My dog learns quickly. She was a house dog. Now in a flash she becomes a country dog….
Now I am an honest man again. When I get a house built, alone, without help, my penance is over for the months I took money and did nothing in Hollywood….
Irrigation, water! Life here is water! Coming from four hundred miles away. Coming in concrete pipes. Flowing down ditches….Water company scout-cars roaring round the valley, spying, reporting unlucky people who have allowed water to get away from them….
I regain sanity through a simple thing. I like the land. Why not be on it? These Swedes and Mexicans are good people. I like them and get along with them….
I shall become a sane individual again out in this valley. I almost begin to think what a picture it would make.
ERIC KNIGHT, to a friend
1939
I had the experience Sat. night which confused and upset me and left me with a feeling of spiritual nausea.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
JUNE 15
1937
I have to unfortunately report to you that at the Stendahl Gallery No. 445, the panel painting “Whitish” was cut from the frame with a razor blade; luckily I had a photograph which I had copied in order to send it to all art journals and newspapers, so that if it appears in the trade everyone knows about it. But of course I hope that the police, whom I will inform tomorrow, will find it first so as to use the opportunity to do a little publicity: that Kandinsky’s pictures are so valuable that someone would steal them. The same thing happened to Klee and I got the picture back.
GALKA SCHEYER, to Wassily Kandinsky
1943
The snarls of our relationship have been miraculously ironed out in my mind by my personal perusal of my diaries….The vicissitudes through which Wilder and I have been together struck me forcibly and made other things negligible.
CHARLES BRACKETT
JUNE 16
1891
It seems to be possible from my continued friendliness and perhaps tenderness in some past letters you may have misunderstood my position—have had some hope that I would someday be yours again. Do not deceive yourself dear. My life is too precious to me to waste anymore of it like those seven years we spent together.
Not wasted in some ways & I grant full of deep experience and that pain that means growth. But you will know how it unfitted me for any work and how since you left I have done good work and lots of it—– have made a reputation in one year. The difference is too great. Work I must, and when I live with you I can’t. Therefore I shall never live with you again as a wife. I know it’s hard for you but I can’t help it. You must take the hard…truth and make the best of it.
Kate is well and happy and very glad to be at home after our trip. I’ll write more soon, but this was on my mind to-day.
Sincerely,
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN, to her husband
1979
Los Angeles had been coming to me all my life, but this was the first time I had come to it. Prejudices are useless. Call Los Angeles any dirty name you like—Six Suburbs in Search of a City, Paradise with a Lobotomy, anything—but the fact remains that you are already living in it before you get there.
CLIVE JAMES
JUNE 17
1905
The accursed telephone has annoyed me so much—one can’t do anything with these operators. Cloudy day.
DON JUAN BAUTISTA BANDINI
1954
I ate & drank & stared until my shit was black & I vomited blood on Vine St. & wandered sick & lonely past Sunset to sit down in gold brick Pantages Theater and see the last comedy [Utopia] by wasted Laurel & Hardy still fat to watch them destroy the world before they die and came out in a prophetic rage against Hollywood and went to my aunt’s house vomiting on the way to recover my heart.
ALLEN GINSBERG
1979
On my last night in LA I dined with Joan Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne at their house in Pacific Palisades. His-and-hers twin Toyotas stood nose to nose in the driveway. Mexican food was served. Both writers unashamedly thrive in Los Angeles. Dunne’s excellent long article about California [“Eureka”] in New West for January 1, 1979 is an unbroken paean, while even Didion’s famously mordant title essay in Slouching Towards Bethlehem is written more from fascination than from fear.
Both writers make their money from writing movies and use the money to buy time in which to write their books—a system pioneered by William Faulkner. Both writers know in advance that scripting the remake of A Star is Born for Barbra Streisand must inevitably entail a certain literary contribution by Ms Streisand herself. They know exactly what the difference is between compromise and capitulation. If two people so intelligent can live in Los Angeles on their own terms, then the place has become civilised in spite of itself. I enjoyed their company very much and did my best not to let them know that I had swallowed a habanero. They probably thought my muffled sobs were due to homesickness.
At midnight Hector and Alphonse fetched me away up through the hills to Mulholland Drive. From a look-out high on the ridge I could see all the way down the coast to Balboa and inland to the Sierra Madre. Turning around, I could see the whole of the San Fernando Valley. It was all one sea of light. This is where the first space voyagers will come from. When our children leave the Earth and sail away into relative time, they will have the confidence of naivety. They will have forgotten what it is like not to get anything you want just by reaching out. In a way the Angelenos have already quit America.
CLIVE JAMES
JUNE 18
1943
They are very patient with me here, extremely kind and friendly, almost embarrassingly so, and don’t seem to mind when I go off on other material for a while, as I’ve been doing with the long short story “The Gentleman Caller.”
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
1946
I used your $5 to buy some magnificent yellow pyjamas with little coloured flowers, a thousand thanks.
THEODOR ADORNO, to his parents
JUNE 19
1907
Such a busy hodge-podge of a day yesterday—mixed business and society…hurried on to the California Club….The Bosworths were there and were roaring along very pleasingly. She looked almost pretty, in her pink linen frock and leghorn hat, covered with red roses….Didn’t get home until late, just a few minutes before my guests arrived! After such unlovely haste, I always vow to retire to my pine-tree in the Sierras.
Beautiful, clear skies and cool breezes—then wonderful, half-misty moonlight effects! It is hard not to sit up at the window and wonder about it all.
OLIVE PERCIVAL
1920
We dine in the Chinese restaurant, overlooking the water. The blue black water and the stars. We stop to see the chimpanzees running little motor cars on the track. I laugh to see how they grab hold of each other’s car and hold each other back. Then we ride on the merry-go-round. Then walk to Venice and ride on the giant racer. The big dips make Helen a little sick. Then we get on the car and come home—not before listening to the singers before the racer place. They are so very town-dandy-ish, so American wisenheim and patronizing and blase. Is amusing. The little bungalow looks fine and we crawl in with a sigh of content.
THEODORE DREISER
1964
Alan Swallow came to Los Angeles for the Publishing Conference….He was the only panelist who did not talk about money. He talked about the writers he had loved and published because he had loved them….
We gathered afterwards for an evening of talk to which he had invited the writers he publishes….how I dislike the snobbish attitude of the East about a “little publisher out West.”
ANAÏS NIN
JUNE 20
1941
I’ve always thought that novels should only be written if there
is something in them that must be said, and now here I plan to write one simply because it will be good for me. But maybe I’ll have something to say that I don’t know now. It will be hard, and I feel lazy yet gnawed, so I’d better get to work.
…There was a little bird in the house today, not very nervous. We took the screen from the closet window.
M.F.K. FISHER
2017
It’s ridiculous but when I start against the Mets I’m very aware that Jerry Seinfeld’s mood is in my hands.
BRANDON MCCARTHY
JUNE 21
1937
We must to town, and the weather is nasty warm, the city stinky beyond the fondest nightmares.
CHARIS WILSON
1938
Worked at the studio all morning, getting no place. To the [Screen Writers Guild] office at noon to oversee a bulletin. Hardly had I returned to the studio before I had a call from Phil Dunne that an interview arranged between [screenwriters] Dudley [Nichols], Phil, myself and the great god [producer] Joseph Schenck was to be right away. All very unofficial and secret. Rushed over to Twentieth Century-Fox and was led with the others into the Presence. Schenck completely charming, said he had no animosity against the Screen Writers Guild….
He practically guaranteed us recognition. We left jubilant. I returned to Paramount and read up on French shooting, in the desperate hope that we could [gin up] something for the part of Midnight on which we are stuck.
CHARLES BRACKETT
JUNE 22
1946
We landed at the airport of Los Angeles, breathing fresh air after the stifling atmosphere over the desert.
I felt happy. I believe, in every sensitive person born in the Northern climate, there lives a longing for the South where the human race originated. The prospect of living among palm trees like Robinson Crusoe in our children’s books, among flowers which were in blossom all year around, in an even climate, just as near to the sea as to the mountains whose outlines reminded me of Greece—seemed fabulous.
One could browse among old books in bookshops of the street around the corner, some open late in the evening. A few blocks further I came to Pershing Square, shaded by palm trees, where every seat was taken on the long benches which criss-crossed it. In the center reformers and fanatics made speeches just as in Hyde Park and were surrounded by people who had a good time joking about what they heard….
The reason why the streets appear so lifeless is that the small businessmen have been driven out of the expensive residential areas. I am accustomed to take walks in the evening and do not like to look at the forbidding façades of elegant homes but wish to see something going on in the streets. I like to look at shops where people are still busy or to pass through places where people are amusing themselves in the open. I decided, therefore, to settle near the [Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Exposition Park]….
A part of the Spanish population still lived in the museum area. Since they take life easier, these people are being slowly driven out by hard-working Americans. In the afternoons and on holidays one could see them lying on the green lawns in front of the museum, enjoying the sunshine, in light dresses. They formed a considerable proportion of the visitors to the museum and were never in a hurry, for which reason art probably penetrated deeper into their minds than into that of the casual American visitor, who does not give the seed of his impressions time to grow.
WILLIAM R. VALENTINER
1971
I love seals and swim with them and play tag, sometimes close enough to reach out and touch, but I don’t touch. Seals—I’m actually talking about sea lions here—have terribly powerful jaws, have to eat raw fish. But I’ve never heard of one attacking a human being in the water. In fact it appears, doesn’t it, that most of the tales we hear of ravening beasts like wolves and mountain lions have been invented by us to excuse our own bloodthirstiness.
ROSS MACDONALD, to Eudora Welty
1976
I just lazed around today—played vacation in the suburbs.
I can’t understand L.A.—It’s totally given up its public spaces to the car. The only places left for meaningful interaction are private areas.
AARON PALEY
JUNE 23
1935
About 10:30 we hiked up the high trail, and after reaching the summit, we went along the firebreak to a higher summit….Back by way of Kay Cañon. Big lunch—grilled steak—tamales—cherry tarts—good time.
HENRY O’MELVENY
1968
Dear Ms. Kael,
Ben Hecht didn’t write Roxie Hart. I did. I take it as a compliment, of course, that you attribute it to Hecht, but if you had let me know you were going to be sloppy about it I could have named you a score of other pictures I’ve written that you would have been welcome to attribute to somebody else, anybody else, in fact.
This mistake shakes me. I was coming to take what you wrote as gospel. Now I don’t know. It’s like discovering that the Encyclopedia had blown one.
NUNNALLY JOHNSON, to Pauline Kael
JUNE 24
1847
For a Californian to ride 100 miles a day is quite common, nor does it appear to require any extraordinary effort. 100 miles a day are as frequently driven by them as fifty by the people in the United States, in truth with them it is but an ordinary day’s ride, but which is generally performed by two or three horses. Their great exploits with the lasso in catching wild horses and cattle are astonishing….
They will, when on full gallop stop and pick up a lasso from the ground, or even a piece of money, without either halting or dismounting. They never walk even the shortest distance. They are never on foot, only when entering a house, at which time they will take a lasso, made of hair, one end of which is fastened to the neck of the horse and the other end held by them….
I saw a game played by these Spaniards. I saw a cock (or as the Yankees say, a rooster) was buried in the sand save his head only. The Spaniards rode by in turns on a full gallop, trying at the same time to pick up the cock, several being successful and none falling from the horse. These horses are much better trained for the saddle than ours. They endure fatigue much more than the American horses.
HENRY STANDAGE
1940
The radio is off its top, even crazier than back east. One whirl of the dial and you want to jump out the window. All day every day they sell GOD here, and I mean sell him, along with used cars, soap and dainties for milady. Also Swing mixed with news of Disaster in Europe on the scale that you know. So I can’t listen to the radio. I’m invited to the home of Mrs. William Wyler to a swimming party. Sounds ducky, isn’t it? I’m going, mainly because Wyler is a nice intelligent sort of man and I’ll play a little pool. But his house is full of refugees, most of whom, God help me, I hate. That is, most of them in Hollywood….
I must find some way to live that does not involve this Paradise. I hope I will. I have some new ideas; we’ll see. Be careful of money. For lack of it can ruin your life. Cagney, who is a millionaire, at least, says in an answer to every implied criticism of Hollywood in the industry;—“There’s always Wednesday!”
ELIA KAZAN
JUNE 25
1931
I planted an acre of potatoes and, as none of them has come up, I am inclined to think that they were planted upside down and are probably making their way slowly to the Antipodes.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
1976
In spite of a first degree smog alert and 90° heat, I took public transportation to Ventura Blvd to walk and shop—to be honest—it’s depressing. Both the buses and the boulevard are mere phantoms of their Bay Area counterparts. Ventura Blvd. can’t even lift a finger to Shattuck. If it was all condensed into one small stretch with people using their feet to get from store to store, perhaps it might be good…
The
buses are depressing in the Valley—few and far between—everyone is driving—the expanses of concrete, driving areas, parking lots are incredibly discouraging for the pedestrian.
AARON PALEY
JUNE 26
1888
It is whispered that San Francisco is already growing jealous of this Southern city, and as for San Diego—that it goes off into a convulsive fit at the mere mention of the name. These are rumors, however, that I do not altogether credit, and merely give them for what they are worth. I know that Marion and I are quite happy to be back here again; that we greeted the mountains, and the orange groves, and the vineyards, and the brisk, busy streets with a smile of true affection, and we confided to each other in the midst of our twelve bundles, that there was no place like Los Angeles.
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