered t
he project in 1961. In the mid-1970s, Isherwood left Curtis Brown, New York, for Candida Donadio. But he stayed with Curtis Brown in London, where he was represented by John Barber, James McGibbon, Richard Simon, Peter Grose, and Anthea Morton-Saner.
Dan and Mrs. Dan. See Bradley, Dan.
Dangerfield, George (Geo) (1904–1986). British historian. He emigrated to New York City in 1930 and worked as a publisher’s editor and then literary editor at Vanity Fair until 1935. By 1968, he was a lecturer in the history department at the University of California at Santa Barbara. His best known books are The Strange Death of Liberal England (1935) and The Era of Good Feelings (1952)—about the shift in America from Jeffersonian to Jacksonian democracy, 1812–1829—which won the Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes in 1953. He co-authored, with David Gebhard and Larry Ayres, Howard Warshaw: A Continuing Tradition (1977), which was the catalog produced by the UCSB Art Museum for the Warshaw exhibition staged there in August and September 1977. Dangerfield’s wife, from 1941, was Mary Lou Schott. Isherwood evidently borrowed his nickname for the main character in A Single Man.
Danquah, Paul (b. 1925). British actor and barrister. His father, a philosopher and also a barrister, was founder of the United Gold Coast Convention, an African nationalist party, and helped create the Republic of Ghana, but he fell out of favor with its first president, Kwame Nkrumah, and died in prison there in 1965. Paul Danquah’s mother was white, and Danquah was raised in England. While he was still a law student, he played Jimmy in the film version of A Taste of Honey and had several other film and T.V. roles during the 1960s. His companion was Peter Pollock, an industrial heir who had once been Guy Burgess’s lover. From 1955 until 1961, Danquah and Pollock shared their Battersea flat with Francis Bacon. Later, in the 1970s, they moved to Tangier where Pollock ran a beach bar, The Pergola. Danquah was a consultant to the World Bank in Washington until 1986.
David. See Hockney, David.
Davidson, Gordon (b. 1933). Theater director, raised in Brooklyn. He worked as stage manager and director at the American Shakespeare Festival, where he met John Houseman who invited him to UCLA to work with the Theater Group in 1964. In 1967, the company moved into the new Mark Taper Forum, and Davidson became artistic director of what is now called the Center Theatre Group. He continued in the job for thirty-eight years, opening the new Ahmanson Theater in 1989 and the Kirk Douglas Theater in 2004. By the time he retired, he had won eighteen Tony Awards, three Pulitzer Prizes, and sent thirty-five productions to Broadway. He also won a Margo Jones Award for his contribution to the development of American regional theater.
Davies, Marion (1897–1961). The Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl taken up by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who made her into a romantic star and financed her films. Her relationship with Hearst is sketched in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941). She lived with Hearst at San Simeon and at houses in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica until he died in 1951. Ten weeks after his death, she married Captain Horace Brown, whom she first met during the war and who was previously a suitor of her sister Rose. Speed Lamkin introduced Isherwood to Davies in 1950, and she appears in D.1 and Lost Years.
Davis, Vince. A boyfriend of Ted Bachardy with whom Ted lived for about four years at the end of the 1950s (after Ted lived with Bart Lord). The relationship broke down over Ted’s mental health problems; later Davis became a born-again Christian and married. He appears in D.1.
Day-Lewis, Cecil (1904–1972). Irish-born poet, novelist, translator, editor; educated at Sherborne School and Oxford, where he became friends with Auden and, through him, met Isherwood. He was a schoolmaster during the 1930s, wrote for leftist publications and joined the Communist party in 1936. His poetry from the period reflects his political involvement, but he later returned to personal themes and abandoned his radical opinions during World War II. He wrote roughly twenty detective novels under a pseudonym, Nicholas Blake, as well as three autobiographical novels, and he published verse translations of Virgil and of Paul Valéry. He was Professor of Poetry in Oxford from 1951 to 1956 (just before Auden) and became Poet Laureate of Britain in 1968. He married twice, the second time to actress Jill Balcon (b. 1925), with whom he had three children (one is the actor Daniel Day-Lewis); he had two children with his first wife. He also had a long affair with Rosamond Lehmann during his first marriage. He appears in D.1.
“de Laval, Jay” (probably an assumed name). American chef; he adopted the role of the Baron de Laval. In the mid-1940s he opened a small French restaurant on the corner of Channel Road and Chautauqua in Santa Monica, Café Jay, frequented by movie stars seeking privacy. In 1949, he opened a second restaurant in the Virgin Islands, and in 1950 he was briefly in charge of the Mocambo in Los Angeles before opening a grand restaurant in Mexico City. There, he also planned interiors with Mexican designer Arturo Pani and created a menu for Mexico Air Lines and crockery for Air France. Isherwood met de Laval through Denny Fouts. He was a lover of Bill Caskey before Isherwood and a friend of Ben and Jo Masselink. He appears in D.1 and Lost Years.
Dench, Judi (b. 1934). British actress, educated at The Mount School, York, and Central School of Speech and Drama. She made her stage debut as Ophelia in Hamlet for the Old Vic in Liverpool and London in 1957 and was Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1960 production of Romeo and Juliet. She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1961, played classic roles for them and for other companies, left for a time, then returned in 1976. In 1968, she was Sally Bowles in the London production of Cabaret, her first singing role. Her fame as a movie star grew later in her career; her films include Four in the Morning (1965), A Room with a View (1986), A Handful of Dust (1988), Mrs. Brown (1997), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and subsequent James Bond films, Shakespeare in Love (1998, Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress), Tea With Mussolini (2000), Chocolat (2000), Ladies in Lavender (2004), Iris (2001), and Notes on a Scandal (2006).
DePry, Bert and Bess. Vedanta devotees. He was a successful businessman and President of the Vedanta Society of Southern California throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s.
Dexamyl. Dextroamphetamine, an antidepressant or upper, combined with amobarbitol, a barbiturate to offset its effect. Isherwood was introduced to it by Bachardy, and they both used it when tackling big swathes of work; for many years they shared Bachardy’s prescription since neither of them relied on it habitually. Bachardy was first given it at eighteen by a friend, Alex Quiroga. (Dexedrine, which Isherwood also mentions, is a brand name for a preparation of dextroamphetamine without the barbiturate.)
Diggers. A sixties movement which grew out of the radical underground theater and arts scene in San Francisco and spread to other cities. It took its name from the mid-seventeenth-century English Diggers who opposed private property and asserted the poor man’s right to dig on and cultivate common land. The Diggers organized Free Fairs during 1966, bringing avant garde art, poetry, and rock-and-roll to the streets of San Francisco. Later they gave away food in the parks, ran a bakery and stores where the goods were free, and established a free medical clinic. Hippies and Flower Children slept in their shelters for twenty-five cents a night and dressed themselves at their clothing exchanges.
Dobbin. A pet name for Isherwood, known in his lifetime only to himself and Bachardy. Other names included Dubbin, Dub, Drubbin, and Drub, all associated with his private identity as a reliable, stubborn old workhorse.
Dodie. See Beesley, Alec and Dodie Smith Beesley.
Don. See Bachardy, Don.
Donna. See O’Neill, Donna.
Doone, Rupert (1903–1966). English dancer, choreographer and theatrical producer; founder of The Group Theatre, for which Isherwood and Auden wrote plays in the 1930s. His real name was Reginald Woodfield. The son of a factory worker, he ran away to London to become a dancer, and then went on to Paris where he was friendly with Cocteau, met Diaghilev, and turned down an opportunity to dance in the corps de ballet of the Ballets Russes. He was working in variety and revues in London during 1925 when he met Robert
Medley, his longterm companion. He died of multiple sclerosis after years of increasing illness. He appears in D.1 and Lost Years.
Dorothy. See Miller, Dorothy.
Douwe. See Stuurman, Douwe.
Dowling, Doris (1923–2004). American actress. She moved from stage to screen with a Paramount contract in the 1940s. Her handful of films include The Lost Weekend (1945), The Blue Dahlia (1946), and Bitter Rice (1948; made in Italy). Isherwood met her in the early 1950s through Shelley Winters and Ivan Moffat, and she appears in D.1. Her marriage to the musician and bandleader Artie Shaw (his seventh of eight) was then breaking up; in 1960, she married Leonard Kaufmann, her third husband. In the 1970s, she appeared on T.V., returned to Broadway in a 1973 revival of Clare Booth Luce’s play The Women, and toured in Follies during 1974. Her son Johnno, from her marriage to Shaw, settled with his wife and children in South America. Bachardy often drew Doris Dowling and once drew her sister, Constance Dowling (1923–1969), also an actress.
Dreyfuss, Richard (b. 1947). American actor, writer, producer, and director. His films include American Graffiti (1973), Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), The Goodbye Girl (1977), Whose Life Is It Anyway? (1981), Always (1989), Postcards from the Edge (1990), What About Bob? (1991), and Mr. Hollands’s Opus (1995), but he was still unknown when he appeared in the musical of The Dog Beneath the Skin in 1969.
Druks, Renate (1921–2007). Austrian-American painter, actress, film director, scenic designer; born in Vienna, where she studied at the Vienna Art Academy for Women. Later, she studied at the Art Students League in New York. She settled in Malibu in 1950. Her paintings were mostly allegorical portraits of women friends—Anaïs Nin, Joan Houseman, Doris Dowling—in naïve, magic-surrealist style. Druks had a role in Kenneth Anger’s experimental film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) and in other underground films. She often sat for Don Bachardy.
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