Liberation: Diaries:1970-1983

by Christopher Isherwood

  Brown, Bill (1919–2012). American painter. He has used the professional names W.T. Brown, W. Theo. Brown, W. Theophilus Brown, and Theophilus Brown. He was born in Illinois and made his career on the West Coast with his longterm partner, Paul Wonner, also a painter. Brown and Wonner were companions from the late 1950s until the mid-1990s, sharing apartments and houses in Santa Monica, Malibu, New Hampshire, Santa Barbara, and finally San Francisco, where, after twenty years, they settled into separate apartments in the same building. Along with Wonner, Richard Diebenkorn, Wayne Thiebaud, David Park, Nathan Oliveira and others first perceived as a group in the early 1950s, Brown has been characterized as an American or a Californian Realist, a Bay Area Figurative Artist, a Figurative Abstractionist. Isherwood met Brown and Wonner in August 1962, when they attended Don Bachardy’s first Los Angeles show at the Rex Evans Gallery with Jo and Ben Masselink. He appears in D.2.

  Brown, Harry (1917–1986). American poet, playwright, novelist, screenwriter. He was educated at Harvard and worked for Time Magazine and The New Yorker. His first novel, A Walk in the Sun (1944), was filmed in 1945, and afterwards he worked on numerous Hollywood scripts, especially war movies. He won an Academy Award for co-writing A Place in the Sun (1951), and he also wrote Ocean’s Eleven (1960), among others. In the early 1950s, he worked at Twentieth Century-Fox and MGM, and he was married for a few years to Marguerite Lamkin. Later he married June de Baum. His other novels are The Stars in Their Courses (1968), A Quiet Place to Work (1968), and The Wild Hunt (1973); he published five volumes of poetry. He appears in D.1 and D.2.

  Brown, Jerry (b. 1938). Governor of California from 1975 to 1983, and again from 2011, and the only son of the previous Governor Brown. When Isherwood met him in November 1979, he was running for president against Jimmy Carter, Brown’s second of three unsuccessful attempts to secure the Democratic nomination. He went to a Roman Catholic high school, St. Ignatius, run by Jesuits, and to a Jesuit college, Santa Clara University. He then joined a Jesuit seminary, Sacred Heart Novitiate, in 1958 with the intention of becoming a priest. But he left the seminary to study classics at Berkeley, and later got a degree in law from Yale.

  Brown, Rick. Aspiring actor, born and raised in rural West Virginia. He left high school to join the navy, married and had a son before divorcing. In 1971, he had an affair with Truman Capote after they met in a bar on the West Side of Manhattan where Brown then worked. Capote introduced him to Isherwood.

  Brown, Susan (b. 1946). English actress. She had a few stage and film roles and appeared on British T.V. in “Making Out,” “Prime Suspect,” “Casualty,” “East Enders” and “The Ruth Rendell Mysteries.”

  Browne, Coral. See Price, Vincent and Coral Browne.

  Buchholz, Horst (1933–2003). German stage and screen actor, son of a shoemaker. He starred in European films in the 1950s, then achieved Hollywood fame as a gunslinger in The Magnificent Seven (1960). His wife, Myriam Bru (b. 1932), was an actress, and, later, a talent agent in Paris.

  Buckingham, Bob (1904–1975) and May (1908–1997). British policeman and his wife, a nurse. E.M. Forster met and fell in love with Bob Buckingham in 1930. In 1932 they made a radio broadcast together, for a BBC series “Conversations in the Train,” overseen by J.R. Ackerley who had introduced them. When Buckingham then met and married May Hockey, it caused turmoil in his relations with Forster, but the three eventually established a lifelong intimacy. Forster even gave the Buckinghams an allowance as they grew older. In 1951, Buckingham retired from the police force, joined the probation service, and settled with May in a new post in Coventry in 1953. They had one son, Robin, who married and had children of his own, before dying in the early 1960s of Hodgkins Disease. The Buckinghams appear in D.2.

  Buckle, Christopher Richard Sanford (Dicky) (1916–2001). British ballet critic and exhibition designer; educated at Marlborough and, for one year, Oxford. He was ballet critic for The Observer from 1948 to 1955 and for The Sunday Times from 1959 to 1975. He designed an influential exhibition about Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes in 1954, a less successful one about Shakespeare in 1963, and a Cecil Beaton exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 1968. He also created the 1976 exhibition “Young British Writers of the Thirties,” at which Isherwood spoke at the Portrait Gallery. He published biographies of Nijinsky (1971), Diaghilev (1979), and Balanchine (1988), as well as three volumes of autobiography. He appears in D.2.

  Buddha Chaitanya (Buddha). An American disciple of Swami Prabhavananda; born Philip Griggs. He lived as a monk both at the Hollywood Vedanta Society and at Trabuco during the 1950s and took brahmacharya vows with John Yale in August 1955, becoming Buddha Chaitanya. In 1959 he left Vedanta for a time, but eventually took sannyas and became Swami Yogeshananda. Later he led a Vedanta group in Georgia. He appears in D.1 and D.2.

  Burroughs, William (1914–1997). American writer and painter, born in St. Louis, educated at Harvard; he lived with Jack Kerouac in Greenwich Village and for many years abroad in Paris, Mexico City, Tangier and elsewhere. He was also close to Allen Ginsberg and Byron Gysin. His extreme and destructive bohemianism, obsessed by heroin and sadistic sex, is charted in his novels, Junkie (1953), The Naked Lunch (1959), The Wild Boys (1971), and Queer (1985, written in 1953), among others. A Report from the Bunker (1981) was about his life in New York in the 1970s.

  Burton, Richard (1925–1984). British actor, born Richard Jenkins in a Welsh coal-mining village; he took the surname of his English master and guardian, Philip Burton. He made his professional stage debut in the early 1940s then served in the air force and briefly studied English at Oxford, where he acted in Shakespeare. He starred in Hamlet in London and New York in 1953 and 1954, followed by other Shakespearian roles and, later, the Broadway musical Camelot (1960) and Equus (1976). His films include My Cousin Rachel (1952), The Robe (1953), Alexander the Great (1956), Look Back in Anger (1959), Becket (1964), The Night of the Iguana (1964), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), The Taming of the Shrew (1967), Where Eagles Dare (1969), Equus (1977), and California Suite (1978). He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award. His first wife was a Welsh actress, Sybil Williams, with whom Isherwood met him in the late 1950s, and with whom he appears in D.1. He began a tempestuous public romance with Elizabeth Taylor when he played opposite her in Cleopatra (1963); they married twice, in 1963 and 1975, and divorced both times. His third wife, whom he married in 1976, was an English model, Susan Hunt, and he met his fourth wife, Sally Hay, when she worked as an administrator on his television film “Wagner”; they married in 1983. His legendary drinking hastened his death. As Isherwood records in D.2, he worked for Burton on a screenplay of “The Beach of Falesá” by Robert Louis Stevenson, but nothing came of the project. Around the same time, the Burtons loaned their Hampstead house to Don Bachardy when he studied at the Slade, and Isherwood lived there with Bachardy during 1961.

  Butazolidin. Brand name for phenylbutazone, a nonsteroidal, anti-inflammatory and analgesic drug.

  Byrne, John (b. 1945). English bibliophile and scholar, educated at Marlborough and Cambridge, where he abandoned his classics scholarship after two years. He worked on manuscripts and archives for Bertram Rota from 1967 until 1995, and occasionally contributed reviews to The Book Collector and the Times Literary Supplement. He edited James Stern: Some Letters for His Seventieth Birthday (1974), prepared and introduced an edition of Lord Berners’s roman à clef, The Girls of Radcliff Hall (2000), and wrote Aiding & Abetting: An Alphabet for AIDS.

  Cadmus, Paul (1904–1999). American painter of Basque and Dutch background, trained by his parents and at the National Academy of Design in New York; he joined the U.S. government Public Works of Art Project in 1933. Lincoln Kirstein became interested in his work in the mid-1930s and later married Cadmus’s sister, Fidelma, also a painter. Jon Andersson, a model and would-be singer and Cadmus’s long-time companion, was the subject of many of his works. Cadmus and Andersson eventually settled in W
eston, Connecticut. As Isherwood tells in D.1, Cadmus drew Isherwood in February 1942 in New York, and the two became friends.

  Caldwell, George and Philadelphia. Neighbors, across the street and two doors east, on Adelaide Drive. As Isherwood records, he and Bachardy met with them several times in the spring of 1976, in preparation for the March 15 Coastal Commission hearing at which they obtained the permit to enlarge Bachardy’s studio. The Caldwells initially opposed the building work, which was roughly between their own house, in which she grew up, and the ocean view.

  Calley, John (1930–2011). American film producer and studio executive, born in New Jersey. He began his career in T.V. in the 1950s, worked in advertising, and then became an executive at Filmways, Inc. From 1968 to 1981, he was a senior executive at Warner Brothers and president for a time. During the 1980s, he was an independent producer, working closely with Mike Nichols, and then he ran United Artists and Sony Pictures. Isherwood worked for him when Calley was co-producer with Haskell Wexler of The Loved One (Neil Hartley was associate producer). Calley’s other films include Ice Station Zebra (1968), Catch-22 (1970), Postcards from the Edge (1990), The Remains of the Day (1993), Goldeneye (1995), Closer (2004), and The Da Vinci Code (2006). He appears in D.2.

  Calthrop, Gladys (1894–1980). British artist and stage designer; she designed most of Noël Coward’s plays and films from the 1920s onward.

  Cameron, Roderick (Rory) (1913–1985). American shipping heir; he published history and travel books about Africa, India, the South Pacific, South America, Australia, and the French Riviera where he lived. After World War II, he and his often-married Australian socialite mother—when she was Countess of Kenmare—restored La Fiorentina and its gardens at St. Jean on Cap Ferrat. As Isherwood records, the villa was near Somerset Maugham’s house, Villa Mauresque. In the 1960s, Cameron and his mother sold La Fiorentina, and he moved into a smaller adjacent property, an eighteenth-century farmhouse, Le Clos Fiorentina, the oldest house on Cap Ferrat. This is the house Isherwood visited with Hockney and Schlesinger in 1970.

  Camilla. See Clay, Camilla.

  Campbell, Alan (1904–1963). Actor and screenwriter, second husband of Dorothy Parker. They first married in 1933, divorced after the war, and later remarried, eventually settling on Norma Place, West Hollywood, the heart of Boys Town, as it was known among the gay community (Campbell was rumored to be homosexual). They worked on more than a dozen screenplays together, including, with Robert Carson, A Star Is Born (1937) and Lillian Hellman’s film adaptation of her play Little Foxes (1941). Campbell was involved with the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and other leftist causes, and he was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee during the 1950s. He appears in D.2.

  Campbell, Brian. American model, actor, women’s clothing designer. He was Mike Van Horn’s boyfriend for a time from the mid-1970s. Campbell fell ill with AIDS, and, although they broke up soon afterwards, Van Horn looked after him during his last months. He sat for Bachardy twice.

  Capote, Truman (1924–1984). American novelist, born in New Orleans; his real name was Truman Persons. In Lost Years, Isherwood describes meeting Capote in the Random House offices in May 1947 shortly before the publication of Capote’s first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms. They quickly became friends, and Capote also appears in D.1 and D.2. Capote wrote for The New Yorker, where he worked in the early 1940s, and other magazines. His books include The Grass Harp (1951), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958), and the non-fiction novel In Cold Blood (1966). He never finished his last novel, Answered Prayers, though a chapter, “La Côte Basque, 1965,” was published in Esquire magazine in 1975, forever alienating rich and powerful friends like the Paleys who were portrayed in it. The rest of what he had written of the novel was published posthumously. Capote’s com panion for many years was Newton Arvin, a college professor; afterwards, he lived and travelled with Jack Dunphy, and then later picked up new boyfriends with increasing frequency, including John O’Shea. Drink and drugs hastened his death.

  Caron, Leslie (b. 1931). French dancer and actress. Her father was a chemist, her American-born mother a dancer. Caron studied ballet from childhood, performed in Paris as a teenager, and was discovered by Gene Kelly, who made her a star in An American in Paris (1951). Isherwood first met her during the 1950s, when she was appearing in Hollywood musicals such as The Glass Slipper (1955) and Gigi (1958); he mentions her in D.1, and she appears in D.2. She received British Film Academy Awards and was nominated for Academy Awards for Lili (1953) and The L-Shaped Room (1962). Later, she appeared in Damage (1992), Jean Renoir (1993), The Reef (1997), Chocolat (2000), and Le Divorce (2003). She also worked on the stage in New York, London, and Paris. She was married briefly to George Hormel in the early 1950s, then for ten years to British director Peter Hall, with whom she had two children. Her third husband, from 1969 to 1980, was American producer Michael Laughlin.

  Carroll, Nellie (d. 2005). American artist, born Jean Dobrin; she designed and drew greeting cards. She was a close friend of Jim Bridges and Jack Larson. Bachardy drew and painted her many times after they met in 1963. She married once and had a daughter, Amy, who died of cancer in the early 1990s. For the last forty or so years of her life, she lived with a Mexican man about fifteen years her junior, who also had a wife and son. They appear in D.2.

  Carson, Joanne. Pan Am stewardess and RKO starlet. She was “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson’s second of four wives. They separated in 1970 and divorced in 1972. She launched her own talk show and later became a therapist. She was one of Truman Capote’s most loyal friends, and he died in her house while she was with him.

  Carter, Jimmy. In his diary entry for February 2, 1980, Isherwood mentions his anxiety that Carter’s response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan will lead to a nuclear face-off. On February 1, The New York Times reported on a seventy-page Pentagon study, “Capabilities in the Persian Gulf” (completed before the invasion of Afghanistan), which said that the U.S. could not repel a Soviet thrust into northern Iran without the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons. Carter had already imposed a grain embargo on the USSR, and his new military budget was the largest proposed in fifteen years. U.S. military presence in the Gulf had been building ever since Iranian militants took more than sixty Americans hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979. The longterm concern was protecting the flow of oil from the region.

  Caskey, William (Bill) (1921–1981). American photographer, born and raised in Kentucky; a lapsed Catholic of Irish background, part Cherokee Indian. Isherwood met him in 1945 when Caskey arrived in Santa Monica Canyon with a friend, Hayden Lewis, and joined the circle surrounding Denny Fouts and Jay de Laval. They became lovers in June that year and by August had begun a serious affair. Caskey was briefly in the navy during World War II and was discharged neither honorably nor dishonorably (a “blue discharge”) following a homosexual scandal in which Hayden Lewis was also implicated. Caskey’s father bred horses, and Caskey had ridden since childhood; he had worked in photo-finish at a Kentucky racecourse, and in about 1945 he took up photography seriously. He took portraits of his and Isherwood’s friends, and he took the photographs for The Condor and the Cows, which Isherwood dedicated to Caskey’s mother, Catherine. Caskey’s parents were divorced, and he was on poor terms with his father and two sisters. He and Isherwood split in 1951 after intermittent separations and domestic troubles. Later, he lived in Athens and travelled frequently to Egypt. As well as taking photographs, he made art objects out of junk, and for a time had a business beading sweaters. There are many passages about him in D.1, some in D.2, and he is a main figure in Lost Years.

  chaddar. A length of cloth worn on the upper body, often draped on the shoulders as a shawl, by monks and nuns of the Ramakrishna Order and by many other Hindus. Some Western Vedantists meditate in it, to keep warm, and to conceal their rosary.

  Chaikin, Joe (1935–2003). American actor, stage director, writer. In the early 1960s, he founded the Open Theater whic
h became one of the most influential experimental groups in New York. In the late 1970s, he wrote plays with Sam Shepard.

  Chamberlain, Richard (b. 1935). American actor and singer; born in Beverly Hills and educated at Pomona College before serving in Korea for a year and a half. He became famous in the series, “Dr. Kildare,” in which he starred from 1961 to 1966, and he never shook off the role, despite ambitious appearances on the London stage (for instance as Hamlet) and in a number of films, including The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969), Julius Caesar (1970), The Three Musketeers (1974), and The Four Musketeers (1975). He returned to T.V. successfully in the miniseries “Shogun” (1980) and “The Thorn Birds” (1985). He appears in D.2.

  Chandlee, William H., III (Will). American historian; raised in Philadelphia, son of an architect. He was Assistant Chief of the Division of Education at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, organized lecture series there, and wrote seasonal publications. He joined Woodfall Productions for a time, then returned to Philadelphia and ran an antique store in nearby Germantown.

  Chapin, Douglas (Doug) (b. 1950). American actor and film and T.V. producer, younger brother of actor Miles Chapin and son of Betty Steinway, a descendant of the founder of the piano company. He appeared on T.V. in the 1960s and 1970s. Later, with his partner and companion Barry Krost, he produced When a Stranger Calls (1979), American Dreamer (1984), What’s Love Got to Do with It (1993), Love! Valour! Compassion! (1997), and the T.V. series “Dave’s World.”