The Sun and Her Stars

by Donna Rifkind

  and Alfred and Lisl Polgar: Juers, House of Exile, p. 288.

  Some have alleged…a cerebral hemorrhage or an overdose of his heart medication: Rebecca Solnit, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics, p. 73.

  continued on through Spain and eventually to safety: Isenberg, Hero of Our Own, p. 95.

  From Lisbon, Fry cabled the ERC: Flügge, Fry, Bingham, Sharp, p. 63.

  Other donations…went to support the newly arrived refugees in America: ibid., p. 66.

  “Some may die on the way…At least one must try”: Pauli, Break of Time, p. 215.

  “Here you feel at home in the landscape…it’s part of your life”: Marta Feuchtwanger, “An Émigré Life,” oral history, University of California.

  “The Riviera is just trash compared to this”: Jungk, Franz Werfel, p. 196.

  “Grateful and unhappy”: Mahler Werfel, And the Bridge Is Love, p. 275.

  “pedestrians had become extinct…I happen to love walking amongst crowds”: Juers, House of Exile, p. 293.

  “the people here don’t need our stories…serve Louis B. Mayer and one’s own work”: Palmier, Weimar in Exile, p. 513.

  There was even talk that one of his books might once again be made into a film: Wysling, ed., Letters of Heinrich and Thomas Mann, p. 238. Heinrich Mann’s novel Professor Unrat was published in 1905; the film appeared in 1930.

  “appeared an odd figure in the Burbank studio”: KOS, p. 249.

  had set him up as a screenwriter at six thousand dollars per year: Hamilton, The Brothers Mann, p. 317.

  “to waste the time between 10 and 1 in consultation and chatter”: Wysling, ed., Letters of Heinrich and Thomas Mann, p. 239.

  “Care for the house and the car fall to my wife”: ibid.

  “a voluptuous, blond, blue-eyed Teutonic beauty…to which he heroically consented”: KOS, p. 249.

  “the representative, towering literary figure”: ibid., p. 259. Mann’s house on San Remo Drive was at that time being designed and constructed by the émigré architect J. R. Davidson, but the Manns did not move into it until 1942.

  “Hollywood could now boast of being the Parnassus of German literature”: ibid., p. 248.

  “Only shortly before Schoenberg’s death…Later Stravinsky paid great homage to Schoenberg and to his music”: ibid., p. 259.

  Garbo was impatient to get things going so as to be finished with it as soon as possible: Vieira, Greta Garbo, pp. 257–258.

  “Nobody’s heart was in it”: Paris, Garbo, p. 374.

  Gottfried would come home to Mabery Road from the studio: Vieira, Greta Garbo, p. 258.

  “If the war comes here, I won’t try to dodge…Don’t be such a sucker!” Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 139.

  “You can’t only help people…it’s probably better to avoid them, and subscribe to charities”: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 158.

  and would not return until the end of April: KOS, p. 250.

  “I’d rather you didn’t speak about my birthday…the younger natives are waiting”: Wysling, ed., Letters of Heinrich and Thomas Mann, p. 243. Italics are Heinrich Mann’s and indicate that the original words were in English.

  The brothers’ rivalry had begun long ago…had become a senator at age thirty-six: Hamilton, The Brothers Mann, p. 19.

  “I sat in a corner and watched my father and mother…on the quiet features of my mother”: ibid., p. 23, quoting from Thomas Mann, The Dilettante (1897, republished as Das Bild der Mutter).

  As little boys they watched bashfully…in the ballroom of the family home: ibid., p. 19.

  Hans Christian Andersen and Charles Perrault: Anthony Heilbut, Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature, p. 10; Hamilton, The Brothers Mann, p. 20.

  She was the daughter of a German-born planter and his Portuguese-Creole-Brazilian wife: Heilbut, Eros and Literature, p. 8.

  and rang with the songs of the slaves on the plantation: Hamilton, The Brothers Mann, pp. 14–15, 20.

  “the primal simplicity of the fairy tale”: Wysling, ed., Letters of Heinrich and Thomas Man, p. 2.

  “There is no sharp boundary in my memory between children’s games and the practice of art”: ibid.

  “the Starched Collar”: Michael Harris, “The Anguish in His Stories Was His Own,” review of Anthony Heilbut’s Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature, Los Angeles Times, February 5, 1996.

  “He looks wonderfully young for his age…elderly and staid”: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 100.

  “the childlike big moments, times of celebration and honors”: Thomas Mann, “On the Profession of the German Writer in Our Time: Address in Honor of a Brother,” March 27, 1931, Prussian Academy of Arts, Berlin, reprinted in Wysling, ed., Letters of Heinrich and Thomas Mann, p. 280.

  “there behind him, his entire life…but stole the limelight”: Hamilton, The Brothers Mann, p. 21.

  where Heinrich was then serving as president of the poetry department: www.imdb.com, biography of Heinrich Mann.

  But they published their homages to each other that year: Thomas in March 1936, Heinrich in December.

  “Decorated with flowers and candles it looked very festive”: KOS, p. 250; Prager mentions the Ping-Pong table (“Ich bin,” p. 198), as does Gottfried Reinhardt in his memoir of his father. Descriptions of the event also come from a telegram from BV to SV, May 2, 1941, and from Aufbau, the New York–based Jewish émigré newspaper, from May 16, 1941.

  Walter and Hedy Herlitschek…Toni Spuhler: KOS, pp. 244, 150.

  “Nelly was opposite us, towering over the very small Feuchtwanger…All of them represented the true Fatherland to which in spite of Hitler they adhered, as they adhered to the German language”: ibid., p. 250.

  “it gave one some hope and comfort…crowding each other and wiping their tears”: ibid., p. 251.

  Mann’s birthday speech, which was eventually published: Salka says that Thomas Mann’s address was published in the periodical Decision. It, along with Heinrich’s address on the same night, are reprinted in the “Documents” section at the end of Wysling, ed., Letters of Heinrich and Thomas Mann, along with the other birthday speeches quoted here.

  “This glass is for Frau Salka Viertel”: Heinrich Mann, “Afterdinner Remarks at Frau Viertel’s, Delivered May 2, 1941,” ibid., p. 295.

  her “speciality of the house”: KOS, p. 251.

  “Perhaps one had to live her life to make it…the rich, moist, slightly undercooked core”: email from Adam Shaw.

  because he heard that Salka was bringing the cake: conversation with Elizabeth Frank.

  “I’ve started work on a film…when war is on our doorstep”: Swenson, Greta Garbo, p. 411.

  It was Garbo’s twenty-sixth picture for Metro: ibid., p. 414; but Mark A Vieira writes that Garbo appeared in only twenty-four American films: Greta Garbo, p. 271.

  on location at the Sugar Bowl Lodge near Donner Summit: McGilligan, George Cukor, p. 165.

  “I’m only very sorry that the story has changed so much…it will have turned out like it has”: Vieira, Greta Garbo, p. 261.

  Often the blame went to Salka: ibid.: “Cukor, Viertel, or Behrman was often named as a fatal element.”

  with another picture remaining under her current contract”: Paris, Garbo, p. 379.

  “immoral and un-Christian attitude toward marriage…suggestive costumes”: Swenson, Greta Garbo, pp. 417–418.

  asked him to make an assessment of its wickedness: KOS, p. 253.

  “More incensed than his minions…against my sinful Two-Faced Woman”: Gottfried Reinhardt, The Genius: A Memoir of Max Reinhardt, p. 104.

  “when each day brought news more horrible than one could bear”: KOS, p. 248.

  “Oh, these! I just slipped into these”: Two-Faced Woman [script]; George Cukor; 1941; Dialogue cutting continuity, revised version
, December 19, 1941; Script Collection, AMPAS (Unpublished), Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

  based on a novel called The Paradine Case…as a possible Garbo vehicle: Prager, “Ich bin,” p. 202.

  But the actress was not keen to play another femme fatale: KOS, p. 253. Metro eventually gave up on the screenplay and resold it to David O. Selznick, who had bought it in 1933 when he was at Metro, and who eventually completed the picture with Alfred Hitchcock in 1947. Salka’s drafts were unused and she received no credit.

  an emblem of the hardships she had endured: ibid., p. 256.

  with Garbo’s help had secured promises of intervention from the U.S. ambassador: ibid., p. 253. Garbo had become acquainted with the ambassador, Lawrence Steinhardt, during his earlier assignment in Stockholm.

  could only pray that he had fled from Sambor with the retreating Soviets: ibid., p. 254.

  as the Nazis advanced on the capital: ibid., p. 255.

  after which they put her on the train which would take her to Los Angeles: ibid., p. 256.

  “Everyone brought friends…Old age even gallantly borne frightened them”: ibid., p. 257.

  their Swedish ship forced to dawdle through the Panama Canal: ibid., p. 256.

  quietly supported the evacuation of Brecht and a number of other refugees through its bureaucratic channels: Sauter, Frank, Dieterle, and the European Film Fund, p. 36.

  until the release of the Molotov Report in 1942: KOS, p. 269.

  by shooting them or poisoning them in gas vans: www.ushmm.org, “Final Solution” and “Einsatzgruppen.”

  As of late October, it was unlawful for Jews to emigrate from Germany or any of its territories: David Wyman, Paper Walls, p. 205.

  In July all the American consulates in German territory were closed: ibid.

  “a complete solution of the Jewish question”: Hermann Goering to Reinhard Heydrich, July 31, 1941, cited in www.ushmm.org, “Final Solution.”

  up to 1,700,000 Jews were murdered in Eastern Europe: ibid.

  Viktoria was not Jewish, so unlike Dusko she had some measure of protection against German persecution: KOS, p. 257 and 280.

  a few weeks before the release of Two-Faced Woman: the premiere took place on November 30; a censored version was released on December 31.

  Gottfried Reinhardt was sitting in a dubbing room at Metro: Paris, Garbo, p. 379.

  “Arthur Rubinstein was just finishing the first movement…and sunk the American fleet in Pearl Harbor”: KOS, p. 260.

  8: ILIUM

  “In Hollywood there are only two categories of writers”: Alfred Döblin quoted in Sauter, Frank, Dieterle, and the European Film Fund, p. 193.

  “All the Japanese living in California were sent to concentration camps”: KOS, p. 261.

  Policemen warned that it was forbidden to speak German on the street: Juers, House of Exile, p. 342.

  The FBI rounded up many of the prominent Reich sympathizers: Steven J. Ross, Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America, pp. 316–317.

  “there was no curfew in the East…convinced that a ‘fifth column’ existed and caution was necessary”: KOS, p. 261.

  Gottfried…was in uniform immediately…to make training films for the Signal Corps: ibid., p 262.

  “to build my place in life so that I do not have to reproach myself”: ibid., p. 263.

  on a loan-out from David Selznick: P. Viertel, Dangerous Friends, p. 21.

  The news filled Salka with dread: KOS, p. 262.

  “is compelled to face the monster, man to man”: ibid., p. 263.

  “it tortured me to think that Peter had become a tiny, passive particle”: ibid.

  In the Benedict Canyon house of Budd’s unsuspecting father: Nancy Lynn Schwartz, The Hollywood Writers’ Wars, p. 94.

  among them Dalton Trumbo, Ring Lardner Jr., Albert Maltz, Robert Rossen, and Maurice Rapf: ibid., p. 298.

  Her political convictions grew from her sympathy: conversation with Vicky Schulberg.

  But she found Marxist texts tedious: Schwartz, Hollywood Writers’ Wars, p. 184.

  drank and flirted and jousted: Jigee at this point never drank alcohol, and Peter rarely did.

  for a time she was an active Marxist: ibid. 303 “strong reservations”…“destructive character”: KOS, p. 267.

  “would need a lot of courage to face the future…we would need each other”: ibid., p. 266.

  “We spent Sundays on the beach…she also took hold of my heart”: ibid., p. 267.

  chugged off to war in a sea teeming with enemy submarines: P. Viertel, Dangerous Friends, p. 79.

  the new woman in Berthold’s life…“Berthold was much more at peace with himself, and also with me and Gottfried”: KOS, p. 267.

  “A surprisingly large number of elevator boys…at the ends of the corridors”: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 256.

  and was helping the Swami write a translation of the Bhagavad Gita: ibid., p. 240. Isherwood’s and the Swami’s translation was published in 1944 as Bhagavad Gita: The Song of God, with an introduction by Aldous Huxley.

  “What am I doing with this old, unfashionable Indian stuff? What relation can it possibly have to America?”: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 265.

  “For Garbo and her contemporaries, 1942 was the Twilight of the Goddesses”: Vieira, Greta Garbo, p. 268.

  With England the only remaining European market for Metro’s pictures: Thomas Doherty, Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II, p. 40.

  prompting Goebbels to shut down Metro’s Berlin office and to forbid the screening of its films in all German territories: www.tcm.com, “The Mortal Storm.”

  On this autumn afternoon the excitable Saville…hoped for the shooting of French collaborators: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 257.

  It was the story of a wounded soldier and a nurse…updated to the Soviet-German conflict: KOS, p. 268.

  Hyman suddenly died of heart failure: Vieira, Greta Garbo, p. 268.

  His death provoked much anxiety: KOS, p. 269.

  He offered to buy her out…saying she had not earned it: Vieira, Greta Garbo, p. 269.

  A gaggle of Metro employees…Lana Turner: ibid., p. 270.

  published in the United States to blockbuster sales and was chosen in July as a main selection for the Book-of-the-Month Club…for the huge sum of $125,000: Kevin Starr, The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s, pp. 370–372.

  The screenwriting contract…and the studio did not renew it: Sauter, Frank, Dieterle, and the European Film Fund, p. 131.

  “that prevented us from destitution”: ibid., p. 193.

  Heinrich Mann’s contract at Metro…fell behind on the rent: Juers, House of Exile, p. 317.

  his only lifeline: ibid., p. 320.

  Nelly wrote out her will: ibid., p. 318. This occurred on April 27, 1942.

  “Mama is no expert in the treatment of technical implements”: SV to BV, 1945, call # 78.916/10, DLAM.

  still trying to believe that Dusko had escaped from Sambor: KOS, p. 269.

  arrested by the FBI and were currently in jail, awaiting trial: Ross, Hitler in Los Angeles, pp. 322, 323.

  There were no more pro-Nazi rallies…occupied by U.S. troops on the day after Pearl Harbor: ibid., p. 316.

  Much of it was inspired by nationwide campaigns…for America First: ibid., pp. 312, 325.

  G. Allison Phelps…immorality in the film community: ibid. p. 332. See also Louis Pizzitola, Hearst Over Hollywood: Power, Passion, and Propaganda in the Movies, p. 388.

  Germany might institute a pro-Soviet government…heads of state”: Juers, House of Exile, p. 313.

  Heinrich Mann sometimes went outside…in a neighbor’s yard: ibid., p. 317.

  “We learned to
speak freely only at home…an ever more controlled life”: Fritz Stern, Five Germanys I Have Known, p. 95.

  Beginning in January 1942…“165 Mabery Road”: Alexander Stephan, “Communazis”: FBI Surveillance of German Émigré Writers, pp. 194–197.

  “anti-capitalistic and communistically-inclined”: Swenson, Greta Garbo, p. 448.

  “no indication that either [Berthold or Salka] has important Communist Party connections”: ibid.

  “strong, handsome young men…harassing the refugees”: KOS, p. 261.

  Von Bucovich…a low-paying job at Warner Bros.: ibid., p. 217.

  “Oh, you people, you are anti-fascist but”: ibid., pp. 261–262.

  “Since the human capacity for empathy…”: Heinrich Mann’s words paraphrased in Juers, House of Exile, p. 361.

  The British actor Charles Laughton…at Birmingham General Hospital in the San Fernando Valley: Simon Callow, Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor, p. 153; Charles Higham, Charles Laughton: An Intimate Biography, pp. 112, 116.

  “The death of this love is horrible”: SV to BV, undated 1943, DLAM.

  “it was difficult to extricate myself”…“it is senseless to compare one’s own grief”: KOS, p. 269.

  “Just as he had resented my happiness”: ibid., p. 270.

  His girlfriend Liesel Neumann followed from New York: Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, p. 311.

  “the air full of spray and falling light”…and her intention to visit Isherwood’s Swami Prabhavananda: ibid., p. 290.

  “played up outrageously, sighing about how wonderful it must be to be a nun”: ibid., p. 308.

  “Everything in the household was just as usual…the other about refugee domestic servants”: ibid., p. 307.

  “I am convinced he meant it”: KOS, p. 272.

  That same July she sold a treatment for a domestic comedy to Paramount: Prager, “Ich bin,” p. 143. The treatment was called Keeping House.

  a love story for Garbo set in Iceland: ibid.

  Neither was produced…relieving her mortgage worries: KOS, p. 274.

  The fund declared itself in dire financial straits by 1943: Sauter, Frank, Dieterle, and the European Film Fund, p. 236.

  The movement was hoping to install Thomas Mann as the leader of a German government-in-exile: Stephan, “Communazis,” p. 58.