Liberation

by Christopher Isherwood

  When I got home, Hunt Stromberg called, to say that the head of Universal (I forget his name119) is going to England about the 18th of August to arrange to film “Frankenstein” there and that Hunt wants him to have the script as far as the costume ball—the rest will be filled in from our treatment. He says they want to show the film in movie houses. Hunt himself is coming back here about the 10th or 11th, to see about this. I’m relieved in a way that we have got to get a move on.

  Then I ran down to the ocean and took a dip, and on the way back I met Mike Steen, who told me that Tennessee’s play120 didn’t do badly in Chicago and that a man from the Ahmanson Theater has gone to see it and decide if it shall be produced here.

  July 30. Last night, when we were ready for bed, Doug Walsh showed up, drunk. He has been to see me again today, drunk. Very briefly, one of his daughters, aged seventeen, ran away with a black man, a married black man who is a musician of some kind, and lived with him for a couple of weeks. When she came home, under pressure from the police, she talked “nigger talk” to Doug, which so enraged him that he hit her and broke her nose. Soon after this, she ran away again. Now she has written him from Boston, saying that she left town to save the black man, whom Doug has been threatening to kill. She also said that the black man saved her from the drug scene and that she wants to live with him and bear his children. Doug is now checking up to find if the black man is still in Los Angeles or if he has joined her in Boston. If he is still in Los Angeles, Doug says he won’t kill him.

  During our talk today, Doug said his father died of cancer and that he is sure he has it too—only in his case it’s lung cancer. He was very happy in the army because it gave him “guidance.” Otherwise he has been “a miserable sonofabitch.” His wife doesn’t understand. He sacrificed himself for his country and what is his reward? His daughter runs off with a nigger. Do I think he’s prejudiced? I evade the question.

  Doug is a living proof that you don’t have to be educated or win an Oscar to be like Harry Brown. But, actually, he’s much better company. The funny thing is, despite his self-pity, he has lots of drive and is an affectionate dog-type. We both think he has a big queer streak in him. Today he shed tears and then said, “A man of my stature ought not to cry.” I thought to myself, thank God I’m not a psychiatrist—imagine earning your living by listening to this sort of thing. . . . And yet, in my cool Isherwood way, I’m really quite fond of Doug. I would even like to help him. But all the help he wants is something I won’t/can’t do; write a television story about him and his daughter and the tragedy of parents in our day and age!

  At the gym, down to 148 and ½. We went in the ocean, which is brownish red. Very humid. Ninety degrees in town but only seventy-six down here.

  July 31. We went in the ocean this morning. I’ve been in at least twenty times this month! A slightly drunken drip with a moustache came over and told me he’d read Prater Violet five times and still didn’t know what it was about. He went on to say the same thing about several of my other books. He was a perfect specimen of the Hostile Fan type.

  Here’s part of a questionnaire sent me by a Miss Jean Ehly from Amarillo, Texas: What is the loveliest thing about your home? What does home mean to you? Can we not teach love, compassion, tolerance to our children, thus enabling them to better cope with the world? How important is beauty to you in your surroundings? Sir, how important is meditation to you (at home)? Today many people do not like to stay home—is boredom evidence of lack of communion with God in our home life?

  Gut-ache and gas. Desperate struggles to get on with “Frankenstein.” Don absolutely angelic. Somehow or other, whenever I talk to him about the story, we hatch out an idea. So on it crawls.

  August 1. Last night it was very hot and humid, even down here. I felt wretched, blown up full with gas. And Jo’s sad old life added to the wretchedness, although, I must say, she didn’t whine nearly as much as usual; even when she talked about Benjy.121 She says that he hasn’t drunk anything now in a very long time, but that he tells her he still thinks about liquor continually. He has just taken up some form of meditation and goes to classes. Meanwhile, in New York, Anne Baxter has had a somewhat unexpected triumph, having taken over Lauren Bacall’s part in Applause (the musical based on All About Eve).

  Today my gut is much better, at least for the time being. And, thank God, I have at last been granted a breakthrough on “Frankenstein.” I’ve written about five times more than my usual stint and it seems fairly okay.

  August 2. This heat continues; it’s bearable down here but awful as soon as you get inland. I still feel lousy with gas, although I ran down to the beach and went in the ocean. Now I’m trying to cut down on eating. Did quite a big chunk of “Frankenstein” scenes today.

  Last night we saw Gavin, who is still convinced that there is going to be a depression very soon. He has got a lot of his money in Switzerland. Has been seeing Merle Oberon and her husband, [Bruno] Pagliai—and says of them, “There’s something very comforting about the rich, their attitude never changes.” Still no definite news of financing for Gavin’s two film projects.

  August 3. More “Frankenstein,” more gas—though I’ve been eating practically nothing. Don with Mike Van Horn to see Billy Al Bengston and to draw Penny Little. I shopped, buying nuts for our breakfast cereal and Makro-Slim, our latest patent chew-food. Then I went in the ocean, which is still red and dirty but warm with delicious waves. Oh, I am such a compulsive old thing, jogging down the road to the beach, sitting for a moment only on the sand alert for dogs (lest they should pee on my towel), then into the ocean[,] alert for surfers (lest they should collide with me) then to take a shower on the beach (hurrying lest someone else should get there first) then hobbling uphill over the gravel and wiping off the sand from my feet on the lawn of the corner house (hastily, lest they should look out and tell me not to). My secret life isn’t a bit like Walter Mitty’s—it’s mostly ratlike scurrying to secure myself some tiny advantage.

  August 4. Another broiling day. Last night we had supper with Billy Al Bengston and Penny Little at Musso Frank’s. It was a caprice of Billy’s—everything one does with Billy is one of his caprices—to drive right into town on such a hot night, very slowly and leisurely, in his huge air-conditioned car. Actually he was sleepy and got tired of the caprice and wanted his bed, even before he was halfway through his great chunk of beef. I do like him and all his poses and acts, but I don’t feel at ease with him. (“I never feel at ease with any heterosexual man,” I told Don, which rather annoyed him; he thought I was just being difficult!) Billy is now approaching forty—from his point of view; actually he’s about three years off it. He looks fine, which is probably why he talks like that. He told Penny he has “old arms.”

  Don has heard (he can’t remember from whom) that there is to be another big earthquake on August 9 right here in town.

  Lunch with Swami and the others at Malibu today. While we were alone before lunch, Swami told me something he said he’d never told anyone else. (I doubt this—I think by this time he has told every word to someone or other!) We were talking about Hindus and Muslims, and Swami, to illustrate the fact that he had been on good terms with Muslims when he was a young man in India, told me how, while he was on the train travelling to see Maharaj at Kankhal (when he was sixteen or seventeen) he sat next to a Hindu priest, with three Muslims sitting opposite to him. Suddenly the priest groped him, right up beside the crotch—Swami demonstrated this—and, as Swami put it, “I felt very narvous,” adding, “I didn’t know what it was about.” So the three Muslims invited him to come over and sit with them, and they offered him food.

  Swami also told me that Michael Barrie had been to see him, and that Michael had told him Gerald had had a dream, shortly before his strokes, in which he was at Belur Math, and Ramakrishna was there surrounded by his disciples, and as Gerald walked past them, Ramakrishna pointed to him and said, “That one belongs to me!”

  August 5. Another hot day! And we
have to drive clear through town to Mount Washington, to have supper with Bob Ennis (Exotica) and the Reverend Troy Perry, whom I’ve been wanting to meet for some time but am also rather dreading. I am determined not to become involved in his gay church. Still, I can’t help respecting him, idiotically as he sometimes behaves. At least he defends us queers at the risk of his own life as well as ours!

  To see Dr. Allen this afternoon about my stomach. At the first sight of his good-looking good-tempered face I felt better at once. He prescribed Daricon.122

  August 6. As hot as ever, and more predicted, but I feel a lot better inside—thanks either to Daricon or to psychological detensioning produced by seeing Dr. Allen.

  Our evening was pretty much of a drag, because we talked homo sexuality relentlessly for nearly four hours, and dinner was deliberately delayed by Bob in the hopes that Troy’s boyfriend Steve would show up—he didn’t. Meanwhile, a coconut rum drink was served, followed by lots of wine. I laid off all of this, on Allen’s orders. Also, dinner itself wasn’t up to much. The spinach salad would never have passed muster at the Casa,123 and what Bob grandly called Beef Wellington was more of a Napoleon Waterloo.

  On the credit side was Bob’s new and quite beautiful though nearly silent boyfriend, David Mosley. Also, Reverend Troy really impressed me. He is a queeny southern belle, and vain, but brave, innocently shameless and (I believe) fundamentally without shit. I like Bob too.

  Don thinks David Mosley was dipping into a dictionary throughout the evening and looking up words we used which he didn’t understand. It is true that once I distinctly heard him repeat to himself the word “sophisticated”!

  At the gym today—it was too hot to go there for the past week—I weighed a little over 147.

  August 7. Very hot again. Today I missed going down to the ocean, in order to get on with “Frankenstein.” This is the part just before the attempted destruction of the Creature by Polidor and Victor.

  Last night, we had supper at the Beverly Hills Hotel, in Tennessee Williams’s room. Mike Steen cooked it—meat loaf. And Victor Campbell, Tennessee’s secretary and boyfriend, was there. We liked him. He is a very sweet-natured girly-faced rather husky young man from Florida. Tennessee says he used to be retarded and maybe he still is. He read an awful short story out loud to us, at Tennessee’s suggestion, without the slightest embarrassment. And he does magic tricks, with apparatus he bought at Disneyland. They are off to Tahiti and maybe other Pacific islands, tonight.

  Tennessee seemed fatter, quite sane, though a bit high on something before dinner; he laughed incessantly and said life was like a Pinter play. He told me he had always loved me, even before we met; and Don that he gets more and more beautiful. He hopes to have his two-character play, Out Cry, performed here. He gave us an old copy of Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses—an edition published in 1905, with illustrations by Jessie Willcox Smith. He said this was the one his mother used to read to him from, when he was a child.

  Tennessee went to bed early, saying that he was “not a well lady”; but his reason for doing so was also, evidently, in order to hold a levee—or rather, it’s opposite—for he assembled us around him, sitting on the bed. There was then a good deal of dialogue with Victor, making him recall, for our benefit, the night of their first meeting, etc. I wondered later if this form of conversation is perhaps particularly characteristic of dramatists, since it is so often used by them on the stage, when one character is forced by another to make some terrible or at least indiscreet revelation containing necessary exposition!

  August 8. Have now got as far as the destruction of the Creature— how is it to be attempted? Our latest idea is to involve one of the two Chinese menservants—I mean, let the Creature kill him; we can’t afford to kill both, as one is needed for driving! According to this arrangement, the menservants would be doing the dirty work, with Polidor and Victor watching.

  Last night we had supper with Nellie Carroll, Miguel124 and Wilbur Flam,125 who is here on a visit with his two sons. He is now divorced from his wife. He looks older, worried, fat and rather sad. He was very pleasant, and indeed so was Nellie. I have a sort of prejudice against her and yet, often, when I see her (which isn’t often) I am entertained and feel fond of her.

  Not quite so hot today, and the red tide has disappeared.

  Yesterday afternoon, I went over to 147 to talk to Donald Hall, who is writing the Charles Laughton biography.126 Elsa was there too, but withdrew so we men could dig up the dirt. I gathered I was supposed to discuss Elsa’s relations with Charles and answer the question: “Granted that he was often unpleasant with her, did she provoke it in any way and was she ever unpleasant to him?” Of course I wasn’t about to commit myself on this. So we retreated to the safer paths of homosexuality; I being careful only to lead Mr. Hall up the ones he knew already. It is all very well to talk about being truthful in the interests of history, future generations, etc.— but not with Elsa around; she will never, never forget anything I say. Though she may not fully realize it, she is actually using this project to find out if certain of her suspicions about Charles are correct or not. I’m not sure what I think about Hall himself. He smiled rather too much. I suspect that I terrified him—he was terrified lest he, a square, should say something tactless about my “people,” the queers—or even merely use some tabooed word, like calling a Scot Scotch.

  August 9. As hot as ever. All records are now broken—this is the longest spell of over-ninety temperatures in Californian history. But, down here, it isn’t really anything to complain about. Most of the time we have our breeze. And the ocean is refreshing.

  Hunt’s secretary called this morning. He is returning today and we are to see him tomorrow. Today I reached the end of the fire scene at the Old House and there’s only one more short scene before the ball sequence.

  Yesterday, Bob Ennis and David Mosley came over, so Don could draw David. Meanwhile, Bob poured out his emotions, pure intentions and hopes for a beautiful relationship. His silliness is endearing. But what is impressive is that he has already talked to several members of this white and apparently fairly wealthy family and somehow made them accept the fact that David, who has run away from their home in Georgia, is living with Bob and planning to stay there for some time. Bob says that David is very protective towards him, and this I can believe. He seems like a good boy. Don likes him. As for sex, David claims that he doesn’t want any of any kind, at present.

  August 10 [Tuesday]. Yesterday at the gym I weighed 149. This is the kind of thing which enrages me out of all proportion to its importance, which is nearly nil. I have been trying hard to bring my weight down and I had set my heart on getting down below 145 for my birthday. And yet, what the hell does it matter? I am not significantly overweight anyhow. No one—not even Don—cares, within reason, how I look. And on top of that, I’m well aware that weight is a freak thing and that probably mine was up temporarily because of too many cups of Sanka that day.

  Today I more or less got through the ball scene in “Frankenstein.” Hunt Stromberg is coming by tomorrow morning to see us about it. He wants to give Sheinberg the extra pages on the 16th, to take to England on the 18th.

  Had supper at Vedanta Place, where Swami told me that [one of the monks] ran away the other day and wanted to disappear— maybe even kill himself—because he is, in his words, “no good for anything.” This stunned me. And it is one more reminder that I don’t really understand anybody—I only sometimes kid myself that I do. [The boy] is back at the monastery now—seemingly his usual cheerful self, and ready to take brahmacharya with several others at Trabuco next Friday (the 13th!). Probably it was because of this impending change of status that [the boy] got so upset. He even sent Swami a note saying that he wasn’t fit for it. Swami replied that he, Swami, was the best judge of that! I saw [the boy] tonight but only for a moment. I wish I could have talked to him alone. I also saw Chetanananda again and am quite charmed by him. He is marvellously campy, rolls his eyes, giggl
es and does incredible things with his immensely long fingers. Surely he must be queer? But let me beware of thinking I understand him!

  Number 147 was broken into again, last night. This time nothing was stolen except for some liquor. One of the downstair beds was slept in. Elsa has started saying that maybe she will sell the house, or anyhow rent it for a while. This is slightly aimed at us, implying that if we were better neighbors and closer companions for her she wouldn’t feel disinclined to come down there, as she does since Ray Henderson got married.

  August 11. 147 and ½ at the gym.

  Hunt came to see us this morning. Most of his suggestions are fairly easily complied with and I dreamed up an end for Mrs. Blair which satisfied him—she goes snooping in Victor’s rooms, comes upon the Creature and has a stroke. Hunt wants the new pages tomorrow or Friday, and the whole thing is to be given to Sheinberg on the 17th. Hunt’s ideas for casting—Burton, Taylor, Chamberlain—but Chamberlain wants half of the picture! And top billing!!

  Renate called to say Ronnie is crazy again and she is afraid he will visit her and be violent. More alarming, for us, is that Ronnie was in some looney bin in Texas and he decided that I released him from it by my mystic power—so we can expect a visit from him any time! Poor dear Ronnie—for him to show up just at this moment would be hideously appropriate—like the Creature looking in on Frankenstein; the prospect of his gratitude is appalling. It will use up several work hours.

  August 12. Shortly before seven this evening; have just sent off our big batch of “Frankenstein” pages to Hunt by messenger, up to and including the ball. Now we have a couple of days to do the alterations he wants on the earlier pages.