Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel

by Sherill Tippins

  [>] “an America alive”: Fisher, Hart Crane, 86.

  [>] Gathering together: E. L. Masters, Across Spoon River, 366–67.

  [>] Romany Marie’s: Brooks, John Sloan, 60.

  [>] “pulp and quick”: Brooks, The Early Years, 148.

  [>] Harriet Monroe: Brooks, The Confident Years, 475.

  [>] “deeper beauty of feeling”: Rideout, Sherwood Anderson, 167.

  [>] “miraculously set beating”: Brooks, The Early Years, 167.

  [>] “only to be quickly wiped out”: E. L. Masters, Across Spoon River, 340.

  [>] America’s involvement: Loughery, John Sloan, 227.

  [>] “changed the form”: E. L. Masters, Across Spoon River, 381.

  [>] deaths of the Masses: Loughery, John Sloan, 244.

  [>] “a child on the back”: Levy, Herbert Croly, 262.

  [>] “In my country”: Sherwood Anderson, “From Chicago,” Seven Arts (May 1917): 41.

  [>] government expansion: Leach, Land of Desire, 177.

  [>] Department-store windows: Ibid., 70.

  [>] “rolling sculptures”: Miller, Timebends, 45.

  [>] “the deadening”: Dabney, Edmund Wilson, 169.

  [>] “a kind of violence”: Rideout, Sherwood Anderson, 446.

  [>] “old sweet things”: Anderson, Poor White, 341.

  [>] the hard-boiled efficiency: Bareuther, “The Hotel Chelsea.”

  [>] with Gertrude Stein’s 1915 book: Brooks, The Confident Years, 439–40.

  [>] “A shallow hole”: G. Stein, Tender Buttons, 18.

  [>] Etelka Graf: “Woman Cuts Off Hand and Jumps 3 Stories,” New York Times, March 6, 1922.

  [>] wife of a concert pianist: Coretta Wolford, e-mail to the author, August 21, 2009.

  [>] filled it with works: Perlman, Lives, Loves, and Art, 352.

  [>] now featuring Wreath: Ibid., 342.

  [>] “I owe to him”: Ibid., 363.

  [>] husband’s Chelsea studios: Ibid., 364.

  [>] create an entire museum: Ibid., 368.

  [>] “the great unspanked”: Brooks, John Sloan, 204.

  [>] “had come to the end”: Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again, 306.

  [>] “dead and outworn”: Ibid.

  [>] “threatened to outpace”: Brightman, Writing Dangerously, 219–20.

  [>] “couldn’t help”: Leach, Land of Desire, 379.

  [>] Carl Sandburg, Theodore Dreiser, and H. L. Mencken: Hardin Wallace Masters, Edgar Lee Masters, 111, 131.

  [>] “our bluestocking”: Turner, At the Chelsea, 8.

  [>] in part by Sloan’s Masses: Brooks, John Sloan, 96.

  [>] messages left at the front desk: Bareuther, “The Hotel Chelsea.”

  [>] $38.25 per week: Loughery, John Sloan, 324.

  [>] “were shouting”: Stevens and Swan, De Kooning, 121.

  [>] “like pushing”: Sloan, Gist of Art, 21.

  [>] “I can’t begin”: Stevens and Swan, De Kooning, 124.

  [>] “Society, as we have constituted”: Tommasini, Virgil Thomson, 69.

  [>] “because that’s where”: Ibid., 74.

  [>] “ripen unpushed”: Ibid., 122.

  [>] “It was not so much”: Thomson, Virgil Thomson, 74.

  [>] “half-hick” songs: Tommasini, Virgil Thomson, 127.

  [>] church harmonies: Ibid., 157.

  [>] “got on like a couple”: Ibid., 135.

  [>] “How much of it”: G. Stein, Four Saints in Three Acts, 240.

  [>] “whites just hate”: Thomson, Virgil Thomson, 157.

  [>] “they didn’t know”: Tommasini, Virgil Thomson, 258.

  [>] “transfigured American speech”: Ibid., 11.

  [>] commercial tunes: Thomson, Virgil Thomson, 272.

  [>] the “fake folklore”: Tommasini, Virgil Thomson, 302.

  [>] an “unrest cure”: Thomson, Virgil Thomson, 150.

  [>] “not quite sane”: Ibid., 280.

  [>] “sending up sparks”: Brooks, The Confident Years, 497.

  [>] “fashion experts”: Brooks, John Sloan, 212.

  [>] called “psychopathic”: Avis Berman, “Artist as Rebel: John Sloan Versus the Status Quo,” Smithsonian (April 1, 1988): 78.

  [>] “picturesque” images: Ibid.

  [>] Sloan’s portrait of Dolly: Loughery, John Sloan, 143.

  [>] recovered from an abortion: Ibid., 142.

  [>] Art Students League: Brooks, John Sloan, 139.

  [>] Alexander Calder: Ibid., 143.

  [>] petty and soul-killing: Loughery, John Sloan, 328.

  [>] technical abilities: Ibid., 312.

  [>] “My drawing”: Pollock, American Letters, 18.

  [>] “usable past”: V. W. Brooks, “On Creating a Usable Past,” Dial (April 1918).

  [>] hiring a secretary: Donald, Look Homeward, 441.

  [>] creative solitude: Ibid., 444.

  [>] his agent, Elizabeth Nowell: Ibid., 445.

  [>] disciplined work routine: Ibid., 441.

  [>] “The desire”: Ibid., 183.

  [>] “rumbling and roaring”: Nowell, The Letters of Thomas Wolfe, 730.

  [>] “Goddammit”: Nowell, Thomas Wolfe, 399.

  [>] rethinking his ten-thousand-dollar offer: Donald, Look Homeward, 427.

  [>] five-page, single-spaced letter: Bruccoli and Bucker, To Loot My Life Clean, 250.

  [>] “I have not had”: Ibid., 245.

  Edward Aswell of Harper and Brothers: Donald, Look Homeward, 427.

  [>] back to the Chelsea: Ibid., 428.

  [>] piles of papers: Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again, 355.

  [>] offered to match Linscott’s offer: Donald, Look Homeward, 428.

  [>] Aswell was so young: Ibid., 432.

  [>] “father of his spirit”: Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again, 26.

  [>] managed to shrug them off: Donald, Look Homeward, 387.

  [>] “the solid smack”: Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again, 591.

  [>] “I Have a Thing to Tell You”: Donald, Look Homeward, 390.

  [>] farewell to Germany: Ibid.

  [>] “something old”: “I Have a Thing to Tell You,” New Republic (March 1936).

  [>] “wherever ruthless men”: Ibid.

  [>] visits to the hotel bar: Donald, Look Homeward, 429.

  [>] “brother to the workers”: Nowell, The Letters of Thomas Wolfe, 579.

  [>] In recent weeks: Donald, Look Homeward, 434.

  [>] “I caught glimpses”: Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again, 685.

  [>] “But don’t you know”: Donald, Look Homeward, 434.

  [>] never really “go home” again: Ibid.

  [>] “America went off”: Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again, 370–71.

  [>] “the life around me”: Donald, Look Homeward, 434.

  [>] expand his novel’s time frame: Ibid., 439.

  [>] “The Life and Times”: Ibid., 407.

  [>] a story called “K-19”: Ibid., 439.

  [>] “horrible human calamity”: Ibid., 261.

  [>] “literally starving”: Ibid.

  [>] “thousand dreary architectures”: Ibid., 438.

  [>] “the million faces”: Wolfe, Of Time and the River, 423.

  [>] “hard-mouthed, hard-eyed”: Ibid., 424.

  [>] “like a single”: Ibid.

  [>] “a strangely empty”: Nowell, The Letters of Thomas Wolfe, 698.

  [>] “a book of revolt”: Donald, Look Homeward, 440.

  [>] “a book of discovery”: Ibid.

  [>] “subterranean river”: Nowell, The Letters of Thomas Wolfe, 363.

  [>] “demoniacal possession”: Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again, 20.

  [>] “I can’t listen”: Donald, Look Homeward, 441.

  [>] Gwen Jassinoff: Ibid., 442.

  [>] story farther back: Ibid., 441.

  [>] “volubly and without”: E. L. Masters to H. L. Mencken, September 15, 1938, Edgar Lee Masters Collection, HRC.

  [>] stammer disappearing: Donald, Look Homeward
, 402.

  [>] Pacing back and forth: Ibid., 442.

  [>] “drunk with words”: Ibid., 113.

  [>] lawyer’s cool mind: Hilary Masters, Last Stands, 149.

  [>] “this terrible vomit”: Donald, Look Homeward, 186.

  [>] “wanting to be the best”: Arthur Miller, The Price, 57.

  [>] Hilary traveled to New York: Hilary Masters, Last Stands, 36.

  [>] Sydney the elevator man: Ibid., 37.

  [>] addressed him respectfully: Ibid., 40.

  [>] fried cornmeal mush: Ibid., 37.

  [>] Masters’s daily swim: Ibid., 42.

  [>] “a perfect, red”: Hilary Masters, interview with the author, April 24, 2006.

  [>] unbearably painful: Hilary Masters, Last Stands, 43.

  [>] “For days”: E. L. Masters to Tom Coyne, September 29, 1942; E. L. Masters Collection, HRC.

  [>] Alice Davis, a shy book lover: Hardin Wallace Masters, Edgar Lee Masters, 128.

  [>] catalyst, the way he depended: E. L. Masters, Spoon River, 408.

  [>] “Always poor”: Turner, At the Chelsea, 9.

  [>] “Then who”: Ibid., 10–11.

  [>] “he could smell”: Donald, Look Homeward, 209.

  [>] for an escape: Ibid., 446.

  [>] “shoot the works”: Ibid., 446–47.

  [>] responsibility to society: Ibid., 449.

  [>] “the common heart of man”: Ibid.

  [>] “You Can’t Go Home Again”: Ibid., 447.

  [>] sorting and labeling: Ibid.

  [>] “The Web and the Rock”: Ibid.

  [>] “a tremendous amount”: Nowell, The Letters of Thomas Wolfe, 765.

  [>] “a kind of legend”: Donald, Look Homeward, 447.

  [>] more truthful and much grander: Ibid.

  [>] On May 17, 1938: Ibid., 448.

  [>] Chelsea bartender Norman Kleinberg: Ibid.

  [>] At 8:30 that evening: Ibid., 449.

  [>] with a brain abscess: Ibid., 460.

  [>] He died there: Ibid., 463.

  [>] “full of the death”: Hardin Wallace Masters, Edgar Lee Masters, 132.

  [>] Valentine Dudensing Gallery: Naifeh and Smith, Jackson Pollock, 549.

  [>] “may well turn”: Solomon, Jackson Pollock, 41.

  [>] “a giant’s visiting card”: Brooks, John Sloan, 197.

  [>] “the fear”: Solomon, Jackson Pollock, 97.

  [>] “every subversive group”: Gottfried, Arthur Miller, 53.

  [>] “the richest life”: V. Thomson, Virgil Thomson, 290.

  [>] “I think it is most”: Jane Bowles to Virgil Thomson (postcard), January 30, 1940, Virgil Thomson Papers, Yale University Music Library.

  [>] “What are you doing”: Thomson, Virgil Thomson, 305.

  [>] this time in room 210: Helen Dudar, “It’s Home Sweet Home for Geniuses, Real or Would-Be,” Smithsonian 14, no. 9 (December 1983): 101.

  [>] “to convince people”: E. L. Masters to Grace, May 18, 1938, E. L. Masters Collection, HRC.

  [>] “We could scarcely”: Hardin Wallace Masters, Edgar Lee Masters, 138.

  [>] “We are so lost, so naked”: Wolfe, Of Time and the River, 175.

  [>] “I believe that we are lost”: Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again, 702. Also, Donald, Look Homeward, x.

  4. Howl

  [>] vomiting on the carpet: Naifeh and Smith, Jackson Pollock, 471.

  [>] had to restrain herself: Dearborn, Mistress of Modernism, 169–70.

  [>] European society in exile: Stevens and Swan, De Kooning, 169.

  [>] first true surrealist: Breton, Ode to Charles Fourier, 3.

  [>] rooms on Houston Street: Solomon, Jackson Pollock, 72.

  [>] the dazzling paintings: Ibid., 73.

  [>] know other artists: Stevens and Swan, De Kooning, 129.

  [>] shoplift art supplies: Naifeh and Smith, Jackson Pollock, 434.

  [>] “temple of high art”: Dearborn, Mistress of Modernism, 201.

  [>] cut out and frame: Naifeh and Smith, Jackson Pollock, 867.

  [>] jukebox music pounded through the walls: Hilary Masters, interview with the author, April 24, 2006.

  [>] final bankruptcy: “Syndicate Buys the Chelsea,” New York Sun, October 5, 1942.

  [>] more than $570,000: Ibid.

  [>] already prompted rumors: Juliette Hamelcourt, “Oral Histories at the Chelsea Hotel: Margit Cain Interviews Juliette Hamelcourt,” audio recording, Juliette Hamelcourt Collection, SAAA.

  [>] high-stakes game: Arthur Miller, “The Chelsea Affect,” Granta 78 (Summer 2002).

  [>] responded in panic: John Sloan to Don Freeman, August 16, 1943, John Sloan Papers, Delaware Art Museum.

  [>] “a mad house”: E. L. Masters to Arthur Mann, July 29, 1943, Edgar Lee Masters Collection, HRC.

  [>] “a voice like a buzz saw”: Ibid.

  [>] “Nerves somehow”: E. L. Masters to Arthur Mann, April 9, 1943, Edgar Lee Masters Collection, HRC.

  [>] collapsed in his room: Hilary Masters interview.

  [>] “music-appreciation”: Thomson, The State of Music, 75.

  [>] “Opera Guild ladies”: Thomson, Virgil Thomson: A Reader, 194.

  [>] accomplished émigré composers: Thomson, Virgil Thomson, 327.

  [>] all varieties of American performances: Tommasini, Virgil Thomson, 352.

  [>] rumored to have belonged: Hilary Masters, Last Stands, 40.

  [>] could barely squeeze: Tommasini, Virgil Thomson, 327.

  [>] Peggy Guggenheim’s parties: Dearborn, Mistress of Modernism, 193.

  [>] an incongruous presence: Stevens and Swan, De Kooning, 145.

  [>] crucial professional connections: Gerald Busby, interview with the author, May 12, 2007.

  [>] “the jawbone”: “Percussion Concert,” Life (March 15, 1943): 42.

  [>] male brothels: Tommasini, Virgil Thomson, 355.

  [>] “Missouri dinners”: Dominique Nabokov, interview with the author, June 19, 2007.

  [>] expert cook, Lee Anna: V. Thomson to Lee Anna (1948), Virgil Thomson Papers, Yale University Music Library.

  [>] “We cannot retrace”: Gertrude Stein, The Mother of Us All, Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc., New World Records, 1977.

  [>] “the division of the spoils”: Tommasini, Virgil Thomson, 403.

  [>] the “boys”: Brightman, Writing Dangerously, 151.

  [>] several daiquiris: Ibid., 152.

  [>] Wilson’s friend Ben Stolberg: Edmund Wilson to Ben Stolberg, January 4, 1938, Benjamin Stolberg Papers, CURBML.

  [>] relieved to see Peggy: Brightman, Writing Dangerously, 153.

  [>] “funny, squeaky voice”: Ibid., 169.

  [>] another visit to Stolberg: Ben Stolberg to Louis Adamic, February 8, 1938, Benjamin Stolberg Papers, CURBML.

  [>] baiting the Harvard-educated: Thomson, Virgil Thomson, 382.

  [>] United Committee: “Pilgrimage for Palestine,” New York Times, April 3, 1948.

  [>] Louisiana Story: Thomson, Virgil Thomson, 393.

  [>] all but 5 percent: “Conveyances, 222 West 23rd Street, Block 00772, Lot 0064,” New York City Department of Finance, Office of the City Register, January 20, 1947.

  [>] persuaded him to take the helm: Stanley Bard, interview with the author, May 15, 2006.

  [>] “Imagine, and a bathroom!”: “Living Like a King, DP Here Declares,” New York Times, November 2, 1948.

  [>] failed to stand up: Cecile Starr, interview with the author, May 1, 2009.

  [>] “civilized discourse”: Gottfried, Arthur Miller, 159.

  [>] row of praying nuns: Miller, Timebends, 235.

  [>] “MONEEY!”: Ibid., 240.

  [>] whether Ralph Waldo Emerson: Brightman, Writing Dangerously, 324.

  [>] “a hairpin curve”: Miller, Timebends, 234.

  [>] Peace Information Center: “‘World Peace’ Plea Is Circulated Here,” New York Times, July 14, 1950.

  [>] “disgrace to the nation”: Loughery, John Sloan, 355.

  [>]
“plump, graying”: Jane Wickers, interview with the author, July 12, 2009.

  [>] helped create an array: Ayn Rand to Ben Stolberg, September 26, 1946, Benjamin Stolberg Papers, CURBML.

  [>] checked in to the Chelsea: Brightman, Writing Dangerously, 360.

  [>] “a state of monumental”: Ibid., 382.

  [>] “cultural ambassadors”: Ibid., 177.

  [>] “devour the glue”: Miller, Timebends, 334.

  [>] “something else”: Ibid., 198.

  [>] fear of “pollution”: Ibid.

  [>] a single individual: Ibid., 342.

  [>] summer of 1951: Gottfried, Arthur Miller, 174–75.

  [>] affair with Kazan: Ibid., 181.

  [>] “she had taken”: Miller, Timebends, 327.

  [>] “the seeming truth-bearer”: Ibid., 521.

  [>] “like a force of nature”: Gottfried, Arthur Miller, 182.

  [>] “I am the truth”: Ibid., 224.

  [>] “fluidity and chance”: Miller, Timebends, 312.

  [>] “I was sick”: Ibid., 313.

  [>] “the mystery”: Ibid., 312.

  [>] reader of D. H. Lawrence: Brinnin, Dylan Thomas, 114.

  [>] Dionysian celebrations: Ibid., 97.

  [>] “simoons of words”: Dylan Thomas, untitled fragment, n.d., “Thomas, Dylan [Notes],” Berg.

  [>] “coming from deep within”: Edith Sitwell, “A New Poet: Achievement of Mr. Dylan Thomas,” London Sunday Times, November 15, 1936.

  [>] “own ego”: Boyle, Words That Must Somehow Be Said, 62.

  [>] “a thunderbolt”: Linton Weeks, “Literary Voice: Famous Authors Recorded Reading Their Own Words,” Washington Post, May 31, 2002.

  [>] Cinema 16: Brinnin, Dylan Thomas, 202.

  [>] galvanizing “presentness”: Singh, Think of the Self, 133.

  [>] “lumpish” industrial town: Dylan Thomas, untitled fragment, n.d., “Thomas, Dylan [Notes],” Berg.

  [>] support of Edith Sitwell: Lycett, Dylan Thomas, 144.

  [>] T. S. Eliot: Ferris, Dylan Thomas, 168.

  [>] harassment by government: Brinnin, Dylan Thomas, 24.

  [>] “I knew America”: Ibid., 3.

  [>] “Newfilthy York”: Ferris, Collected Letters, 888.

  [>] roster of owners: “Conveyances, 222 West 23rd Street, Block 00772, Lot 0064,” New York City Department of Finance, Office of the City Register, March 4, 1947.

  [>] fifth-floor room: Brinnin, Dylan Thomas, 113.

  [>] Betty Blossom: “The Dowager of Twenty-Third Street,” Cue, March 8, 1952.

  [>] Jake Baker’s passion: Gerald Busby, interview with the author, May 12, 2007.