“forerunners of catastrophe”: Bedford, Aldous Huxley, p. 282.
Dichterfürsten: princes of poetry: ibid., p. 282. Katharina Prager points out that in one of Berthold Viertel’s most influential poems, “Exile,” he distanced himself from the company of the Dichterfürsten, declaring that he did not leave any kingdoms behind.
“We were all victims of intolerance”: Marta Feuchtwanger, interviewed by Lawrence Weschler, “An Émigré Life: Munich, Berlin, Sanary, Pacific Palisades,” Oral History Program, University of California.
the traditional German Sunday roast of veal: Bedford, Quicksands, p. 289.
“Where I am, is Germany”: Mann gave a press conference on February 26, 1938, shortly after arriving in New York, during which he first made this comment. www.dw.com/en/thomas-manns-second-home-in-manhattan/a-16198020.
Weltschmerz grappling with luxe, calme, et volupté: insight by Hilton Kramer, “Oh, that Weltschmerz! German Expressionism About Dark, Not Light,” New York Observer, September 6, 2004.
Ostend for Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth: Adam Kirsch, review of Before the Dark: Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth, Ostend 1936, New Statesman, January 15, 2016.
the lush emerald forests of Brazil’s Petrópolis: George Prochnik, The Impossible Exile, p. 295.
6: MOTHERLAND
“One does not wander without punishment under palms”: Berthold Viertel, quoted in Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 40.
Particularly inspiring to the National Socialists…and from Asia: James Q. Whitman, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, cited in Rafael Medoff’s review of the book in Ha’aretz, “Was Hitler Inspired by Racist American Laws?,” March 29, 2017.
With the Nuremberg Laws in place…the persecution of Jews in Germany: www.ushmm.org, Timeline of Events: 1936.
About a forty-minute drive northeast…there was dancing: The description of the German Day picnic in Hindenburg Park comes from www.archive.org/details/csth_000032, “German Day Festivities in Hindenburg Park, Los Angeles film footage,” 1936.
two major goals: to Nazify the German-American community…Hitler’s New Germany: California State University at Northridge Archives online, http://digital-library.csun.edu/in-our-own-backyard/german-american-bund.
“constitution, flag, and a white gentile ruled, truly free America…to portray itself as a patriotic American defense organization”: Rosenzweig, Hollywood’s Spies, pp. 103, 111, 112.
to mask their German provenance: ibid., p. 94.
that also housed the Aryan Bookstore, a restaurant, and a shooting range: ibid., p. 107.
into what they hoped would become a headquarters for Hitler: “Heil Hollywood: The Los Angeles Bunker From Which Hitler Planned to Run Nazi Empire After the War,” Daily Mail, March 18, 2012.
The Los Angeles police department was more sympathetic to this homegrown fascism than not: Rosenzweig, Hollywood’s Spies, p. 38.
In the meantime…Jack Benny, and Paul Muni: ibid., pp. 137, 250.
An Improvisation: biographical details that follow are based on the life of the composer Ernst Toch. Descriptions of Salka are from her step-grand-niece, Elizabeth Frank.
his “musical autobiography”: Crawford, Windfall of Musicians, p. 158, quoting Lawrence Weschler, “My Grandfather’s Last Tale,” Atlantic, December 1996.
holed up in a beach hotel writing film scores for Paramount at $750 per week: Crawford, Windfall of Musicians, p. 136.
and also to resume teaching: Toch’s students in Los Angeles included André Previn, Alex North, and Douglas Moore: ibid., p. 137.
“a queer step-child”: ibid., p. 140.
Picasso’s Blue Boy hanging over the fireplace: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 40.
and a glimpse of some madly blooming rosebushes: ibid.
a pair of unruly Irish setters and an old Alsatian: ibid.
the huge German shepherd called Prinz…if you lean in too closely over his head: conversation with Sonya O’Sullivan, December 15, 2012.
a furious burrow of ashtrays, newspapers…and modern American poetry: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 56.
Never an obvious beauty…to assume a forceful presence, to make you pay attention: conversation with Elizabeth Frank.
as if she were always leaning slightly forward: ibid.
Johnny Weissmuller…eleven-year-old son Tommy: KOS, pp. 196–197.
since their neophyte filmmaking days in Berlin: Wilder and Zinnemann worked together on the 1930 landmark film Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday), when Wilder was twenty-four and Zinnemann was twenty-three.
two screenplays for Pioneer Pictures: these were Encore and Gibraltar; neither picture was ever made.
Salka began to entertain Toch…and went to rejoin the others at dinner: The anecdote about Huston and Peter Viertel boxing in the garage is from P. Viertel, Dangerous Friends, p. 20.
“The Jew possesses no power or ability to create culture”: this, and the story of Toch’s expulsion, are from Lawrence Weschler, “My Grandfather’s Last Tale,” Atlantic, December 1996.
“a zu Hause…and expelled them all”: credit for the zu Hause insight belongs to Bilski and Braun, Jewish Women and Their Salons, p. 145.
a position he usually defended but on this occasion considered cowardly: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 41.
Berthold was as temperamental and dramatic as Salka…were not only about politics: ibid., p. 92.
a view intended to lift your eyes and your spirits: Weschler, “My Grandfather’s Last Tale.”
Irving Thalberg had died…Salka did not think they would remember her: KOS, p. 212.
fans gathered as if for a film premiere: Lambert, Norma Shearer, p. 239.
“laughed tears”: SV to S. N. Behrman, January 9, 1963, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
“To be honest…I felt sorry for him”: SV to S. N. Behrman, November 3, 1965, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
“It is a fascinating theme…He was anti semitic”: SV to S. N. Behrman, March 29, 1963, Behrman Archives, NYPL.
a big donor, from its earliest days, to the Wilshire Boulevard Temple: Vieira, Irving Thalberg, p. 276.
to raise funds to expose and combat the active pro-Nazi efforts of the Los Angeles branch of the Bund: Gabler, Empire of Their Own, p. 340.
“a lot of Jews will lose their lives…The Jews will still be there”: David B. Green, “This Day in Jewish History 1936: Hollywood’s ‘Boy Wonder’ Producer…Dies,” www.haaretz.com, September 14, 2014, quoting Vieira, Irving Thalberg, p. 264.
“devoted themselves to assimilation” and “denied their Jewishness”: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, quoted in the Yiddish newspaper The Day, January 13, 1935, cited in Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman, FDR and the Jews, p. 80.
mostly by writing checks to resistance organizations: Rosenzweig, Hollywood’s Spies, p. 198.
“all through my teens I considered myself un- or non-Jewish…with the culture of my forebears”: Budd Schulberg, Moving Pictures, p. 238.
“the ever-recurring—since Egypt—community of expulsion”: Crawford, Windfall of Musicians, p. 12.
Metro, which had the biggest German investment of all the studios, maintained its offices in Berlin as late as 1938, staffed by non-Jews: Martin Sauter, Liesl Frank, Charlotte Dieterle and the European Film Fund, pp. 50–51.
while Paramount and Fox remained in business there until at least late 1940: K. Führer and C. Ross, eds., Mass Media, Culture and Society in Twentieth-Century Germany, p. 99.
Quietly they issued affidavits for Jews seeking to come to America, and wrote checks to the United Jewish Welfare Fund and other organizations: Matthew Bernstein, Walter Wanger, p. 175; www.ushmm.org, “American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and Refugee Aid.”
Hyman seemed at first to be Salka’s ally: KOS, p. 212.
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sp; a “Chassidic soul”: ibid., p. 215.
“became first a small, then a huge nightmare”: ibid.
“If you want to feel sorry for Napoleon then let Garbo play him”: ibid., p. 214.
“I wished to convey my personal feeling…since he represented their secret wish-dreams of conquest”: S. N. Behrman, People in a Diary, p. 162.
but fell months behind schedule, piling up costs: KOS, p. 26; Swenson, Greta Garbo, p. 367.
though it did much better in Europe: Paris, Garbo, p. 343. The picture lost $1,397,000.
“an exhausting experience for everyone…from her and Behrman’s original script in the final version”: KOS, p. 216.
as the dying Camille: Salka did not get a writing credit for Garbo’s Camille (1936), as she had been traveling in Europe while the film was being written. But she did coach Garbo’s acting for it. Christopher Isherwood noted: “When young, [Garbo] was eager to learn—watched Salka for hours playing out her old roles. Garbo was so inadequate in the last scene of Camille that Salka had them give all the lines to Robert Taylor. Garbo had only to say ‘Yes’ and ‘No,’ and it came out great.” Diaries, Volume One, p. 761 (June 26, 1958).
It organized banquets and receptions to save money to buy ambulances, food and medicine for the Republican cause: Palmier, Weimar in Exile, p. 594.
In early 1937: Palmier (Weimar in Exile) says January; others say March.
and managed to collect five thousand dollars: KOS, p. 215.
“ladies in mink rising and clenching their bejeweled hands”: ibid. See Peter Viertel’s quite different take in Dangerous Friends on p. 7, where he says Malraux’s “closed-fist salute…shocked most of the listeners, the minority of whom belonged to the far left.” Where Salka, looking back, attempted to show herself as only one in a large crowd of Communist sympathizers, Peter suggests that few in the audience had those sympathies.
Again they stopped first at a private reception on Mabery Road: Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood, p. 115.
Their efforts summoned up…for ambulances and medicine: KOS, p. 215.
“stars, producers, writers…and practically every German refugee in Los Angeles”: ibid.
“premature antifascism,” meaning antifascist activity that was nefariously controlled by Communists: Kevin Starr, Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, p. 286.
a left-leaning young Metro producer named Frank Davis: KOS, p. 220.
“Do you think the time has come not to work for Greta any more?…it has felt like a burden to you”: BV to SV, August 1, 1937, call # 78.867/7, DLAM.
her then companion, the conductor Leopold Stokowski: KOS, p. 218.
amusing stories to recount among the writers’ rooms at Metro: ibid., pp. 217–218.
while the film star took a dip: Vieira, Greta Garbo, p. 240.
Salka also wrote at least one draft: Maurice Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, pp. 80–81.
Screenplay credits eventually went to Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder…for the original story: KOS, p. 247; and www.tcm.com, “Notes on Ninotchka”: “Modern sources indicate that author Melchior Lengyel, S. N. Behrman, and Salka Viertel also wrote drafts of the script, and that Gottfried Reinhardt was originally assigned to direct.”
Bernie Hyman instructed Salka to go ahead with the treatment: KOS, p. 218.
and stayed for a time at Frieda Lawrence’s ranch in New Mexico: Nicholas Murray, Aldous Huxley, pp. 304–306.
Huxley turned in a novelistic 145-page treatment: Paris, Garbo, p. 359.
to discover radium in a squalid one-bedroom laboratory: KOS, p. 228.
and became the first woman appointed to a lecture chair at the Sorbonne: Paris, Garbo, p. 359.
Huxley was paid twenty-five thousand dollars for his treatment: KOS, p. 220.
“it was instantly forgotten”…“it stinks”: ibid., p. 223.
“were sincerely fond of her but perhaps they tended to take her for granted…Salka’s name isn’t mentioned”: Isherwood, Lost Years, p. 71.
“above all she is a European…while retaining their charm and personality”: Murray, Aldous Huxley, p. 320, quoting Maria Huxley to Jeanne Neveaux, July 31, 1939.
Thomas Mann, who had also recently landed in Los Angeles: Sauter, Frank, Dieterle, and the European Film Fund, p. 62. Mann came over on the same Normandie crossing as Aldous Huxley: Murray, Aldous Huxley, p. 303.
of which Aldous Huxley was one of the founding sponsors: Palmier, Weimar in Exile, p. 369.
the Franks were living quite handsomely…with Metro in 1937: KOS, p. 217.
Garbo was thoroughly occupied by Ninotchka: Prager. “Ich bin,” p. 127. Shooting began on May 31, 1939.
“Like Ariadne’s thread…the Hitler menace grew”: KOS, p. 223.
“[Hitler] hated Vienna especially…It was very, very difficult, and you had to try all kinds of things”: Gertrud Zeisl oral history, www.zeisl.com/archive/gertrud-zeisls-oral-history.htm.
The Zeisls were among the lucky few…settling in Los Angeles in 1941: Crawford, Windfall of Musicians, p. 206.
She also applied for a quota number for her mother in Poland: KOS, p. 223.
“with great dignity”…to be his assistant and dramaturg: ibid., p. 224.
Peter had graduated…and continued his studies at UCLA: ibid., p. 222.
Berthold remained in London, sending updates to Salka: ibid., p. 224.
and he apologized to her for costing so much: BV to SV, August 1, 1937, call # 78.867/7, DLAM.
“That you are forced to live and work in Hollywood…but even more for me”: KOS, p. 225.
tackling everything from the Viertel boys’ untidiness and Salka’s chaotic bookkeeping to the tangled coats of the two Irish setters: ibid., p. 217.
“the Jewish community of Germany went up in flames”: Lucy Dawidowicz, quoted in Haskel Lookstein, Were We Our Brothers’ Keepers? The Public Response of American Jews to the Holocaust, 1938–1941, p. 23.
German citizens engaged in an orgy of terror and violence…and destroyed 267 synagogues: Statistics are from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia, “Kristallnacht,” www.ushmm.org.
All these facts were reported by the American press by early December of 1938…about the Anschluss and mounting refugee crisis: Lookstein, Were We Our Brothers’ Keepers?, pp. 23 and 26; www.ushmm.org, “Kristallnacht.”
more vaguely as “political refugees”: Lookstein, Were We Our Brothers’ Keepers?, p. 32.
Polls showed that…official government position was “sympathy without hospitality”: ibid., p. 44.
“flight was both necessary and possible in the weeks and months following…for the failure of the world to open its doors while there was still time”: ibid., pp. 66–67.
By 1938 Liesl Frank, along with Charlotte Dieterle…had established the European Film Fund in Hollywood: Sauter, Frank, Dieterle, and the European Film Fund, p. 149. The EFF was officially incorporated on November 22, 1938.
“You paid in…for the next guys who were coming along”: Paul Andor quoted in Cinema’s Exiles, From Hitler to Hollywood, PBS, premiere, January 2009.
Henry Blanke…gotten his start as an assistant to Ernst Lubitsch: Frederick Kohner, The Magician of Sunset Boulevard: The Improbable Life of Paul Kohner, pp. 53 and 109.
In her memoir she made a point to give proper credit to Liesl Frank and Charlotte Dieterle: KOS, p. 217.
Salka was both a contributor to the Fund, and, in her later years, a recipient of its largesse: Sauter, Frank, Dieterle, and the European Film Fund, p. 153.
Donations to the EFF helped refugees in two related ways: ibid., p. 47.
a “biographical sketch,” preferably written by as distinguished a personage as one could muster…and a studio contract or some similar document as proof that one would not becom
e a public charge in America”: ibid., p. 185. The requirement for the “biographical sketch” was added later.
“generously guaranteed with their bank accounts…and I am happy to say that none ever did”: KOS, pp. 223–224. The precise number of people for whom Salka collected affidavits is unknown. There are thirty-two letters at the DLAM written by people asking her for help, but this is by no means definitive. For one thing, many of Salka’s papers and documents were later destroyed in a house fire on Mabery Road; for another, the EFF and other relief organizations avoided paper trails for activity that the government might choose to flag as suspicious.
In February 1939, Salka herself became a citizen of the United States”: ibid., p. 226.
when Gottfried Reinhardt was fired from the picture after arguing with Lubitsch about a plot point: Vieira, Greta Garbo, p. 246.
“Dear Salka Steuermann…so that the ride should be a little easier for me”: Alexander Granach to SV, March 1939, DLAM.
Some of Alexander Granach’s early life…by way of Switzerland: Jan-Christopher Horak, UCLA Film & Television blog post, April 4, 2013, www.cinema.ucla.edu/blogs/archival-spaces/2013.
In July 1939, Berthold returned again to Mabery Road: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 39; KOS, p. 227.
“he always came back and told me that he could not live without me”: Tagebuch, January 1, 1963.
“Gottfried liked me to get furious at him…then cajole and seduce me afterwards…either went without him or did something else”: Tagebuch, September 16, 1962.
“people who considered themselves superior only because they were overpaid”: KOS, p. 226.
which had now reached $650 a week: ibid., p. 242.
Gottfried and Sam Hoffenstein had convinced Salka to hire the agent Paul Kohner: Prager, “Ich bin,” p. 192. The contract between SV and Kohner in the archives at the Kinemathek Berlin is dated April 21, 1939.
could finesse a deal: KOS, p. 242.
“no pretty girl would ever study chemistry or physics”: ibid., p. 227.
The Sun and Her Stars Page 41