Liberation: Diaries:1970-1983

by Christopher Isherwood

  Haridas. American monk of the Ramakrishna Order, originally called Bill Stevens. During the 1990s, he went to the Chicago Vedanta Center and then to India where he took his sannyas and became Swami Hariharananda. Afterwards he lectured in Chicago and settled in Sacramento.

  Harris, Bill (d. 1992). American artist, raised partly in the USSR and Austria. Harris painted in the 1940s and later made art-objects and retouched photographs. Isherwood met him through Denny Fouts in 1943, while still living as a celibate at the Hollywood Vedanta Society; early in 1944 they began an affair which helped weaken Isherwood’s determination to become a monk. Harris was a beautiful blond with a magnificent physique, and Isherwood found him erotically irresistible; the relationship soon turned to friendship, and Harris later moved to New York. Isherwood refers to Harris as “X.” in his 1939–1945 diaries (see D.1), and he calls him “Alfred” in My Guru and His Disciple. Harris also appears in Lost Years and D.2.

  Harris, Julie (b. 1925). American stage and film actress, born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan; educated at finishing school, Yale Drama School, and the Actors Studio. She became a star in the stage adaptation of Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding (1950), a status she confirmed when she originated the role of Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera (1951). She received a Tony Award for Forty Carats (1969) and for The Last of Mrs. Lincoln (1972), and toured with a one-woman show on Emily Dickinson, The Belle of Amherst (1976). Altogether, she has won five Tony Awards, more than any other actor, and she has been nominated ten times. She moved to the screen with early stage roles, receiving an Academy Award nomination for her film debut in The Member of the Wedding (1952); later Hollywood movies include East of Eden (1955), Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), The Haunting (1963), Harper (1966), Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), The Bell Jar (1976), and Gorillas in the Mist (1988). She has also been nominated for nine Emmy Awards, and won twice. During the 1980s, she appeared in the television series “Knots Landing.” Isherwood first met her in 1951 after she was cast as Sally Bowles, and their close friendship is recorded in D.1 and D.2. She was married to Jay Julien, a theatrical producer, and then to Manning Gurian, a stage manager and producer, with whom she had a son, Peter Gurian. She divorced Gurian in 1967 during a long affair with actor James ( Jim) Murdock. In 1977 she married the writer William Carroll.

  Harrison, Rex (1908–1990). English stage and film star, educated at Liverpool College. He made his stage debut in Liverpool at sixteen and was successful in the West End, on Broadway, and in films by the mid-1930s, especially in black-tie comedies. He married six times: to Marjorie Colette Thomas (1934–1942), to actresses Lilli Palmer (1943–1957), Kay Kendall (1957–1959), and Rachel Roberts, whom Isherwood mentions both as Rachel Harrison and as Rachel Roberts (1962–1971), to Elizabeth Harris, ex-wife of actor Richard Harris (1971–1975), and to Mercia Tinker (1978 until his death). His affair with another actress, Carole Landis, was presumed to have contributed to her suicide. He won a Tony Award as Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady (1956) on Broadway, and the 1964 film brought him an Academy Award. His other films, many of which also reprised stage roles, include Blithe Spirit (1945), The Rake’s Progress (1945), Anna and the King of Siam (1946), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Cleopatra (as Julius Caesar, 1963), The Agony and the Ecstasy (as Pope Julius, 1965), and Doctor Dolittle (1967). He appears in D.2.

  Harrold, Greg (b. 1955). American organ builder, from Santa Monica. He began working in an organ building shop in 1974 and ran his own shop from 1979 to 2003. He also composed music, played several instruments, wrote poetry and painted. He introduced himself to Isherwood and Bachardy on the beach in 1975 or 1976. He and his longtime companion, Gordon Myers (1947–2001), sat for Bachardy several times in 1976 and 1977, and Harrold sat again in 2007. Myers was born in Kansas City, got a degree in architecture from Columbia University, and settled in the early 1970s in West Hollywood, where he worked in real estate and development and had his own firm for a while.

  Hartley, Neil (1916–1994). American film producer, from North Carolina; Tony Richardson’s collaborator in Woodfall Productions from 1965. He was production manager for Broadway impresario David Merrick, who imported several of Richardson’s stage plays, and he met Richardson in 1958 at the Boston try-out for The Entertainer. The pair worked together for the first time on Luther when it opened in New York in 1963. The Loved One was the first film that Hartley produced for Richardson, and the partnership lasted until Richardson’s penultimate film, Hotel New Hampshire (1984). Hartley also produced for T.V., including “The Corn Is Green” (1979) and several Agatha Christies. He was a semi-closeted homosexual and died of AIDS. His companion for a long time was Bob Regester. He appears in D.2.

  Harvey, Anthony (Tony) (b. 1931). English actor turned film editor, then director. He directed his first film in 1967. He was mooted to direct Cabaret in 1969, following a popular success with The Lion in Winter (1968) and an Academy Award nomination. He turned down Isherwood and Bachardy’s treatment for Cabaret, but in the end did not direct it anyway. He appears in D.2.

  Hathaway, Henry (1898–1985). American director and producer, born Henri Leonard de Fiennes, the grandson of a Belgian aristocrat; his mother and father were actors. He acted and assisted in silent movies and began directing in 1932, mostly for Twentieth Century-Fox. His films include The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), The House on 92nd Street (1945), Kiss of Death (1947), The Desert Fox (1951), Niagara (1953), How the West Was Won (1962), and True Grit (1969).

  Hayden, Tom (b. 1939). American activist and writer; born in Detroit and educated at the University of Michigan, where he was editor of the Michigan Daily and a founder of Students for a Democratic Society. He participated in the Civil Rights Movement and opposed the Vietnam War. In 1968, he was arrested at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and charged with six others with conspiracy and incitement to riot; the group attracted huge media attention as “the Chicago Seven.” He travelled to Cambodia and North Vietnam, enemy territory, taking Jane Fonda with him on one trip in 1972 and again attracting the press and much controversy. Fonda became his second wife. He served in the California State Assembly and State Senate in the 1980s and 1990s. His books include The Port Huron Statement (1962), which set out the principles of the SDS, Rebellion in Newark: Official Violence and Ghetto Response (1967), and Vietnam: The Struggle for Peace 1972–1973 (1973).

  Hayworth, Rita (1918–1987). American movie star and World War II pinup. Her parents were dancing partners in the Ziegfeld Follies, and she was a professional dancer at twelve. Her career swelled and faded like her love life, but she was Hollywood’s sex goddess during the 1940s. Her films included Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Blood and Sand (1941), You Were Never Lovelier (1942), Cover Girl (1943), Gilda (1946), Miss Sadie Thompson (1953), Pal Joey (1957), and Separate Tables (1958). She had five husbands—including Orson Welles and Aly Khan, the son of the Aga Khan—and many lovers. She appears in D.1 with her last husband, producer James Hill, and in D.2.

  Heard, Henry FitzGerald (Gerald) (1889–1971). Irish writer, broadcaster, philosopher, religious teacher. Auden took Isherwood to meet him in London in 1932 when Heard was already well known as a science commentator for the BBC and author of several books on the evolution of human consciousness and on religion. A charismatic talker, he associated with some of the most celebrated intellectuals of the time. One of his closest friends was Aldous Huxley, whom he met in 1929 and with whom he joined the Peace Pledge Union in 1935 and then emigrated to Los Angeles in 1937, accompanied by Heard’s friend Chris Wood and Huxley’s wife and son. Both Heard and Huxley became disciples of Swami Prabhavananda. Isherwood followed Heard to Los Angeles and through him met Prabhavananda. Then Heard became an ascetic, rejecting association with women and criticizing Swami’s insufficient austerity; he broke with Swami early in 1941, straining his friendship with Isherwood, and set up his own monastic community, Trabuco College, the same year. By 1949 Trabuco had failed, and he gave it to the Vedanta Society of Souther
n California to use as a monastery. In the early 1950s, Heard’s asceticism relaxed, and he warmed again to his friendship with Isherwood and, later, Don Bachardy. During this period, he shared Huxley’s experiments with mescaline and LSD.

  He contributed to Vedanta for the Western World (1945) edited by Isherwood, and throughout most of his life he turned out prolix and eccentric books at an impressive pace, including The Ascent of Humanity (1929), The Social Substance of Religion (1932), The Third Morality (1937), Pain, Sex, and Time (1939), Man the Master (1942), A Taste for Honey (1942; adapted as a play by John van Druten), The Gospel According to Gamaliel (1944), Is God Evident? (1948), and Is Another World Watching? (1950), published in England as The Riddle of the Flying Saucers. For a number of years, he obsessively documented sightings of flying saucers, which he believed were either ultra-fast, experimental aircraft kept secret by the U.S. government or, more exciting to him, visitors from Mars.

  Heard is the original of “Augustus Parr” in Down There on a Visit and of “Propter” in Huxley’s After Many a Summer (1939). His role in Isherwood’s conversion to Vedanta is described in My Guru and His Disciple, and he appears throughout D.1, D.2, and Lost Years.

  Heflin, Lee. American writer and painter. He joined Isherwood’s writing class at UCLA in the spring of 1964, when he was working at the university’s vast new research library, later called the Charles E. Young Research Library, which was completed that year. Isherwood writes about their friendship in D.2.

  Heilbrun, Carolyn (1926–2003). American literary scholar; born in New Jersey, educated in Manhattan and at Wellesley. She taught briefly at Brooklyn College and then, for thirty-three years, at Columbia University, where in 1972 she was the first woman to receive tenure in the English department. From the 1960s, she published detective novels under the pen name Amanda Cross. Her other books include The Garnett Family (1961), Christopher Isherwood (1970), Towards a Recognition of Androgyny: Aspects of Male and Female in Literature (1973), Reinventing Womanhood (1979), Writing a Woman’s Life (1988), and The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty (1997). She became president of the Modern Language Association in 1984 and exercised her influence in that role to secure for Isherwood the Commonwealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature, then still selected by an MLA committee. She was married and had three children. She committed suicide.

  Heinz. See Neddermeyer, Heinz.

  Henderson, Ray. American musician, educated at USC. As a pianist, he accompanied Elsa Lanchester for many years, performing in her nightclub act at The Turnabout, a Los Angeles theater, and on tour, notably, in the auto biographical revue Laughton created for her, “Elsa Lanchester—Herself,” for which Henderson was billed as Musical Director, and on her T.V. show. He was also her friend and lover, although he was much younger than Lanchester. He composed the music for some operettas which she recorded privately, and he scored and wrote lyrics for a musical version of The Dog Beneath the Skin, which was never produced. He died young, of a heart attack. He appears in D.2.

  Hensler, Martin. See entry for Gielgud, John.

  Herbert, David (1908–1995). British author, second son of the 15th Earl of Pembroke; raised at Wilton. Among his books is Second Son: An Autobiography (1972). He was a close friend of Cecil Beaton and of Jane Bowles. Around 1950, he settled in Tangier where he reportedly ran the expatriate social life. Isherwood saw him there in 1955 and 1976, and he appears in D.1.

  Herbold, Mary. A member of Allan Hunter’s Congregational church. Isherwood met her in the early 1940s. She was a typist and a notary public whose services Isherwood evidently used over the years. On Isherwood’s recommendation she typed Time Must Have a Stop for Huxley in 1944. She appears in D.1 and D.2.

  Heyman, Barton (1937–1996). American character actor; he worked in T.V. beginning in the early 1960s and had many small roles in films, including The Exorcist (1973), The Happy Hooker (1975), The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Raising Cain (1992), and Dead Man Walking (1995).

  High, Beth. A life-long friend of Jim Gates, from the time they attended high school together in Claremont, California. He introduced her to Swami Prabhavananda in May 1969. She married Gates’s friend Gib Peters, with whom she became a Vedanta devotee in the early 1970s; then she became a Vedanta nun and took the name Deepti (Isherwood often typed Dipti). Eventually she left the convent and married again, to an ex-Vedanta monk, Peter Hirschfeld, also a close friend of Gates. Hirschfeld changed his name to Jan Zaremba and became a Sumi’e (ink painting) master; she became known as Deepti Zaremba.

  Hill, Charles Christopher (b. 1948). American artist; born in Pennsylvania and educated at the University of California, Irvine. He taught at UCLA and elsewhere and had solo exhibitions in many cities, including Los Angeles, London, Paris, San Francisco, and Chicago. His paintings are held by the Los Angeles County Museum, the Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo, the Pompidou Center, the Guggenheim, and the Museum of Modern Art.

  Hirschfeld, Magnus (1868–1935). German sex researcher; founder of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin, where he studied sexual deviancy. He wrote books on sexual-psychological themes and dispensed psychological counselling and medical treatment (primarily for sexually transmitted diseases). He was homo sexual and campaigned for reform of the German criminal code in order to legalize homosexuality between men. His work was jeopardized by the Nazis and he was beaten up several times; he left Germany in 1930 and died in France around the same time that the Nazis raided his institute and publicly burned a bust of him along with his published works. Isherwood took a room next door to the institute in 1930 and first met Hirschfeld then, through Francis Turville-Petre.

  Hoban, Gordon (b. 1941). American actor. He had small parts in movies and on T.V. and later wrote scripts, plays, and novels, including Bike Cop (1989), The Adventures of a Highschool Hunk (1990), The Marine Olaf, and Runaway.

  Hockney, David (b. 1937). British artist, educated at Bradford Grammar School in West Yorkshire, Bradford School of Art, and the Royal College of Art. By 1961, he was identified—with his friend R.B. Kitaj and others—as a leader of a new movement in British art. Versatility and an appetite for new projects and techniques continually energized his career, in oils, acrylics, photography, photocopying, drawing, printmaking, faxing, computer images, watercolor, stage and opera design, as well as commentaries about art and the historical development of artistic technique. Hockney’s early success allowed him to travel to the USA, Europe, and Egypt; in 1964 he settled in Los Angeles, and met Isherwood soon afterwards. During the 1960s, he taught at the University of Iowa, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Colorado, as well as at UCLA where, in 1966, he met Peter Schlesinger, a student in his class who became an important model. Hockney and Schlesinger rented an apartment on 3rd Street in Santa Monica, a few minutes’ walk from Isherwood and Bachardy. Hockney returned to England towards the end of the 1960s and then worked in Paris for a time, near Gregory Evans who became his lover by 1974 and another important model. Later, he moved around among his studios in the Hollywood Hills, Malibu, London, and Bridlington, North Yorkshire. He appears in D.2.

  Holt, Larry. Dr. Hillary Holt, a Hollywood devotee of German or Austrian background. He lived in Hollywood and was friendly with the American monk Swami Anamananda, who assisted him with his work and errands. He died of cancer in the 1970s, as Isherwood records. He appears in D.2.

  Holy Mother. See Sarada Devi.

  homa fire. Prepared in an ancient Vedic ceremony according to scriptural instructions, the fire is a visible manifestation of the deity worshipped. Offerings to the deity are placed in the consecrated fire. The homa ritual aims at inner purification; at the end of the ritual, the devotee mentally offers his words, thoughts, actions, and their fruits to the deity.

  Hooker, Evelyn Caldwell (1907–1996). American psychologist and psychotherapist, trained at the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins; professor of psychology at UCLA. She was among the first to view homosexuality as a norm
al psychological condition. She studied homosexuals in the Los Angeles area for many years, through questionnaires, interviews, and discussion in various social settings, accumulating many file drawers of notes which she referred to as “The Project.” She first presented her research publicly at a 1956 conference in Chicago, demonstrating that as high a percentage of homosexuals were psychologically well adjusted as heterosexuals. (Her paper was titled “The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual.” There were many more.) Born Evelyn Gentry, she took the name Caldwell from a brief first marriage then changed to Hooker at the start of the 1950s when she married Edward Hooker, a Dryden scholar and professor of English at UCLA, who died of a heart attack in 1957. Isherwood met her in about 1949, possibly through the Benton Way Group, a circle of writers, artists, psychoanalysts, philosophers, and others, mostly homosexual, then living together or gathering to talk at a house in Benton Way, Los Angeles. In 1952, he rented the Hookers’ garden house on Saltair Avenue in Brentwood, refurbished it, and lived there until tension developed over the arrival of Don Bachardy in 1953. After an uneasy period, the friendship resumed, as Isherwood tells in D.1 and Lost Years. Hooker also appears in D.2.

  Hoopes, Ned (1932–1984). Teacher, children’s anthologist, and, during 1962– 1963, host of “The Reading Room,” a CBS T.V. series about children’s books. He worked on a biography of Charles Laughton, at first with Elsa Lanchester’s approval in 1968 and later without. The book, A Public Success—a Private Failure: The Unauthorized Biography of Charles Laughton, was never published.