The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969

by Christopher Isherwood

  Harford, Betty. See Andrews, Oliver and Betty Harford.

  Harris, Bill (d. 1992). American artist, raised partly in the USSR and Austria. Harris painted in the 1940s and later made art-objects and retouched photographs. Isherwood met him through Denny Fouts in 1943, while still living as a celibate at the Hollywood Vedanta Society; early in 1944 they began an affair which helped weaken Isherwood’s determination to become a monk. Harris was a beautiful blond with a magnificent physique, and Isherwood found him erotically irresistible; the relationship soon turned to friendship, and Harris later moved to New York. Isherwood refers to Harris as “X.” in his 1939–1945 diaries (see D.1), and he calls him “Alfred” in My Guru and His Disciples. Harris also appears in Lost Years.

  Harris, Julie (b. 1925). American stage and film actress, born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan; educated at finishing school, Yale Drama School, and the Actors Studio. She became a star in the stage adaptation of Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding (1950), a status she confirmed when she originated the role of Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera (1951). She received a Tony Award for Forty Carats (1969) and for The Last of Mrs. Lincoln (1972), and toured with a one-woman show on Emily Dickinson, The Belle of Amherst (1976). Altogether, she has won five Tony Awards, more than any other actor, and she has been nominated ten times. She moved to the screen with early stage roles, receiving an Academy Award nomination for her film debut in The Member of the Wedding (1952); later Hollywood movies include East of Eden (1955), Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), The Haunting (1963), Harper (1966), Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), The Bell Jar (1976), and Gorillas in the Mist (1988). She has also been nominated for nine Emmy Awards, and won twice. During the 1980s, she appeared in the television series “Knots Landing.” Isherwood first met her in 1951 after she was cast as Sally Bowles, and their close friendship is recorded in D.1. She was married to Jay Julien, a theatrical producer, and then to Manning Gurian, a stage manager and producer, with whom she had a son, Peter Gurian. She divorced Gurian in 1967 during a long affair with actor James ( Jim) Murdock. In 1977 she married the writer William Carroll.

  Harrison, Rex (1908–1990). English stage and film star, educated at Liverpool College. He made his stage debut in Liverpool at sixteen and was successful in the West End, on Broadway, and in films by the mid-1930s, especially in black-tie comedies. He married six times: to Marjorie Colette Thomas (1934–1942), to actresses Lilli Palmer (1943–1957), Kay Kendall (1957–1959), and Rachel Roberts, whom Isherwood mentions both as Rachel Harrison and as Rachel Roberts (1962–1971), to Elizabeth Harris, ex-wife of actor Richard Harris (1971–1975), and to Mercia Tinker (1978 until his death). His affair with another actress, Carole Landis, was presumed to have contributed to her suicide. He won a Tony Award as Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady (1956) on Broadway, and the 1964 film brought him an Academy Award. His other films, many of which also reprised stage roles, include Blithe Spirit (1945), The Rake’s Progress (1945), Anna and the King of Siam (1946), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Cleopatra (as Julius Caesar, 1963), The Agony and the Ecstasy (as Pope Julius, 1965), and Doctor Doolittle (1967).

  Harrity, Rory. American actor. Second husband of Marguerite Lamkin, from 1959 until 1963. Harrity began on the stage and had a film role in Where the Boys Are (1960). He also had writing ambitions, but died young of alcoholism.

  Hartley, Neil (1916–1994). American film producer, from North Carolina; Tony Richardson’s collaborator in Woodfall Productions from 1965. He was production manager for Broadway impresario David Merrick, who imported several of Richardson’s stage plays, and he met Richardson in 1958 at the Boston try-out for The Entertainer. The pair worked together for the first time on Luther when it opened in New York in 1963. The Loved One was the first film that Hartley produced for Richardson, and the partnership lasted until Richardson’s penultimate film, Hotel New Hampshire (1984). Hartley also produced for T.V., including “The Corn Is Green” (1979) and several Agatha Christies. He was a semi-closeted homosexual and died of AIDS. His companion for a long time was Bob Regester.

  Harvey, Anthony (Tony) (b. 1931). English actor turned film editor, then director. He directed his first film in 1967. When he was mooted to direct Cabaret in 1969, he had just had a popular success with The Lion in Winter (1968) and an Academy Award nomination.

  Harvey, Laurence (Larry) (1928–1973). Lithuanian-born actor, educated in South Africa and briefly at RADA. He played the Christopher Isherwood character in the film version of I Am a Camera in 1955, and Isherwood first met him in London in 1956. He appears in D.1. He worked on stage and in films in England from the late 1940s and through the 1950s before going to Hollywood; other films include The Good Die Young (1954), Storm Over the Nile (1955), Three Men in a Boat (1956), Room at the Top (1958), Expresso Bongo (1959), Butterfield 8 (1960), Walk on the Wild Side (1962), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Of Human Bondage (1964), Life at the Top (1965), Kampf um Rom (1966), and The Magic Christian (1968). He lived with the actress Hermione Baddeley for a number of years and was married three times: to actress Margaret Leighton from 1957 to 1961, to American heiress Joan Cohn from 1968 to 1972, and to model Paulene Stone from 1972 until his early death from cancer. With Stone he had a daughter, Domino (1969–2005), subject of the eponymous 2005 film. He also reportedly had male lovers, including Jimmy Woolf, who boosted his career.

  Hayworth, Rita (1918–1987). American movie star and World War II pinup. Her parents were dancing partners in the Ziegfeld Follies, and she was a professional dancer at twelve. Her career swelled and faded like her love life, but she was Hollywood’s sex goddess during the 1940s. Her films included Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Blood and Sand (1941), You Were Never Lovelier (1942), Cover Girl (1943), Gilda (1946), Miss Sadie Thompson (1953), Pal Joey (1957), and Separate Tables (1958). She had five husbands—including Orson Welles and Aly Khan, the son of the Aga Khan—and many lovers. She appears in D.1 with her last husband, producer James Hill.

  Heard, Henry FitzGerald (Gerald) (1889–1971). Irish writer, broadcaster, philosopher, religious teacher. Auden took Isherwood to meet him in London in 1932 when Heard was already well known as a science commentator for the BBC and author of several books on the evolution of human consciousness and on religion. A charismatic talker, he associated with some of the most celebrated intellectuals of the time. One of his closest friends was Aldous Huxley, whom he met in 1929 and with whom he joined the Peace Pledge Union in 1935 and then emigrated to Los Angeles in 1937, accompanied by Heard’s friend Chris Wood and Huxley’s wife and son. Both Heard and Huxley became disciples of Swami Prabhavananda. Isherwood followed Heard to Los Angeles and through him met Prabhavananda. Then Heard became an ascetic, rejecting association with women and criticizing Swami’s insufficient austerity; he broke with Swami early in 1941, straining his friendship with Isherwood, and set up his own monastic community, Trabuco College, the same year. By 1949 Trabuco had failed, and he gave it to the Vedanta Society of Southern California to use as a monastery. In the early 1950s, Heard’s asceticism relaxed, and he warmed again to his friendship with Isherwood and, later, Don Bachardy. During this period, he shared Huxley’s experiments with mescaline and LSD.

  He contributed to Vedanta for the Western World (1945) edited by Isherwood, and throughout most of his life he turned out prolix and eccentric books at an impressive pace, including The Ascent of Humanity (1929), The Social Substance of Religion (1932), The Third Morality (1937), Pain, Sex, and Time (1939), Man the Master (1942), A Taste for Honey (1942; adapted as a play by John van Druten), The Gospel According to Gamaliel (1944), Is God Evident? (1948), and Is Another World Watching? (1950) published in England as The Riddle of the Flying Saucers. For a number of years, he obsessively documented sightings of flying saucers, which he believed were either ultra-fast, experimental aircraft kept secret by the U.S. government or, more exciting to him, visitors from Mars.

  Heard is the original of “Augustus Parr” in Down There on a Visit and of “Propter” in Huxle
y’s After Many a Summer (1939). His role in Isherwood’s conversion to Vedanta is described in My Guru and His Disciple, and he appears throughout D.1 and Lost Years.

  Heinz. See Neddermeyer, Heinz.

  Henderson, Ray. American musician, educated at USC. As a pianist, he accompanied Elsa Lanchester for many years, performing in her nightclub act at The Turnabout, a Los Angeles theater, and on tour, notably, in the autobiographical revue Laughton created for her, “Elsa Lanchester—Herself,” for which he was billed as Musical Director, and on her T.V. show. He was also her friend and lover, although he was much younger than Lanchester. He composed the music for some operettas which she recorded privately, and he scored and wrote lyrics for a musical version of The Dog Beneath the Skin, which was never produced. He died young, of a heart attack.

  Herbold, Mary. A member of Allan Hunter’s Congregational church. Isherwood met her in the early 1940s. She was a typist and a notary public whose services Isherwood evidently used over the years. On Isherwood’s recommendation she typed Time Must Have a Stop for Huxley in 1944. She appears in D.1.

  Hockney, David (b. 1937). British artist, educated at Bradford Grammar School in West Yorkshire, Bradford School of Art, and the Royal College of Art. By 1961, he was identified with his friend R.B. Kitaj and others as leaders of a new movement in British art. Versatility and an appetite for new projects and techniques continually energized his career, in oils, acrylics, photography, photocopying, drawing, printmaking, faxing, computer images, watercolor, stage and opera design, as well as commentaries about art and the historical development of artistic technique. Hockney’s early success allowed him to travel to the USA, Europe, and Egypt; in 1964 he settled in Los Angeles, and met Isherwood soon afterwards. During the 1960s, he taught at the University of Iowa, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Colorado, as well as at UCLA where, in 1966, he met Peter Schlesinger, a student in his class who became an important subject. Hockney and Schlesinger rented an apartment on 3rd Street in Santa Monica, a few minutes’ walk from Isherwood and Bachardy. Hockney returned to England towards the end of the 1960s and then worked in Paris for a time, near Gregory Evans who became his lover by 1974 and another important subject. Later, he moved around among studios in the Hollywood Hills, Malibu, London and eventually, Bridlington in Yorkshire.

  Hoitsma, Kinmont (b. 1934). American college instructor. He fenced for Princeton and for the U.S. in the 1956 Olympics, studied art history as a postgraduate, and for thirty years taught humanities, philosophy, and religious studies in a community college in the San Francisco Bay area. He was photographed by Cecil Beaton in 1964 and 1965, and he appears in Beaton’s diaries. He published a booklet, The Real Mask—Albee’s Tiny Alice (1967).

  Holt, Larry. Dr. Hillary Holt, a Hollywood devotee of German or Austrian background. He lived in Hollywood and was friendly with the American monk, Swami Anamananda, who assisted him with his work and errands. He died of cancer in the 1970s.

  Holy Mother. See Sarada Devi.

  homa fire. Prepared in an ancient Vedic ceremony according to scriptural instructions, the fire is a visible manifestation of the deity worshipped. Offerings to the deity are placed in the consecrated fire. The homa ritual aims at inner purification; at the end of the ritual, the devotee mentally offers his words, thoughts, actions, and their fruits to the deity.

  Homolka, Oscar (1901–1978) and Florence Meyer (1911–1962). Viennese-born actor and his wife, a photographer. He moved from stage to screen in Germany at the end of the 1920s and went to Hollywood in the 1930s. Isherwood met him in 1941 during the filming of Rage in Heaven. Homolka was in countless other movies, including The Seven Year Itch (1955), War and Peace (1956, as General Kutuzov), A Farewell to Arms (1957), and Funeral in Berlin (1966). Isherwood knew Homolka’s first wife, the actress Grete Mosheim, and he remained friendly with Homolka’s second wife, Florence, after her marriage to Homolka ended. Florence was wealthy in her own right; her father, Eugene Meyer, was publisher of The Washington Post, later succeeded by her younger sister, Katharine Meyer Graham. The Homolkas appear in D.1.

  Hooker, Evelyn Caldwell (1907–1996). American psychologist and psychotherapist, trained at the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins; professor of psychology at UCLA. She was among the first to view homosexuality as a normal psychological condition. She studied homosexuals in the Los Angeles area for many years, through questionnaires, interviews, and discussion in various social settings, accumulating many file drawers of notes which she referred to as “The Project.” She first presented her research publicly at a 1956 conference in Chicago, demonstrating that as high a percentage of homosexuals were psychologically well-adjusted as heterosexuals. (Her paper was titled “The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual.” Isherwood mentions another 1961 paper, “The Homosexual Community,” published in the Proceedings of the XIV International Congress of Applied Psychology in Copenhagen. There were many more.) Born Evelyn Gentry, she took the name Caldwell from a brief first marriage then changed to Hooker at the start of the 1950s when she married Edward Hooker, a Dryden scholar and professor of English at UCLA, who died of a heart attack in 1957. Isherwood met her in about 1949, possibly through the Benton Way Group. In 1952, Jim Charlton refurbished the Hookers’ garden house on Saltair Avenue in Brentwood, and Isherwood stayed there until tension developed over the arrival of Don Bachardy in 1953. After an uneasy period, the friendship resumed, as Isherwood tells in D.1 and Lost Years. In 1961, Isherwood refers to a young woman Hooker counselled who suffered complications after an abortion and had to be hospitalized. The young woman’s father pressed charges against Hooker, two other psychiatrists who had each advised a therapeutic abortion, the obstetrician who performed the operation, and his daughter’s boyfriend. The five were indicted by a grand jury. After six months, the judge ruled there was not enough evidence to indict Hooker, who, as a personal friend of the young man in question, had only referred the couple to one of the two psychiatrists. Both psychiatrists and the young man were eventually declared innocent, but Hooker came to believe that the police had pursued the charges against her because of her research on homosexuality, about which she was questioned at her university office. Anxiety led her to remove all personally identifying data from her notes and records, a task which took her and her secretary nearly a year.

  Hoopes, Ned (1932–1984). Teacher, children’s anthologist, and, during 1962– 1963, host of “The Reading Room,” a CBS T.V. series about children’s books. He worked on a biography of Charles Laughton, at first with Elsa Lanchester’s approval and later without. The book, A Public Success–A Private Failure: The Unauthorized Biography of Charles Laughton, was never published.

  Hope. See Lange, Hope.

  Horne, Geoffrey (b. 1933). American actor and acting coach, born in Argentina. He appeared in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and worked in T.V. from the 1950s through the 1980s. He taught acting at the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute and, later, at New York University. One of his numerous wives was Collin Wilcox, with whom he looked after several children evidently born to other parents.

  Houseman, John (1902–1988) and Joan. Romanian-born writer, director, producer, and actor; his real name was Jacques Haussmann. His mother was British and he was educated in England, then travelled to Argentina and the U.S. as an agent for his father’s grain business which collapsed during the Depression. He worked as a journalist and translated plays, then in 1934, directed Virgil Thomson’s opera of Gertrude Stein’s Four Saints in Three Acts, a Broadway hit. Afterwards, he collaborated with Orson Welles with whom he founded the Mercury Theater in 1937. He produced Welles’s film Citizen Kane (1941), but after a disagreement over who developed the story, he went on to work for David Selznick in Hollywood and was responsible for a string of widely admired films. He returned often to direct on Broadway, taught at Vassar, was Artistic Director of the American Shakespeare Festival in the late 1950s, and later of the UCLA Professional Theater Group, and he ran
the drama division at Juilliard from 1967. He took his first of many movie roles in Seven Days in May (1964), and he won an Academy Award for his supporting role in The Paper Chase (1973), which he reprised in the T.V. series. He divorced his first wife and, in 1950, married a beautiful and stylish French woman, Joan Courtney, with whom he had two sons. He appears in D.1 and Lost Years.