In New Orleans, Heinlein sold the trailer to a young couple just getting married. After Mardi Gras he and Ginny returned to Pass Christian and to work on his books. He had to expand the serial “Methuselah’s Children” into a book, and he had to cut Space Cadet—and he had to be canny about it.
Alice Dalgliesh wasn’t entirely happy with Space Cadet—it was a little different from the formula in Rocket Ship Galileo; the characters, she thought, were not so sharply defined, and her eyes glazed over in the technical material—despite which she and her assistant, Virginia Fowler, found the book “fascinating.” 17 Their sense of his readership was better than their conscious philosophy about writing for children.
Heinlein cut the book from 73,000 to 70,000 words and had it to her by the end of the first week in March. He needed the $450 advance to pay his taxes.
While Heinlein was revising Space Cadet, Cal Laning wrote saying he had decided definitely that he wanted Heinlein to come to Washington, D.C., and help him finalize the new article on how radar could be applied to air traffic control. By the end of February, Laning had finished his draft of “System in the Sky” and sent it to Lurton Blassingame for preliminary comments. It was time to make the travel arrangements to D.C.—not a simple matter.
Laning had offered Heinlein his basement, but, he cautioned, there were complications:
You can certainly shack up with us. Mick [Cal’s wife and Leslyn’s friend], is still antagonistic—I believe mostly as a result of Leslyn’s handling though partly because she feels you represent too strong a claim on my affections. I am sure that the visit would work out in improved relations. 18
But Robert could not bring Ginny with him, effectively saying to Mickey Laning, “Oh, by the way, here’s my current shack-up I left your friend for, and won’t you invite her into your home, too?” If he was going to go to Washington, they would have to separate for at least a couple of weeks. Ginny could go on to New York without him, and he could join her there when he was finished in D.C.
Meanwhile, Ginny acquired a kitten from a neighborhood boy, a rustcolored tom she called Pixie. “I started out as a dog man—and still am,” Heinlein wrote years later, “but the relationship with cats is not the relationship with dogs. Dogs are human; cats are e.t.s—Martians probably. Very odd people and all different and quite unhuman.”19 Ginny, however, was as cat-mad as Mark Twain.
Pixie was entertaining: he would launch himself at the trailing skirt of Ginny’s ankle-length housecoat and climb up to her shoulder, where he would perch, cleaning her hair. But Robert grouched because the cat tied them down to Pass Christian just when he was making arrangements to move. 20
Then the situation became even more complicated: he heard from Bill Corson that Leslyn was carping about some personal items he had kept—a briefcase she had given him in 1934; a Tchaikovsky phonograph record. He sent the briefcase back by way of Corson and asked him to buy the album for her as a replacement. That kind of thing still gave him twinges of grief. “This whole matter is still a source of great pain to me,” he told Corson.
I was so upset as to be useless and unfit to live with the entire day following the receipt of your last letter but I do want you to know that I greatly appreciate the news about her that you relay to me and comments thereon. Please continue. It is a great help to me and has done more than anything else to confirm me in my resolution to stay away from her .21
She was receiving $50-a-month payments from Corson on a $1000 loan they had jointly given him earlier, so he had to stay in touch with her. Heinlein didn’t, and that’s the way he wanted to keep it.
Town and Country magazine bought “Broken Wings” on March 1. They retitled it “Ordeal in Space,” to point up both the science-fiction elements and the ironic twist.
Heinlein was starting to get ready for the move to Washington, D.C., when Fritz Lang wrote him. They had corresponded in December, once Heinlein had a more or less permanent address .22 Now Lang wrote saying he was wrapping up a film project and it was time for them to collaborate on the trip-to-the-Moon film they had been talking about periodically since Heinlein had come back to Hollywood after the war. Lang had been approached by the astronomer Robert S. Richardson, but Richardson’s story idea was “hopeless.”23 Lang wanted Heinlein to come back to Hollywood to work on this project; he knew Heinlein had the right attitude about it: no mad scientists, nothing fantastic—let the inherent drama speak for itself. “An interesting human story,” Lang framed the project, “against the background of the first rocket to the moon.”24
“Your suggestion of Moon story collaboration tantalizes,” Heinlein wrote back, but he was already committed to D. C.25 He proposed to cut short the stay in New York he had planned after completing the article with Laning and come to Hollywood in April. Lang thought this would work.26
This put Heinlein square up against a big problem: Ginny had reconciled herself to a brief separation, planning to meet up again in New York after he finalized “System in the Sky” with Cal Laning. The trip to California would mean a much longer separation—months longer at the very least. Ginny could no more accompany him back to Hollywood than she could camp out with him in Cal Laning’s basement, and for much the same reason: they would be much, much too visible there to slip under Leslyn’s radar, or the law’s, or his family’s, for that matter.
But he could not turn Lang down. There are no letters or other documents telling how the arrangements were made—Heinlein was still not referring to Ginny at all in his correspondence—but if their later relationship is at all typical, he must have sat Ginny down one evening and laid out the situation for her as dispassionately as he could manage. She could only have been sad about it: if they separated now, there was a real possibility they might not be able to get back together later. But Ginny faced up to the necessity; she could not have disagreed with his logic. This was an opportunity he had to take.
On March 25 they loaded up Skylark IV for the trip to Washington, D.C. They must have been sadly conscious this could be their last trip together. Perhaps he later wrote a poem to himself about this painful and ambiguous moment and stuck it in his files—very different from the thumping, Kiplingesque verse he had written for “The Green Hills of Earth”:
“Wise Choice”
Of course it’s the sensible thing to do;
Our love was founded on shifting sand.
You owe me nothing, nor I to you.
We’re both agreed, and here’s my hand.
So go your way and I wish you well
I know that you wish the same to me.
No need for candle, nor book, nor bell—
I’m sure we’ll often meet for tea.
If we can’t be lovers at least we’re friends.
There’s no denying the fun we’ve had.
The waltz is over, the music ends.
It could not last but it wasn’t so bad.
You never quite lose what you’ve already had
So I’m not bitter and you’re not mad.
If you’re content I’ll even be glad.
Rational actions need never be sad.
So finish your cup; I’ll fetch your hat.
A friendly kiss and then we part.
You’re startled—that noise? No, it wasn’t the cat;
But only the sound of a breaking heart.
In Washington, D.C., Heinlein settled into Laning’s basement and bent his efforts to finishing up the “System in the Sky” article Laning had drafted. Laning just was not a commercial writer. 27
Ginny discreetly visited for a few days with a friend from her Bureau of Aeronautics days, then went on to New York by train. She went about getting reestablished—finding another residence hotel, another secretarial job—but the luster had gone out of her life. She didn’t even have family there anymore: both of her parents had remarried and had no place for a thirty-year-old daughter in their lives.
She looked up John Arwine and went out on a couple of dates with him. He was
already separated from his wife and about to get a divorce—a nice enough guy, but no sparks.28
Heinlein joined her in New York a couple of weeks later and camped out with Arwine. The two men arranged to drive west together, leaving just before Ginny’s thirty-first birthday. Heinlein would drop Arwine off in Las Vegas and then go on to Los Angeles.
Heinlein arrived in Hollywood around May 4, 1948 (a postcard from Victorville, northeast of Los Angeles, was postmarked on May 3). This time, he had to stay close to Lang’s home and office. He could not bunk with friends; none of his friends were in the Hollywood area anymore, so he would have to put up with the inconvenience (and expense) of moving from hotel to hotel every few days, since the postwar ordinances coping with the population explosion were still in place. He wrote to Ginny almost daily.
Lang was ready to go to work, too. He had already started pitching a project around Hollywood, to be titled Rocket Story,29 based on his earlier talks with Heinlein about a realistic treatment of the early days of space flight. Heinlein found the early stages of building a film project mystifying and frustrating. He put the best possible face on it for Ginny’s benefit: “I’m not used to the Hollywood method of writing a story yet. It just seems like sitting around and chatting, but it’s fun.”30 Their partnership was supposed to share the writing jointly, with Heinlein supplying all the technical expertise for the story and Lang the technical expertise for film. But the complicated deal maneuvers Lang floated seemed pointless and confusing to him.31
He did keep busy on other matters: it helped his reputation locally that he had two stories out—“Gentlemen, Be Seated” in Argosy in April 1948 and “Ordeal in Space” in the May issue of Town and Country. Nearly as soon as he arrived in Hollywood, he was invited to give a talk to a group of children’s librarians at a “Book Breakfast” of the County Librarians’ Association meeting in Los Angeles on May 5, 1948, sharing the “stage” with eight writers, including soon-to-be Newbery Medal–winning children’s librarian-turned-writer Mabel Leigh Hunt32 and Theodor Seuss Geisel, who was to become much better known as Dr. Seuss. Although Geisel had been writing children’s books since 1936, in 1948 he was still best known for his Flit ads and Oscar-winning documentary films—and for the series of “Private Snafu” newspaper cartoons he had done with Chuck Jones during World War II (his Gerald McBoing-Boing cartoon would first appear in 1950 and 1951). Heinlein’s boys’ books were written for an older readership than most of this particular group aimed at; he talked about how the “gravity gauge”—the difference between the Moon’s gravitational field and the Earth’s—might change the strategic situation so completely that anyone who got to the Moon first didn’t need atomic weaponry; he could throw rocks from the Moon and be a serious threat. The speech was picked up as the theme of The Los Angeles Times’s report of the breakfast the next day.33
Heinlein got reacquainted with his friends and found it possible to have a social life of a sort—but it was opening up old scars. “This return to Hollywood is having an odd emotional effect on me,” he wrote Ginny.
I can’t define it because I can’t analyze it, but I think I will be free of most of the bad associational effects of the place after this one trip. However, just at present seeing old friends and old places is squeezing out emotional feelings that have been dammed up. For one thing, after a year of avoiding my friends and keeping my mouth shut I find myself talking about my bustup with Ed, with Roby [Wentz], with Bill, with Lucy [the Corsons] particularly. And probably I shall talk with others. At the time it is both painful and relief-inducing, like removing a bandage or tearing off adhesive tape. I don’t know how I shall feel about it in the long run.34
The daily sessions with Fritz Lang were starting to take on a surreal quality. Heinlein practically forced the story issue by offering the basic situation of Rocket Ship Galileo and evolving a more adult-oriented story line out of it. Lang seemed preoccupied spinning deals, and Heinlein didn’t understand more than a third of the maneuvering he wanted to do.35
This semi-stalled state was beginning to have a serious downside for Heinlein as his cash reserves drained away: it was very expensive to live in Los Angeles. He had been lucky enough to find a room to rent, on Highland north of Franklin,36 so he no longer had to move every few days—but he would have to do some commercial writing, quickly, in order to stave off total collapse of his finances. Fortunately, several markets had asked for stories: Irving Crump, the editor of Boys’ Life magazine, had written before Heinlein got to Hollywood,37 asking for a twenty-thousand-word serial; Town and Country and This Week magazines were both looking for short stories.38
And Lang kept spinning deals. He wanted his production company—Diana Productions—to take over the copyright of the story they were generating, without fee. Heinlein thought it was time for him to consult his agent: maybe Lou Schor could explain the whys and wherefores of this deal to him.
As to Fritz, at first everything was lovely, then I told him that I must go see my agent and talk things over with him. He wanted to know why Lou must know anything about our venture, an attitude that I did not like. I told him that Lou was displaying other properties of mine, interplanetary, as he knew. I pointed out that it was better to bring Lou in, pay his commission, and have him on our side. He agreed but it seemed to surprise him very much that Lou was offering Rocket Ship Galileo for sale.
Why it should surprise him I don’t know, since he had seen the book and actually owned a copy, but it did. He then took the stand that I must make up my mind between Rocket Ship Galileo and the venture with him before we could talk about anything. I wanted him to talk with me and Lou to see what the situation was and figure out what was mutually advantageous—i.e., Fritz has no financing as yet. Lou thinks he can float a moon rocket story; maybe we can use Lou. No, no, a thousand times no! I was subject to five hours of temperament, nine P.M. to two A.M. at Fritz’s house. All of which added up to the notion that Fritz would not see Lou because “he had nothing to say to him.” There’s no need to go into all the involvements. Lou thinks that Fritz is trying to pull a fast one in which I would speculate on a possibility while giving up the right to peddle the moon story elsewhere and taking my chances that a picture might eventually bring me some money while Fritz draws fifty thousand or so as director’s salary in advance profits.39
Heinlein didn’t think Lang was being that dishonest: Lang was a personal friend of several years’ standing—but certainly there was an uncomfortable level of paranoia. And there were other matters that made him uncomfortable : “A couple of phrases used in my presence,” he told Cal Laning, “plus a remark about Paul Robeson made by his closest friend and collaborator … convinced me that Fritz was either a commie or a fellow traveler.”40
Well, I was prepared to trust him completely when I came out here, but his displays of temper at the very idea of talking things over with my agent have left me quite jaundiced. Actually, I think Fritz is quite honest by his lights and sincerely hurt that I should have let an agent come between us. He feels that he is honoring me with the association and that I should be grateful. Well, I am, but when it comes to the money side of it, it seems to me that I should be paid just as soon as he is. And I don’t see why that we remove from the market a story which he’s not interested in. Oh, well, I doubt if we shall reach any agreement, in which case Lou will go ahead and see what he can do without Fritz. Perhaps it’s just as well. I still have qualms about Fritz’s leftist leanings, and I would hate to be associated with a story which might turn out to fit the party line. But mostly I don’t give a damn.41
He just didn’t go back to Lang’s house. “The deal with Fritz Lang is probably falling through,” he wrote Lurton Blassingame on May 18, 1948,
but I am not unhappy about it. Lou Schor does not like the proposed contract, and especially does not like the fact that Lang wants me to agree to withdraw Rocket Ship Galileo from the market before he will go ahead. Schor is expecting to sell Galileo.42
T
wo weeks later, Lang wrote, saying this obviously was not working out. “Let’s call it quits and part friends”43—which Heinlein thought was about all that could be salvaged from that. Schor quietly went about trying to salvage the film deal—if not with Lang, perhaps with someone else. 44
32
FRESH STARTS
When the project with Lang collapsed at the end of May 1948, Heinlein’s trip to Los Angeles became open-ended, and the possibility of money problems and family problems had to be dealt with. Lou Schor, his Hollywood agent, confidently expected to sell Rocket Ship Galileo for film, and the adult-oriented story Heinlein wanted to develop for film (only loosely related to Rocket Ship Galileo) might be salvaged in one way or another, so leaving Hollywood again was not an option.
But the social problems Heinlein had anticipated from his return to Hollywood did start to come about: Leslyn had started hinting that she wanted to meet with him, probably to talk about a reconciliation. He was stalling her, but he could not keep that up indefinitely1—and what he heard of her current condition from friends who had visited her recently made him heartsick. “Because you never saw her before she got sick,” he wrote Ginny in New York, “you cannot compare her with the person I knew and loved.”
And now she is sicker than ever, in a dire and desperate condition, and there is nothing at all I can do to help her. It tears my heart out and makes me want to weep. Of course, I can’t help her. She’s gone too far into her dream world. All I could get is her lashing-out resentment at my attempt to force her to give up her sodden ways. I know that she isn’t lovely and that she did it to herself. For one thing, I can’t stop the march of years and apparently she can’t stand growing old and must convince herself by her own means that she is young and desirable. I can’t help it, but it leaves me with a sickness that I cannot readily get over. Forgive me, dearest, I can’t shut Leslyn like a book and lay her aside forgotten. She was part of my life. She was my life. It will take time for me to build up a new life. I still love her and grieve to my roots for what she has become.2
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century Page 58