Falk, Eric (1905–1984). English barrister, raised in London. Falk, who was Jewish, was a school friend from Repton, where he was in the same house as Isherwood, The Hall, and in the History Sixth. He helped Isherwood edit The Reptonian during Isherwood’s last term, and they saw one another during the school holidays and often went to films together. Falk introduced Isherwood to the Mangeots, whom he had met on holiday in Brittany. Later, he lived in The Temple, a group of mostly late seventeenth-century, college-like buildings in which barristers have offices and also keep residential apartments on the Thames Embankment at the western edge of the City of London. He appears in Lions and Shadows, D.1, and Lost Years.
Faye, Alice (1915–1998). American actress, singer, comedienne; born and raised in New York, where she went on the stage at fourteen. She starred in Hollywood musicals from 1934 to 1945—including Every Night at Eight (1935), Poor Little Rich Girl (1936), Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938), The Gang’s All Here (1943)—but quit movies over conflicts with Darryl Zanuck at Twentieth Century-Fox and focused back on radio and stage. She made only a few further films. In 1972 and 1973, she revived the musical Good News on Broadway, then toured in it for a year, including to Los Angeles. She was a childhood favorite of Bachardy.
Finney, Albert (b. 1936). English actor, trained at RADA; son of a bookie. He acted in Shakespeare from the mid-1950s for the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and came to prominence on the London stage in Billy Liar (1960). Afterwards, he appeared in several John Osborne plays directed by Tony Richardson, receiving great praise for Luther in 1961, and taking the role to Broadway in 1963. In 1965, he joined the National Theatre Company and appeared in Peter Shaffer’s Black Comedy (1965) and Peter Nichols’s A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1967); then, after a hiatus, he returned to the company to star in Hamlet, Tamburlaine, Macbeth, and others. His film career was launched with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), and he became an international star in Richardson’s Tom Jones (1963). His other films include: The Entertainer (1960), Night Must Fall (1964), Scrooge (1970), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Dresser (1983), Under the Volcano (1984), The Browning Version (1994), Erin Brokovich (2000), and Traffic (2000).
Foch, Nina (1924–2008). American actress, born in Holland and raised in Manhattan. Her films include The Return of the Vampire (1944), Johnny Allegro (1949), An American in Paris (1951), Scaramouche (1952), Executive Suite (1954), The Ten Commandments (1956), Spartacus (1960), and Mahogany (1975). She had roles on Broadway, was a member of the American Shakespeare Festival, and appeared regularly on T.V. in John Houseman’s “Playhouse 90,” “The Outer Limits,” and others. She also directed and, from the 1960s, taught acting at USC and at the American Film Institute. Her third husband, from 1967 to 1993, was stage producer Michael Dewell (b. 1931).
Fonda, Jane (b. 1937). American actress, born in New York, raised in Hollywood and Greenwich, Connecticut, educated at Vassar; daughter of actor Henry Fonda and his socialite second wife, Frances Seymour Brokaw, who committed suicide in 1950. She worked as a model before studying with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. There she met Andreas Voutsinas, a Greek would-be actor and director born and raised in Africa and educated in London; he directed her in a disastrous Broadway comedy and coached her in films at the start of the 1960s. Attracted to the vanguard of cultural trends, she opposed the Vietnam War during the 1960s, toured American G.I. camps with Donald Sutherland and other actors as the Anti-War Troop and, in 1972, travelled through North Vietnam followed by press and making radio broadcasts. In 1988, she apologized publicly for supporting the enemy and allowing herself to be photographed at the controls of a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. Her films include Walk on the Wild Side (1962), Period of Adjustment (1962), The Chapman Report (1962), Cat Ballou (1965), Barefoot in the Park (1967), They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969), Klute (1971, Academy Award and New York Film Critics Award), Julia (1977), Coming Home (1978, Academy Award), California Suite (1978), 9 to 5 (1980), and On Golden Pond (1981). She married three times: in 1965 to Roger Vadim, who directed her in La Ronde/Circle of Love (1964) and Barbarella (1968), then from 1973 to 1990 to political activist Tom Hayden, and from 1991 to 2001 to CNN tycoon Ted Turner. She had one child with Vadim and another with Hayden.
Foote, Dick. American actor and singer. A longtime lover of Carter Lodge. Isherwood and Bill Caskey first met him in early 1949, and saw him regularly over the years with Lodge and van Druten, sometimes at the AJC Ranch. He appears in D.1 and Lost Years.
Forbes, Bryan (b. 1926). English actor, director, producer, screenwriter, novel ist; born in London and educated at RADA. He worked on the stage from seventeen, had film roles during the 1950s, and appeared in The Guns of Navarone (1961) and A Shot in the Dark (1964). From the 1960s, he turned mostly to direct-ing—including The L-Shaped Room (1962), King Rat (1965), The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969), and The Stepford Wives (1975)—and contributed some of his own screenwriting and producing. His second wife is the English actress Nanette Newman (b. 1934), with whom he has two daughters, Emma, an actress, and Sarah, a fashion journalist.
Ford, Glenn (1916–2006). Canadian-born actor raised in Santa Monica. He was already making movies by 1939, served in the marines during World War II, and afterwards became a star opposite Rita Hayworth in Gilda and opposite Bette Davis in A Stolen Life, both in 1946. Among his many other films are The Big Heat (1953), The Blackboard Jungle (1955), Cimarron (1961), The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1963), and Midway (1976). He also acted in T.V. films and in the series “Cade’s County” (1971) and “The Family Holvak” (1975). When Isherwood met him with Hope Lange in July 1960, he was working on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962), Vincente Minnelli’s remake of the 1921 silent film about a family fighting on opposite sides in World War I; Minnelli’s film was set during World War II. From 1943 to 1959 Ford was married to the American tap dancer, Eleanor Powell (1910–1982); they had a son, Peter. Later, Ford was married to actress Kathryn Hays, from 1966 to 1968, and then to actress Cynthia Hayward from 1977 to 1984 and to Jeanne Baus from 1993 to 1994.
Forster, E.M. (Morgan) (1879–1970). English novelist, essayist and biographer; best known for Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924). He was an undergraduate at King’s College, Cambridge, and one of the Cambridge Apostles; afterwards he became associated with Bloomsbury and later returned to King’s as a Fellow until the end of his life. He was a literary hero for Isherwood, Upward, and Auden from the 1920s onward, and Isherwood regarded Forster as his master. They were introduced by William Plomer in 1932. Forster was a supporter when Isherwood was publicly criticized for remaining in American during World War II. He appears in D.1 and Lost Years. He left his papers and copyright to King’s College with a life interest to his literary executor, the psychologist and translator of Freud, Professor W.J.H. “Sebastian” Sprott (1897–1971). Isherwood was also named in his will, as the heir to the American rights of Forster’s unpublished homosexual novel Maurice, written 1913–1914 and heavily revised 1959–1960; it was published posthumously in 1971 under Isherwood’s supervision. Forster and Isherwood shared an understanding that any proceeds would be used to help English friends in need of funds for U.S. travel; Isherwood assigned the proceeds to the National Institute of Arts and Letters where an E.M. Forster Award was created to support English writers on extended visits in the U.S.
Forthman, William H. (Will). American professor of Philosophy of Religion. Isherwood met him at the start of the 1940s, when Will and his brother Bob were teenage parishioners of Allan Hunter, the Congregational minister who participated in the La Verne Seminar in 1941 and involved himself with Gerald Heard’s spiritual pursuits. Bob Forthman attended one of Heard’s Trabuco seminars in 1942, and Will Forthman continued for many years to attend events sponsored by Heard or by the Vedanta Society. In the 1950s, Will lived on Spoleto Drive in the house of Margaret Gage, Heard’s patroness. He became an instructor at California State University, North Ridge in 1958 while still working
on his Ph.D.; later, he was a full professor and taught there for many years. He appears in D.1.
Fouts, Denham (Denny) (circa 1914–1948). Son of a Florida baker; he worked for his father as a teenager then left home to travel as companion to various wealthy people of both sexes. Among his conquests was Peter Watson, who financed Horizon magazine, and Fouts helped solicit some of the magazine’s earliest pieces. During World War II, Watson sent Fouts to the U.S. with Jean Connolly, and she and Tony Bower introduced Fouts to Isherwood in mid-August 1940 in Hollywood. Fouts determined to begin a new life as a devotee of Swami Prabhavananda, but Swami would not accept him as a disciple, so, after a spell in the East, Fouts moved in with Isherwood in the early summer of 1941, and they led a spartan life of meditation and quiet domesticity. Isherwood describes this in Down There on a Visit where Fouts appears as “Paul,” and there are many passages about Fouts in D.1 and Lost Years. In August 1941, Fouts was drafted into Civilian Public Service camp as a conscientious objector; on his release in 1943, he lived with a friend from the camp while studying for his high-school diploma; afterwards he studied medicine at UCLA. In 1945 and 1946, Isherwood and Bill Caskey lived in Fouts’s apartment at 147 Entrada Drive while Fouts was mostly away; eventually, when Fouts returned, Caskey quarrelled with him, ruining Isherwood’s friendship. Soon afterwards, Fouts left Los Angeles for good.
He became an opium addict in Paris, and Isherwood saw him there for the last time in 1948 before Fouts died in Rome.
Fox, James (Willie) (b. 1939). British actor, from childhood; his real name is William; he is a younger brother of actor Edward Fox. Tony Richardson gave him a small role in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), and he later starred in The Servant (1963), The Chase (1966), Isadora (1968), Performance (1970), A Passage to India (1984), Absolute Beginners (1986), The Remains of the Day (1993), and other films. He left acting for Christian evangelism for a time during the 1970s.
Fox, Lyle. He ran the gym in Pacific Palisades attended by Isherwood, Bachardy, and the Masselinks from the start of the 1960s. He was blond and muscular. In 1967, he married an attractive younger woman called Rez. Eventually he became personal trainer and masseur for Gregory Peck and travelled with Peck on location all over the world.
Frandson, Phillip (Phil) (1925–1981). American educator, from the Midwest. He studied geography, geology, and economics in Paris and Mexico and earned a doctorate in adult education from UCLA. He worked for the Adult Education Association in Washington and Chicago, and from 1956 onwards, for UCLA Extension, where he became Associate Dean in 1970 and Dean in 1973 and developed the Extension into probably the largest continuing education program in the U.S. He was a consultant to the U.S. Office of Education and the National Endowment for the Humanities and travelled in the U.S. and abroad to advise other continuing education administrators. He also collected and lectured about American antiques and received an Emmy Award for producing and hosting a nationally televised T.V. series on American folk art. He also helped plan the Los Angeles Zoo and was a member of its Board of Trustees.
Frank. See Isherwood, Frank Bradshaw.
Franklin. See Knight, Franklin.
French, Hugh (1910–1976). Hollywood agent and former actor. He first approached Isherwood with project ideas in the late 1950s after opening his own agency, Chartwell Artists, with his son, Robin, in about 1956. The Frenches took over from Jim Geller as Isherwood’s film agents in 1963. At the start of the 1970s, Hugh French left Chartwell Artists to produce films. He appears in D.1. French, Robin (b. 1936). Hollywood agent and, later, producer and T.V. syndicator; educated at boarding school in England and briefly at college in California. He worked with his father, Hugh, and increasingly represented Isherwood in the film business, taking over entirely in about 1970. He presided over the “incredible rights mess” of the play I Am a Camera and the musical and film Cabaret, securing Isherwood a substantial income for many years. By 1974, he had left the agency business to become head of domestic production at Paramount Pictures. He later produced a few films, but worked primarily as a T.V. syndicator; eventually he operated and part-owned several T.V. stations before retiring in the late 1990s. French is mentioned in D.1.
From, Isador (Eddie, Isad). American film technician and, later, psychotherapist. Isherwood first met him in 1944, though he became closer to Eddie’s identical twin, Sam, who was among the first to answer one of Evelyn Hooker’s questionnaires. (The Froms did not look alike because Sam had his nose bobbed.) Sam became wealthy as a businessman, but was a frequent drunk driver and died in a car crash in the mid-1950s. The Froms were at the center of The Benton Way Group which began when Ruby Bell, a librarian from the Midwest, inherited some money and encouraged a group of friends, mostly homosexuals and including the Froms and Charles Aufderheide, to move with her to Los Angeles where she bought a house for them downtown on Benton Way. Later, the group moved to a bigger house, above the Sunset Strip behind the Chateau Marmont; the new house looked like an Italian villa and became known as The Palazzo. It was the scene of many parties and also of serious discussions about homosexual love. Their third home was a large apartment above some shops in a two-story building on Melrose Place. According to Alvin Novak, Eddie was once picked up by the police for an offense relating to his homosexuality, and Isherwood made a great impression on him by coming to his aid. The Froms appear in D.1 and Lost Years. Frost, Ron (Ronny). American musician, writer, teacher, and registered nurse. He was accepted as a private piano student by Elizabeth O’Neil De Avirett, director of the Los Angeles Conservatory, when he was still a teenager, but he abandoned his studies and became a surgical technician in the army. Afterwards, he settled in Hollywood and worked at Mount Sinai Hospital, but had difficulties adjusting to civilian life. He heard Swami Prabhavananda lecture at the Hollywood temple in 1957, and the following year he became a monk. By the start of the 1960s, he felt able to devote himself to his music again, and he also studied for a master’s degree in English. Eventually he returned to Texas, where he taught English Composition at the Community College in El Paso, gave private music lessons, and was the organist at Unity Church.
Gage, Margaret. A rich, elderly patroness of Gerald Heard; she loaned him her garden house on Spoleto Drive in Pacific Palisades, close to Santa Monica, from the late 1940s until the early 1960s. She also provided Will Forthman with a room in her house during the same period. She appears in D.1.
Gain, Richard (Dick). American ballet dancer. He danced in the original Broadway chorus of Camelot (1960) and in Martha Graham’s company and later worked as a choreographer and teacher. He became friendly with Richard and Sybil Burton during Camelot and shared their Hampstead home with Isherwood and Bachardy in 1961, while touring with Jerome Robbins’s “Ballets: USA.” Gain’s friend, Richard (Dick) Kuch, also danced in Camelot. In 1972, the pair moved to East Bend, North Carolina, to teach dance at the North Carolina School of the Arts where Kuch became an assistant dean. They resigned in 1995.
Gambhirananda, Swami (1899–1988). Indian monk of the Ramakrishna Order; philosopher, scholar, translator. A powerful General Secretary of the Ramakrishna Order for many years, in charge of its practical daily operation. Then, from 1985 to 1988, he was the eleventh president of the order, the spiritual leader, with no role in temporal matters.
Garrett, Anthony (Tony) (b. 1929). Companion to Angus Wilson from the late 1940s; son of a bank clerk; born and raised in London. He left school at sixteen and in 1945 began work as an assistant librarian at the British Museum, where he met Wilson who advised him what to read and took him abroad. From 1948 to 1950, Garrett served in the Army Intelligence Corps in occupied Austria. He returned briefly to the British Museum, then tried the Foreign Office, and, from 1952 to 1954, studied at the London School of Economics for a Social Science Certificate which enabled him to become a probation officer. In 1960, Garrett sacrificed his career when the probation service, evidently responding to gossip about his homosexual ménage with Wilson, requested that he mov
e out of Wilson’s cottage in Sussex to a separate residence at least forty miles distant. Thereafter, Garrett devoted himself to Wilson’s career, serving as secretary, typist, research assistant, driver, and photographer. He also acted in amateur dramatic productions.
Gates, Jim (1950–circa 1990). American non-conformist, violinist, monk of the Ramakrishna Order; born in Washington state and raised in Claremont, California; his father taught Latin and English. He moved out of his parents’ house before the end of his sophomore year in high school and after high school went with Peter Schneider to Los Angeles, where they shared various living arrangements in Venice, San Marino, and Hollywood, and where he eventually revealed to Schneider that he was gay. He was obsessed with Isherwood and hoped to run into him on the beach; Schneider looked up Isherwood’s telephone number in the phone book and called him to explain this, and Isherwood invited them to Adelaide Drive. Gates attended Santa Monica College briefly and worked as a busboy, library clerk, and live-in assistant to the husband of Marlene Dietrich. He also joined the Hollywood Vedanta monastery for a time. He died of AIDS.
Gavin. See Lambert, Gavin.
Gaynor, Janet (1906–1984). American film star. She appeared in her first movie in the 1920s, and by 1934 was the biggest box office attraction in the U.S. Her films include The Johnstown Flood (1926), Sunrise (1927), Seventh Heaven (1927), Street Angel (1928), State Fair (1933), A Star is Born (1937), The Young in Heart (1938), and Bernadine (1957). For many years, she used the name of her second husband, fashion designer Gilbert Adrian (known as “Adrian,” d. 1959), with whom she appears in D.1. In 1964, she married producer Paul Gregory. Gaynor was also an accomplished painter and showed her still lifes in New York in 1976.
The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969 Page 83