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

by Sherill Tippins

  [>] bat hanging: Vogel, Memories and Images, 79.

  [>] knockdown-dragout fights: Brinnin, Dylan Thomas, 120.

  [>] “all those fool”: Ibid., 91.

  [>] “among friendly faces”: Ibid., 151.

  [>] San Remo Bar: Ibid., 162.

  [>] “the condition under”: Frascina, Pollock and After, 120.

  [>] “Like children”: Stevens and Swan, De Kooning, 244.

  [>] “Is he the greatest”: “Jackson Pollock,” Life (August 8, 1949).

  [>] the Irascibles: “The Irascibles,” Life (January 15, 1951).

  [>] “action painting”: Maroni and Bigatti, Jackson Pollock, 704.

  [>] “Terrific,” “Gee!”: Stevens and Swan, De Kooning, 366

  [>] “You know more”: Wetzsteon, Republic of Dreams, 563.

  [>] to be present too: Brinnin, Dylan Thomas, xii.

  [>] “Do you think”: Solomon, Jackson Pollock, 240.

  [>] American bitch goddess: Stevens and Swan, De Kooning, 324.

  [>] “roaring boy”: Brinnin, Dylan Thomas, 140.

  [>] American academics: Ibid., 43.

  [>] Thomas had never understood: Ibid.

  [>] snuggling up to their women: Ibid., 59.

  [>] young “ardents”: Ibid., 53.

  [>] “play for voices”: Ibid., 99.

  [>] Spoon River Anthology: Lycett, Dylan Thomas, 362.

  [>] “so young, so ruddy”: Kay Boyle, “A Declaration for 1955,” The Nation, January 29, 1955.

  [>] eyes reddened: Brinnin, Dylan Thomas, 143.

  [>] dark, second-floor room: Ibid., 147.

  [>] “I think it’s called”: Ibid., 6.

  [>] “high, wild, wonderful laughter”: Ibid., 146.

  [>] “who with a week’s”: Miller, Timebends, 514.

  [>] “the struggle to hold off”: Ibid.

  [>] gone to see The Crucible: Brinnin, Dylan Thomas, 175.

  [>] combined with Benzedrine: Ferris, Collected Letters, 918.

  [>] “I’ve seen the gates”: Brinnin, Dylan Thomas, 203.

  [>] a girl “loaned” to him: Ibid., 211.

  [>] a woman he disliked: Ibid., 216.

  [>] “I’m really afraid”: Ibid., 213.

  [>] giggled over the caricatures: Ibid., 215.

  [>] “the cockroaches have teeth”: Ferris, Dylan Thomas, 299.

  [>] wanted was to die: Brinnin, Dylan Thomas, 219.

  [>] “I’ve got to go”: Ibid.

  [>] likely exaggerating: Ferris, Dylan Thomas, 304.

  [>] “I’ve had eighteen straight”: Brinnin, Dylan Thomas, 220.

  [>] dose of morphine: Ferris, Dylan Thomas, 306.

  [>] face had turned blue: Brinnin, Dylan Thomas, 222.

  [>] tore a crucifix: Ibid., 233.

  [>] born across the street: Homberger, New York City, 118.

  [>] “metropolitan excitements”: Kerouac, The Subterraneans, 82.

  [>] two “Catholic buddies”: Leland, Why Kerouac Matters, 17.

  [>] drawing paper: Kerouac, On the Road: The Original Scroll, 24.

  [>] “But Jack”: Charters, Kerouac, 128.

  [>] Kerouac bellowed at him, red-faced: George Plimpton, “Robert Giroux, the Art of Publishing No. 3,” Paris Review (Summer 2000).

  [>] “not so great”: Kerouac, The Subterraneans, 53.

  [>] Metropolitan Opera House: Vidal, Palimpsest, 217.

  [>] “as one writer”: Ibid.

  [>] tied everything together: Kerouac, The Subterraneans, 53.

  [>] swung in a circle: Vidal, Palimpsest, 231.

  [>] “varied & adventurous”: Allen Ginsberg to John Montgomery, n.d., HRC.

  [>] “lust to one”: Vidal, Palimpsest, 232.

  [>] rosy-red light: Ibid.

  [>] “I liked”: Ibid., 233.

  [>] “reasonably brisk”: Ibid., 231.

  [>] never did return: Ibid., 234.

  [>] hip new outlook: Hill, A Grand Guy, 63.

  [>] “an adventure”: Rivers, What Did I Do?, 227.

  [>] “He thought by hanging out”: Ibid., 133.

  [>] “eyeball kicks”: Schumacher, Dharma Lion, 197.

  [>] at the very heart: Ibid., 202.

  [>] “I saw the best”: Ginsberg, Collected Poems, 134–41.

  [>] Whitman’s cataloging style: Schumacher, Dharma Lion, 203.

  [>] Gertrude Stein’s rhythms: Shinder, Poem That Changed, 76.

  [>] to make the poem move: Ibid., 41.

  [>] a high-pitched voice: Ibid., 103.

  [>] audience laughed, hooted: Jason Epstein, speaking at “Howl: The Fiftieth Anniversary,” Miller Theatre at Columbia University, April 17, 2006.

  [>] “social force”: Ginsberg, Howl: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 155.

  [>] inspired by some peyote: Schumacher, Dharma Lion, 205.

  [>] “whose love is endless”: Ginsberg, Collected Poems, 134–41.

  [>] a global utopian gathering: Ibid.

  [>] “In all our memories”: Ibid.

  [>] “an emotional time bomb”: Shinder, Poem That Changed, 146.

  [>] son of the Wobbly leader: Baxandall, Words on Fire, 271.

  [>] “what might truly be waiting”: Miller, Timebends, 381.

  [>] “dreadful little”: John Hollander, “Poetry Chronicle,” Partisan Review (Spring 1957): 296–98.

  [>] “redeeming social importance”: The People of the State of California (Plaintiff) v. Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Defendant), October 3, 1957.

  [>] “with boys and girls”: Carter, Spontaneous Mind, 294.

  [>] “dirty books”: Hill, A Grand Guy, 32.

  [>] “only a blow job”: Miles, William Burroughs, 88.

  [>] crowds yelling: Amy Finnerty, “The Photo That Exposed Segregation,” New York Times Book Review, October 7, 2011.

  [>] having an affair: Atlas, Delmore Schwartz, 330–31.

  [>] Descending on Kramer’s: Ibid., 331.

  [>] “like an old bull”: Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, 341.

  [>] “I get lots”: Morgan and Stanford, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, 370.

  [>] “I’m afraid to come back”: Ibid., 393.

  [>] “I almost cried”: Ibid., 356.

  [>] “sexy chicks”: Lee, The Beat Generation Writers, 190.

  [>] “Your public?”: Morgan and Stanford, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, 417.

  [>] “I’m waiting for God”: Maher, Kerouac, 356.

  [>] he confessed: J. Kerouac to Robert Giroux, July 13, 1962, Jack Kerouac Papers, Berg.

  [>] “to stand the gaff”: Kerouac, Kerouac: Selected Letters, 263.

  [>] “old woods life”: Ibid., 315–16.

  [>] “thick and sullen”: Vidal, Palimpsest, 227.

  [>] “I forgot”: Ibid., 231.

  [>] the tide had nevertheless turned: Miller, Timebends, 362.

  [>] “siren song”: Ibid., 288.

  [>] “One felt it”: Ibid., 362.

  [>] “found-object instruments”: Robert Palmer, “John Cage’s Night of Uproar,” New York Times, October 25, 1981.

  [>] “Give me your hump!”: Hill, Grand Guy, 87.

  [>] columnist Jack Mabley: Schumacher, Dharma Lion, 297.

  [>] Calling it Big Table: Ibid., 299.

  [>] “dead, undersea eyes”: “Notes on Contributors,” Big Table 1 (Winter 1959): 2.

  [>] “I have a funny”: Editorial, Big Table 1 (Winter 1959): 3.

  [>] “revolted” by: Brightman, Writing Dangerously, 414.

  [>] delighted by what she considered: Ibid., 474–75.

  [>] Gertz organized a protest: McAleer, Arthur C. Clarke, 139.

  [>] next stage in human evolution: Ibid., 136.

  [>] “carny barker”: Ibid., ix.

  [>] “maybe only fifty years”: A. C. Clarke, Horizon (video), BBC, 1964 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FxYgdX2PxyQ).

  [>] statistically normal: McAleer, Arthur C. Clarke, 341.

  [>] Hector Ekanayake: Ibid., 122.

 
[>] “sounded fun”: Ibid., 139.

  [>] offered to publish: Miles, William Burroughs, 98.

  [>] refugees from Franco’s Spain: Frank Cavestani, interview with the author, December 9, 2011.

  [>] El Quijote: “Conveyances, 222 West 23rd Street: Lease Renewal,” New York City Department of Finance, Office of the City Register, June 16, 1988.

  [>] schoolteacher’s son: Stanley Bard, interview with the author, May 15, 2006.

  [>] paint walls, sand floors: Virgil Thomson to Mr. Krauss, n.d.; Virgil Thomson to Mr. Bard, September 27, 1955; Virgil Thomson to Mr. Bard, February 25, 1967, Virgil Thomson Papers, Yale Music Library.

  [>] sold off his other properties: Stanley Bard, interview with the author, May 15, 2006.

  [>] “tolerated everything”: Miller, “The Chelsea Affect.”

  [>] Morath, whose friend: Miller, Timebends, 512.

  [>] “the Chelsea charm”: Ibid., 512–13.

  [>] well educated on the GI Bill: Rivers, What Did I Do?, 75.

  [>] “you could be poor”: Ibid., 76.

  [>] “every artist likes”: Lehman, The Last Avant-Garde, 21.

  [>] “wigging in”: Schuyler, Collected Poems, 252.

  [>] John Ashbery: Rivers, What Did I Do?, 214.

  [>] Larry Rivers: Ibid., 234.

  [>] “spontaneity of sentiment”: Thomson, Virgil Thomson, 158.

  [>] “beauty of true things”: Lehman, Last Avant-Garde, 278.

  [>] “what horror”: Ibid., 195.

  [>] a “faggot”: Ibid., 336.

  [>] “ruining American poetry”: Ibid.

  [>] “a united front”: Ibid., 337.

  [>] “to smash”: Russell, The Avant-Garde Today, 226.

  [>] “wonderfully uninvolved”: Miller, Timebends, 487.

  5. After The Fall

  [>] “Everything is perfect”: Arthur Miller, “The Chelsea Affect,” Granta (Summer 2002).

  [>] “good people”: Miller, Timebends, 245.

  [>] recommended the Chelsea: Ibid., 512.

  [>] hostel one found: Miller, “The Chelsea Affect.”

  [>] providing the distraction Monroe: Gottfried, Arthur Miller, 171.

  [>] “place of happiness”: Miller, “The Chelsea Affect.”

  [>] free from the money-based: Marshall Smith, “The Madcap Chelsea, New York’s Most Illustrious Third-Rate Hotel,” Life 57, no. 12 (September 18, 1964): 134–40.

  [>] long-distance truckers: Richard R. Lingeman, “Where Home Is Where It Is,” New York Times Book Review, December 24, 1967.

  [>] “the winds of my”: Miller, Timebends, 34.

  successful photojournalist: Ibid., 494.

  [>] a children’s story: Gottfried, Arthur Miller, 354.

  [>] “They were all innocents”: Miller, Timebends, 495.

  [>] slipping upstairs to Virgil: Miller, “The Chelsea Affect.”

  [>] plaster frieze: Juliette Hamelcourt, “Oral Histories at the Chelsea Hotel: Sir René Shapshak and his wife, Eugenie,” Juliette Hamelcourt collection, n.d., SAAA.

  [>] friend of anarchists: Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 325.

  [>] “paralyzing potions”: Miller, Timebends, 513.

  [>] increasing carbon dioxide: Ibid.

  [>] Byrd, a young experimental musician: Robert Nedelkoff, e-mail to the author, October 11, 2011.

  [>] lent Byrd her loft: Banes, Greenwich Village, 60.

  [>] “Third Play”: Miller, Timebends, 516.

  [>] group of scientific researchers: Ibid., 326.

  [>] “failed to embarrass”: Ibid., 520.

  [>] “tired of being Marilyn Monroe”: Gottfried, Arthur Miller, 342.

  [>] One did what one: Miller, Timebends, 517.

  [>] thinking of Camus’s The Fall: Ibid., 484.

  [>] After the Fall: Ibid., 516.

  [>] Whitehead, with a request: Ibid., 529.

  [>] “swamp cooler”: Arthur Miller, “American Summer: Before Air Conditioning,” The New Yorker, June 22, 1998.

  [>] “an attempt”: “Curtain Time,” Milwaukee Journal, January 28, 1962.

  [>] Kleinsinger, the sociable composer: Miller, “The Chelsea Affect.”

  [>] red laser beam: Helen Dudar, “It’s Home Sweet Home for Geniuses, Real or Would-Be,” Smithsonian 14, no. 9 (December 1983): 106.

  [>] “human art”: Restany, Yves Klein, 23.

  [>] International Klein: John Perreault, “Yves Klein’s Blues: Souvenirs of the Future,” Artopia (November 9, 2005).

  [>] specialized in “accumulations”: Chernow, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 149.

  [>] filling a plastic pool: Rivers, What Did I Do?, 382.

  [>] Jean Tinguely produced kinetic art: Ibid., 379.

  [>] Niki de Saint Phalle: Ibid., 377.

  [>] dancing at the transvestite bar: Ibid., 380.

  [>] set itself on fire: “The Collection: Fragment from Homage to New York,” Jean Tinguely (Swiss, 1925–1991), Museum of Modern Art, http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=81174.

  [>] “To play”: Chernow, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 155.

  [>] construct situations: SI 1958, “Preliminary Problems in Constructing a Situation” (Ken Knabb, trans.), Internationale Situationniste 1 (1958).

  [>] “Imagination is”: Yves Klein, “Chelsea Hotel Manifesto,” Spring 1961, http://www.yvesklein.de/manifesto.html.

  [>] writer Harry Matthews: Scott Griffin, interview with the author, November 14, 2007.

  [>] an opera libretto: Scott Griffin, e-mail to the author, October 17, 2007.

  [>] then shot down: Tommasini, Virgil Thomson, 458–59.

  [>] The Construction of Boston: David Shapiro, “A Conversation with Kenneth Koch,” Field 7 (Fall 1972).

  [>] “They were all battling”: Eric Hu, “Frank O’Hara on American vs. European Sociality in Art Circles,” Empathies, http://empathies.tumblr.com/post/29138539755/frank-ohara-on-american-vs-european-sociality-in-art.

  [>] body cast in blue plaster: Rivers, What Did I Do?, 383.

  [>] “Negro hustler named Joe”: Ibid., 387.

  [>] “poets write the best”: Scott Griffin, interview with the author, November 14, 2007.

  [>] “rising up”: Henry Galdzahler in Who Gets to Call It Art? (documentary film), directed by Peter Rosen (2006).

  [>] “soft sculptures”: Patti Mucha, “Sewing in the Sixties,” Art in America (November 2002): 79–87.

  [>] “The amount”: Claes Oldenburg in recorded interview with Bruce Hooten at the Hotel Chelsea, February 19, 1965, Oldenburg Collection, Box 1, Getty Research Center.

  [>] “I am for an art”: Stiles and Selz, Theories and Documents, 335.

  [>] “precious works”: Tony Sherman, “When Pop Turned the Art World Upside Down,” American Heritage (February 2001): 68.

  [>] “The one thing”: Peter Campbell, “At the Hayward,” London Review of Books 26, no. 6 (March 18, 2004): 18.

  [>] “one of the worst”: Brian O’Doherty, “Doubtful But Definite Triumph of the Banal,” New York Times (October 27, 1963).

  [>] “wanted to be a machine”: Thierry de Duve and Rosalind Krauss, “Andy Warhol, or The Machine Perfected,” October 48 (Spring 1989): 3–14.

  [>] “either a betrayal”: Ibid.

  [>] abruptly leaving: Stevens and Swan, De Kooning, 441.

  [>] “Oh, so nice”: Sherman, “When Pop Turned the Art World.”

  [>] “My procedure”: Oldenburg interview with Bruce Hooten.

  [>] “ignoring its right”: Lehman, The Last Avant-Garde, 308.

  [>] “It’s like some”: Miller, After the Fall, 39.

  [>] “Where is everybody?”: Stevens and Swan, De Kooning, 422.

  [>] a dangerous choice: Miller, Timebends, 514.

  [>] “her ghost”: Gottfried, Arthur Miller, 345.

  [>] as an abstract concept: Ibid., 346.

  [>] “truth-bearer of sensuality”: Miller, Timebends, 521.

  [>] “I never got”: Miller, After the Fall, 80.

  [>] “They l
augh. I’m a joke”: Ibid., 47.

  [>] “as all of us are”: Miller, Timebends, 521.

  [>] white-collared dresses: Sylvia Thompson, interview with the author, June 3, 2008.

  [>] watch out for the discarded: Healey and Isserman, California Red, 174.

  [>] years in prison: Abt and Myerson, Advocate and Activist, 221.

  [>] her only son, Fred: Ibid.

  [>] “I like a hotel”: E. G. Flynn, “I Like a Hotel,” Daily Worker, February 19, 1939.

  [>] International Hotel Workers’ Union: “Young Woman Leads the Waiters’ Strike,” New York Times, January 14, 1913.

  [>] Irish lace curtains: Sylvia Thompson, interview with the author, June 3, 2008.

  [>] lovingly inscribed: C. Tresca inscription, Lawrence, Massachusetts, November 17, 1912, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Collection, New York University Tamiment Library.

  [>] Irish peas: Sylvia Thompson, interview with the author, June 3, 2008.

  [>] her favorite restaurant, John’s: Ibid.

  [>] “Do you know”: Baxandall, Words on Fire, 270.

  [>] “stodgy old men”: Ibid., 271.

  [>] including the filmmaker: Cecile Starr, e-mail to the author, May 1, 2009.

  [>] blond, athletic Englishman: O’Connor, Brendan Behan, 96.

  [>] befriended Terry Southern: Ibid., 137.

  [>] “the number of people”: Jeffs, Brendan Behan, 35.

  [>] Dunham happened to be: O’Connor, Brendan Behan, 296–97.

  [>] David Bard’s son, Stanley: Stanley Bard, interview with the author, November 30, 2007.

  [>] providing them with classes: Aschenbrenner, Katherine Dunham, 139.

  [>] a room near her own: Smith, “The Madcap Chelsea.”

  [>] five dollars per day: Turner, At the Chelsea, 14.

  [>] “lisping through broken”: Miller, Timebends, 515.

  [>] his “Hellenism”: O’Connor, Brendan Behan, 96.

  [>] seaman from Dundalk: Turner, At the Chelsea, 14.

  [>] to the YMCA with Arthurs: Ibid., 295.

  [>] live in terror: Ibid., 301.

  [>] no one gave a damn: Miller, Timebends, 514.

  [>] who was visiting: O’Connor, Brendan Behan, 297.

  [>] assumption that Farrell was dead: Landers, An Honest Writer, 320.

  [>] “Gurley, you’re the only”: Sylvia Thompson, interview with the author, June 3, 2008.

  [>] liked the Beat writers: Behan, Brendan Behan’s New York, 118.

  [>] happy to harmonize: Rivers, What Did I Do?, 406.