The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969

by Christopher Isherwood

  Ritajananda, Swami. Indian monk of the Ramakrishna Order; chief assistant to Swami Prabhavananda at the Hollywood Vedanta Society from 1958 to 1961. He then went to France to run the Vedanta Center at Gretz, near Paris, until his death in 1994. As his assistant at Gretz, he later took on Prema, by then called Swami Vidyatmananda.

  Robbins, Jerome ( Jerry) (1918–1998). American dancer, choreographer, theater and film director, born and raised in New York where he studied dance and appeared on Broadway before joining Ballet Theater in 1940. He collaborated with Leonard Bernstein on Fancy Free and On the Town in 1944 and went on to choreograph many Broadway hits, including The King and I (1951), The Pajama Game (1954), Peter Pan (1954), West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), and Fiddler on the Roof (1964). In Hollywood, he worked on The King and I and West Side Story, for which he shared an Academy Award for Best Director in 1961. He worked simultaneously in classical ballet, sometimes with George Balanchine, and became a Ballet Master with The New York City Ballet in 1972. He ran a touring company, “Ballets: USA,” from 1958 to 1962, which he brought to London in 1961 when Isherwood and Bachardy were there. The company performed many of his own works, including Afternoon of a Faun (1953, to Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune), and The Cage (1951), both of which Isherwood mentions.

  Roberts, Rachel (1927–1980). Welsh-born actress, educated at the University of Wales and RADA. She had many stage roles, beginning in 1951. Her films included Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), This Sporting Life (1963, Academy Award nomination), O Lucky Man! (1973), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and When a Stranger Calls (1979). She also appeared regularly on American T.V. in “The Tony Randall Show” from 1976 to 1978. Her second marriage, in 1962, was to Rex Harrison; they divorced in 1971.

  Robinson, Bill. A young man with whom Isherwood became friendly during 1958. Robinson was then in analysis, and soon settled into a successful longterm relationship. He appears in D.1.

  Rodia, Sabato (1879–1965). Italian-born construction worker, tiler, and telephone-line repairman. He worked from 1921 to 1948 in a lot beside his house in Watts, building seven towers of steel rods, reinforced cement, and wire mesh, which he decorated with tile fragments, broken dishes and bottles, sea shells, car parts, corncobs, fruit, and other objects, and titled “Nuestro Pueblo” (Our Town). His remark, which Isherwood quotes in his entry for March 19, 1969, about doing something big was recorded by William Hale, a student, who made a 1952 documentary about Rodia.

  Roerick, Bill (1912–1995). American actor. Isherwood met him in 1943 when John van Druten brought Roerick to a lecture at the Vedanta Society. He was in England as a G.I. during World War II and became friends there with E.M. Forster, J.R. Ackerley, and others. His companion for many years was Tom Coley. In 1944, Roerick contributed a short piece to Horizon defending Isherwood’s new way of life in America after Tony Bower had made fun of it in a previous number. He appears in D.1 and Lost Years.

  Ronnie. See Knox, Ronnie.

  Rorem, Ned (b. 1923). American composer and writer, born in Indiana and raised in Chicago. His mother was a civil rights activist and his father a medical economist whose work formed the basis for Blue Cross; both were Quakers. Rorem attended the Music School of Northwestern University before winning a scholarship to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia; he continued his studies at Juilliard. He was Virgil Thomson’s copyist in the late 1940s and in 1949 moved to France where he entered Parisian aristocratic circles and pursued his own eccentric, dissipated adventures. He chronicled this life in The Paris Diary (1966) and published four further volumes of diaries as well as books of lectures and criticism. His musical compositions, which are widely performed and recorded, include three symphonies, four piano concertos, many other orchestral and chamber works, six operas, a variety of choral works, ballet and theater music, and the hundreds of songs and song cycles for which he is best known.

  Rosen, Bob. Assistant director and production manager on various T.V. serials, and, later, a producer. He was a casual friend who lived near Isherwood in Santa Monica and was often on the beach.

  Ross, Jean (1911–1973). The original of Isherwood’s character Sally Bowles in Goodbye to Berlin. He met her in Berlin, possibly in October 1930, but certainly by the start of 1931. She was then occasionally singing in a night club, and they shared lodgings for a time in Fräulein Thurau’s flat. Ross’s father was a Scottish cotton merchant, and she had been raised in Egypt in lavish circumstances. After Berlin, she returned to England where she became friendly with Olive Mangeot, lodging in her house for a time. She joined the Communist party and had a daughter, Sarah (later a crime novelist under the name Sarah Caudwell), with the Communist journalist and author Claud Cockburn (1904–1981), though Ross and Cockburn never married. She appears in D.1 and Lost Years.

  Russell, Bertrand Arthur William, 3rd Earl Russell (1872–1970). English philosopher, mathematician, social critic, writer; educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a Cambridge Apostle; afterwards he worked as an academic. He published countless books and is one of the most widely read philosophers of the twentieth century. Chief among his awards and honors was the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Throughout his life, Russell expressed his convictions in social and political activism. When he opposed British entry into World War I and joined the No-Conscription Fellowship, he lost his first job at Trinity, and he was fined and imprisoned more than once for his role in public demonstrations as a pacifist. Partly as a result, he became a visiting professor and lecturer in America and returned to Trinity as a Fellow only in 1944. Isherwood first met him through Aldous and Maria Huxley in late 1939 in Hollywood, as he tells in D.1. By December 1939, Russell had renounced pacifism because of the evils of fascism. In 1949, he began to champion nuclear disarmament. In 1958, he helped to found and was elected president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, but he resigned in 1960 to launch his more militant Committee of 100 for Civil Disobedience Against Nuclear Warfare, which sponsored several public protests in 1961. A week before the September 17 demonstration which Isherwood mentions, Russell and more than thirty other committee members (including three Royal Court playwrights, Arnold Wesker, Robert Bolt and Christopher Logue) were summoned to Bow Street magistrates’ court and enjoined not to breach the peace by participating; they refused and were sentenced to a month in prison. Because he was eighty years old, Russell served only seven days, in Brixton.

  Sachs, David (1921–1992). American philosopher and poet, born in Chicago, educated at UCLA and Princeton where he obtained his doctorate in 1953. He lectured widely and taught philosophy at a number of American and European universities, longest at Johns Hopkins. His essays on ethics, ancient philosophy, philosophy of the mind, literature, and psychoanalysis were published in many journals, as were his poems, and he edited The Philosophical Review. He appears in Lost Years as a participant in the Benton Way Group.

  Sahl, Mort (b. 1927). Canadian-American comedian and political satirist, raised mostly in Los Angeles and educated at UCLA. As he tells in D.1, Isherwood first saw him perform in Los Angeles in July 1960; that year, Sahl was pictured on the cover of Time Magazine as the father of a new kind of comedy. He appeared in films and on T.V. and made many recordings.

  Sainthill, Loudon (191[8]–1969). Australian-born theatrical designer. He painted Colonel De Basil’s Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo on tour in Australia in the late 1930s and was invited to return with the company to London where he had a show at the Redfern Gallery in 1939. Afterwards, he designed sets and costumes for Helene Kirsova when she left the Monte Carlo Russian Ballet to set up her own company in Sydney, and he served in the Australian military during World War II. After the war, he lived with Harry Tatlock Miller at Merioola, and they produced books about Ballet Rambert and the Old Vic Theatre Company on tour. In 1949, they settled in London, where Sainthill designed sets and costumes for the Royal Shakespeare Company and others, including The Tempest (1951), Shaw’s The Apple Cart (1953), A Woman
of No Importance (1953), RimskyKorsakov’s Le Coq D’Or at the Royal Opera House (1954), Othello (1955), Tiger at the Gates (1955), Expresso Bongo (1958), Orpheus Descending (1959), Aladdin (1959), Belle or the Ballad of Dr. Crippen (1961), Canterbury Tales (1967), and a handful of films. He collaborated on several books with Miller, and he taught stage design at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London during the 1960s.

  St. Just, Maria (1921–1994). Russian-born actress, Maria Britneva. She was edu cated in England and in 1956 married Peter Grenfell, 2nd Baron St. Just (1922–1984) the heir and putative son of English banker and politician Edward Grenfell. She was known for her obsessive friendship towards Tennessee Williams more than for her acting. Williams made her his literary executor, a role she played with ferocity until her death in the early 1990s. Isherwood met her through Williams, certainly by the mid-1950s, and she is mentioned in D.1.

  samadhi. The state of superconsciousness, in which an individual can know the highest spiritual experience; absolute oneness with the ultimate reality; transcendental consciousness.

  Sambuddhananda, Swami. Indian monk of the Ramakrishna Order. He was a disciple of Holy Mother and was inspired to become a monk by Swami Premananda, a disciple of Ramakrishna. Sambuddhananda was head of the Ramakrishna Math in Bombay from 1935 to 1965. He also served as secretary on several centenary committees. He died in the mid-1970s.

  Sandwich, George. See Amiya.

  sannyas. The second and final vows of renunciation taken in the Ramakrishna Order, at least four or five years after the brahmacharya vows. The sannyasin undergoes a spiritual rebirth and, as part of the preparation for this, renounces all caste distinctions. In D.1, Isherwood’s entry for March 13, 1958 refers to the way in which Krishna (George Fitts) had first to join the Brahmin caste in order to have a caste to renounce; then Krishna had to imagine himself as dead, and to become a ghost in preparation for being reborn. At sannyas, the spiritual aspirant becomes a Swami and takes a new Sanskrit name, ending with “ananda,” bliss. Thus, the new name implies “he who has the bliss of ” whatever the first element in the name specifies, as in Vivekananda, “he who has the bliss of discrimination.” A woman sannyasin becomes a pravrajika (woman ascetic), and her new name ends in “prana,” meaning “whose life is in” whatever is designated by the first element of the name.

  Sarada (d. 2009). American nun of the Ramakrishna Order; of Norwegian descent, originally called Ruth Folling. She studied music and dance and, while at the Vedanta Society, learned Sanskrit. Her father lived in New Mexico. Isherwood met her when he arrived in Hollywood in 1939; in the mid-1940s, she moved to the convent at Santa Barbara where he occasionally saw her. He tells about her in D.1 and Lost Years. She was a favorite of Prabhavananda, but she suddenly left the Vedanta Society in October 1965 when she was forty-three years old. She married a few years later and became a painter. Prabhavananda was distressed by her abrupt departure and for a long time afterwards forbade her to be mentioned by her Sanskrit name, insisting she be called Ruth.

  Sarada Convent, Montecito. In 1944, Spencer Kellogg gave his house at Montecito, near Santa Barbara, to the Vedanta Society of Southern California. The house was called “Ananda Bhavan,” Sanskrit for Home of Peace. Kellogg, a devotee, died the same year, and the house became a Vedanta center and eventually a convent housing about a dozen nuns. During the early 1950s, a temple was built adjacent to the grounds.

  Sarada Devi (1855–1920). Bengali wife of Ramakrishna; they married by arrange ment when she was five years old. After the marriage, she returned to her family and he to his temple, and their relationship was always chaste although she later spent long periods of time living intimately with him. She became known as a saint in her own right and was worshipped as Holy Mother, the living embodiment of Mahamaya, of the Divine Mother, of the Goddess Sarasvati, and of Kali herself. Isherwood was initiated on Holy Mother’s birthday, November 8, 1940.

  Satprakashananda, Swami. Indian monk of the Ramakrishna Order. In D.1, Isherwood records meeting Swami Satprakashananda for the first time in 1957. He was head of the St. Louis Vedanta Center from 1938 until his death in the late 1970s.

  Schary, Dore (1905–1980). American actor, writer, film producer, studio executive. He ousted Louis B. Mayer to run MGM in 1951, then formed his own production company. Lonelyhearts (1958) was his adaptation of Nathanael West’s novella, Miss Lonelyhearts, and Sunrise at Campobello (1960) was based on his award-winning play about Roosevelt. He appears in D.1.

  Schenck, Marvin (1897–1993). Studio executive, at MGM; a nephew of Hollywood bosses Joseph Schenck (Loews, United Artists, Twentieth Century-Fox) and Nicholas Schenck (Loews, MGM). He began work aged fifteen as an office boy for Marcus Loew Vaudeville Booking Agency in New York, joined the navy during W.W.I, then managed Loew’s theaters in New York and New Jersey before joining MGM and, later, moving to Los Angeles. In 1954, when MGM hired Isherwood to write the script for Diane, Schenck formally questioned him about his loyalty to the U.S., and as he mentions in his diary entry for September 7, 1969, Isherwood always felt ashamed of answering. He had signed a petition requesting a review of the case against the “Hollywood Ten,” who were jailed without appeal and blacklisted by the studios for refusing to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The studios adopted the uniform position that they would not knowingly employ a Communist or a member of any group proposing to overthrow the U.S. government. Isherwood implied to Schenck that, upon reflec tion, he might not sign the petition again. He assured him that he had never been a member of the Communist party and affirmed his loyalty to the U.S. He also explained that his leftist sympathies in the 1930s, like those of so many of his contemporaries, had primarily reflected his strong opposition to fascism. He reiterated most of this in a subsequent letter written at the request and on behalf of Salka Viertel, but the letter denies any knowledge of the political activities or attitudes of Salka or her daughter-in-law, Virgina, who had divorced leftist writer Budd Schulberg to marry Peter Viertel.

  Schenkel, John. A novice monk at the Hollywood Vedanta Society from about 1949; by 1952 he was living at Trabuco. He became Ananta Chaitanya in 1954 when he took his brahmacharya vows and then, around 1960, he fell in love and left Vedanta to get married. Eventually, he settled in India with his wife, an Indian woman he met in Mexico City. He appears in D.1.

  Schlesinger, Peter (b. 1948). American painter, photographer, and, later, sculptor; born and raised in Los Angeles. In the summer of 1966, Schlesinger studied drawing with David Hockney at UCLA and became Hockney’s lover and model. In 1968, they travelled together to England, where Schlesinger studied at the Slade. He remained in England for the better part of a decade, also travelling in Europe. Some of the photographs which he took during this period later appeared in his book, A Checkered Past: A Visual Diary of the 60s and 70s (2003), including many of Eric Boman, the photographer who became his lover and companion in 1971 and with whom he moved to New York in 1978.

  Schneider, Peter (1950–2007). American writer, editor, and teacher, raised in Claremont, California, where he became friends with Jim Gates who first introduced him to Vedanta. He and Gates moved to Los Angeles together when they were about eighteen, at first living briefly with Schneider’s father, Dr. Leonard Schneider, a Gestalt therapist and a psychology professor at L.A. State, and afterwards in a cabin on the canals in Venice. Around this time, Schneider attended Santa Monica College; he later got a degree in English at UCLA. He introduced himself and Gates to Isherwood over the telephone; Isherwood began driving them to Wednesday night meetings at the Vedanta Society and soon introduced them to Swami Prabhavananda, whereupon Schneider joined the society, toying with the idea of becoming a monk. Instead, he married Sumishta Brahm, a Vedanta devotee; the marriage was short, but he stayed away from the Vedanta Society for some years. Afterwards, he lived with Anya Cronin, also known as Anya Liffey, with whom he had two children in the 1980s. With Cronin, he wrote and produced musicals and other theate
r events for the Vedanta Society and elsewhere. He contributed to Vedanta publications and served as the society librarian in Hollywood. His Sanskrit name, given to him by Vivekaprana, was Hiranyagarbha. As P. Schneidre and later P. Shneidre, he published poems in Paris Review, Rolling Stone, Antioch Review, and others. He also founded and ran a literary press, Illuminati, publishing work by James Merrill, Charles Bukowski, Viggo Mortensen, and a book of Don Bachardy’s drawings of artists, 70 x 1.

  Schorer, Mark (1908–1977). American literary critic, novelist, biographer, anthologist; educated at the University of Wisconsin. He taught at Dartmouth and Harvard before becoming Professor of English at Berkeley in 1945; he was department chair from 1960 until 1965. He lectured around the country on modern English and American literature, held distinguished research fellowships (including three Fulbrights, four Guggenheims, and a Bollingen), and served on the boards of various learned societies. His short stories appeared in The New Yorker, and he wrote three novels, House Too Old (1935), The Hermit Place (1941), and The Wars of Love (1954). He also published William Blake: The Politics of Vision (1946), Sinclair Lewis: An American Life (1961), and edited two widely used books for students of English, The Harbrace College Reader (1959, with Philip Durham, Everett L. Jones, Mark Johnston) and Modern British Fiction: Essays in Criticism (1961). He had a son and a daughter with his wife, Ruth.