Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  4 Later Isherwood added the boy’s name, Marshall Ephron.

  5 “One instant’s toil to Thee denied/Stands all Eternity’s offence.” Rudyard Kipling, “My New-Cut Ashlar.”

  6 Hollywood agent.

  7 American actor; former Broadway star in musicals and revues.

  8 Lesser-known American actor, also with stage background.

  9 Official Lebanese support for Britain and France during the Suez crisis nearly brought down President Chamoun, whose regime was preserved only by the intervention of U.S. Marines.

  10 Lipton was, or wanted to be, the guru of the Venice West Beat Generation; he had a bookshop in Venice and wrote about the Beats.

  11 In the margin Isherwood added, “I think this should be ‘pod.’” And later still, “No. Pot.”

  12 From her first marriage; see Glossary.

  13 Fontaine was the first wife of American writer and producer Collier Young; her parents were British.

  14 Sadness and loneliness.

  15 Disraeli’s Tory hostess and lady of fashion.

  16 The Iraqi revolution; King Faisal II and many of his family and supporters were murdered in a military coup and the Republic of Iraq was proclaimed.

  17 A play based on Huxley’s story, staged at a small theater in Los Angeles.

  18 Swami Vivekananda in America: New Discoveries (1958).

  19 John Foster Dulles (1888–1959), then secretary of state.

  20 The Story of Civilization; six of ten volumes by the historian and philosopher had appeared by 1958 (some co-authored with his wife, Ariel Durant).

  21 The first nuclear powered submarine and the first journey under the Polar ice cap, in August 1958.

  22 Director of the Actors Studio and leading exponent of Method acting.

  23 Evidently referring to a geranium, of which Isherwood and Bachardy had many.

  24 Silent film star; she was married first to film director King Vidor and afterwards to violinist Jascha Heifetz.

  25 Probably psilocybin, first written up in 1958 (by A. Hofmann et al).

  26 Martin Cyril D’Arcy (1888–1976), English Jesuit, Roman Catholic apologist, scholar, author, collector of sacred art; liturgically and theologically conservative, he received Evelyn Waugh, among others, into the Roman Catholic church.

  27 “A View Without a Room: Old Friends Fifty Years Later,” appeared in The New York Times Book Review, July 27, 1958 and, on the same day, in the London Observer.

  28 Sister of John Cowan, a friend through Bill Caskey.

  29 American director (1911–1979) of Rebel Without a Cause and many others.

  30 Choreographer and dance director; often worked on films with Fred Astaire.

  31 The Forgotten, the imaginary town south of the border where Isherwood set much of the first draft of Down There on a Visit; the name alludes to Buñuel’s 1950 film Los Olvidados (The Young and the Damned)—about juvenile delinquents in the slums of Mexico city—which uses surrealist dream sequences. Isherwood later abandoned this setting.

  32 Later published as An Approach to Vedanta (1963).

  33 Later called Mary and Clem Griffiths.

  34 The renewed threat of invasion from mainland China was again stemmed by a U.S. naval presence.

  35 Actress, briefly a neighbor on Sycamore Road.

  36 Schary had been head of MGM until 1956; see Glossary.

  37 Great Writings of Goethe (1958), edited by Spender and translated by Spender and others.

  38 Zena Parkes.

  39 Isherwood left the sentence unfinished.

  40 These People, Those Books; see Glossary under Beesley.

  41 Probably On the March to the Sea; see Glossary under Vidal.

  42 In Webster’s play (act 4, scene 2).

  43 English barrister and Conservative M.P. for Northwich, Cheshire; held government and international posts and was later knighted; eventually introduced Marguerite Lamkin to her third husband.

  44 Imre Nagy, Hungarian Prime Minister, seized by the Soviets at the end of the 1956 revolution, then handed over to the new regime which had him shot, June 18, 1958.

  45 Debbie Reynolds, Eddie Fisher, and Elizabeth Taylor.

  46 In a datebook of significant events, Isherwood recorded for September 19 leaving for South America with Caskey in 1947 and Peron’s expulsion from power in 1955. The 19th was also numinous in other months: on January 19 he had departed for China in 1938, for America in 1939, and for England in 1947.

  47 Watts’s “Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen” and an excerpt entitled “Meditation in the Woods” from Kerouac’s Dharma Bums, appeared in the summer number of the Chicago Review; see Glossary under Watts.

  48 L. A. Marchand, Byron: A Biography (1958), three volumes.

  49 Pius XII.

  50 Upward’s In the Thirties, still unpublished.

  51 The film version of van Druten’s play, starring James Stewart and Kim Novak; Lanchester had a supporting role.

  52 Loneliness.

  53 “Peter” does not appear in later versions of Down There on a Visit.

  54 In the Thirties was rejected by eight or nine publishers and appeared only in 1962; see Glossary.

  55 Like Isherwood’s diary entry for April 27, 1950, this slightly misquotes the Theologia Germanica; see Glossary under Eckhart.

  56 Bert and Bess DePry were Vedanta devotees; he was president of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. The house was no longer Amiya’s.

  57 By Rodney Garland, who also used the pseudonym Adam Hegediis (1953).

  58 By M. J. De Forrest (1949).

  59 Parks sent Isherwood a tape of songs he had written, possibly with a collaborator, for the proposed musical. Bachardy liked the music, but Roger Edens told Isherwood it was not first rate; Carter Lodge represented John van Druten’s interest as the author of the play.

  60 Isherwood and Bachardy had begun writing a play, eventually titled The Monsters.

  61 John van Druten, Distinguished Playwright Series (Westminster Spoken Arts, 1956).

  62 The Crackerjack Marines.

  63 The science fiction writer.

  64 Probably Explorations with Gerald Heard (Pacific Records, 1957), still in Isherwood’s collection.

  65 Lambert was to help revise the screenplay written with Lesser Samuels (it was never produced).

  66 Anthony Perkins, American actor.

  67 Gielgud had been arrested in a men’s room for importuning; see Glossary.

  68 Italian actress.

  69 Michael Arlen’s novel, adapted as a play and a film, which ends with the heroine crashing her car, only her hat landing safely.

  70 A psychotherapist.

  71 Harlan is German.

  72 Hoover’s brother Lamar was also there; they were not related to Ted Bachardy’s friend, Bob Hoover.

  73 Elan’s lover at the time.

  74 Barbara Hutton’s son and Jill St. John’s boyfriend (later briefly her husband).

  75 The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).

  76 By Joe Masteroff; Harris was starring in it.

  77 Sweet Bird of Youth.

  78 Photographer, known for his pictures of musicians and actors.

  79 Producer, especially of gag comedies; a possible buyer of Isherwood and Lambert’s TV idea, Emily Ermingarde.

  80 At Kirstein’s suggestion; see Glossary under Curtiss.

  81 An early play by John Osborne and Anthony Creighton.

  82 Seven Gothic Tales (1934).

  83 Newman played Chance Wayne to whom the Princess says, “Chance, you’re a lost little boy that I really would like to help find himself,” (act 1, scene 2). Isherwood is also alluding to Peter Pan.

  84 “An Ode to Himself.”

  85 In A Single Man, Isherwood describes the disappearance of the “dusty marine trophies and yellow group photographs”; the photographs were mostly of Doc Law’s close friend, Will Rogers, and the two of them together and with other friends—Ken Maynard, Ian Hunter (an actor), and Bide Dudley (a journalist
).

  86 Diplomatic tension over the status of Berlin began to build in November 1958; see Glossary under Berlin crisis.

  87 Welsh actor and Broadway star.

  88 In fact, they were headed for Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona; see Glossary under Wright.

  89 Australian actress.

  90 Possibly the young man called “Masao” in Spender’s account of his 1957 and 1958 trips to Japan in his Journals 1939–1983.

  91 “We are both neighbors of the heavens, madame,/Because you are beautiful and because I am old.” Written for Judith Mendés, Théophile Gautier’s daughter, a few months before Hugo died, and entitled “Ave, Dea; Moriturus Te Salutat” (Hail Goddess, He Who Must Die Salutes You,” after the Roman gladiators’ salute to the emperor).

  92 Josephine MacLeod, an American friend of Vivekananda who devoted her life to promoting his teachings; she died in Hollywood in 1949, well past ninety years old.

  93 “Waldemar,” set during August—October 1938.

  94 A department store.

  95 The second section of the novel.

  96 Gerald Heard, Reflections (Pacific Records, 1959).

  97 Later changed to “Dorothy.”

  98 Head of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center in New York; he wrote many books on Vedanta and supervised the English translation of The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.

  99 Burton’s wife at the time was Sybil Burton, also Welsh, and a former actress.

  100 Bandleader Ozzie Nelson, his wife Harriet, and their sons, Ricky (also a singer) and David, stars of the long-running family comedy, Ozzie and Harriet.

  101 “Something to turn. Water. …” as Isherwood cooked over the open flame.

  102 Craft always put on a fresh shirt during intermission when conducting.

  103 The mother of the universe; see Glossary.

  104 The dancers and musicians of the Japanese imperial household; Kirstein and Dag Hammarskjöld arranged for them to tour the U.S. in 1959.

  105 Who also left Vedanta suddenly; see Glossary.

  106 The designer Charles Eames and his wife and collaborator, Ray Eames, made a multi-screen film about the history of man to show at the 1959 U.S. Exhibition in Moscow.

  107 Deborah Kerr was also obtaining a divorce.

  108 Loaned by Paul Millard; see Glossary under Millard.

  109 Probably Love Lies Bleeding (1964), about an aging torero.

  110 Luis Miguel Dominguín and Antonio Ordóñez (married to Dominguín’s sister) were each gored twice that summer and recovered; Hemingway—who had modelled “Pedro Romero” in The Sun Also Rises on Ordóñez’s father Cayetano, “Niño de la Palma,” and who was close to Antonio—described the rivalry in “The Dangerous Summer” (Life, September 1960).

  111 A car dealer.

  112 Stratford-upon-Avon, England.

  113 The widow of George Orwell, remarried to Michael Pitt-Rivers.

  114 British composer and lyricist.

  115 Evidently sent to Spender in his role as literary editor of the essentially anti-communist magazine Encounter; see Glossary under Pasternak.

  116 American writer on film and on Japan; Isherwood and Bachardy saw him in Tokyo in 1957.

  117 Arnold Wesker’s 1959 play, seen at the Royal Court in London.

  118 French painter; see Glossary under Valadon.

  119 The Misfits (1960).

  120 Danish-born film and stage director.

  121 The previous owner of 145 Adelaide Drive.

  122 Ivor and Gwen Jenkins.

  123 English actress.

  124 By Robert Graves.

  125 Costume designer.

  126 John Markovitz, a monk at Trabuco and later a swami.

  127 E. M. Forster (1943).

  128 By Aldous Huxley.

  129 Island (1962).

  130 Exercises to relieve strain, re-educate the eye and improve defective sight; developed by the New York oculist W. H. Bates early this century.

  131 Isherwood was to appear December 3 with Fred Shroyer on a half-hour show about Hemingway’s novel.

  132 Not his real name.

  133 Daughter of the film director Ernst Lubitsch.

  134 Isherwood, Huxley and others requested clemency for the alleged child molester and murderer whose conviction was surrounded by doubt, but Chessman went to the gas chamber in May 1960.

  135 The nuclear holocaust film based on Nevil Shute’s novel; Tennessee Williams invited them.

  136 Elizabeth Taylor’s daughter with her third husband, Broadway impresario Michael Todd.

  137 A student at L.A. State College.

  138 Psychiatrist, pioneered the open ward system in English mental hospitals.

  139 The Broadway Department Store.

  140 The “brains” of Southern California were collected for a group photograph: Heard, Huxley, Isherwood, Buckminster Fuller, Richard Neutra, Linus Pauling, and Julian Huxley who was visiting.

  141 The producer.

  142 Of burns; see Glossary.

  143 American actress with political interests, a friend of Gore Vidal.

  144 TV talk show host.

  145 Probably David Kahn, Kallman’s second cousin, whom Kallman intensely disliked.

  146 “Eve Black” is a “bad” personality of the schizophrenic woman played by Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve (1957).

  147 By M[aurice] M[agnus]

  148 Maugham’s 1930 novel.

  149 Center for psychiatric training founded by Dr. Karl Menninger and associated with his clinic and with other hospitals in Topeka, Kansas.

  150 Theatrical impresario of the 1930s and 1940s.

  151 German-born English astronomer (1738–1822).

  152 Bachardy drew a set of Hollywood portraits including producers Jerry Wald and Joe Pasternak, writers Gavin Lambert and Ivan Moffat, director Richard Brooks, and Marguerite Lamkin (who planned the piece).

  153 A brand of bulgar wheat.

  154 Gide’s entry for April 26, 1918; Isherwood had Justin O’Brien’s four-volume English translation.

  155 By E. M. Forster.

  156 In Encounter.

  157 American actress.

  158 At L.A. State College.

  159 American musical comedy actor, singer, dancer and singing coach.

  160 Professor of American literature at L.A. State.

  161 Novelist.

  162 Novelist, he later taught briefly at L.A. State.

  163 To teach at Santa Barbara.

  164 Ruth Conrad.

  165 Isherwood’s title since February 14 for Down There on a Visit is now temporarily the title for the episode on which he is working, eventually published as “Waldemar.”

  166 The 1960 Paris summit broke up in confusion on May 17 after Khrushchev, referring to the American U-2 spy plane shot down on May 1 over the USSR, denounced U.S. espionage, and Eisenhower refused to apologize.

  167 Former tennis star.

  168 The Good Woman of Szechwan; he went with Gavin Lambert.

  169 In “In the Presence of My Enemies.”

  170 Karin later became Dorothy.

  171 Forster’s then unpublished novel.

  172 Sheridan’s eighteenth-century comedy.

  173 Isherwood added in the margin: “Gay Robertson.”

  174 University of California at Santa Barbara.

  175 The actor and Pickford’s husband.

  176 Singer and actress.

  177 Sergei Eisenstein’s film; the second part was made in 1946 but suppressed by Stalin and released only in 1958, long after his death.

  178 What Religion Is: In the Words of Swami Vivekananda, edited by John Yale.

  179 Probably either students or fans.

  180 Alexander Trocchi (1923–1984), British underground poet—writer, performer, protester.

  181 Love and Death in the American Novel (1960).

  182 Literature professor at UCLA.

  183 Mahendranath Gupta’s gospel; see Glossary under “M.”

  184 A
Struggle for Rome.

  185 American screenwriter and novelist.

  186 The producer (son of the director).

  187 Armenian novelist and popular historian.

  188 His 1946 autobiographical account of the deportation and murder by the Turks of the Armenians in his childhood village, and of his own eventual escape to America.

  189 Russian stage actress in a few Hollywood films.

  190 Fashion model and daughter of the Russian-American harmonica player, Borrah Minevitch.

  191 Richardson had directed the adaptation of Faulkner’s novel, Requiem for a Nun, on stage in London, but in the end, his film drew more from Faulkner’s earlier novel Sanctuary—including its title; see Glossary under Richardson.

  192 Wife of screenwriter and playwright John Paxton.

  193 Television and film producer.

  194 Lenore Cotten had recently died.

  195 The Democratic convention (which nominated Kennedy) was to be held in Los Angeles starting July 11.

  196 Referring either to Laughton’s outrageous rudeness to Bachardy, which in fact occurred the previous day, or to Isherwood and Bachardy’s discussion that morning of the incident.

  197 A madam of the period; she told her story in a bestselling book A House Is Not a Home, later filmed.

  198 Isherwood added in the margin: “Mr Peckanpaugh (?),” evidently referring to the director Sam Peckinpah, who wrote television Westerns (The Rifleman, The Westerner) before making films.

  199 Christopher Fry’s translation of Jean Giraudoux’s play Pour Lucrèce, running in Los Angeles before the New York opening; Mary Ure had a lead.

  200 Hollywood agent.

  201 German-born film director.

  202 Dobyns lived in and helped manage Millard’s apartment building.

  203 Gertrude Appelbaum, secretary to Manning Gurian.

  204 Vivien Leigh was starring with Mary Ure in Duel of Angels, directed by Helpmann, the Australian ballet dancer and actor.

  205 The actress and pianist and her wealthy second husband, Mortimer Hall.

  206 Japanese painter and draughtsman whose portraits of Kabuki actors were produced as woodblock prints; he may have been a No actor.

  207 Several illustrated studies appeared in the 1950s; Laughton might have had Tosushai Sharaku (Worked 1794–1795) (1955) by Ichituro Kondo (adapted for English by Paul Blum) or Elise Grilli’s Sharaku (1959).

  208 Assistant to Louella O. Parsons, Hollywood gossip columnist for the Hearst newspapers.