The Sun and Her Stars

by Donna Rifkind

  On the last day of July Salka sailed from New York…and Columbia Pictures chief Harry Cohn: ibid., p. 230.

  Berthold had his own long list of messages for Salka to relay as well: ibid., p. 229.

  But Salka remembered that nobody aboard this luxury liner was talking about Hitler: ibid., p. 230.

  All seemed newly fearful because of Hitler’s threats against Poland: ibid., p. 232.

  Both were certain that their parents’ story would be cheapened by Hollywood, with or without Garbo: ibid., pp. 234–235.

  “Not in a position to take full responsibility…I remained silent”: ibid., p. 234.

  “Dear Sidney, when [Irène] refuses it is as if the Rock of Gibraltar were to refuse”: Michael Troyan, A Rose for Mrs. Miniver: The Life of Greer Garson, p. 159; the letter, dated August 21, 1939, is in the USC Archives.

  planning to fly to Poland on August 23: KOS, p. 235.

  the newspapers were announcing the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact: ibid., p. 236. Note that this was probably not announced until August 23.

  “My American passport made me feel guilty”: ibid.

  when her quota number, which Salka had applied for around the time of the Anschluss, at last arrived: ibid., p. 223.

  “There were the usual intertwined couples on the boulevard…I wrote down addresses and promised help”: ibid., p. 237.

  Nearby was the Viennese novelist Gina Kaus…who was emigrating with her husband and sons: ibid.

  her mother’s visa had been forwarded to the American consulate in Bucharest: ibid., p. 239.

  the eternal sunbathers idled: Tagebuch, September 5, 1962; the fat pelicans…the hot Santa Ana winds pummeled the eucalyptus trees: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 47.

  “One does not wander without punishment under palms”: ibid., p. 40.

  Isherwood was teaming again with Berthold to work on an idea for a film: ibid., p. 46.

  “in a coma of nicotine poisoning”: ibid., p. 46.

  “two aliens from doomed Europe…Where would these bronzed and muscular boys be, five years from now?”: ibid. p. 40.

  “after much barking and little biting”: ibid., p. 42. The producer was Al Rosen and the project was titled Mad Dog of Europe.

  After the outbreak of the war in Europe, the house on Mabery Road was also on edge: KOS, p. 241.

  “snorting like a war-horse”: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 46.

  a fourteen-year-old compilation of messy red hair and glasses: ibid., p. 56.

  offering Peter an advance for a novel he had written in secret: KOS, p. 241.

  “The creek bed had gone…that was the water’s brother”: P. Viertel, The Canyon, p. 282.

  “I suppose…that people of Salka’s temperament…as a background to her meetings with Gottfried”: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 73.

  The party of about thirty people…and the Hindu spiritual teacher Krishnamurti: ibid., p. 51.

  “Berthold—that born city dweller—might just as well have been walking down Fifth Avenue”: ibid., pp. 49–51.

  “Years of the Devil”: KOS, p. 239.

  Salka took in Berthold’s niece: ibid., p. 241.

  She also welcomed a thirteen-year-old refugee named Andrew Frank: KOS, p. 241. Andrew Frank was not related to Bruno and Liesl Frank.

  His life would be saved via passage to the U.S…. which gathered affidavits for him: Sauter, Frank, Dieterle, and the European Film Fund, p. 184. Sauter notes that Lena Frank, Andrew’s mother, was also brought to the States via help from the EFF. She was sponsored by the social reformer Dorothy Canfield Fisher, and her “biographical sketch” was written by Thomas Mann, as was that of her ex-husband, Leonhard Frank.

  her niece Margret, Edward’s daughter, who lived at Mabery Road throughout the war years: Margret’s nickname was Mausi. She was very talented both musically and theatrically. See also Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, Glossary, p. 997.

  the Japanese maid…the somewhat fearsome German cook: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, pp. 43, 46, and 57.

  And now Christmas was coming: KOS, p. 242.

  the studio’s general manager Eddie Mannix: Mannix appears as the fear-inspiring studio “fixer” in Joel and Ethan Coen’s film about Golden Age Hollywood, Hail, Caesar!

  “She should see if Kohner can get her a better job!”: KOS, p. 242.

  grossing $1,187,000 domestically and nearly as well overseas, even without the now-defunct European market: Vieira, Greta Garbo, p. 252.

  at thirty-four, she was preoccupied with the specter of aging…a raw-food diet and obsessive skin care: Prager, “Ich bin,” p. 195; Vieira, Greta Garbo, p. 251.

  “this autumn of tears and anxiety”: KOS, p. 241.

  7: LIFEBOAT

  “It is a fantastic commentary”: quotation from the journalist Dorothy Thompson appears as the epigraph to David Wyman, Paper Walls: Americans and the Refugee Crisis, 1938–1941.

  “Faced by Salka’s lost job at MGM”: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 56.

  Peter gave Salka and Berthold the bound manuscript: ibid., p. 62.

  “I want to drink blood brotherhood with you”…Peter had to take him home and put him to bed: ibid., p. 67.

  make her think seriously about opening a restaurant in the canyon…would be a gold mine: KOS, p. 244.

  The usually generous Ernst Lubitsch…feeding all of Hollywood for nothing: ibid.

  May’s second venture…failing to attract customers outside the émigré community: Sauter, Frank, Dieterle, and the European Film Fund, pp. 168–169.

  Formerly a contributor to the European Film Fund, in his last years he lived entirely on its donations: Ruth Barton, Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film, pp. 67–68. See Sauter, Frank, Dieterle, and the European Film Fund, p. 104, for a sample of May’s donations to the EFF.

  On a random Tuesday in February 1940…“the friendship between Salka and Gottfried has a lot to do with these fights”: Isherwood’s description of Salka’s dinner party in February 1940 appears in Diaries, Volume One, p. 92.

  “the comparative of Kohn”: P. Viertel, Dangerous Friends, p. 234.

  an autobiographical novel by Katalin Gero: Prager, “Ich bin,” 193. The title was Not a Fairy Tale.

  Salka owed money to the bank for back debts on her house: Prager, “Ich bin,” pp. 193–194.

  “in the long run the hotdog stand might have given us more permanent security”: KOS, p. 244.

  and the picture was shelved: Prager, “Ich bin,” p. 193.

  suggestions about putting the house up as collateral to get a new loan: ibid., p. 194.

  And so…“to the perennial search for a Garbo story”: KOS, p. 247.

  a comedy—preferably something like an Americanized Ninotchka: ibid.

  “My friend Bruno Frank…and, I gather, never recovered until he died”: S. N. Behrman, “A Tribute to Fulda,” New York Times, February 7, 1943.

  “the imminent conquest of Paris does not aggravate my diabetes so much as the bombings of London and Berlin”: KOS, p. 245.

  she “could not write nor work nor think coherently” and “remained glued to the radio in despair”: SV to BV, May 20, 1940, DLAM, quoted in Prager, “Ich bin,” p. 194.

  “The radio broadcasts claimed large portions of each day…tuned it up loud for each new bulletin”: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 45.

  “I dreaded the thought of his being a pilot…the world is rather small when you think of it”: KOS, p. 243.

  the first of Peter’s “tennis friends” to impress Salka with his love of the theater and literature: P. Viertel, Dangerous Friends, pp. 59–60.

  The Bronx-born Jewish writer…to his own large social circle: Michael Shnayerson, Irwin Shaw, pp. 104–105.

  “the azure coast, the mountains, the sea, the pines…the gentle c
all of some bird”: Lion Feuchtwanger, The Devil in France, p. 27.

  “All German nationals…are to report for internment”: ibid., p. 22.

  Feuchtwanger had already been interned and released: Manfred Flügge, Fry, Bingham, Sharp: The Americans Who Saved Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger, p. 51.

  One of his cats…wanting her dinner: Feuchtwanger, The Devil in France, p. 23.

  “a bright room in the sky”: Peter Stephan Jungk, Franz Werfel: A Life in Prague, Vienna and Hollywood, p. 178.

  “he smudges so easily”: ibid., p. 218. The friend who made that comment was Gustave O. Arlt.

  “the Hindenburg of the emigration”: Anthony Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise: German Refugee Artists and Intellectuals in America from the 1930s to the Present, p. 274.

  the times themselves had become the real novel of the age: Nigel Hamilton, The Brothers Mann: The Lives of Heinrich and Thomas Mann, 1871–1950 and 1875–1955, p. 312. Mann’s letter was addressed to Eva and Julius Lips, February 12, 1939.

  one of the few contemporary writers worth his attention: KOS, p. 249.

  “Heinrich Mann, even more stiff and formal than his brother”: Bedford, Aldous Huxley, p. 282.

  “the manners of a nineteenth-century grand seigneur”: KOS, p. 249.

  A collaborationist regime…the abandoned hotels of the spa town of Vichy: www.ushmm.org, “World War II in Europe.”

  Many thousands of German and Austrian antifascists and Jews were apprehended and interned as enemy nationals: Memorial to the Shoah in Paris, wall label, “From the Phony War to German Occupation”; see also Hertha Pauli, Break of Time.

  interned again at the Les Milles brickworks…made him cough up blood: Feuchtwanger, The Devil in France, pp. 38–39.

  Then he was sent to a military camp…outside of Nîmes: Flügge, Fry, Bingham, Sharp, p. 52.

  His wife Marta…slept on straw-filled sacks on the floor: ibid.

  Feuchtwanger was disguised…and spirited into a waiting car: ibid., p. 61.

  Hiram Bingham IV…to offer that hospitality: ibid.

  “I never learned my lesson…I must surely be able to keep it”: Feuchtwanger, The Devil in France, p. 30.

  Heinrich Mann and his wife Nelly: KOS, p. 249. Nelly was twentyseven years younger than Heinrich, who was sixty-nine at that time.

  hiding in a small hotel near the city’s railway station: Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 58.

  with the hope of booking passage on any ship they could find leaving the Atlantic coast: Flügge, Fry, Bingham, Sharp, p. 62.

  that Werfel called their “Tour de France”: Alma Mahler Werfel, And the Bridge Is Love, p. 262.

  He vowed that if he managed to escape from Europe he would write a book to honor the saint: Jungk, Franz Werfel, p. 187.

  who joined the swelling tide of fugitives to pray at her shrine: Pauli, Break of Time, p. 158.

  Eventually the Werfels managed to obtain a safe-conduct pass…that permitted travel within France: Sheila Isenberg, A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry, p. 15.

  and they still needed exit visas to leave the country: Fry, Surrender on Demand, pp. 6–7.

  all bent on their daily hellish missions to petition the consulates: Jungk, Franz Werfel, p. 187.

  risked arrest and deportation to Germany if they remained in Marseille or if they tried to leave: Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 7.

  The hotels in which they hid were filled with German officers: Mahler Werfel, And the Bridge Is Love, p. 262.

  There was a circulating fear that at any moment the borders might be sealed: Evelyn Juers, House of Exile: The Lives and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger-Mann, p. 280.

  The husband falls in love with the counterfeit version: Prager, “Ich bin,” p. 197, which verifies the time as autumn 1940. The writers worked on the script from summer 1940 to summer 1941.

  She faced comparisons with fresh American actresses like Lana Turner, who was sixteen years younger: Vieira, Greta Garbo, p. 256.

  “As nothing divides people more than difference in their sense of humor”: KOS, p. 252.

  sharing the cramped apartment with Salka’s brother Dusko, his girlfriend Hania, and their little son: ibid., p. 166.

  a young woman named Viktoria…and had always been treated as a member of the family: ibid., p. 77.

  “I am thankful that he has become a responsible human being”: ibid., p. 246.

  They were on a Greek steamer on their way to join Josef Gielen in Buenos Aires: ibid.

  Alexander Granach, Ernst Lubitsch, Henry Blanke, William Wyler, and Paul Kohner: Sauter, Frank, Dieterle, and the European Film Fund, p. 100, from list of “Donations from Non-Members, May 1, 1940–April 30, 1941” and from Paul Kohner Collection; both documents undated.

  having made a five-thousand-dollar donation to the Finnish Relief Fund…under the condition of strict anonymity: Swenson, Greta Garbo, p. 402; and Paris, Garbo, p. 394.

  Garbo used her influence to help physicist Niels Bohr escape: Paris, Garbo, p. 394.

  Salka pulled Garbo into her humanitarian network, persuading the actress to donate $500 to the EFF: Sauter, Frank, Dieterle, and the European Film Fund, p. 110: “Garbo’s donation clearly was a result of her close connection with Salka Viertel…”

  Garbo’s donation put her among the top twenty-eight contributors to the EFF: ibid., p. 110.

  “If anyone has made the suggestion…has done the utmost to help me in my work of rescuing antifascist refugees from Europe”: Paris, Garbo, p. 394, quoting Raymond Daum, Walking with Garbo, pp. 173–174.

  she had a residence of her own on South Amalfi Drive near the Huxleys in the Palisades: Murray, Aldous Huxley, p. 319: the Huxleys had moved in April 1939 “to a furnished house at 701 South Amalfi Drive, Pacific Palisades. Garbo lived on the other side of the street.”

  “Salka Viertel, her family and friends remained Garbo’s anchor in Hollywood”: Swenson, Greta Garbo, p. 406.

  “Everyone was fleeing and everything was temporary…or our entire lives”: Anna Seghers, Transit, p. 32.

  The ERC was the Amerian extension of an international committee founded by…Albert Einstein: Einstein’s committee was called the International Relief Association. It still exists today in the form of the International Rescue Committee.

  while she did not remember the first time she met Thomas Mann, it must have been around this summer of 1940: KOS, p. 249.

  renting a house up the street from the Schoenbergs: Thomas and Katia Mann had not yet committed to moving permanently to Los Angeles from Princeton. They would do so the following year.

  “the reserved politeness of a diplomat on official duty”: KOS, p. 249.

  The committee saw that it needed to focus its initial rescue efforts on high-profile writers…to help the many thousands of others to escape: Terence Renaud, “The Genesis of the Emergency Rescue Committee, 1933–1942,” Boston University, 2005.

  Thus the ERC solicited names from the likes of…Alfred Barr…and…Jacques Maritain: ibid.

  Its initial list of about two hundred refugees: Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. xi.

  Fry arrived in Marseille in mid-August 1940…at that time the only possible exit points out of Europe: Isenberg, Hero of Our Own, p. 12.

  to smuggle more than two thousand people out of France: Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. x.

  “Up to the last moment…might in the meantime have run out”: Palmier, Weimar in Exile, p. 448.

  Fry added a fourth couple: Isenberg, Hero of Our Own, pp. 76–77. Fry left the Adlers out of his account in Surrender on Demand, later admitting sheepishly that he did so because Adler was not as famous as the others.

  Like Lion Feuchtwanger, he was interned at Les Milles and had recently escaped: Isenberg, Hero of Our Own, p. 76.

  These were generally available for anyone who had a valid over
seas visa: Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 57. See Isenberg’s Hero of Our Own for a list of each of the refugees’ documents.

  Their journey would still be illegal…the impossible French exit visas: Isenberg, Hero of Our Own, p. 15.

  promising that they could follow as soon as possible: Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 51.

  They included the musical scores of her former husband…novel-in-progress about Saint Bernadette of Lourdes: Juers, House of Exile, p. 282.

  Maybe he was a spy; maybe he would sell them out to the authorities: Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 64.

  Of this scheme everyone in the group was afraid: Isenberg, Hero of Our Own, pp. 77–78; Fry, Surrender on Demand, pp. 62–63.

  “He’s too fat…and Mann’s too old”: Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 63.

  “Half an hour later…or resting in its half-shade”: ibid., p. 65.

  a billowing white dress and a pair of old sandals: Isenberg, Hero of Our Own, p. 78.

  “Mountain goats could hardly have kept their footing on the glassy, shimmering slate…. nothing but thistles to hold on to”: Mahler Werfel, And the Bridge Is Love, p. 266.

  “Not that he wasn’t game…he couldn’t make the grade without help”: Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 68.

  carrying Heinrich most of the way over the mountain: ibid.

  Some hours later…they changed guides: Juers, House of Exile, p. 283.

  “we felt utterly wretched”: Mahler Werfel, And the Bridge Is Love, p. 266.

  “We almost fell into one another’s arms”: Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 68.

  “Harry can send his friends”: Flügge, Fry, Bingham, Sharp, p. 63.

  “Telegram from Golo and Heinrich from Lisbon”: Hans Wysling, ed., Letters of Heinrich and Thomas Mann, 1900–1949, p. 411, citing Thomas Mann’s Tagebuch entry of September 20, 1940, and diary entry of September 22, 1940.

  “A lost lover is not more beautiful”: Hamilton, The Brothers Mann, p. 314.

  “Now America lies before us…I hope that it will be favorably disposed toward me”: Jungk, Franz Werfel, p. 193.

  with the help of an American Unitarian minister named Waitstill Sharp and his wife Martha: Flügge, Fry, Bingham, Sharp, p. 64.