Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century
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Leslyn Heinlein, letter to RAH, 11/02/47.
RAH, letter to Bill Corson, 12/01/47.
Bill Corson, letter to RAH, 12/23/47.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 05/14/48.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 05/14/48.
RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 11/20/47; see also RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 04/17/54. Heinlein notes his stories had not polled well in November 1947, and he must have received this information in direct response to his May 30, 1947, letter to Stuart Rose asking what kind of story the Post would like to see next. However, the particular face-to-face conversation with Ben Hibbs, reported to Blassingame in April 1954, must have taken place in April 1948, as Heinlein noted it took place the “last time” he was in Philadelphia, and in another place he records his most recent prior visit to Philadelphia as between stops in Washington, D.C., and New York before going back to Hollywood to work with Fritz Lang on his speculative Moon rocket film project. RAH, Naval Personal History Statement, 01/31/51.
RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 11/20/47.
RAH, letter to William Corson, 12/01/47; RAH, letter to Dorothy and Clare Heinlein, 12/08/47.
RAH, “The Happy Days Ahead,” Expanded Universe.
Heinlein made different parts of this observation about his usual working method at many times and in many places; see, for example, RAH’s letter to Lurton Blassingame, 03/16/46:
I suppose you are used to the method of having a writer send in a few chapters and a synopsis. I will do that when requested to, but, unfortunately, once I have gone that far with a novel, that novel will be finished about ten days later, or at least with such speed that only the fastest possible response from the publisher can affect the outcome very much. I am sorry, but it is a concomitant of how I work. I work slowly on a novel for the first few chapters only. As soon as I can hear the characters talk, it then becomes a race to see whether I put down their actions fast enough not to miss any of them. It is more economical in time and money and it results in a better story for me to work straight through to a conclusion, rather than wait for an editor to make up his mind whether or not he likes it. Editors are not likely to like my advance synopses in any case, for it is simply impossible for me to give the flavor of a story not yet written in a synopsis.
Virginia Heinlein, taped interview by author, Tape 6, Side A (February 28/March 1[?], 2000).
Virginia Heinlein, letter to author, 11/07/99b.
RAH, letter to Rex Ivar Heinlein, 10/09/54.
Virginia Heinlein, letter to author, 11/30/2000.
RAH, letter to Betty Jane Babb, 02/04/59.
Virginia Heinlein, IM with author, 02/05/01.
RAH, letter to Betty Jane Babb, 02/04/59.
RAH, letter to Betty Jane Babb, 02/04/59.
On the author’s first visit to Virginia Heinlein’s Florida home in 2000, she took down the bottle from its display shelf and opened it; a faint odor lingered, after fifty-three years. The bottle was not forwarded to the RAH Archive following Virginia Heinlein’s death and may have been accidentally discarded during the breakup of the house in February 2003.
Methuselah’s Children was not actually published until 1958; his third hardcover book was Space Cadet. Methuselah’s Children was subsumed into Shasta’s Future History project as one of five volumes, which would have been published in 1954 or 1955. But the project fell apart after the third volume of short stories and was never completed.
31. Once More, Dear Friends … (pages 448–457)
Virginia Heinlein, letter to Leon Stover, 03/17/89.
Virginia Heinlein mentioned this fact to the author in an untaped dinner conversation that took place in March 2001. There appears to be no other documentation of the incident, but it is so characteristic of Heinlein that it is highly believable.
Edmund Fuller, letter to RAH, 02/26/46.
RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 01/31/48.
RAH, letter to Ted Carnell, 07/27/61.
Lou Schor, letter to RAH, 02/05/48.
See, for example, Chesley Bonestell’s letter to RAH, 05/02/47.
Lou Schor, letter to RAH, 12/01/47.
RAH, letter to Lewis Aker, 08/20/51.
In 1948, Mardi Gras was on February 10.
This quote, and the information about their experience of Mardi Gras in 1948, was taken from RAH’s letter to Bill and Lucy Corson, 03/11/48.
RAH, letter to Bill Corson, 03/11/48. This letter indicates they stayed in New Orleans through Mardi Gras, but another letter is datelined from Pass Christian three days before Mardi Gras.
RAH, letter to Bill Corson, 03/18/48.
Virginia Heinlein, letter to Leon Stover, 03/17/89.
RAH, letter to Bill Corson, 03/11/48.
RAH, letter to Bill Corson, 03/11/48.
Alice Dalgliesh, letter to RAH, 02/25/48.
Cal Laning, letter to RAH, 02/17/48.
RAH, letter to H. L. Gold, 10/25/57.
Both observations from Virginia Heinlein, taped interview by author, Second Series, Tape A, Side B.
RAH, letter to Bill Corson, 02/20/48.
See, for example, Fritz Lang’s letter to RAH, 12/17/47, commiserating with him about his state of mind following the divorce.
Fritz Lang, letter to RAH, 03/12/48.
Fritz Lang, letter to RAH, 03/12/48.
RAH, letter to Fritz Lang, 03/18/48.
RAH, letter to Fritz Lang, 03/25/48.
“System in the Sky” never did sell—a fact Cal Laning, in a February 1, 1990, letter to Ginny Heinlein, attributes to missteps in marketing by Lurton Blassingame. He had shown the manuscript in 1950 to Charlie Horne, then head of the FAA. Horne, Laning said, shook his head and told him, “Had the aviation industry known of this ms. in 1947, we would have forced its widespread publication—or withdrawn our advertising.” Considering the enthusiastic reaction to “Flight into the Future,” such a reaction is not beyond the realm of possibility.
Heinlein, mentioned a version of the article, retitled “The Billion Dollar Eye,” in his 1980 collection Expanded Universe.
Virginia Heinlein, taped interview by author, Second Series, Tape A, Side B.
Gail Morgan Hickman, The Films of George Pal (South Brunswick, N.J.: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1977), 36.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 05/06/48.
See especially RAH’s letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 05/12/48.
Miss Hunt’s papers are at the de Grummond Collection, McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern Mississippi.
“This Trip to Moon Talk Seen as Pretty Serious,” Los Angeles Times (May 6, 1948, 22).
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 05/14/48. He also took the opportunity to change his California voter registration from the Lookout Mountain address to an address high in the Hollywood Hills, well north of Sunset (though the address is not an obvious one of his connections). Perhaps this may be taken as an acknowledgment on Heinlein’s part that the move might well be permanent, if the connection with the film community became long-lasting—though, equally possible, it may simply be that since Leslyn had sold the house before moving to Port Hueneme, he needed to sever all remaining connections with that address and it represented a move of convenience rather than of intention.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 05/12/48.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 05/12/48.
Irving Crump, letter to RAH, 04/19/48.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 06/30/48.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 05/12/48.
RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 11/26/50.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 05/12/48.
RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 05/18/48.
Fritz Lang, letter to RAH, 05/24/48.
Lang recounted his own version of the events of this two-month period—from the correspondence while Heinlein was out of the state to the “let’s part friends” letter he sent Heinlein—in a letter to their mutual friend Willy Ley, publish
ed as a tiny (thirteen-page) book by Posthumous Press (Rochester, Mich.) in 2005, Fritz, Willy & Bob and the Summer of ’48. As is to be expected, Lang’s intentions and motivations are somewhat clearer than Heinlein was able to discern, and Lang’s letter to Ley confirms that the marketing of Rocket Ship Galileo was the important deal-breaker Heinlein thought it was. Lang reverts and reexplains his position to Ley so often, in fact (any Moon trip story in Hollywood would be alarming to him), that one has to wonder why Lang didn’t simply option the property, if not for cash, then as Heinlein’s part of the partnership’s capitalization—practices as common in Hollywood in 1948 as they are today.
Lang has remembered the events not quite as the documents say they happened. Not only was Lang’s correspondence contemporaneously preserved by Heinlein, but Heinlein memorialized the events as they occurred in letters to Virginia Gerstenfeld, who was in New York at that time, and in conversations with Los Angeles friends such as Bill Corson, so the actual sequence of events and the offers and inducements actually made are fairly well documented—and not quite as Lang has represented them to Ley.
Lang has, in fact, left out anything that might tend to exculpate Heinlein, and it may well be that Lang’s recounting of the incident was tailored to “play” to his friend. Ley was still hurt by Heinlein’s withdrawal of support during the period when Ley was “collaborating” (as a journalist) with the Nazi rocket scientists brought to the United States after World War II to become part of Project Paperclip. (Of this, Lang had asked in a March 1948 letter to Heinlein whether they were both still sulking; Heinlein replied that he was not but perhaps Ley was: he had written a cordial letter to Ley in February [about the same time he received a cordial letter from L. Ron Hubbard], but had not heard back from him.)
In any case, Heinlein’s basic conclusion seems sound, that the collaboration—if, indeed, there was ever enough meeting of the minds to justify the term—ran aground when Lang refused to cooperate with Heinlein’s agent in working out terms of participation. When an experienced Hollywood figure tries to cut a newbie’s agent out of a deal by saying there is “nothing to discuss,” it raises a red flag of insurmountable proportions.
It may well be that Heinlein did not understand the auteur stance from which Lang was operating—and Lang’s letter to Willy Ley suggests that Lang had a much more “subordinate” role in mind for Heinlein than Heinlein had—but Lang’s lament that Heinlein “has turned out to be a great disappointment to me as a human being” is surely, and at the very least, disingenuous.
32. Fresh Starts (pages 458–473)
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 08/06/48.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 05/14/48.
See, for example, Virginia Gerstenfeld letter to RAH, 03/22/46.
Virginia Heinlein, taped interview by author, Tape 7, Side A (February 28–March 1, 2000).
Cartmill had a severe case of polio, which left him disabled: he had to use a string tied to a foot to work the shift key of his typewriter.
Virginia Gerstenfeld, letter to RAH, 05/18/48.
Virginia Gerstenfeld, letter to RAH, 05/26/48.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 05/24/48.
Virginia Gerstenfeld, letter to RAH, 05/26/48.
RAH, letter to Rex Ivar Heinlein, 05/17/48. The split with Rex was caused by what Heinlein took to be extreme inconsiderateness in 1939 when Rex collected belongings stored with Robert and Leslyn Heinlein. Leslyn was upset, so Robert had become very upset on her behalf.
Virginia Heinlein, taped interview by Leon Stover (October 1988), Tape 3, Side A (p. 14 of the transcription in the RAH Archive, UCSC). In The Best of All Possible Worlds (New York: Ace Books, 1980), 338, Spider Robinson relates that Heinlein called this story one of his “own personal favorites,” in private conversation, saying he had the “single specific intention” of making the reader grin and cry at the same time.
RAH, cover letter to Lurton Blassingame, 06/30/48.
RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 06/30/48.
RAH, Muster Notes (1949), 43.
Irving Crump, letter to RAH, 06/02/48.
RAH, letter to Alice Dalgliesh, 09/21/48.
The anecdote is told, but the occasion is undated, in Hickman, The Films of George Pal.
Nowadays we expect major film studios to be managed from Hollywood locations, but periodically, and especially when studios are purchased by other organizations, the go/no-go authority is located in the financial, rather than the technical and administrative, headquarters—which might be anywhere. At this time, the decision makers of Paramount were headquartered in New York City.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 08/01/48.
Virginia Heinlein, letter to Leon Stover, 03/29/89.
Undated except “Thursday,” but probably July 31, 1948. The copy was preserved among Heinlein’s copies of his correspondence with Virginia Gerstenfeld in the summer of 1948, in the RAH Archive, UCSC.
The Hollywood film Men of Honor (2000), though set in 1962, gives a good look at the diving suits and technology Heinlein was using in 1948.
This version of the anecdote, which differs very slightly in some of the details from Ginny Heinlein’s taped recollections in interviews with the author, is taken from the formal “Diving Notes” that Heinlein wrote up as a letter to Ginny in New York, dated 08/10/48.
RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 08/19/48.
RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 05/30/49.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 08/10/48.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 08/07/48.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 08/07/48.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 08/10/48.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 08/10/48.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 08/10/48.
Virginia Gerstenfeld, letter to RAH, 08/16/48.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 08/16/48.
RAH, letter to Virginia Gerstenfeld, 08/07/48.
Virginia Heinlein, IM with author, 08/05/2000.
Don Johnstone, letter to Mary Jean Lermer, 09/03/88.
Virginia Gerstenfeld, letter to RAH, 08/26/48.
RAH, letter to Rip van Ronkel, 10/29/48.
RAH, letter to Rip van Ronkel, 10/29/48. For the reference to Eliot, Virginia Heinlein told Dr. Robert James that Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats was one of their favorite read-aloud books. Virginia Heinlein, e-mail to Robert James, Ph.D., 01/06/2003.
RAH, letter to Alice Dalgliesh, 09/21/48.
Alice Dalgliesh, letter to RAH, 10/06/48.
Lurton Blassingame, letter to RAH, 09/23/48.
RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 09/27/48.
Bill Corson, letter to RAH, undated but by context mid-September 1948.
Bill Corson, letter to RAH, undated but by context mid-September 1948.
RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 09/27/48.
Leslyn’s life was indeed in a worse state than Robert knew at the time and only got worse over the next few years. Dr. Robert James made a special study of Leslyn Heinlein’s life after the separation and divorce, published in two articles in The Heinlein Journal: “Regarding Leslyn,” No. 9 (July 2001) and “More Regarding Leslyn,” No. 11 (July 2002). Summarizing Dr. James’s findings:
After selling the Lookout Mountain house and all its contents (at a tidy profit), Leslyn called on Admiral Scoles, who had moved to Point Mugu, California, after leaving the Air Materials Laboratory in Philadelphia, to establish the missile development and testing facility there. With Scoles’s help, she found an administrative secretarial job there, living in nearby Hueneme. Some material about her life in Hueneme appears in letters to and from Heinlein quoted at various points in the text. Her personal and professional life, however, was even more disordered than appears from the testimonial of mutual friends. Leslyn herself indicated, in a 1953 letter to Fred Pohl, that she became fearful—perhaps “paranoid” is not too strong a word—about security and was ultimat
ely forced to resign because of insubordination in that she refused to follow the orders of her superiors with regard to security matters.
Her personal life was even more disordered. From the somewhat confused reports that circulated among Heinlein’s friends, it appears that she had a passionate affair with an officer at Mugu whose initials were also R.H. (no attempt at a further identification has been made)—but who was a married man. Then she married another man at Mugu. The marriage did not last long, but Leslyn implied that he dissipated all her savings, including the proceeds of the sale of the Lookout Mountain house, leaving her impoverished. At some point thereafter, she met and married Jules Mocabee, who she said resembled both her father and Cal Laning. The marriage with Mocabee appears to have been stable, though not happy. They lived with Mocabee’s father and ran a combination service station and bar in northern California until Leslyn had what she (somewhat disingeniously) called “a series of strokes” in 1950 which hospitalized her. It was during this hospitalization that the last rounds of poison-pen letters went out to Heinlein’s professional contacts (matters covered as they occur in the text).