Liberation: Diaries:1970-1983
Page 132
19 Cheim designed and edited catalogues for the gallery; in 1996, he opened a new gallery, Cheim and Read, with Howard Read, also a Robert Miller co-director and the photography curator.
20 Born 1949 in Beirut; educated at Louisiana State University and Yale.
21 McShine was a longtime curator at the Museum of Modern Art where the Picasso Retrospective filled the whole museum, May 16–September 30. It was curated by William Rubin.
22 Reading the Letter (1921), the men are not necessarily actual brothers.
23 The Mariposa Portraits, of twelve gay and lesbian leaders; see Glossary under Voeller.
24 Oh my heart!
25 Generally called hydrochloric acid.
26 The former Prohibition-era drinking club and ranch retreat in Rustic Canyon.
* Joe Hacker—they are actually man and wife; Joan Quinn told me. [ Joseph Hacker acted on T.V. and in commercials; later, he became a lecturer at USC School of Theater. He did not marry until 1986.]
27 Black actress; she was in Hair in London, had a daughter by Mick Jagger, and appeared in Lindsay Anderson’s Britannia Hospital (1982). Her real name was Marsha Hunt, but she changed the spelling to join the Screen Actors Guild because a white actress with the same name (b. 1917) already belonged. She and her daughter both sat for Bachardy.
* Fred Flintstone.
28 Bernolak, a friend of Bridges and Larson, worked as a carpenter building film sets; he was murdered for dealing drugs in someone else’s territory. Bridges wrote Mike’s Murder (1984) about him.
29 American Broadway star (1895–1980) who played Hollywood gangsters during the 1930s and 1940s. Mae West made her film debut opposite him in Night After Night (1932); they were reportedly lovers, and they both appeared in her last film, Sextette (1978). He died on November 24, and she died on November 26.
30 A Los Angeles revival.
31 In 1965; afterwards, Siporin (1942–2001) became a lawyer for the American Indian movement. He appears in D.2.
32 Hindu monk (1908–1982), a disciple of Bhagawan Nityananda; he brought Siddha Yoga to the West in the 1970s, giving shaktipat initiation to thousands and setting up hundreds of meditation centers and many ashrams.
33 The number was 757 Kingman Avenue; see Glossary under Kiser.
34 In a 1959 interview on BBC T.V., John Freeman, host of “Face to Face” asked Jung, “Do you now believe in God,” and Jung replied: “Now? . . . Difficult to answer. I know. I needn’t—I don’t need to believe. I know.”
* Famous first words! It cost plenty!
* It was Jim Charlton’s friend, Ben Weininger, the psychologist.
35 On Ruegen Island, north of Berlin in the Baltic Sea, where they holidayed in 1931 and 1932; the third section of Goodbye to Berlin, “On Ruegen Island,” is based on Isherwood’s first summer there.
36 The novel has not been published.
37 Woodland Hills, California.
38 A frequent subject for Bachardy during this period, with whom Bachardy freely experimented because Stille never objected to any of the resulting portraits.
39 John Hinckley Jr. shot President Reagan on March 30; see Glossary under Reagan.
* When it did arrive, in July, it was only $5,686.75!
40 In his review of Christopher and His Kind in The New York Review of Books, December 4, 1976, vol. XXIII, no. 20, p. 10.
41 I.e., advance part payments of estimated income tax for the coming year.
42 The dealer bought all thirty.
43 The Writers Guild struck April 11–July 16 against major movie and T.V. producers for a greater share of pay T.V., videos, and disks.
44 Now the Orange County Museum of Art.
45 Vedanta: Voice of Freedom; see Glossary under Chetanananda.
46 Shimabukuro, a photographer. He photographed one of Bachardy’s last sittings with Isherwood.
47 Castellani, his lover at the time, from Argentina.
48 The Japanese papier-mâché horse which Bachardy gave Isherwood for his birthday in 1962; mentioned above, February 9, 1972.
49 About seven inches long, made from fabric like a child’s stuffed toy and covered with long, white fake fur; it had pale blue glass eyes and a crisscross nose and mouth sewn with pink thread. It was already dirty and bedraggled when Bachardy found it and gave it to Isherwood.
50 Bengston had rented a house in Honolulu for an extended period.
51 Hamilton showed the letter to Tom Driberg, then writing William Hickey’s gossip column in the Daily Express; see the entry for August 20, 1961 in D.2. and Glossary.
52 Douglas Corrigan, American aviator (1907–1995), took off from New York headed for California but landed in Ireland claiming he had misread his compass. He had been refused permission for the transatlantic flight because his plane seemed inadequate. He and Isherwood look remarkably alike in photographs.
53 The Falkland Islands, a British Crown Colony 250 miles southeast of Argentina, were occupied on April 2. Prince Andrew (b. 1960), second son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, was serving in the Royal Navy aboard HMS Invincible.
54 Argentina’s second largest warship and only cruiser, the General Belgrano, was torpedoed by a British submarine on May 2, southeast of the Falklands; 800 of the 1,042 crew survived.
55 Previously titled California.
56 It later proved that Turner had AIDS; he was the first sufferer Isherwood and Bachardy knew and died after ten years of illness.
57 Zoologist, with a special interest in ornithology. Spender met him in 1976 in Gainesville, Florida, and encouraged him to give up teaching school there to pursue a graduate degree at UCLA, where he became a professor in 1987. He died of AIDS in 1991.
58 From King George VI, November 23, 1937; it was the medal for 1936.
59 Macbeth, III.i.