The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969

by Christopher Isherwood

  Mallory, Margaret. Art collector and philanthropist. She lived with Alice Story, known as Ala, and they travelled and collected together. Mallory was a benefactor of UCSB, endowing fellowships in music and art history and donating parts of her collection.

  Mann, Daniel (Danny) (1912–1991). American film and television director, born and educated in Brooklyn. He trained as a musician and acted in the theater from childhood, then made his name directing movies, including Come Back Little Sheba (1952, for which Shirley Booth won an Academy Award), The Rose Tattoo (1955, for which Anna Magnani won an Academy Award), Butterfield Eight (1960, for which Elizabeth Taylor won an Academy Award), Our Man Flint (1966), For Love of Ivy (1968), Willard (1971), and How the West Was Won (1977). Isherwood first met him in 1954 during the filming of The Rose Tattoo, when he took Bachardy to visit Tennessee Williams and Frank Merlo in Key West.

  Manning. See Gurian, Manning.

  Mangeot, Olive. English wife of Belgian violinist André Mangeot; mother of Sylvain and Fowke Mangeot. Isherwood met the Mangeots in 1925 and worked for a year as part-time secretary to André Mangeot’s string quartet which was organized from the family home in Chelsea. He brought friends to meet Olive when he was in London. She is the original of “Madame Cheuret” in Lions and Shadows, and Isherwood drew on aspects of her personality for “Margaret Lanwin” and “Mary Scriven” in The Memorial. Olive had an affair with Edward Upward and through his influence became a communist. Later she separated from her husband and for a time shared a house with Jean Ross and Jean’s daughter in Cheltenham. Hilda Hauser, the Mangeots’ housekeeper and cook, also moved with Olive to Cheltenham, where, together, they raised Hilda’s granddaughter, Amber. As Isherwood tells in D.1 and in Lost Years—in which the Mangeots also appear—Hilda’s daughter, Phyllis, was raped by a black G.I. during World War II and Amber resulted.

  Mangeot, Sylvain (1913–1978). Younger son of Olive and André Mangeot. Isherwood’s friend, Eric Falk, initially introduced Isherwood to the Mangeot family because Sylvain, at age eleven, had a bicycle accident which confined him to a wheelchair for a time, and Isherwood had a car in which he could take Sylvain for outings. They grew to know each other well during the time that Isherwood worked for Sylvain’s father, and together they made a little book, People One Ought to Know, for which Isherwood wrote nonsense verses to accompany Sylvain’s animal paintings (it was eventually published in 1982, but one pair of verses appeared earlier as “The Common Cormorant” in Auden’s 1938 anthology The Poet’s Tongue). Sylvain is portrayed as “Edouard” in Lions and Shadows. Later he joined the Foreign Office and then became a journalist, working as a diplomatic correspondent, an editor, and an overseas radio commentator for the BBC. He appears in D.1.

  mantram or mantra. A Sanskrit word or words which the guru tells his disciple when initiating him into the spiritual life and which is the essence of the guru’s teaching for this particular disciple. The mantram is a name for God and includes the word Om; the disciple must keep the mantram secret and meditate for the rest of his life on the aspect of God which it represents. Repeating the mantram (making japam) purifies the mind and leads to the realization of God. With the mantram, the guru often gives a rosary—as Swami Prabhavananda gave Isherwood—on which the disciple may count the number of times he repeats his mantram.

  Marguerite, previously Marguerite Brown, also Marguerite Harrity. See Lamkin, Marguerite.

  Markovich, John (Mark) (193[2]–2008). American painter and monk of the Ramakrishna Order, born in Detroit. He was known as Mark, and later as Brahmachari Nirmal and then Swami Tadatmananda. He became the official abbot of Trabuco.

  Marple Hall. The Bradshaw Isherwood family seat; see entries for Frank Bradshaw Isherwood and Richard Bradshaw Isherwood.

  Masocco, Mirandi. See Levy, Miranda.

  Mason, James (1909–1984). British actor, educated at Marlborough and Cambridge. He was a conscientious objector during World War II. He joined the Old Vic Theatre Company in the 1930s, soon began making films, and became a star in The Seventh Veil (1945), before moving on to Hollywood where he often played villains. Later films include Julius Caesar (1953), The Desert Rats (1953), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), North by Northwest (1959), Lolita (1962), Lord Jim (1965), Georgy Girl (1966), and The Verdict (1982). On T.V. he played Franz Gruber in Isherwood and Danny Mann’s “The Legend of Silent Night” and Polidori in “Frankenstein: The True Story.” He was married to actress Pamela Kellino from 1941 to 1965 and, from 1971, to Clarissa Kaye.

  Masselink, Ben (1919–2000). American writer, born in Michigan and educated at DePauw University. Probably Isherwood and Bill Caskey met Ben Masselink with his longtime companion Jo Lathwood in the Friendship Bar in Santa Monica around 1949; they appear often in D.1 and Lost Years. During the war, Masselink was in the marines; one night on leave, he got drunk in the Friendship and Jo Lathwood took him home and looked after him. When the war was over he returned and stayed for twenty years. Isherwood alludes to this meeting in his description of The Starboard Side in A Single Man. Masselink had studied architecture, and Isherwood helped him with his writing career during the 1950s. His first book of stories, Partly Submerged, was published in 1957. He then published several novels: two about his war experience—The Crackerjack Marines (1959) and The Deadliest Weapon (1965), the second of which Isherwood greatly admired— and The Danger Islands (1964), for teenage boys. He also wrote for television throughout the 1950s and in 1960 worked at Warner Brothers on the script for a film of The Crackerjack Marines. As Isherwood tells, Masselink left Jo in 1967 for a younger woman, Dionyse (Dee) Humphrey, the wife of their friend, Bill Hawes. Dee had an adopted daughter, Heather, from her first marriage.

  Masselink, Jo (circa 1900–1988). Women’s sportswear and bathing suit designer, from Northville, South Dakota; among her clientele were movie stars such as Janet Gaynor and Anne Baxter. In youth, she worked as a dancer and was briefly married to a man called Jack Lathwood whose name she kept professionally. Also, she had a daughter, Betty (see Arizu), and a son with a North Dakotan, Ferdinand Hinchberger. From 1938, Jo lived in an apartment on West Channel Road, a few doors from the Friendship, and by the late 1940s she knew many of Isherwood’s friends who frequented the bar—including Bill Caskey, Jay de Laval, and Jim Charlton. She never married Ben Masselink, though she used his surname while they lived together. She and Masselink figure through much of D.1 and Lost Years as Isherwood’s closest heterosexual friends.

  Maugham, William Somerset (Willie) (1874–1965). British playwright and novelist. In 1917, he married Syrie Wellcome, but he never lived with her. His companion was Gerald Haxton, eighteen years younger, whom he met in 1914 when they both worked in an ambulance unit in Flanders. They travelled and entertained on Cap Ferrat at the Villa Mauresque, which Maugham bought in 1926. Haxton died in 1944, and Maugham’s subsequent companion and chosen heir was Alan Searle. Isherwood met Maugham in London in the late 1930s and saw him whenever Maugham visited Hollywood, where many of Maugham’s works were filmed; with Bachardy, Isherwood later made several visits to the Villa Mauresque. In 1945, Isherwood worked for Wolfgang Reinhardt on a screenplay for Maugham’s 1941 novel Up at the Villa (never made), and he enlisted Swami Prabhavananda to advise Maugham on the screenplay for The Razor’s Edge (1944). Although Maugham did not follow their advice, Isherwood and Swami again helped him in 1956 with an essay “The Saint,” about Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950), the Indian holy man Maugham had met in 1936 and on whom he had modelled Shri Ganesha, the fictional holy man in The Razor’s Edge. Maugham appears in D.1 and Lost Years.

  maya. In Vedanta, maya is the cosmic illusion, the manifold universe which the individual perceives instead of perceiving the one reality of Brahman; in this sense, maya veils Brahman. But maya is inseparable from Brahman and can also be understood as the manifestation of Brahman’s power, god with attributes. Maya has a double aspect encompassing opposite tendencies, toward ignorance (avidya) and toward knowledge (vidya). Avidya-maya i
nvolves the individual in worldly passion; vidya-maya leads to spiritual illumination.

  McKinnon, Russell. Californian patron of Don Bachardy. He commissioned a sanguine (red pencil) drawing of himself in about 1960, when he was in his early forties and married to a wealthy woman called Edna, ten or fifteen years older. Possibly he also had money of his own. Bachardy felt McKinnon was attracted to him, but McKinnon was shy and expressed his interest mostly in a brotherly way. He urged Bachardy to gain exposure to European art and culture and offered to pay for art study in Europe. Bachardy admired Walter Sickert, so he suggested the Slade where Sickert had studied. McKinnon visited London after Bachardy’s show at the Redfern Gallery and took him out to dinner. They met again in Los Angeles, then eventually fell out of touch.

  Mead, Mr. Isherwood and Bachardy’s mechanic.

  Medley, Robert (1905–1994). English painter. He attended Gresham’s School, Holt, with Auden, and they remained close friends after Medley left for art school at the Slade. In London, he became the longtime companion of the dancer Rupert Doone and was involved with him in 1932 in founding The Group Theatre, which produced The Dog Beneath the Skin, The Ascent of F6, and On the Frontier. He also worked as a theater designer and teacher and founded the Theatre Design section at the Slade in the 1950s before becoming Head of Painting and Sculpture at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in 1958. He appears in D.1 and Lost Years.

  Meredith, Burgess (1907–1997). American actor and director. He distinguished himself in the theater in the early 1930s, moved to film in 1936 with his stage role in Winterset, and appeared in many subsequent films, including Of Mice and Men (1939), The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), Advise and Consent (1961), and Rocky (1976). He also played the Penguin in the Batman T.V. series. His third of four wives was actress Paulette Goddard, from 1944 to 1949. Meredith was blacklisted in 1949, and disappeared from movies for nearly a decade. In D.1, Isherwood tells how his plan to play Ransom in The Ascent of F6 was interrupted by the war; in this volume, Isherwood records Meredith’s interest in directing The Dog Beneath the Skin.

  Merlo, Frank (1921–1963). Italian-American companion of Tennessee Williams; raised in New Jersey by his Sicilian immigrant parents. He was about twenty-five years old when he met Williams in 1947. He had served in the navy and for a time continued to work as a truck driver. He was handsome and capable, kept house, cooked, and made travel, social and business arrangements for Williams. Isherwood first met him in Los Angeles when Merlo accompanied Williams on a visit there in 1949, and Merlo appears in D.1 and Lost Years. The relationship grew less stable during the late 1950s, and the pair were often apart during Merlo’s fatal illness with lung cancer; but it was the most lasting romance of Williams’s life, and Williams was at his bedside when Merlo died.

  Methuen. Isherwood’s English publisher from the mid-1940s. His cousin, Graham Greene, recommended Mr. Norris Changes Trains to E.V. Rieu, a managing director at the firm, but Isherwood’s first book published by Methuen was Prater Violet in the spring of 1946 (well after the U.S. publication because of the war). In September 1935, Isherwood had signed a contract for his “Next three full-length available novels” and accepted half of a £300 advance on the first (styled in the contract Prata Violet); he had already promised his next novel to his current publisher, The Hogarth Press, and at Leonard Woolf’s insistence, Sally Bowles, Goodbye to Berlin, and Lions and Shadows were published by Hogarth. After the war, the contract with Methuen was honored, the second novel being The World in the Evening and the third, Down There on a Visit, which he delivered to Alan White in 1961. White joined Methuen in 1924, became a director in 1933, and retired as Chairman in 1966. When White retired, John Cullen became Isherwood’s editor, and after Cullen, Geoffrey Strachan. Methuen remained Isherwood’s U.K. publisher for the rest of his life and posthumously until 1998, when Random House attempted to take over the imprint which by then belonged to a larger group, Reed Books. Methuen achieved independence through a management buy-out, but agreed in the negotiations to let Isherwood go to Chatto & Windus at Random House.

  Michael. See Barrie, Michael.

  Milam, Webster. Vedanta devotee from Arizona and, as a seventeen-year-old high school student, an aspiring monk. He was among the handful of men who lived with Isherwood in Brahmananda Cottage at the Vedanta Society in 1943. By 1949, he had left the society, and he soon married. He appears in D.1.

  Millard, Paul. American actor. He lived with Speed Lamkin in West Hollywood for a few years during the 1950s. He briefly called himself Paul Marlin, then later changed to Millard; his real name was Fink. He was good-looking and relatively successful on the New York stage and on T.V., but eventually joined his mother’s real estate business and invested in property. During 1959 and 1960, he loaned Bachardy a little house in West Hollywood to use as a studio, and around this time, the two had an affair which Isherwood apparently did not know about. Millard appears in D.1; he died in the 1970s.

  Miller, Dorothy (d. 1974). Cook and cleaner to Isherwood and Bachardy from 1958 until the early 1970s. On their recommendation she later kept house for the Laughtons as well, both in Hollywood and in Charles Laughton’s house next door to Isherwood and Bachardy in Adelaide Drive.

  Miller, Harry Tatlock (1913–1989). Australian-born writer, critic, and curator. He met his longtime companion, Loudon Sainthill, in the mid-1930s, travelled to London with him in 1939 and served with him in the Australian Army Medical Corps during World War II; after the war, they shared a room at Merioola, a Sydney boarding house which gave its name, the Merioola Group, to the artists living there. Miller curated two shows at the David Jones Gallery in Sydney and wrote about the tours of European dance companies and theater com panies to Australia and New Zealand during the 1930s and 1940s, especially Ballet Rambert. In 1939, when Sainthill’s paintings of the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo were shown at the Redfern Gallery in London, Miller began an association with the gallery and in 1949 settled in London permanently and was made a director. His books with Sainthill include Royal Album (1951), Undoubted Queen (1958), and Churchill (1959); he also edited Loudon Sainthill, With an Appreciation by Bryan Robertson (1973).

  Miller, Henry (1891–1980). American writer, born in New York, son of a Brooklyn tailor. He dropped out of college, drove a cab, worked at odd jobs and for Western Union, then lived in Paris from 1930. His first novel, Tropic of Cancer (1934), about an American artist abroad, was published there but banned in English-speaking countries for its sexual explicitness. In the U.S. the ban was lifted in 1961 and Grove Press brought out an edition, but the book was labelled obscene and booksellers were prosecuted for selling it. Grove Press and the ACLU fought more than sixty cases, eventually reaching the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in December 1963 that the book was not obscene. A volume of Miller’s stories, Black Spring (1936), and his second novel, Tropic of Capricorn (1939), were also banned until the early 1960s. Other works include The Colossus of Maroussi (1941) about Greece, The Plight of the Creative Artist in the United States (1944), The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945), The Rosy Crucifixion—a trilogy comprised of Sexus (1949), Plexus (1953), and Nexus (1960)—The Time of the Assassins (1956) about Rimbaud, The Intimate Henry Miller (1959), and Just Wild about Harry (1963), a play. He also painted, contributed to Why Abstract? (1945) with Hilaire Hiler and William Saroyan, and assembled To Paint Is to Love Again (1960) with reproductions of his work. During World War II, he returned to America and settled in Big Sur in 1944; in 1962, he moved to Pacific Palisades. Partly because of his long battle with censorship, he became a guru for the Beat generation. He was married five times. His triangular love affair with his second wife, June Mansfield, and Anaïs Nin, who encouraged and assisted him financially during his years in Paris, was recorded by Nin in her diaries and became the subject of the movie Henry and June (1990). With his third wife, Janina Martha Lepska, to whom he was married from 1944 to 1952, he had Valentine Miller (b. 1945) and Henry Tony Miller (b. 1948); they lived with their mother in Los
Angeles. His fourth wife was Eve McClure, whom he divorced in 1962.

  Miltown. A tranquilizer widely used in the 1950s and 1960s, generically called meprobamate. In the mid-1960s, it was discovered to be a habit-forming sedative and became a controlled substance available only by prescription.

  Mishima, Yukio (1925–1970). Japanese author, of novels, short stories, poems, plays, and essays; born Kimitake Hiraoka; educated at Tokyo University. He was already famous in Japan when Alfred Knopf published The Sound of Waves in English translation in 1956 and invited Mishima to the U.S. the following year. Isherwood first met him during that visit, which he tells about in D.1, and they met again in November 1960 when Mishima returned to the U.S. for the staging in New York of three of his Noh plays. By then Mishima had married Yoko Sugiyama, a student of English literature and daughter of the painter Yagushi Sugiyama, and the couple had had the first of their two children. More of Mishima’s work had been translated into English: Five Modern Noh Plays appeared in English in 1957, then Twilight Sunflower (also a volume of plays) and Confessions of a Mask (1949) in 1958, followed by The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1959) and many others. Confessions of a Mask addressed Mishima’s discovery of his homosexuality. His masterwork, Sea of Fertility, conceived in 1962 and completed in 1970, is a tetralogy about Japan in the twentieth century. Mishima was obsessed by the warrior traditions of Imperial Japan and was expert in martial arts. In 1968, he founded a military group, the Shield Society, to revive the Samurai code of honor. Disillusioned when the young did not answer his call for a return to nationalist ideals, he committed Seppuku; in his diary entry for November 25, 1970, Isherwood transcribed an account of the ritual suicide from the Los Angeles Times. Mishima was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize.