Liberation: Diaries:1970-1983

by Christopher Isherwood

  White, Dan (1954–1985). Vietnam veteran, police officer, fireman, and San Francisco City Supervisor. In 1978, he resigned as City Supervisor over low pay and clashes with liberal colleagues, but, encouraged by supporters, especially among the police force, asked Mayor Moscone for his job back. Moscone refused, whereupon White shot Moscone and Harvey Milk. White’s defense argued that he was depressed, as evidenced by his uncharacteristic consumption of junk food—the “Twinkie defence.” On May 21, 1989, White was convicted of manslaughter, not murder, on grounds of reduced capacity, and sentenced to only five years in prison. Angry gays marched on City Hall, smashing windows and torching police cars, and the police unleashed a counter riot in the Castro District where the march had begun. The White Night Riot, as it came to be known, was followed by peaceful celebrations of Harvey Milk’s birthday, May 22. White committed suicide by gassing himself in his car. Milk became the subject of the eponymous 2008 film for which Sean Penn won an Academy Award.

  White, James P. (b. 1940). American writer, educated at the University of Texas, Vanderbilt and Brown. He taught writing at the University of Texas, UCLA, USC and the University of South Alabama. When his first novel, Birdsong (1977), was published, he sent Isherwood a copy and met him soon afterwards during a visit to Los Angeles. White has also published poems, short stories, essays and reviews. In March 1979, his wife, Janice, gave birth to a boy, whom they named Christopher Jules White and called Jules. With Don Bachardy, White edited Where Joy Resides: A Christopher Isherwood Reader (1989) and co-founded The Christopher Isherwood Foundation, of which he was Executive Director until 2011.

  Whiting, Leonard (b. 1950). British actor and singer. He was the Artful Dodger in Oliver! in London’s West End and became famous as Romeo in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968) before appearing in “Frankenstein: The True Story.”

  Wilcox, Collin (1935–2009). American actress, also known as Collin Horne and sometimes credited as Wilcox-Horne or Wilcox-Paxton. She was educated at the University of Tennessee, the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago and Actors Studio. She attracted praise on Broadway in The Day the Money Stopped (1958) and appeared in a few films, including To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Catch-22 (1970), and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997). She also worked in T.V. She was married for a time to actor Geoffrey Horne. Later, she taught acting on the East Coast. She appears in D.2.

  Wilder, Nicholas (1937–1989). American art dealer, son of the scientist who invented Kodachrome. He was educated at Amherst and Stanford, where he studied law before turning to art history. As a graduate student, he worked in a San Francisco gallery then abandoned his studies and became a dealer by the time he was twenty-four. He opened his first gallery in Los Angeles on La Cienaga Boulevard in the 1960s, moved to Santa Monica Boulevard in 1970, and quickly became the most influential contemporary art dealer in Los Angeles. He was a close friend of Don Bachardy, whom he persuaded to leave Irving Blum’s gallery and join his own. He also discovered West Coast artists Bruce Nauman, Ron Davis, Robert Graham, and Tom Holland, among others, and he showed David Hockney, Helen Frankenthaler, Barnett Newman, and Cy Twombly. He travelled constantly to see the work of new artists and to advance the reputations of the artists he represented, but his finances were often in disarray. In 1979, he closed his gallery; James Corcoran opened in the space and took on some of Wilder’s best artists. Wilder left for New York, where he began to paint abstract oils inspired by the work of James McLaughlin, an artist he had brought to prominence. His longtime companion and business associate was Craig Cook. Wilder died of AIDS, as did Cook a few years later.

  Williams, Brook (1938–2005). British character actor; younger son of Emlyn Williams. He worked on the London stage and had small parts in over a hundred films. He was Richard Burton’s close friend, assistant, and sometimes collaborator.

  Williams, Clifford (1926–2005). British actor and director, educated at Highbury County Grammar School, in London. He worked in mining, served in the army, and acted and directed in South Africa during the 1950s. In 1961, he became a staff producer at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and from 1963 until 1991, a prolific associate director. His many independent productions, some of which went on to successful Broadway runs, include an all-male As You Like It, Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth, both in 1967, and Kenneth Tynan’s Oh! Calcutta! in 1970. He was married twice and had two daughters with his second wife. He appears in D.2.

  Williams, Emlyn (1905–1987). Welsh playwright, screenwriter, and actor. He wrote psychological thrillers for the London stage, including Night Must Fall (1935), and is best known for The Corn Is Green (1935), based on his own background in a coal-mining community in Wales and in which he played the lead; both of these plays were later filmed. His many other stage roles include Shakespeare and contemporary theater, and from the 1950s, he toured with oneman shows of Charles Dickens and Dylan Thomas. Among his films are The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The Dictator (1935), Dead Men Tell No Tales (1938), Jamaica Inn (1939), The Stars Look Down (1939), Major Barbara (1941), Ivanhoe (1952), The Deep Blue Sea (1955), I Accuse! (1958), The L-Shaped Room (1962), and David Copperfield (1970). His wife, Mary Carus-Wilson, known as Molly (d. 1970), was an actress under her maiden name, Molly O’Shann. Isherwood first met Williams and his wife in Hollywood in 1950; they appear in D.1 and D.2.

  Williams, Ralph. Aspiring young actor. He appeared in the brief Los Angeles run of Remote Asylum, Mart Crowley’s first play after The Boys in the Band, and he sat for Don Bachardy several times.

  Williams, Tennessee (1911–1983). American playwright; Thomas Lanier Williams was born in Mississippi and raised in St. Louis. His father was a travelling salesman, his mother felt herself to be a glamorous southern belle in reduced circumstances. The Glass Menagerie made him famous in 1945, followed by A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). Many of his subsequent plays are equally well known—The Rose Tattoo (1950), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), The Night of the Iguana (1961)—and were made into films. He also wrote a novella, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950). When he first came to Hollywood in 1943 to work for MGM, he bore a letter of introduction to Isherwood from Lincoln Kirstein; this began a long and close friendship which Isherwood tells about in D.1, D.2, and Lost Years. Isherwood later told Edmund White of a 1940s love affair, but Williams once reminded Isherwood, in Bachardy’s presence, that Isherwood had rebuffed Williams’s one direct pass. Williams’s Out Cry, a revised version of The Two-Character Play, was staged in Chicago in 1971, and Isherwood mentions a reading he attended in Los Angeles in 1972. It previewed up and down the East Coast, opened on Broadway in March 1973 starring Michael York, then closed after twelve performances.

  Wilson, Angus (1913–1991). British novelist and literary critic, educated at Westminster and Oxford. He worked as a decoder for the Foreign Office during World War II and otherwise made his career in the library of the British Museum before turning to writing full time in 1955. His novels include Hemlock and After (1952), Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1956), The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot (1958), The Old Men at the Zoo (1961), No Laughing Matter (1967), and Setting the World on Fire (1980). He also published short stories and literary-critical books about Zola, Dickens, and Kipling. From 1966, he was a professor of English literature at the University of East Anglia, where, with Malcolm Bradbury, he oversaw the first respected university course in creative writing in Britain. In D.1, Isherwood tells that he met Wilson at a party in London in 1956. Wilson also appears in D.2. Wilson’s companion from the late 1940s was Anthony Garrett.

  Wilson, Colin (b. 1931). English novelist and critic. Author of psychological thrillers, studies of literature and philosophy, criminology, the imagination, the occult and the supernatural. He became well known with his 1956 book The Outsider—which Isherwood mentions twice in D.1—about the figure of the alienated solitary in modern literature. Isherwood met him in London in 1959, and Wilson appears in D.2.

  Wilson, William (b. 193[4]). Art critic, born and
raised in Los Angeles, where he graduated from UCLA. He began freelancing for The Los Angeles Times in 1965, joined the staff in 1968, and in 1978 became chief art critic after his predecessor, Henry Seldis, died. He taught at Cal. State Fullerton, Santa Monica City College, and UCLA Extension and contributed to various art magazines, including Art in America, Art Forum, and Art News.

  Wingreen, Jason (b. 1919). American actor. He was a regular and a guest on popular T.V. series, including “The Untouchables” (1960–1961) and “All in the Family” (1977–1983), and he had a few small film roles.

  Winters, Shelley (1922–2006). American actress, from St. Louis. She worked on the New York stage and moved to Hollywood in 1943. She was nominated for an Academy Award for A Place in the Sun (1951), won Academy Awards for her supporting roles in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and A Patch of Blue (1965), and was nominated again for The Poseidon Adventure (1972). She played Natalia Landauer in the film of I Am a Camera in 1955. From the early 1990s, she played Roseanne’s grandmother in the T.V. comedy series “Roseanne.” Isherwood met her at the start of the 1950s, and she appears in D.1 and D.2. She was married to actor Tony Franciosa from 1957 to 1960.

  Wonner, Paul (1920–2008). American painter, originally from Arizona. He settled on the West Coast, first in Los Angeles, and from the early 1980s in San Francisco, with his longtime partner, the painter Bill Brown. Wonner’s work has been called American Realist or Californian Realist, and he has been grouped with other painters who came to maturity in the 1950s—Richard Diebenkorn, Wayne Thiebaud, David Park, Nathan Oliveira—as a Bay Area Figurative Artist or Figurative Abstractionist. He taught painting at UCLA and elsewhere, and, with Brown, had close friendships with a number of writers, for instance, May Sarton, Diane Johnson, and Janet Frame. He appears in D.2

  Wood, Christopher (Chris) (d. 1976). Isherwood met Chris Wood in September 1932 when Auden took him to meet Gerald Heard, then sharing Wood’s luxurious London flat. Wood was about ten years younger than Heard, handsome and friendly but shy about his maverick talents. He played the piano well, but never professionally, wrote short stories, but not for publication, had a pilot’s license, and rode a bicycle for transport. He was extremely rich (the family business made jams and other canned and bottled goods), sometimes extravagant, and always generous; he secretly funded many of Heard’s projects and loaned or gave money to many other friends (including Isherwood). In 1937, he emigrated with Heard to Los Angeles and, in 1941, moved with him to Laguna. Their domestic commitment persisted for a time despite Heard’s increasing asceticism and religious activities, but eventually they lived separately though they remained friends. From 1939, Wood was involved with Paul Sorel, also a member of their shared household for about five years. Wood appears throughout D.1, D.2, and Lost Years.

  Wood, Natalie (1938–1981). American actress, of French and Russian background; her mother was a ballet dancer. She appeared in her first movie when she was five years old and was a star by the time she was nine. Her films include: Happy Land (1943), Tomorrow Is Forever (1946), Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), The Searchers (1956), Splendor in the Grass (1961), West Side Story (1961), Gypsy (1962), Inside Daisy Clover (1966), Penelope (1966), and Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice (1969). She was married twice to the same man, actor Robert Wagner, and in between married Richard Gregson, father of her daughter Natasha Gregson Wagner, also an actress. She drowned after falling overboard from a yacht.

  Woodcock, Patrick (1920–2002). British doctor. His patients included many London theater stars—including John Gielgud and Noël Coward—and also actors based in New York and Hollywood. Isherwood and Bachardy first met him with Gielgud and Hugh Wheeler in London in 1956, and a few days later Woodcock visited Bachardy at the Cavendish Hotel to treat him for stomach cramps. Woodcock also prescribed vitamins for Isherwood at the same time and became a friend. He appears in D.1 and D.2.

  Woody, Jack. Grandson of actor and stuntman Frank Woody (1896–1959) and actress Helen Twelvetrees (1907–1958); his father was also called Jack Woody (b. 1932). After completing high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Woody worked in bookstores in Los Angeles and then at Nicholas Wilder’s gallery, where he appointed himself head of photography. He was also Wilder’s lover. He founded a fine art press, which he called The Twelvetrees Press, and published October (1980) by Isherwood and Bachardy, Bachardy’s Don Bachardy: One Hundred Drawings (1983), which he designed with Scott Smith, and Bachardy’s Drawings of the Male Nude (1985). Under another imprint, Twin Palms, Woody published Lost Hollywood, a book of early photographs he himself collected of film stars. He designed and produced other books with Tom Long, who was his companion after Wilder. Woody’s many books include work by George Platt Lynes, Robert Mapplethorpe, Duane Michals, William Eggleston, Horst P. Horst, and Allen Ginsberg, as well as Killing Fields: Photographs from the S-21 Death Camp and Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America.

  Worton, Len (d. late 1990s). English-born monk of the Ramakrishna Order; he settled in Trabuco and became Swami Bhadrananda. He was a British army medic during World War II, stationed in Hong Kong, and was captured there by the Japanese when he remained behind tending the wounded. He was spared execution because of his medical skills and because he was wearing Red Cross insignia. He spent four years as a prisoner of war in Japan. He appears in D.2.

  Wright, Thomas E. (Tom). American writer, from New Orleans. Isherwood met him while both were fellows-in-residence at the Huntington Hartford Foundation in 1951, and they had a casual affair which lasted about eight months. Wright was then about twenty-four years old and had taught at New York University. He was a childhood friend of Speed Lamkin and of Speed’s sister Marguerite and he knew Tennessee Williams and Howard Griffin. He also became close to Edward James and lived at James’s Hollywood house as a caretaker for a number of years. Bachardy drew the first of several portraits of Wright in 1960. Wright published novels, travel books, and Growing Up with Legends: A Literary Memoir. He eventually settled in Guatemala. He appears in D.1 and D.2.

  Writers Guild Strike. The 1973 strike demands included a nearly fourfold pay increase, full pay for T.V. reruns, control over health and welfare plans with a five percent contribution from producers, a percentage of profits from cable and pay T.V., and a definition of allowable script changes without writers’ express consent. The strike began March 6 and ran until June 28, when the guild accepted with much dissent substantial salary increases for T.V. writers, improved health and welfare packages, protection for hyphenates (writer-producers, writer-directors), and a guaranteed share of future supplemental markets—pay T.V., cable, cassettes, and any hardware yet to be invented.

  Wudl, Tom (b. 1948). Bolivian-American painter, raised in Los Angeles from age ten. He studied at Chouinard from 1966 to 1970 and later taught at UCLA, U.C. Santa Barbara, Claremont College, Otis College of Art, and elsewhere. He has exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and other major galleries in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

  Wyberslegh Hall. The fifteenth-century manor house where Isherwood was born and where his mother returned to live with his brother after WWII; it was part of the Bradshaw Isherwood estate. During most of the nineteenth century, Wyberslegh was leased to a family called Cooper who farmed the surrounding fields, lived in the rear wing of the house, and rented out the front rooms. When Isherwood’s parents married in 1903, his grandfather, John Isherwood, divided Wyberslegh Hall into two separate houses. Frank and Kathleen Isherwood moved into the front of the house, and, for roughly half the twentieth century, the Coopers continued to live in the back overlooking the farmyard.

  Wystan. See Auden, W.H.

  yoga. Union with the Godhead or one of the methods by which the individual soul may achieve such union. Isherwood and Prabhavananda translated the yoga sutras or aphorisms of the Hindu sage Patanjali (4th c. B.C. to 4th c. A.D.) as How to Know God (1953); they describe the aphorisms as a compilation and re
formulation of yoga philosophy and practices—spiritual disciplines and techniques of meditation—referred to even earlier in four of the Upanishads and in fact handed down from prehistoric times.

  Yogeshananda. See Buddha Chaitanya.

  York, Michael (b. 1942) and Pat McCallum York. British film star and his wife, a photographer and writer. He was educated at Oxford, where he acted for the Oxford University Dramatic Society. His real name is Michael York-Johnson. In 1965, he had a small role in Franco Zeffirelli’s stage production of The Taming of the Shrew for Olivier’s National Theatre Company and afterwards appeared in the movie with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Subsequent films include Romeo and Juliet (1968), Justine (1969), Something for Everyone (1970), Cabaret (1972), England Made Me (1973), The Three Musketeers (1974), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Weather in the Streets (1983), The Wide Sargasso Sea (1993), Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997), Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), Borstal Boy (2000), Megiddo (2001), and Austin Powers: Goldmember (2002). He has often appeared on television, notably in “The Forsyte Saga” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and on Broadway, and he has a prize-winning career recording audio books. She was born in Jamaica to an English diplomat and his American wife, educated in England and France, married for the first time as a teenager, and in 1952 had a son, Rick McCallum, later a Hollywood producer. From the early 1960s, she worked as a fashion journalist at Vogue, then as a photographer and travel editor at Glamor before becoming a freelance photographer with a few lessons from David Bailey. Her portraits of celebrities have appeared in Life, People, Town and Country, Playboy, and Newsweek; she has published several books and had numerous gallery exhibitions, in particular of her later avant-garde work featuring dissected cadavers and nude portraits of professional people at work. She met Michael York when photographing him for a magazine profile, and they married a year later, in 1968. Isherwood was introduced to them in 1969, probably at the Vadims’ lunch party described in the diary entry for January 15, 1969 in D.2.