Saw Mrs. Maltin at last, on May 13. Felt awfully sorry for her, but I had to ask her for all of our tax papers. We were very polite. I also had to tell her that a man from the District Attorney’s office had called and asked about Arnold, who has apparently been reported for fraud of some kind. This didn’t seem to worry her unduly. She is faithful unto death; her huge ass seems somehow to express this. She said quite seriously of Arnold that he was the most sensitive man she has ever met. She obviously accepts his view of himself as a victim of society.
On May 19, Truman Capote called, from Long Island. He just wanted to talk. He was very bright and friendly. But he told me that he had had two operations for cancer in the rectum; he had thought it was piles for a long time. The pain had been terrible, and then, after the operations, he had a nervous breakdown and had to go to a clinic in Switzerland for three months. I had just the slightest impression that this was a signal for help. Maybe he is sending out a lot of them. It is peculiarly shocking to see this terrible thing happen to a whiz kid of success. I wanted to take him in my arms and somehow reassure him. And there was absolutely nothing to say—at least, not over the phone, not to Truman. I am glad that he has Jack Dunphy with him.
June 3. Mary Lazar, whom we saw at a party on the 28th, given by Jennifer and Norton Simon, made light of Truman’s cancer to Don, saying it was nothing at all serious. (Is there such a thing as an unserious cancer? The Lazars are in disfavor slightly, anyhow, because we invited them to the dress rehearsal of our play and they excused themselves at the last moment through a secretary.)
The Simon party was given for Lauren Bacall; it was also a first-anniversary celebration of their wedding. Their marriage seems to be going well and I began to like Norton; he does seem to be sensible politically, and being sensible is all one can expect of Republicans. Bacall was terrific—like a campy alligator, very like Beatrix Lehmann at her funniest, but not so bitter. Senator McGovern165 also showed up—thus causing the house to be immediately surrounded by secret service men. He was probably exhausted. He thrilled none of us but did his best to be pleasant. He’s all we’ve got to vote for—that was the attitude of the Democrats present. I’m sure we can’t win, anyway.
The “Frankenstein” script is now cut down from 199 and ½ pages to 139 and ½, which is exactly what Hunt required. I think we did a very neat job. Now there is no excuse left for Hunt—he must leave Texas and come back here and do something about getting a director. We have decided to start work again on “The Mummy” the day after tomorrow, but at slow speed.
Anecdotes and miscellaneous information:
John Gielgud told us this story about Mae West. She was asked, “Do you ever smoke after you’ve had sex?” She answered, “I never looked.”
Tennessee (who’s here again) told us that his sweet but simple-minded friend Victor went with him to Italy but hated it. The first morning, Victor went out on the street among the Italians and came back at once, exclaiming in dismay, “I can’t understand what they’re saying!”
Both Virginia Pfeiffer and Gavin have been bitten by black widow spiders. Neither one of them felt the bite. But Virginia’s leg swelled up terribly and she was in bed for four weeks. Gavin’s symptoms were much less violent. His doctor gave him cortisone and vitamin C.
Swami told us, the day before yesterday, that several people ask him for a Brahman mantram when they are initiated, but that they always want to exchange it later for a mantram containing the name of a chosen ideal—the Impersonal God proves unsatisfactory for meditation. Three of the monks have Christ mantras.
June 16. An almost incredible absence of news. Nothing from Universal, or from Hunt, or from Ed Parone in London, or from anybody in New York. Meanwhile, we keep plodding on with “The Mummy”—now provisionally called “The Lady from the Land of the Dead,” a title I think I like very much, though Don has doubts. It does sound a bit like an operetta.
My left-hand little finger, after getting straighter, is now curling over. I daren’t show it to Dr. Ashworth, because he said, “If you don’t wear it in a splint at nights, don’t come back,” and I haven’t been wearing it in the splint because the splint keeps coming off.
Have just been out shopping for a Father’s Day present for Swami. Got a silk scarf I’m not sure about; on these occasions, one takes refuge in spending a lot of money, $18.38.
Robin French just called to say how much he likes the cut version of “Frankenstein.” Word has lately got around that Jessie is pregnant again. [. . .]
Paul Millard called me this morning to say that he wants me to ask his friend Rob Matteson to photograph me and to offer to pay for the pictures. This is because Rob is very insecure—although a marvellous photographer, according to Paul. Because of his insecurity, Paul says, they split up for a while and are now back together again on trial. If Rob’s confidence isn’t restored, Paul fears Rob will leave him again. I agreed, of course, and yet the whole thing irritates me a bit. It seems such a cheap trick to play on Rob, and, if he ever does get to know about it, he almost certainly will leave Paul. I told Don I felt inclined to praise the pictures to the skies and then say all my friends must have them and order six dozen. Because Paul has assured me that he’ll pay for the pictures, no matter what they cost. (I couldn’t resist telling Paul that I never pay for photographs taken of me; which is true.)
When I saw Swami the day before yesterday, I asked him if he had had any dreams about Maharaj lately. He said smiling, “No, I think he is waiting till I die.” Swami got annoyed with Anandaprana, who had said at the board meeting, “Why don’t we sell some of the Trabuco land, so we can start the new buildings for the nuns?” Swami is determined not to do this; he feels it would be a betrayal of Gerald’s memory. (Swami always thinks of Trabuco as being Gerald’s personal gift, which, technically, it wasn’t.) Ananda, whiny voiced but obstinate, told me, “I can’t help thinking of the poor girls, living next to that terrible freeway noise, and the boys at Trabuco have far more room than they need.” Swami thinks they can raise the money by getting a property-tax exemption which, in its turn, will release some of their invested capital to be used for building. They want to reconstruct the entire Hollywood center.
According to Swami, Jim Gates is getting on very well at the monastery. He works at the bookshop and everybody likes him. But Peter Schneider is out of favor. Swami thinks him lazy. He is being given money to look after the apartment-house garden, and he doesn’t. Also, Swami doubts that he really wants to become a monk.
June 24. Dennis Altman just sent me this from Australia. It appeared among the want ads in a Sydney newspaper:
“Single man, an Isherwood fan, seeks another, 28 plus, to share snug Sydney northside flat.”
Paul Shaw, our new tax accountant, is arranging for us to share some of the money and thus avoid death taxes. At present, I feel boundless confidence in him and imagine we’d now be rich if we’d met him ten years ago.
Nothing will budge Hunt from Texas, it seems. We hear that Sheinberg is shopping around for a cheap television director to do “Frankenstein.”
I dreamed that I was walking with Stravinsky on the seashore, talking about my coming death.
The worst time of the day or night for me at present is immediately after waking, because Don insists on having the alarm ring, again and again from 6:30 onward. We are supposed to get up in turns and stop it. But I always am the first to do this, and it wakes me up, and I get back into bed and worry. But another of our basic disagreements, about Don’s fast driving, has had the sting taken out of it, because I now lie down on the back seat of the car. I rather enjoy this, except that it is so uncomfortable, because from that position you can see almost nothing but tree-tops, only occasionally a tall building.
Michael York is really quite adorable and incredibly young looking for thirty. (We went to a party there, last night.) When he sits down beside you, he projects a very strong feminine appeal. We think him capable of deep resentments, beneath his beautiful man
ners. (As we were leaving, I said I liked to leave a party without saying general goodbyes, and he said, “You’re just like me,” and then corrected himself, “I mean, I’m just like you.” Who else in the entire Los Angeles area would have said that?) He kisses us in public, too. Pat his wife is a power lady, pop-eyed with ambition.
Martin Hensler told Don that John Gielgud often begins to cry when he thinks about his death. Martin was furious yesterday because Truman Capote had said in an interview that John was stupid. He wanted to write Truman an abusive letter.
July 1. Don keeps drawing Michael York but can’t get a good likeness. He has done several good portraits of Pat.
Ed Parone has returned from London. He hasn’t called us, but he told Jim Bridges that he had no luck there with our play; perhaps because it has been overexposed by Clement Scott Gilbert. Several people said they weren’t even interested in reading the new version. However there is a very favorable notice in July’s issue of After Dark, complete with a picture of Larry and Sam in their parts. Gordon Hoban is also praised, which pleases me because he got slighted in the local notices. The After Dark critic, Viola Hegyi Swisher166 (can this be a joke name invented by a drag queen?) writes: “The New Theater for Now season struck a beautiful opening chord, under Jim Bridges’ direction.”
Last night, we went with Lauren Bacall to hear Lee Roy Reams sing at the Little Club. He’s in Applause with her and she is trying to promote his career as a night-club singer. He has a nice voice but is hopelessly shy and a nonwinner. Bacall is all power, but we both like her. Got a headache from drinking half a bottle of wine—so low is my tolerance, nowadays—so went down to the beach and dunked it in the ocean. Don drank two vodkas and felt awful.
Yesterday, I took $33,000 out of three of our savings accounts, and Don deposited the money in his personal checking account. Now I have to live three years (I believe) or else Don will have to pay death duty on it. Mr. Shaw is very disapproving of the joint tenancy grant deed—which Albert Spar drew up, years ago. He fears it will land us in trouble, later. But Don absolutely refuses to spend money on consulting a lawyer to find out how we can annul it. He bitterly resents the fact, and so do I, that I shall have to pay $3,170 state gift tax on the $33,000.
For the moment—or to be more exact, for the past week—we are stuck in “The Mummy.” Can’t think how to end it.
July 2. This morning we sort of fudged an ending to “The Mummy.” We now think we’ll sketch it out as quickly as we can and then throw the whole burden onto Hunt, if he ever comes back. Mummy talk has become a terrible time waste.
Meanwhile, I get on very slowly but not too badly with my reconstructed 19[4]7167 diary. There’s a lot of good material in it.
Bad news/good news, from the New York Mattachine Times of May–June:
After three months, the new penal code enacted by the Idaho legislature, legalizing homosexual activity between persons of sixteen years and older, has been repealed. Now they are back to the old law: “Every person guilty of the infamous crime against nature is punishable by imprisonment for not less than five years.”
A new criminal code for Hawaii, effective next January, contains no penalties for solicitation and lewd conduct and makes fourteen the age of consent for “deviate sexual conduct.”
Other relatively free states are now Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois and Oregon.
July 3. The usual holiday jitters. How one longs for them to be over! Last night we had supper with Stathis Orphanos and his friend Ralph Sylvester. Stathis is a sweet boy, a good person, but his photography takes longer than anyone else’s and tomorrow he plans to spend most of the day photographing Don—who will then later be photographed by Pat York! Luckily, Stathis now has nearly all the desirable editions of all my books, so I don’t have any more to sign for him.
This morning a letter came from James M. Foster who is the only gay delegate from California to the Democratic National Convention at Miami Beach this month. He is also a friend of Troy Perry’s. He tells me they have set up a foundation called the Isherwood-Radclyffe Foundation which is to lobby for gay rights, etc. The women on the committee which set it up voted for “Radclyffe” in memory of Radclyffe Hall; the men voted for me! I’m going to talk them out of this, if I can. Foster is up in San Francisco and I haven’t been able to reach him yet.168
July 4. Both yesterday and today we were in the ocean, big waves and beautiful, but still very cold. We got away before the big beach crowd this morning and I have spent the day working on my 1947 diary, while Stathis takes photographs of Don. He has already spent three hours on this and shows no signs of having finished. Don groaned to me, as he changed clothes for the third or fourth time, “This’ll punish me for all the times I’ve complained because I wasn’t photographed!”
Nothing will get my weight down; it fluctuates around 149–151.
Last night we saw Truman Capote’s friend Rick Brown. He is living in Hollywood, sharing an apartment with a boy named Michael who got stabbed in the buttocks on a parking lot by a guy who followed him out of a bar because the guy thought Michael was making a pass at his girlfriend. When the police arrived, they checked up on Michael and found he had never appeared to answer a drunk-driving charge, some while ago. So, disregarding his wounds, they shut him up for the whole of one day in the tank before they let him lie down on a hospital bed. Now his wounds are infected. A big nice-looking good-natured boy who could easily be terrifically sexy, except that he’s a hopeless slob. Both he and Rick want to be actors. They don’t appear to have a chance in a million. But then, how much chance does someone with real talent, like Gordon Hoban, have?
July 5. A singularly pleasant harmonious dinner party last night. Mrs. Leavitt cooked and we had Michael and Pat York, Billy Al Bengston and Penny Little, Jack Larson and Jim Bridges. Michael got good marks again, he was charming to Penny and suitably macho (in a restrained British way) with Billy Al. Pat came on strong about Don’s drawings and paintings, compelling him to bring out two albums, which everybody looked at, even Billy. And then Jack and Jim came on even stronger with their new craze for skiing, which pleased Pat. And then we had the Fourth of July fireworks with our dessert, not so plentiful as usual, but enough.
Don has done three very interesting paintings, painted over drawings.
This morning we really have more or less found an ending for “The Mummy.”
My weight, just a fraction under 150.
Gluttony; after a marvellous run down to the beach and plunge into the ocean, I grabbed all the remaining cookies from last night, three cherries, a slice off the sweetmeat which Ralph, Stathis’s friend, made for us and three Bath Oliver biscuits, two of them spread with (very old and stale) honey, one of them with cheese!
July 6. Woke up this morning feeling very strongly that I must not allow my name to be put on to this foundation. If it remains there, it will compromise me; I shall have all the disadvantages of being dead without any of the advantages. I’ll be like a president of the Soviet Union. I called Foster and at once felt that my hunch had been correct. I realize that they only voted for me because they think of me as a stuffed limey. And when I told Foster, he was horrified, because they have already sent the papers to Sacramento in my name—they did that before they even asked me! Foster immediately said that I must talk to his colleague, David Goodstein(?), who’s a lawyer169—in other words, someone who would be able to bully or wheedle me into changing my mind. Oh, they little know Dobbin! I do hope I shan’t have to go to law about it.
Last night we saw Morocco with Gavin—what a noble masterpiece of high camp it is, and how incredibly Dietrich rises above her dumpy kraut figure! Once again, Gavin showed up without Mark. We are now nearly sure that he doesn’t want to see Don or me again before they leave for France. Gavin totally uncommunicative about his home life, as usual. But neither Don nor I can believe that Mark will want to stay long in France.
July 7. Leslie Laughlin doesn’t believe Mark will want to stay in Fra
nce, either, though she admits it’s just possible he might make a hit in French films as “a tall Texan beauty.” (For some reason, Leslie had supposed Mark was from Texas.) We had supper with her last night—alone, because Michael was down in La Jolla, selling the idea of a hotel project in Corsica to some money man; Leslie says Michael is an amazing salesman. This dinner was a delayed birthday dinner for her and it was a bit of a bore, because Leslie has to pretend to be interested in things like my visit to China or my friendship with Stravinsky, instead of getting down to some good relaxed gossip. We noticed how her face twitches. But how adorable her face still is, such sweet little-girl prettiness. And she does try hard—it’s almost heartbreaking, sometimes.
This morning, James Foster’s colleague, David Goodstein, called me. He didn’t attempt any pressure, said that if that was what I wanted, they would take my name off the foundation—they might not be able to do this at once, but they promised never to use it. So that’s that. We were quite pleasant and I got the feeling that he is sensible and efficient. It seems that he and the other San Francisco organizers take a dim view of the leaders of the gay movement down here. He blamed it on them that I hadn’t been informed properly before they had sent the documents to Sacramento, so that I could have taken my name off then. This may have been just an alibi, but I don’t think so.
Liberation: Diaries:1970-1983 Page 34
