Rosset: My Life in Publishing and How I Fought Censorship

by Barney Rosset

  Nancy lived a short block away. She and Bullock left together as I was still apologizing to her. Bullock came back, and he, Ben Roselle, Steve Van Buren, and I set out for a bar. Ben and Bullock started quarrelling immediately and kept it up for the rest of the night. I became the peacemaker. There was no belligerence left in me. I wanted to talk to Nancy, to tell her over and over again how much I loved her. Finally I called her from the bar. I was afraid. I had never conquered the uneasiness I had always felt with her parents, and I did not like thinking about them as I dialed their number.

  DIversey-7340 rang a couple times. Mr. Ashenhurst picked up and said, “Hello, Barney. Nancy is all right, don’t worry about her.”

  He had not even waited for me to say hello. He did not sound mad at me. He said that he would tell her I called. And then, “Goodnight.”

  I turned to my friends at the bar and resumed drinking. I remember later careening down the outer drive with Steve, trying to jump out of the car, pounding Ben on the head with his shoe—all at the same time. Bullock and I kept our truce, but it was just that—a truce.

  I never passed a single course or took an exam at the University of Chicago, but I didn’t flunk any, either. I got all incompletes. That actually saved me later because it automatically allowed me back into school after the war.

  When Nancy decided to try her luck in the theater world of New York, I headed for California and Hollywood. I went to UCLA, with the idea of studying filmmaking. I also went there to get as far away from Nancy as was geographically possible, because Alfred Adler told me that I was going to die if I did not. This was the same man who, secretly, had gone to Nancy’s parents two years earlier and suggested they arrange, in a very discreet way, to vacate their apartment for a weekend so that Nancy and I would find her bedroom a most convenient and natural place to spend our first night in bed together.

  For me, UCLA was a desolate place. There I was again totally isolated. My classes were unmemorable except for a psychology seminar, where the professor and I were in solid accord against the rest of the class. He and I agreed that Marshal Tito and his Communist partners in Yugoslavia were fighting the Germans and that General Drazaˇ Mikhailovich, his mortal enemy, was Hitler’s ally. Somehow the US Government had failed to notice that then. As a psychology professor, he was very cool, advising us students not to worry about the exam, to take some amphetamines beforehand, and simply enjoy it. This might produce gibberish, he explained, instead of proper test answers, but so what? He was fired. Not only was he the best teacher I encountered at UCLA, he is the only one I remember at all. And I did take the pills.

  One day, after months in Los Angeles, a student, Pearl Glazer, came up to me and said, “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” I said, “I hope so.” And she went on, “Yeah, we went to a meeting together in Philadelphia. Must have been 2,000 people. Some kind of a very left-wing thing.”

  She introduced me to everybody she knew, so all of my first acquaintances in Los Angeles were from Philadelphia, including Joseph Strick, the mildly radical filmmaker-to-be who was studying physics or some science at UCLA. A little later, he married a girl whose uncle, the director Herbert J. Biberman, was one of the Hollywood Ten. They were all very much into the left-wing Hollywood group, who at that time were riding high. They were talented and making money. Later, all were blacklisted, finished. Joe and Haskell eventually made a marvelous film together about Los Angeles called The Savage Eye. Ben Maddow, usually a good film writer, wrote the script, which was not good. But if you view this film silently, it’s incredible to this day. It showed everything about the real Los Angeles of that era.

  Eventually I met other people in Los Angeles, but mainly only offshoots of the Philadelphia transplants. A group of us volunteered to pick tomatoes for the war effort. The farmers hated us. There we were, working for nothing to get the crops in, for the soldiers. We were “premature anti-fascists.” It was a weird, weird period.

  In the FBI’s dossier on me there is a list of books I had mailed to somebody. I suspect that the father of a sorority girl I had met reported on me to the FBI. We were giving her radical publications like Marshall Field’s New York newspaper PM. She was intelligent but naive and she had never in her life been exposed to anything quite like this. A lovely girl, I really liked her. One day I drove her to Mexico, just for the hell of it. We went for lunch and ended up in Baja California. By the time we got back it was four in the morning and her family almost went berserk. Nothing “bad” had happened but her father almost killed her, and then she was gone. They took her out of the university and sent her to Arizona.

  During the first eight months of the war, when I was a student at UCLA, its reality finally began to sink in. The government came closer to drafting my age group and I had to begin thinking of what I was going to do. I took an ROTC course because it was required. I did miserably. I hated it but I passed. For a while I decided that I wanted to finish college and I tried to enlist in some sort of reserve, which was supposed to enable me to do so. During this time I tried to enlist in the Marines and they turned me down. Then I tried to get into the Royal Canadian Air Force. Same thing, bad eyes. I had even memorized the chart. No luck. Haskell was already in the Merchant Marine. By then, Nancy’s search for her place in the theater had proved fruitless and she had returned to Chicago. Was it absolutely necessary for me to go back home to enlist—or was it to see her? Who can say?

  So in the fall of 1942 I got in the car and drove to Chicago to enlist in the US Army. I was designated to be in the infantry. They would take anyone who could walk. My father was relieved about my joining the Army. When I suggested going into the Merchant Marine he had objected strongly, saying it was not respectable. But he did not want me to be in the Army either, instead suggesting the Quartermaster Corps. That was the place to be. You might end up in a nice office and learn something. Maybe you could even help a general and travel around with him to quiet places. I did not want to be in the Quartermaster Corps.

  After a two- or three-day stop at Camp Grant, outside of Rockford, Illinois, I was deployed to a camp in Oregon to the 96th Infantry Division, a newly activated unit, which was then being filled with new recruits. My train trip out there ended several days later on a cold rainy night on the sidings of Camp Adair, near Corvallis, Oregon. We stepped down from the cars of the train and slogged through the mud to barracks. I felt alone and miserable.

  I spent eight months in the 96th, most of them at Camp Adair. They placed me in a line company of an infantry regiment. Most of the time, I served as a squad leader in an infantry platoon. I lived a double life. I tried hard to be a good soldier but it was difficult for me to adjust to military discipline. I struggled to salute and say, “Yes, SIR.” Making a full field pack and stripping an M1 rifle were mysteries almost impossible to solve, but there was help available. Most of the men with me came from the South—if you include Texas, Missouri, and Indiana in that mix. Perhaps ten percent of the regiment was illiterate. It made me truly happy when I was ordered to teach these illiterate soldiers in my off-hours how to read and write and how to sign their paychecks. They, in turn, helped me cope with problems involving my weapon, gear, and other things. I rarely left camp. I read military manuals and learned about intelligence and tactics. I had the potential to become a good infantry soldier, but it never flowered.

  My feet were my curse. They were not made for the infantry. I was in above average physical condition when I arrived. I could do everything but march long distances day after day. The more I marched, the worse my feet got. They developed infections and time after time I was dispatched to the hospital, which I hated with a passion. The moment I was admitted I began asking for my discharge and to be sent back to duty, and always managed to get it approved before I was really healed. One day I marched until one foot was swollen so badly that my shoe would no longer go on. The next day I wore galoshes, with a shoe inside only on my good foot. The day after that I was sent back to the hospital.

>   I gained a certain amount of respect from the officers for my persistence, but my performance was badly hindered. My best skill seemed to be in solving tactical field problems involving single squads. My squad was as good as any, not only in the company but maybe even the battalion.

  While I was still at Camp Adair I got a letter from Haskell. He had been torpedoed off Murmansk and returned to Chicago, where he was warmly welcomed and praised. After apologizing for not having written to me right away when he returned home, he explained that, after he survived his ship’s being torpedoed, his ongoing service in the Merchant Marine had taken him to warmer regions—and another torpedo attack. He wrote me:

  We were up in Egypt for a month. Saw a little of the Nazi aircraft, met with our allied soldiers and airmen and had an informative and rip roarin’ good time despite interruptions. We unloaded up there incidentally, so when we were banged in the ass off South Africa we were empty—much to the sub commander’s chagrin.

  This letter is for a special purpose and not to let go with a wild west story about our exploits. Nancy and I are going to be married next Saturday. We’re going back to the coast and in a week or so I’ll be shipping out again. That’s it in a nutshell.

  Except for a couple of things: the nature of my work, my political convictions make it important for there to be a deep comradely spirit between husband and wife. Nancy and I have not yet reached this point but she has developed marvelously and shows a sincere interest in the labor movement. This development I know is due primarily to your influence.

  Haskell also phoned to tell me this. There I was, stranded at Camp Adair, in the Army. The news struck me dumb. It put me into a catatonic state. I had been writing to Nancy regularly from my lonely outpost in Oregon and she had never once given me a hint. I thought they were making a terrible mistake in getting married and I said so. When I called Alfred Adler in the middle of the night to break the news, he simply predicted the marriage would not last. He took the news in what I thought was a very nonchalant way of dealing with such an important problem. But he also later wrote that

  Barney and Nancy would not have had a good marriage. No, not at all. He would have pushed her around. He wanted to force her … to have certain leftist interests that she didn’t have. When Mao Tse-tung appeared, Barney said, “That is something! You should get yourself interested in it.” And I found that rather childish.9

  Adler’s prediction about Nancy’s marriage to Haskell proved to be accurate. I don’t know how many years they were together but it was long enough to have two children. After their divorce, Nancy went back to teach drama at Francis Parker. I don’t really know what happened there, but I believe she was asked to leave; I think everybody thought it was very sad. Although Haskell called me when they were about to be married, he didn’t when they were getting divorced. On the other hand, he did call me on the day she died in 1952. There is no doubt that my star-crossed relationship with Nancy had a profound impact on me and my relations with women during the rest of my life.

  In Oregon, I maintained my lifeline to home. Late at night, in the incessant rain, I would leave my barracks and trudge to the phone booth to call Chicago. Then I would wait for an hour or two until the call was put through. This went on night after night. My father began promising me things—and I asked for them. He was going to have me transferred, he was going to get me to a better climate, into Officer Candidates School (OCS), anywhere but where I was. Sometimes I resisted his proposals. On one day I was determined to stay and fight out the war with my company. The next day I wanted out.

  Three possibilities shaped up. I could get placed into a limited service group and finish out the war as a technician of some sort; I could go to OCS; or I could get into the college Army training program. But as much as I hated the whole mess, I refused to abandon the Army.

  I wanted badly to go to an OCS but there were few openings. My father had a friend at the White House, Charles K. Claunch,10 who could work minor miracles, and he worked quite a few of them on my behalf, or on my father’s behalf. The Quartermaster OCS was one of the last still accepting new candidates and I, fortunately, was one of those selected. I reported to division headquarters where, within a few hours, I appeared before a board of approval and moved over to the Quartermaster barracks. Ironically, it was with real sadness that I packed my barracks bags. Only later in China would I come as close to being an integral part of a group when in the Army as I had been in that infantry company.

  While I was waiting for my orders to go to the Quartermaster training center in Camp Lee (now Fort Lee), in Petersburg, Virginia, I secured my license to operate large trucks. I enjoyed that part of the work. We moved both personnel and materiel from Oregon up to Washington by road convoy. I had bought an old car, an Oldsmobile convertible, which had been garaged in Chicago, and I took it to OCS with me. I could only use it on weekends, but what an asset it was. I found myself going into town more frequently. Though I tried to escape at night to find a neighboring town where other soldiers weren’t hanging around, I never was able to find one.

  My first days in OCS were a nightmare. I was convinced I could not get through it. I was unprepared, had hay fever like never before, causing my eyes to swell shut when I was asleep. I had to stumble to the latrine in the mornings to get hot water to pry them open. But after I got through this first difficult period, my hysteria subsided. Maybe there was a chance for me after all. What work demanded mental skill was simple, and as for the physical military demands on me, this was ground I’d covered thoroughly in the 96th Division. I concentrated on staying in the background. The hay fever made seeing and breathing a continual torture, but my foot problems had prepared me for that kind of ordeal. I could accustom myself to suffering a little more than those around me.

  The weekends were unexpectedly pleasant. I had never before been in the South and I did not expect a good time during my off-moments. I was proven wrong. We were allowed to leave camp Saturday afternoon and did not have to return until Sunday night. The first weekend I went to a USO dance in Richmond, and in an unusually easy manner for me I met a native Virginian girl, the first I had ever known. While she came from a very genteel family and had been properly brought up, she was willing to kiss and drink and provide a little affection. That was all I needed to forget the camp and school for a while.

  Our early North/South antagonism ended up as self-mocking enjoyment. I learned that there were some nice white Southerners. My problem was that I found two of them—one prettier, warmer, more intelligent, and less racist than the other. But each week I changed my mind as to which I preferred and of course thereby lost them both.

  My father and his White House friend, Claunch, were busy working on my behalf in the interval of time I had free before reporting for my first orders as an officer. I did not want to serve in the Quartermaster Corps. To me, it was part of the pencil-pushing war. Because of my early interest in motion pictures, I had hazy ideas about making films, but I did not know exactly where films were made in the Army. My father began making inquiries. Eventually his (and my) maneuvering worked out. I was transferred to the Signal Corps.

  My first major stop was Boston. I went there on a 60-day loan from the Photographic Center in New York. I reported to the film distribution center of the 1st Service Command, where I had to learn something about film distribution. I started by taking a course in how to run and service projectors. My homework was to read manuals on film distribution. I lived in a fine hotel in Boston. Life picked up, especially at night.

  When the course ended, I left Boston reluctantly and found myself spending 60 days of temporary duty in my first film library building, at Camp Patrick Henry, a high-security embarkation camp back in Virginia. The library, which housed training films covering everything from basic infantry tactics to how to avoid getting venereal disease, was a gloomy shambles. A lazy sergeant and a WAC were my helpers. It was like starting OCS. I wanted out.

  But this time things went better. Fil
m distribution was organized on a vast, competitive basis in the army. Each service command was rated on the number of film showings it held per soldier. I was sent to show films in camps that had been doing badly. I thrived on competition, and I did a good job. I reorganized my library, managing to make many improvements in all of its functions, and was proud that my camp shot up toward the head of the list for the country.

  The Signal Corps Photographic Center next placed me in their school in Astoria, Queens. The heads of the school were a little baffled by me because, compared to my fellow students, I had no experience or technical knowledge. The other students seemed to be unusually informed about directors like Frank Capra and John Huston—and some actually knew them personally. The place was riddled with politics. Big shots’ sons abounded. The Hollywood atmosphere at the school, which had once been the home of Paramount Pictures, had penetrated everything.

  First I was assigned to a still photography class. I was always two jumps behind the other officers, who had been professional photographers in peacetime. But I was not criticized too severely and I quickly acquired some skills. It was nice living in New York. I had my Oldsmobile and a suite, directly over a nightclub, at the old Belmont Plaza Hotel on Lexington Avenue.

  The school started a new motion picture class, and my little group of officers was enrolled. We were taught cinematography on a very simple level. One important thing the teachers insisted on was that a single static view of an object does not give it film life. You have to see it from a distance, from a medium view, and up close.

  Technical problems beset me as usual but I was learning the things I most wanted to learn. We were sent on picture-making sorties, sometimes on our own, and other times in teams of two or three men. One day I shot film at a Coca-Cola bottling company. Another day I took shots of trucks being loaded on ships. Several times I went to Central Park to photograph seals in the zoo and pigeons. I also was assigned to film at Coney Island.