Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  This evening, O’Neil arranged that I should be invited to dinner by a man named Durant—a tall, lean, horseman-playboy. His house has a heated swimming pool, filled with salt water. It steamed, exotically green, in the electric light under the orange trees. The other guests were Gladys Cooper, Flora Robson and Barbara O’Neil, who is George O’Neil’s cousin. We drank champagne out of small Coca-Cola glasses. Slices of pie were served simultaneously with big drugstore cups of coffee. That’s so typically Hollywood—super-swagger surroundings, and then something that reminds you of a Baptist mission station in the wilds of China. I find it rather sympathetic.

  All the women were nice—three typical actresses in the three stages of the theatrical career: arriving, on top, coming back. O’Neil seemed the most human, because she is at the beginning.59 We talked about the war. Robson and Cooper said the conventional things, steering discreetly between patriotism and pacifism. No actor can afford to be openly pacifist: it’s bad for the box office. One saw that they really knew nothing and cared for nothing outside the theater. They were ignorant, good-natured and charming. I flattered Cooper and Robson—as one always can—by telling them how badly their colleagues had handled roles in which they themselves had appeared.

  January 27. This morning, Thoeren and I had our first interview with Gottfried Reinhardt, who has just returned from New York. He is fatter and more piglike than ever, puffing at his cigar, wisecracking, exuding good humor, gossip and malice. In certain moods, I find this Viennese style of behavior very charming, but today I was impatient and critical. And I noticed that Gottfried used the word “success” several dozen times in the course of twenty minutes. Everybody in his world seems to be either “going up” or “going down.” Gottfried himself is going up. In some mysterious way, his trip to New York—where he got drunk while Behrman60 wrote dialogue for Waterloo Bridge—has greatly increased his prestige with the Metro front office.

  January 28. The sunshine was wonderfully hot. Huge waves rolled in, almost to the steps of the houses. I lay on the beach and felt happy.

  Lunch with Berthold. We talked about Guttchen. Guttchen is now making a precarious living by his knowledge of Chinese gambling. He goes to a gambling club in Chinatown and wins money. The proprietors dislike this, of course; so they want him to come in with them on a racket. Berthold is trying to talk him out of it: it would be very dangerous, and might lead to his arrest and expulsion from the U.S. Gutchen’s attitude is fatalistic. “I’ll have to do it—unless, of course, you find me something better.” He knows that Berthold won’t drop him: he is a moral liability. “People like Guttchen and Uhse,” says Berthold, “are our own bad conscience. While we talked, they acted.”

  Berthold’s relations with Guttchen are extraordinary and hysterical. The other day, while they were driving together, Guttchen said something insulting about the Viertel dogs—which become more violent and unruly every day. Berthold flew into a terrific rage, and roundly abused him. He excused himself, in telling this to me, by saying that he was merely trying to rouse Guttchen from his apathy, to make him defend himself.

  In the evening, Peter and I went to dinner with the Lewtons. Val Lewton is Selznick’s story editor, a fat apologetic man, courteous and shy. His father, who was a Russian chemist, “discovered” Yalta, and helped develop it from a tiny fishing village into a fashionable resort.

  Peter was rather uneasy, because, this afternoon, he’d had an outburst in my presence against two English boys who came over here after the war started and were shamelessly glad to have escaped. He hastened to assure me that my case was quite different. But he criticizes me in his heart, because he’s feeling a bit guilty himself. Half of him would like to go to Canada and enlist; half of him wants to stay here in Hollywood and make money. During the first months of the war, he secretly took flying lessons. Then he got rather scared, and dropped them when the pilot who was teaching him went out of business.

  We all went to the leftist revue, Meet the People. It has been a tremendous success—because, as Peter says, the film colony always enjoys anything amateur. There are some excellent numbers. Especially the Roosevelt impersonator who drawls: “The American people hate war. And I hate the American people.” But the general intention is muddled. The authors are isolationist pacifists—but they daren’t say so absolutely. They hide behind the Popular Will.

  We’re not the kind the newspapers extol

  But we’re a power in the Gallup Poll.

  Suppose “the people” suddenly turn around and vote for war? Then, presumably, war’s all right. The authors’ bluff will have been called.

  January 29. Lunch with Aldous. We get along best when gossiping—about Salka, about Gerald, about our salaries. Aldous is stuck fast in the script of Pride and Prejudice, which is to start shooting almost at once. He said how difficult it was for him to invent plots. We discussed the possibility of constructing them by some mathematical formula. Aldous, the ever-informative, knew of a Russian composer who has invented a machine for writing fugues.

  Walked over to inspect the little bookstore opposite the studio buildings. It is kept by a very deaf, tiny Englishwoman. At the end of this week, she is having a clearance sale. “I’ve stared at that wall opposite for ten years, and now I’m going to get out.” She will take a shop in Venice, near the oilfields. Her greatest helper and friend has been Noel Langley, the writer.61 He has saved her from bankruptcy. Bought a copy of Plomer’s Paper Houses.

  In the afternoon, Gottfried went down to the court to become an American citizen. While he was away, some of the writers draped his desk with a huge American flag, on which they placed a plaster eagle, borrowed from the property department.

  January 30. Conference with Gottfried. He is really very nice to work with—charming, easygoing, polite. I told him he’d get the best results out of me if he flattered me a bit and was careful never to snub me. He laughed. We start the script today.

  During the past week, without any particular notice in the press, a faint whispering crescendo of war rumors has begun. They say the government is preparing to take over the studios. Employees are being discreetly investigated. Meanwhile, Finns kill Russians, Nazis sink shipping, the Balkans simmer, and nothing definite materializes.

  January 31. Worked hard all day on the script. It is quite an amusing job and I am doing it as well as I possibly can. Gottfried seems fairly pleased. Thoeren is a model collaborator. He is brilliantly inventive and actually does most of the work. But he always supports me. I am beginning to like him very much.

  Supper with Gerald. We talked about psychical research and its findings. They seem, on the whole, to fit in with Vedanta philosophy. Gerald thinks that people rediscover each other through a whole series of lives. But what if one develops spiritually and doesn’t have to be reborn? Gerald admits that this idea torments him—because of Chris. Chris marched in upon our speculations. He was cross because we hadn’t finished our meal. So we washed up in a hurry, while Gerald made delicately malicious remarks.

  Gerald is anxious to get me away from MGM. He wants me to work with Henwar Rodakiewicz, who is just forming a unit to produce films on significant subjects, partly documentary. I said I thought Wystan would be much more suitable, because of his experience in Post Office films.

  February 1. Rain and thunder in the night. When I drove to work, the Venice-Sepulveda intersection was several feet deep in water. Had to make a detour. I went out to the bookstore and bought several books. I had to insist on paying for them; the old lady wanted to give them away. While we were talking, Noel Langley walked in. A tall young man with a little “artist’s” beard. He was aggressive and arrogant, beneath a mask of humility and admiration. What was I—the author of The Dog Beneath the Skin—doing in the movie studios? I ought to be ashamed of myself. It was different for him; he was a hack. I asked him to have lunch with me, and he developed a sour-grape line of talk which he called “the philosophy of self-respect.” He believes that happiness is achieved by
leaving “great works” behind you. But these “great works” that people like Langley are so fond of talking about are really the merest little discarded droppings. “The death shapes” of the mind, as W. J. Turner62 calls them. A man has to be a hundred times as great as the things he produces. There is so much leakage of power between conception and accomplishment. We treasure the Ninth Symphony and Hamlet as one treasures the photographs of the dead: but how much do they actually represent of the genius of Beethoven and Shakespeare? We may admire them. They are all we have left. But, for their creators, they can only have been distorted images, imperfect tokens of an infinitely larger awareness.

  February 2. A long, pleasant day of work with Gottfried and Thoeren. Frau Bach interrupts, coquets, contradicts, pouts, complains. She arouses the sadistic instincts of every man she meets, and she loves it. She is a masochistic flirt. Gottfried really enjoys himself. He isn’t the slave of his work. Rage in Heaven is simply the chief topic of our conversation; but he is always drifting away from it into anecdotes and discussions. He keeps us at the story without ever seeming impatient or in a hurry.

  Dinner at the Viertels’. Berthold, Hans and I went into town to see Valeska Gert63 dance. A little sprinkling of the faithful in an almost empty hall. It was a heartbreaking flop. Gert had only a couple of good moments, and one of these was ruined by the “poet Stern”—she was doing a parody of a temperamental Spanish dancer, during which she recklessly kicks off a shoe: Stern, ever-helpful, dashed forward like a retriever and triumphantly caught it in mid-air!

  Gert has quite lost that quality which thrilled Berlin in the twenties: she is no longer even disgusting. A few young Americans looked on with bewildered dismay at these old-fashioned, unshocking perversities. Berthold came away deeply depressed—seeing in Gert the typical failure of the Emigration to make good in the New World. I cheered him up a little by citing Basserman, who has just had a sensational success in a small character part in Dr. Ehrlich.64

  Berthold tells me that Guttchen went to Dr. Kolisch, who examined him free of charge and was very kind. But Guttchen won’t promise not to frequent the Chinese gambling club, so they’ve parted. Berthold is very angry: he calls Guttchen a decadent poseur.

  February 3. This morning, lying in bed, half-awake, I had a very strange experience. I remembered—or rather, relived, with extraordinary vividness—an instant of a certain morning, four years ago. I was sitting in a small park in Amsterdam, with Gerald Hamilton, and looking through the overhanging branches of a willow at a patch of brightly sunlit water, in which some ducks were swimming. Not only did I relive this instant (which was, I am sure, absolutely authentic) but, for a couple of seconds, I actually was the Christopher of 1936. I was—and yet I wasn’t; because, standing aside from the experience, I was also aware of the present-day Christopher. I can’t, of course, in the least describe the difference between the two personalities—that of 1936 and that of 1940—but, as I gazed at that strip of water, I was intensely conscious of it. I could hold the two selves separate, comparing them—and, in doing so, I caught the faintest glimpse of something else—that part of my consciousness which has not changed, which never will change, because it is a part of Reality.

  Now, for the first time, I feel I have some inkling of what Gerald is really talking about. But it won’t stay with me. Imagination, vanity and doubt are already at work. My mind suggests all kinds of literary touches, to improve the picture. My egotism preens itself—delighted to have had a “mystical experience.” My scepticism—disgusted by their antics—urges me to discredit the whole thing. “After all,” it tells me, “this was only a dream.”

  February 5. Today I went to see Kolisch and told him I want to begin the treatment he suggests. No meat, no fish, no milk, no butter, no candy, no alcohol, no bread except pumpernickel—nothing except vegetables and fruit. Herbal tea night and morning. Codliver oil. Red capsules before meals; green capsules after. Visits three times a week—for blood tests, shots, weighing, pulse taking, quartz-lamp baths. Price: one hundred dollars a month. Well, I asked for it.

  February 6. Tonight, a party at the Viertels’. The Huxleys, Anita Loos and Gottfried were invited. The real object of our presence was to convince a producer, who has bought They Walk Alone, that Beatrix Lehmann should be brought over from England to play the chief part. Unfortunately, the Huxleys had never even heard of Beatrix, so our propaganda fell rather flat.

  Berthold was in a tense, jumpy state—like a cannon, loaded and longing to be fired. He and Salka started a political argument, in Gottfried’s presence, about the Russian policy. Berthold snapped: “I am absolutely for the extermination of Poland!”

  Aldous informed us that female rabbits can now be impregnated from the ova of other female rabbits, but they can only produce females. In the same way, a future manless age of matriarchs might be created; a lesbian tyranny. Salka and Aldous began picturing the Hollywood of the future—Warner Sisters, Louisa B. Mayer, United Artistes, Twentieth Century Vixen, etc.

  After dinner, Aldous and I got in a corner. He was a little drunk, and started on a favorite topic: the poorness of all literature. Homer was terribly overrated, Dante was hopelessly limited, Shakespeare was such a stupid man, Goethe was such a bore, Tolstoy was silly, etc. etc. We had disposed of nearly everybody, and Aldous was really enjoying himself—until a nasty doubt struck him: “What about Lope de Vega? I’ve never read him. Is he any good?” “Lope de Vega,” I told him airily, “no—he’s not up to much.” “He isn’t?” Aldous was immensely relieved: “Oh, I am glad to hear you say that!”

  Later there was a violent row between Gottfried and Berthold, about the Russo-Finnish war. Gottfried, who is pro-Finn, was delighted because the Russian troops are said to be suffering terribly from the arctic weather. “God makes it colder for them,” he said, gloatingly. Berthold left the room. Although he isn’t jealous in the ordinary, sexual sense, there’s no doubt that the friendship between Salka and Gottfried has a lot to do with these fights.

  March 6. A month since I last wrote in this book—and where are we? A little nearer the advertised blitzkrieg outbreak, and perhaps the entry of the U.S. into the war. The Russians still haven’t got Viipuri, the Turks haven’t attacked Odessa, the President hasn’t declared himself for a third term.

  George O’Neil died of heart failure, one evening in Pershing Square, while listening to a political speech.

  I am still at Metro—with, perhaps, another three weeks before the picture and my job are finished. I am still being treated by Kolisch, and still feeling much the same. Gas, fits of depression, nervous headaches. He has now given me six different sorts of medicine—but what use are they if I can’t relax? My stomach is cramped in a tight knot of hate and fear.

  I’ve seen the Swami. He says, if I’m too busy to meditate, I should think about the word Om, which is God. But I can only become aware of God by thinking all around him. Om says nothing. It’s just a comic noise. I’m afraid the Swami is altogether too Indian for me, with his mantras and his parables. I must talk to Gerald again.

  Vernon has been away since Saturday. I miss him when he isn’t here, but when he is we quarrel. I’m absolutely unfit for any but the most casual human contacts. The split in my personality is now several yards wide; it’s a marvel how I hold together. However much I may dislike the prospect, I know it’s absolutely necessary for me to spend large periods of time alone. Independently alone—not sniffing like a spaniel around other people’s comforting smell and warmth. Poor Wiggs is in agony just now, because a bitch down the road is on heat and he wants to get at her. He howls all night.

  The studio doors are now guarded more strictly than ever—because, we are told, of a recent attack on Louis B. Mayer. The cops keep asking you for your pass—especially if you are going up to the sacred third floor, where the big shots have their offices. Never was back-slapping harder, cordiality louder, mistrust greater. Rumor travels the corridors on roller skates.

  The morning etiquett
e of super-optimism. “Hi, Chris.” “Hi, Jack.” “How’s the boy?” “Swell. How’s everything?” “Fine. Just fine.”

  Of certain sinecure holders on the lot, it is said: “Oh, they’ll never fire him. He knows where the body is buried.”

  An anecdote someone told me of the early movie days. Two tycoons were battling for control of a studio. One of them had the other attacked and shot up by hired gunmen. He was in hospital for several weeks. When he recovered and returned to the studio, the doorkeeper wouldn’t let him inside. His rival had bought the place over his head.

  March 31. Sunday morning. Dull warm cloudy weather. John Barbirolli, conducting Beethoven’s Eighth over the radio from New York, competes with Happy’s stolid thumping on the piano upstairs. Vernon is in his studio, in the house down the hill, doing a still life. Am sad and bored, with the boredom of a wage earner on Sunday, who has nothing to do, and finds himself furtively longing for the office.

  Rage in Heaven is practically finished. It isn’t nearly such a disgrace as I’d feared. Now Victor Saville wants me to do a picture about Chopin—not the real Chopin, but a fiery young revolutionary, whose every note is composed for Poland. George Sand is the heavy who lures him from the arms of his country and a simple Warsaw maiden. Can I really handle such filth?

  On Easter, a week ago, we drove out to Victorville and stopped the night at a dude ranch, the Yucca Loma. It lies right in the middle of a desert valley, looking toward high snow-covered mountains—a little colony of luxury dwellings, in ranchero-Mexican style, complete with stables, swimming pool and tennis court. The place is run by a Mrs. Behr, one of those art-corsairs of the desert, in bold gaudy clothes, who speak of their guests as “my little family.” The guests were third-rate film notables, some nice college kids, with sound teeth, clear empty eyes and consciences, and a young man dying of TB who publishes a weekly newspaper supposed to be written by his dogs.