He seems lonely, but then he always did. He is building quite a lot of houses. He has few people he can talk to, plenty he can go to bed with. He is engaged in one of his satirical projects, it’s called Autopia, a scheme for turning the entire United States into stripes of superhighway; he describes it with that deadpan matter-of-factness which sometimes seems a little mad but is probably his safety valve to relieve paranoid pressures.
We talked about things we were ashamed of. Jim was ashamed of having failed to defy the cops that evening long ago when we were taken to the Santa Monica police station because I’d asked them why the café we were in was being raided.914 I’m ashamed of having consented to answer the loyalty questions which Marvin Schenck(?) put to me at MGM, when I was about to work on Diane in 1954. (This always rankles, but, on the other hand, it gave me a chance to put in a good word for Salka and for Virginia, and I said nothing that wasn’t true. The reason I hate having done it is that my prospective job was at stake, maybe, plus the possibility of being put on an “uncooperative” list.915 Well, anyhow—I’m sure I have done worse things which I refuse to remember at all, much less tell Jim.)
Jim talked about his first meeting with Mark Cooper—whom he now chooses to regard as one of the chief heavies in his personal drama: “I was driving back home along the coast highway and there he stood, holding out his arms—he was like a man on a flat-top, signalling in a plane. And then, when I’d got him home, I said to him, ‘I want to go all the way with you’—and I sure did, Jesus!”
Another thing I now feel about Honolulu—or rather, don’t feel—is that it’s “the gateway to the South Seas.” All kinds of places used to be a gateway to them, and Tahiti in particular—even San Pedro!916 But now, because I’ve been down there, Honolulu is Honolulu simply. Which makes me like it better.
Yesterday I went over to Venice to collect my turquoise ring from Jim Gates, who had got it back from the waitress. He told me how he and Peter had gone into Westwood Village to see a movie (If . . .), and how it had seemed very exciting and disturbing, like going to the great city; their life in Venice is so pastoral! The other day, when I left, he hugged me and then felt embarrassed, because Peter was there. So yesterday, as we were alone, I hugged him. He was pleased and said, “You’re out of sight!”
September 21. Don got home on the 8th. We started work on Claudius next day, so tomorrow we shall complete two weeks on the script. We have got as far as the marriage to Messalina, not bad, but still I am really worried because there are so many problems still to be solved and then the whole thing has to be written out in detail—and all this within another five-and-a-bit weeks! I know already that it can’t be done properly, only fudged, and I loathe fudging from the bottom of my soul.
Jeanne Moreau told me that both she and her father have Dupuytren’s Contracture. They will have to have the operation soon. I met her again, with Don. The evening wasn’t quite a success, she seemed chilly.
A cute marine in Vietnam was being interviewed on T.V. the other evening. Asked what he would say if he heard they were to be returned home, he grinned and answered, “It’d be outstanding. We look on the States as a dream world.”
Got a letter from Avant Garde (magazine) asking me (as one of “one hundred notable Americans”) “who qualifies as the most hated man in America?” They explain: “Ever since the retirement of Lyndon B. Johnson, America has been left with a hate vacuum. That is, Johnson was almost universally despised, the object of all our scorn and frustration.” The people they suggest are: Roy Cohn,917 Mayor Daley,918 J. Edgar Hoover, General Hershey,919 George Wallace,920 Richard Nixon. But surely some newspaper editors are far more despicable than any of these?
October 21. We’re still at it, and I doubt if the screenplay can be finished by the end of the month, though probably soon after. It has meant a most drastic reconstruction of the story and really I do think we have done a quick and quite good job; but ideally it should all be rewritten before Tony sees it.
For the past ten days or so, I’ve been trying a new method of meditation, which is to imagine myself sitting alone in front of the shrine at Vedanta Place. To do this properly, so that I really feel what I feel (sometimes) when I am sitting in front of it, is very difficult but wonderfully effective. As long as I can hold the feeling I have no trouble at all with distracting thoughts.
The shrine is a piece of furniture that is alive. I have to be absolutely alone with it to feel this; it’s a sense of radiation. You don’t do anything, don’t even pray, just expose yourself to the radiation. The radiation is “safe” as long as you expose yourself to it without any conditions; it would be dangerous to ask it for anything. (Except, of course, to be able to experience the radi ation.) It is a confrontation, with the implication that the shrine is really inside me—for otherwise I couldn’t get this feeling at all, even occasionally. Now I am wondering, should I try to keep visiting the shrine at times when I can be alone in it? Will that help me to meditate on it?
A couple of weeks ago, when I came to see Swami, I took the dust of his feet. It was just an impulse. Swami said quickly, “What’s the matter, Chris? You aren’t ill?”—which made me laugh. Did he mean that he found my behavior artificial? Perhaps so.
He says that the Belur Math people won’t allow Vidya to come to India because he made conditions—told them where he would and would not go, etc.
November 21. Well, we finished the Claudius screenplay and sent it off on November 3. Since then we have been waiting to hear something. At last, yesterday, we did hear—by way of Peter Schlesinger on a card and Bob Regester in New York—that Tony Richardson has only just returned to England. So Robin French sent a cable to Neil to ask him if he ever got the copy of the screenplay and today we hear that Neil cabled back that Tony is writing us about it and that he is sending Robin the money for it. This sounds frigid, but we mustn’t jump to conclusions till we get Tony’s letter. Anyhow, I still feel obstinately that we did a really good job, allowing for the untidiness of first-draft dialogue.
As for our play, we are still waiting to hear if this Clifford Williams, the suggested director, really and truly wants to do it, rather than a gruesome-sounding musical about Oscar Wilde in prison, which is another “property” Clement Scott Gilbert wants to produce.
Since finishing the screenplay I have spent eleven days laboriously writing and rewriting two and three-quarter pages as a foreword to David Hockney’s book of drawings and etchings! Am only just now restarting chapter 9 of Kathleen and Frank.
November 22. This morning a note arrived from Tony Richardson: “I have read the script very quickly and liked a lot of it, especially the first part which I liked enormously. . . . as soon as I have had time to think about it clearly I shall write to you again. It is a super job and I am very grateful to you both.” This may still be a brush-off, but at least it raises our morale greatly. Now we have to wait for a further word from Tony or some news from Gilbert before we can decide about going to England.
Meanwhile, Irving Blum continues to talk in the most definite way about Don’s show at his gallery, early next year. Don of course is still skeptical and I am bound to admit that Don’s kind of work does seem very far from that of Blum’s other artists. Why does he want to show it? As a sort of offbeat joke, Don says. I have a theory that it is a mad attempt at an art putsch.921 If it succeeds, the bottom will drop out of the market for a lot of his competitors’ clients; if it fails, Don will be sacrificed as the figurehead of a sunk revolt and Blum will get an E for effort.
We were discussing possible alternative titles for Kathleen and Frank. One is For Life.
December 10. Tony Richardson never wrote, so I called him in London, the night before last and he told me that he had decided our script wasn’t what he wanted and that he had already made a script of his own, during a trip to the South of France. He was embarrassed and slightly apologetic and said that he wished we had been with him, implying that, in that case, we might have worked together
. He also asked if we’d be in New York next week because he was probably coming over. I said that we might be and asked him to call us when he knew for certain.
As far as we can guess, this leaves the door open a little way. But maybe we won’t want to open it further. It’s so difficult to know what to do. I think we may go to New York, because Don has anyway some drawings he could do there for his show, and we should see Wystan and the Stravinskys and even, who knows, manage a reconciliation with Lincoln. As for going to London, it seems we have got to, if we are to see Clifford Williams and decide if we want him to direct A Meeting by the River. He is directing another play there now and couldn’t come over and meet us in New York—I suggested this to Clement Scott Gilbert on the phone last night. But if I go to London that means visiting all around or offending everybody by dashing off again in a couple of days. Which seems senseless, considering that we will presumably have to be in London for several weeks in February and March for the rehearsals.
Meanwhile I plug along with Kathleen and Frank and should soon finish chapter 9. I now incline to the idea that the book will change its character at the end of chapter 10, when Kathleen and Frank are married. The rest of the material will be summarized as much as possible and there will be much more about my own feelings, fantasies, myths and memories with an increasing number of flash-forwards. I estimate that the book will consist of twenty-four chapters, so I’ll soon have done three-eighths of it.
Two synchronicities:
I remarked to Jennifer Selznick last time we saw her that I think Jung is one of the greatest men of our age. I was actually referring to his autobiography, but Jennifer reacted to this by sending me a copy of his Psychology and Alchemy, saying she was sure I’d be interested in it. Shortly before it arrived, I got a book from a reader in England who had seen me there in an interview on T.V.; it is his autobiography, called The Diary of a Mystic (his name is Edward Thornton). In it he writes of his great preoccupation with Jung’s ideas and he particularly quotes from Psychology and Alchemy!
I was copying a passage from one of Frank’s letters to Kathleen about the two of them leaning over Johns bridge together during a visit to Cambridge. I wondered, does one write Johns (as Frank did) or John’s, so I looked up Cambridge in The Everyman Encyclopaedia and there was a photograph of John’s922 seen from the Backs—the only illustration to the Cambridge article!
December 23. Yesterday was the solstice (I checked on it this year by phoning the Griffith Park Observatory) and there’s the usual feeling of starting the upward climb again. This is a period of unanswered questions which I always rather enjoy recording, it gives one a sense, at least, that something has got to happen. (So often it actually doesn’t, however!)
Robin French sent us this morning a copy of a note he got from Neil Hartley about our Claudius screenplay: “This letter is to inform you that we have decided not to go forward with their draft and to thank you very much for your cooperation. Please give my great devotion to both Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy for the work they have done.”
This sounds so weird that I almost begin to wonder if Tony isn’t having some quite other problems, either financial or psychological. And Neil also says he has written to us. He hasn’t.
We await news about Don’s opening at Irving Blum’s gallery. Don is lunching with him on Christmas Day to arrange this. Then we can settle about going to England. Don thinks we should both go and interview Clifford Williams together, otherwise we can’t observe him properly. The bore of it is, we should presumably have to make two trips: See Williams, come back for Don’s show, go back again to England for the rehearsal and opening of the play.
Working like a donkey I have revised all the muddled-up manuscript of Swami’s translation of Narada’s Bhakti Sutras. When I told him this in triumph on the phone just now, he asked sweetly, “And you have written the introduction?” which of course I haven’t. Also he asked me to paraphrase a whole chapter of the Gita which he has quoted verbatim! To be ready for his birthday on the 26th!
Finished chapter 9 of Kathleen and Frank on the 17th.
Jim Gates has gone to Trabuco for the holiday week. This is the one truly satisfactory thing I’ve managed to arrange. Swami really knows who he is now and likes him and Jim got good marks by waxing the library floor soon after arrival, after hitchhiking all the way down there! Jim’s lump is not satisfactory, however. The doctor now says it should be removed immediately as it may be malignant. Jim doesn’t seem much worried about this. Peter Schneider is coming to see me this afternoon—very shortly, in fact.
December 24. Peter did show up. His face is spotted with tiny scars because he dropped a container of sulphuric acid at the restaurant where he works—they use it for cleaning pots—and it splattered all over him and he got some up his nose, which still burns. I was worried about this and called him this morning but he won’t go to the doctor, says it’s getting better. He really is quite sweet, though moody, envious and a bit of a poseur. I asked him why had he come to see me and he said because he liked to hear me talk about God (which I hadn’t been doing—I wish now that I had because that might have flushed out some ideas from the unconscious which I could use in writing this gruesome Narada introduction). This morning he asked me what he should read, and I read him the ending of Ulysses over the phone, old Dobbin show-off.
First thing this morning a telegram arrived. Hoped of course it would be from Tony Richardson but no, Tony Page, wanting the books and papers he gave me when I was to adapt Wedekind’s Lulu plays; he has evidently got someone else to do it now. No apologies—he just asks for them as though I owed him something. Well, never mind. Forget it. This is, ha, Christmas.
Talking of Christmas, I have been playing Scrooge by proxy; demanding that one of our tenants at the Hilldale duplexes shall pay or get out. His name is Harold M. Evans and he is a Negro, which of course makes me feel guilty but only very slightly. Anyhow, he has paid, now. Arnold Maltin, who had to do the demanding, claims that he couldn’t sleep on account of it. He is hysterical but maybe not without purpose; he is trying to prepare us for his fee as manager. There will be a fuss about this, I’m pretty sure. As for Mr. Evans, it seems likely that he was just probing to see if we’d get tough or not; he has a tailoring business of his own.
Have just looked through my papers and it seems that all I have of Lulu material is just one paperbound book; the cut version of the two plays in German, made by Kadidja Wedekind. So am feeling less put-upon and less indignant with Tony Page.
A beautiful pearly evening with flamingo sunset. Just back from the gym where my weight is exactly 155 lbs.; it has come down just a bit from an alltime high of about 157-8. Something drastic must be done. I blame it largely on eating dates. Nicked my hand on a barbell; it bled.
Last night we had supper with David Sachs. He bores me terribly but that’s because he is still awed by me and makes professor talk, carefully weighed and measured generalizations about life, etc. He’s turning into a little old Jewish professor of philosophy; last time I saw him, he was still a brash cute little Jewboy grotesquely masquerading as a professor.
December 25. We talked to Vera Stravinsky in New York this morning. She was very pleased to be called, I think. She said that they have got possession of the manuscripts of Igor’s works which are now their only important assets, but that she’s afraid the lawyers will charge a lot for having got them. Igor is wonderfully better. Vera is all right, only so tired—“morally tired” the doctor had told her. It was all touching and sad, because you got a feeling that, no matter how much money came out of the sale of the manuscripts, it would be frittered away on these astronomical hotel and medical bills which they keep running up. And Vera seems so defenseless now and an old lady.
Ben Underhill talked to me too, phoning from the airport on his way back to San Francisco. He is now in charge of a school for children up to fourteen in a little town called Paicines, south of Hollister, where they have vineyards. Very cheerful a
s usual and with his slightly amused, calm, self-sufficient air.
Went to see the new James Bond movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, with a much less good Bond923 and little to recommend it except scenes of skiing and an avalanche in Switzerland. Going to a performance at half past twelve in the morning was chiefly significant as a symbolic act of schedule breaking. But I had no business to do it. Should have started chapter 10 of Kathleen and Frank. I did fudge my way to the end of a rough rough prefirst draft of a foreword to the Narada Bhakti Sutras, however.
Now I’m waiting for Don to call me and tell me what happened when he had lunch with Irving Blum today and discussed his show. He agreed to do this because we can’t very well talk about it at the two parties we’re to go to tonight—at Charles Aufderheide’s and at Leslie Caron’s.
Don just called, and Irving Blum seems really to mean business; the show is to be late February or early March. So that’s a good solid Christmas present—the best we could have.
December 29. On Christmas Eve, they reran “The Legend of Silent Night,” and it had my name on it, not “Magda Bergmann,”924 despite all the fuss I made last year. However, it seems that my residual won’t be shared with the man who wrote the additional material, so I’ll get the full ten thousand, minus taxes etc.
We have sent a cable to Clement Scott Gilbert, trying to get a definite statement from him about the deadline for deciding on a director and the possibility of opening our play in March. Have heard nothing from Tony Richardson.
Jim Gates is just back from a week at Trabuco; a great success. His description of it consisted of wow-s. He liked Mark and Krishna the best of the monks.
Don is busy drawing people for his show.
Terrific winds, such as I’ve hardly ever experienced before in this town. Driving was really quite dangerous even in Beverly Hills.
Ray Henderson is getting married, but the girl has to get divorced first, so they’ve gone to Maryland to do it. I think Elsa is more upset about this than she’ll admit.
The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969 Page 77