109 The Vedanta Center in Montecito (Ananda Bhavan).
110 Conrad Salinger, an orchestral arranger at MGM.
111 Isherwood’s lawyer in the Harrington case.
112 A New York architect Isherwood and Caskey knew during the 1940s.
113 American painter.
114 On September 3, China launched an artillery bombardment on Quemoy, the largest offshore island held by Chiang Kai-shek.
115 Jessie Marmorston.
116 J. McLaren-Ross’s playlet, “I Am a Chimera,” spoofed The World in the Evening and van Druten’s play of the Berlin stories, making deadly fun of Isherwood’s new life and work in America (Punch, August 25, 1954, pp. 260–61).
117 John Huston’s third wife, Ricki Soma, the dancer (Anjelica’s mother).
118 Richard Thorpe, the director.
119 Bernadine Fritz-Szold; see Glossary.
120 Isherwood and Bachardy went to Key West, November 3–21, to watch the filming of The Rose Tattoo; Williams returned with the crew to finish filming at Paramount.
121 Field gossiped about Isherwood’s relationship with Bachardy; see Glossary under Field.
122 The Wayfarer.
123 Kazan was to direct Williams’s new play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and was demanding drastic changes; see Glossary under Williams.
124 In Mexico.
125 Bachardy had decided to make clear to the draft board that he was homosexual. Evelyn Hooker gave him a Rorschach test and wrote a letter giving her professional view of his sexual orientation; he presented the letter to the draft board at his physical examination on October 5 after indicating his homosexuality on the written questionnaire. His psychiatric examiner was condescending and disapproving, and Bachardy had to endure a second exam on December 7, the day before leaving for Mexico. He was classified 4-F.
126 Pius XII was ill from late November until mid-December.
127 Mum underarm deodorant, then available only as moistened pads or cream which dried slowly.
128 Published in Britain in 1927 as Fiesta.
129 The Kafkaesque novel was to become Down There on a Visit. The Day’s Journey—a film in which all the events were to occur in one day (as a metaphor for one life)—evolved into A Single Man.
130 On February 12.
131 The Philadelphia opening, before New York, of Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; she was working on the production.
132 In Diane.
133 Joseph Breen administered the film industry’s Production Code.
134 The sensitive young Italian violinist who becomes a prizefighter in Clifford Odets’s 1937 play Golden Boy.
135 James Laughlin, founder of New Directions; Tennessee Williams’s publisher and friend.
136 Russian-born aspiring actress, educated in England, better known for her obsessive friendship towards Williams than for her few acting roles.
137 A former reporter and one of Williams’s closest friends; he helped Williams with his plays, typing and advising.
138 Memoirs of Hadrian.
139 David Miller was directing Diane in which Lana Turner had the lead.
140 As a clerk in the department store.
141 Isherwood and Bachardy’s landlady and neighbor.
142 Also neighbors.
143 Now her husband.
144 A Latin beauty then trying to become an actress; she lived next door.
145 U.S. Savings Bonds were issued in alphabetical groups; series “E” first appeared in 1954.
146 Decline.
147 By T. E. Lawrence; Isherwood bought the expurgated version published by Jonathan Cape in 1955 but had read a friend’s unpublished copy in Buenos Aires in 1948.
148 Balzac’s character (a German) in La Comédie humaine.
149 Sissela Myrdal, daughter of Gunnar and Alva Myrdal; see Glossary.
150 Jan Myrdal; see Glossary.
151 In his 1950 UFO book, Heard speculates that Deimos and Phobos, the moons of Mars, might be Martian-made satellites used as launching stations to investigate Earth. MOUSE (Minimal Orbiting Unmanned Satellite, Earth), proposed by Professor S. Fred Singer, was much-discussed in the early 1950s, but no manmade satellites were launched before the Soviet Sputnik in October 1957.
152 Probably at Atascadero.
153 “Franny” had just appeared in The New Yorker in January 1955. Earlier work was collected in Nine Stories (1953).
154 By Norman Douglas.
155 A shop.
156 Beading sweaters; Caskey consigned them to various Los Angeles shops.
157 A bar on the boardwalk in southern Santa Monica.
158 The movie producer.
159 Episcopalian priest, a close friend of the Huxleys, he conducted Maria’s funeral.
160 “The Lonely God,” a 240-line poem from Stephens’s The Hill of Vision (1912).
161 Writer and director.
162 Dancing in the Checkered Shade.
163 The movie of the Broadway musical.
164 Columnist and actress.
165 The director Robert Parrish and his wife Kathy.
166 Sid Luft.
167 Lauren Bacall.
168 The third party at Isherwood and Bachardy’s house, this one all men.
169 A young friend decorated for bravery in WWII and widely admired for his blond good looks.
170 Later Isherwood learned the correct spelling of Elizabeth Duquette’s nickname, Beegle.
171 One-minute monologues, described in Isherwood’s diary entry for September 23, 1942.
172 Atmosphere.
173 Screenwriter
174 British actor.
175 By Hans Andersen.
176 Screenwriter.
177 John Brahm (1893–1982), a German, directed Conrad’s short story “The Secret Sharer” as the first part of a two-story movie, Face to Face. The producer was Huntington Hartford.
178 Robert Sherwood’s play, filmed in 1936 and remade for TV in the 1950s; Humphrey Bogart starred in both versions (as well as on Broadway).
179 Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux; see Glossary under Grandville.
180 In January 1955, during a brief trip to New York.
181 Daniell was British, but acted in Hollywood from the start of the 1930s (he was in Diane).
182 Actor John Archer and his wife.
183 Speed Lamkin then carried a recording of “The Glad Rag Doll” everywhere he went and encouraged friends to dance (as at Harry Brown’s birthday party where there was a similar kick line, mentioned in Isherwood’s diary entry for May 2).
184 Screenwriter, mostly of B-movies.
185 American character actor.
186 The agent and Broadway producer.
187 Hungarian producer, long in Hollywood.
188 Van Druten’s new play, Dancing in the Checkered Shade, which flopped and closed immediately.
189 Eldest of the five Lane Sisters, all actresses (only three had significant careers).
190 Actress Thelma Todd was murdered there; see Glossary under Todd.
191 Aircraft carrier.
192 An open house is customarily held at Trabuco on July 4, American Independence Day and the day of Vivekananda’s death.
193 Botanist and head of a laboratory in Almore, India; he was a boyhood friend of Swami Prabhavananda and long associated with the Ramakrishna movement.
194 In East of Eden.
195 Lyricist and MGM producer.
196 Young friend of Leonard Spigelgass, the MGM screenwriter (see Glossary).
197 English novelist and critic (1916–1981).
198 Never finished.
199 Barbara Skelton, his second wife.
200 The kitten.
201 Caskey’s sisters tried to take his share of their inheritance from their father, and Isherwood objected to Caskey’s passivity. Caskey was trying to sell paintings bought together with Isherwood; Isherwood never received any money for them—some were valuable Haitian primitives.
202 The co
nductor.
203 One of Thomas Mann’s sons; he introduced Isherwood to Voss.
204 Producer of slapstick comedies.
205 Lyricist and musical book writer.
206 Eugene L. Vidal (1895–1969), former army pilot, pioneer of commercial aviation and Roosevelt’s head of air commerce during the 1930s, afterwards a liaison between the army and the new air force and head of a Pentagon committee on secret weapons.
207 Cobina Wright was a society columnist (her daughter, with the same name, was an actress).
208 Screenwriter and playwright.
209 Known as a nightclub singer in the 1930s and later for the alleged murder of her husband, a Reynolds Tobacco heir.
210 Chain of British tea shops run by the Lyons tea company.
211 Mann’s 1926 story.
212 Howard Austen.
213 Elizabeth, known as “Beau.”
214 Charles Brackett’s elder daughter, Alexandra, married to James Larmore; see Glossary.
215 A California painter of some reputation.
216 That thin men are dangerous, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar I : ii. Peter Hartshorne was skinny.
217 The artist’s model mesmerized by Svengali in George du Maurier’s 1894 novel Trilby.
218 Probably Lionel Trilling’s collection The Opposing Self (1955); apparently Isherwood returned or gave away the book as it was not in his library at his death.
219 The veterans hospital on Sawtelle Boulevard.
220 Colleague and biographer of Freud.
221 Isherwood’s history master at Repton; he appears as “Mr. Holmes” in Lions and Shadows.
222 Music Corporation of America—originally founded to book bands—was a powerful Hollywood talent agency until 1961 and later became the global entertainment giant.
223 Best-selling American novelist and screenwriter.
224 On the Pacific Coast Highway north of Malibu; Ray Ohge rented them the house.
225 Correct French would be, Prenez garde du chien (Beware of the dog).
226 As Isherwood tells in Lions and Shadows, he and Edward Upward called their fantasy world “the rat’s hostel” before they invented the name “Mortmere.” “The rat’s hostel” suggested to them an atmosphere of medieval surrealism.
227 Chapter twelve.
228 Of Gaby.
229 Isherwood later changed his mind and they became close friends.
230 Robert Hardy Andrews, the screenwriter.
231 To The Wayfarer.
232 A 1941 compilation of Fort’s various books of inexplicable phenomena.
233 Moffat did not marry her.
234 The Cornish fishing port whose artists’ colony has given its name to an open air school of painting.
235 Jean Anouilh’s play, adapted by Lillian Hellman.
236 The Kingdom of Earth with Hard Candy, a collection of nine Tennessee Williams short stories published by New Directions in 1954.
237 The play by Michael Gazzo.
238 Theater director and critic.
239 The Deer Park.
240 Not his real name.
241 Majoon is a narcotic confection made from hemp leaves, henbane, datum seeds, poppy seeds, honey, and ghee.
242 Mexican star of Hollywood films.
243 Muhammad Ibn Yusuf aligned himself with the Moroccan nationalist movement in the late 1940s and was deported in 1953; after two years of accelerating riots and organized killing, the French agreed to restore Moroccan sovereignty. Muhammad returned in November 1955 and later became Muhammad V.
244 Gysin, also a novelist, poet, and collaborator of William Burroughs, owned the Thousand and One Nights.
245 Southern nephew of a former U.S. ambassador to Paris, once a researcher for Fortune; he moved with Herbert from London to Tangier in 1950 and became garden columnist for the Tangier Gazette.
246 Second son of the Earl of Pembroke, raised at Wilton, a close friend of Cecil Beaton and Jane Bowles; he reputedly ran the expatriate social life in Tangier.
247 Auden’s landlord was involved in a family property squabble so Auden had to change houses in September 1955 just before leaving Ischia for New York; Kallman stayed behind to work on the new house.
248 Auden lived in Forio d’Ischia; Porto d’Ischia is on the other side of the island, perhaps six miles away by road.
249 The international literary magazine published in Rome from 1949 to 1960.
250 Then U.S. Ambassador to Italy.
251 Pius XII depended on Spellman, the powerful New York cardinal, for financial and diplomatic advice; Spellman was a fierce anti-communist, and poured Catholic relief money into areas threatened by communism.
252 Charles Turner, American composer.
253 Italian novelist Moravia’s play is Beatrice Cenci (1955); Prokosch’s A Tale for Midnight (1955) is also about the Cenci.
254 Also known as an opera designer and book illustrator.
255 In the Scuola di San Rocco.
256 English artist and stage designer.
257 Both in the Medici funerary chapel.
258 The Genius of Victory in the Palazzo Vecchio.
259 As in Genesis 27.
260 Probably Bacchus, Medusa, Sacrifice of Abraham, and Youthful Bacchus.
261 Capriccio and Village with Canal by Francesco Guardi.
262 Gypsies’ Meal.
263 Villette is by Charlotte Brontë, Wuthering Heights by Emily.
264 Vidor was directing the film with stars brought from Hollywood; Soldati directed all the battle scenes.
265 In fact, the painting was generally called Gentleman with a Tricorn, though after 1954 it was also known as Portrait of a Cavaliere of the Order of Constantine.
266 Katherine Mansfield.
267 Maugham’s house.
268 K.Y. Jelly, used as a sexual lubricant.
269 By Maugham.
270 The novelist Norman Douglas (1868–1952) lived in Capri, where Maugham often visited.
271 Good-natured.
272 Featherbeds.
273 The Battle of Alexander (his victory over Darius at Issus).
274 The bridge over the Isar named after the Prince Regent, Luitpolde (1888–1912).
275 Heaven Is Never Sold Out.
276 Eléna et les hommes (Paris Does Strange Things), directed by Jean Renoir.
277 Irwin Shaw, the novelist and screenwriter, was a close friend of Peter Viertel.
278 See Glossary under Neddermeyer.
279 J.M. Barrie’s play, with Peggy Cummins as Peter.
280 The actresses.
281 George Montagu, her husband.
282 Traditionally kept at the Tower of London with clipped wings because superstition says the British monarchy will fall if they fly away.
283 The cottage was The Barretts, at Finchingfield, Essex.
284 The Vicarious Years (1956).
285 Carter Lodge was avidly interested in astrology.
286 Dorothy Tutin and Michael Gwynn played “Sally Bowles” and “Christopher Isherwood” in the original London production of I Am a Camera. Laurence Harvey was the male lead in the movie version.
287 The 1936 MGM film.
288 The first London production of Samuel Beckett’s play.
289 A volume of the abridged version of the drama critic’s autobiography.
290 “The intoxicating thing,” freedom; see Isherwood’s diary entry for September 15, 1943 and note.
291 Actor.
292 What Vedanta Means to Me, containing a chapter by Isherwood.
293 Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean had defected to the USSR in May 1951; see Glossary under Burgess.
294 A mathematician (b. 1928); later Assistant Master at Eton.
295 The art historian (b. 1928); author on baroque and neo-classical art, later Professor of Art History at Oxford.
296 Corpus Christi College.
297 Another Cambridge contemporary; he matriculated with Isherwood in 1923 and took a degree in Geography in 1926.<
br />
298 George Rylands, the Shakespeare scholar.
299 Fenmen are inhabitants of the low-lying, marshy countryside surrounding Cambridge; townees are town-dwellers but not members of the university.
300 Ivor Ramsay killed himself January 21.
301 A life.
302 Not his real name.
303 The British suppressed the movement among the Greek-speaking majority in Cyprus for union with Greece, and between 1955 and 1959 the pro-union terrorist organization persistently attacked the British presence. (ROTC is the Reserve Officers Training Corps.)
304 Novelist and critic (1913–1991).
305 Former proprietress of the Cavendish Hotel (where Isherwood and Bachardy were staying); portrayed as “Lottie Crump” in Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies (1930).
306 Mescaline Experience Day.
307 Westminster Cathedral is the Roman Catholic cathedral near Westminster Abbey (which is Anglican).
308 Upward was struggling with In the Thirties (1962); see Glossary.
309 Sheridan’s play.
310 The American physicist who headed the atomic bomb project and afterwards was accused of communist sympathies.
311 British stage and film director.
312 In West Sussex.
313 Storm at Castelfranco.
314 Elevated railroad.
315 “Natalia Landauer” in the original stage production of I Am a Camera.
316 American stage and film actress.
317 Her husband, a lawyer.
318 Actress.
319 American novelist (1904–1979).
320 Bachardy made himself a number of dolls, which he did not want Isherwood to discover. The one Isherwood found was a stocking doll with a black silk dress made from a scarf. Bachardy’s mother embroidered the dolls’ faces, and he made different colored hair for each doll, from embroidery thread, which could be combed.
321 Out by the Country Club, never produced.
322 Swami Saradananda, Sri Ramakrishna The Great Master.
323 Chouinard Art Institute.
324 Israeli troops had raided the Gaza Strip in 1955, killing thirty-six Egyptians in a professed attempt to control Arab terrorism; President Nasser responded by blockading Eilat, effectively closing the Gulf of Aqaba.
325 Sweet Bird of Youth.
326 The film of Williams’s story.
The Late Fifties
1956–1960
Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1 Page 90
