The Bradbury Chronicles
Page 46
The Mummy (1932)
Again, it’s unrequited love. The mummy is trying to bring back his lost love from 4000 years before and it’s an impossible situation. I saw the film at a theater in the center of Tucson when I was twelve. The theater was having some sort of union trouble and someone threw a stink bomb inside so that people would be uncomfortable and wouldn’t stay for the performance. But they couldn’t do that to me. I stayed through with my brother and I thought it was one of the most beautiful films ever.
King Kong (1933)
I remember every theater I saw every film in. I saw King Kong in the Fox Theater in Tucson, Arizona. I sat there in the front row and when Kong hit the screen, boy, I tell you, he fell on me. It was a concussion. He was so titanic. It’s so simple. It rises and rises and rises to series of climaxes and then a super climax. This film changed my life forever. After seeing it, I went home and wrote the screenplay on my dial typewriter. It took forever, but I wanted to remember the dialogue. Later, in 1934 when we had moved to Los Angeles, the girl who lived next door had her father’s typewriter and I went over and retranslated my screenplay and submitted it in my short-story class at high school. My teacher, Jeanette Johnson, was very sweet. She wrote on the script, “I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re doing it very well.” All of my early stories were bad imitations like this. I hadn’t found myself yet so I was busy imitating.
Things to Come (1936)
H. G. Wells was very paranoid and so much of his stuff was negative. But at the end of this film, where they shoot the rocket off to the moon and Cabal and his partner watch the image on a giant screen and his partner says, “Is that all there is? I mean, what is this all about?” And Cabal says, “Which shall it be, the stars or the grave?” I left the theater after seeing this and I was crying. The music came up and the voices kept repeating, “Which shall it be… which shall it be…” and I knew which one it had to be. I saw this film three or four times in the next week sneaking in each time because I had no money.
Fantasia (1940)
I saw it in the summer of 1940 with my aunt Neva. We couldn’t go to the premiere because it cost, maybe, two or three dollars and we didn’t have that. But I think the first night after the premiere it was a dollar. Neva and I went and I came out raving—raving about the film. Of course, my Aunt Neva was crazy for it too. I was selling newspapers on a street corner at the time and I took all of my money and invested it in tickets to Fantasia. I took my friends to see it and I watched their faces during the film. And if they didn’t like it that was the end of the friendship!
Have You Read?
More by Ray Bradbury
AHMED AND THE OBLIVION MACHINES
Ray Bradbury’s wondrous children’s fable traces the adventures of a lost boy who makes the acquaintance of a long-forgotten, though very powerful, ancient god.
BRADBURY SPEAKS
A highly personal, deeply felt collection of essays, Bradbury Speaks offers an intimate look into one of the most fertile and dazzling imaginations of the modern age.
BRADBURY STORIES
The one hundred stories in this volume were chosen by Bradbury himself, and span a career that blossomed in the pulp magazines of the early 1940s and continues to flourish in the new millennium.
THE CAT’S PAJAMAS
In this 2004 collection, Ray Bradbury presents twenty-two new and amazing tales, all but two never before published.
DANDELION WINE
The author’s most deeply personal work, Dandelion Wine is a semiautobiographical recollection of a magical small town summer in 1928.
DEATH IS A LONELY BUSINESS
Ray Bradbury dips his pen into the cryptic inkwell of noir to create a stylish and slightly fantastical tale of mayhem and murder set in Venice, California, in the early 1950s.
DRIVING BLIND
Driving Blind is a stunning collection of short fiction. Here are unforgettable excursions to the fantastic, glorious grand tours through time and memory, unexpected side trips to the disturbing and eerie.
FROM THE DUST RETURNED
In an extraordinary flight of the imagination a half-century in the making, Ray Bradbury takes us to a most wondrous destination: into the heart of an Eternal Family.
A GRAVEYARD FOR LUNATICS
Halloween night, 1954. A young, film-obsessed scriptwriter has just been hired at one of the great studios. An anonymous invitation leads him from the studio’s back lot to an eerie graveyard separated from the studio by a single wall.
GREEN SHADOWS, WHITE WHALE
In this comic autobiographical novel, Ray Bradbury recounts his unexpected odyssey through Ireland, where, in 1953, he was summoned by famed director John Huston to write a screenplay for Moby Dick.
I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC!
Each of these twenty-eight classic Bradbury stories (and one luscious poem) has something profound to tell us about our own humanity.
THE ILLUSTRATED MAN
The Illustrated Man is widely believed to be one of Bradbury’s premier accomplishments: eighteen startling visions of humankind’s destiny—a kaleidoscopic blending of magic, imagination, and truth.
LET’S ALL KILL CONSTANCE
On a dismal evening, a once-glamorous Hollywood star pounds on a writer’s door. In her hands are two anonymously delivered books that have sent her running in fear: twin lists of the Tinsel town dead and soon-to-be dead… with her name among them.
THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES
Of all the dazzling stars in the vast Bradbury universe, none shines more luminous than these masterful chronicles of Earth’s settlement of the fourth world from the sun. The Martian Chronicles is a classic work of twentieth-century literature whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time’s passage.
A MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY
Sinister mushrooms growing in a dank cellar. A family’s first glimpse at Martians. A wonderful white vanilla ice-cream summer suit that changes everyone who wears it. All those images and many more appear in this trade edition of thirty-one classic Bradbury tales.
THE OCTOBER COUNTRY
The author’s first collection of stories takes readers to many places: a picturesque Mexican village where death is a tourist attraction; a city beneath the city where drowned lovers are silently reunited; a carnival midway where a tiny man’s most cherished fantasy can be fulfilled night after night.
ONE MORE FOR THE ROAD
Another round on Ray Bradbury—eighteen new stories and seven previously published but never before collected. Here is a rich elixir distilled from the pungent fruit of experience and imagination, expertly prepared by a superior mixologist.
QUICKER THAN THE EYE
In these twenty-one stories, the master tells all, revealing the strange secret of growing young and mad; opening a Witch Door that links two intolerant centuries; joining an ancient couple in their wild assassination games.
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES
Few American novels have endured in the heart and memory as has this unparalleled literary classic. When Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show comes to town, two boys learn all too well the heavy cost of wishes… and the stuff of nightmare.
A SOUND OF THUNDER AND OTHER STORIES
(previously titled The Golden Apples of the Sun)
Here are thirty-two of Bradbury’s most famous tales—prime examples of the poignant and mysterious poetry he uniquely uncovers in the depths of the human soul.
FAHRENHEIT 451 (Audio)
Internationally acclaimed with more than five million copies in print, Fahrenheit 451 is Ray Bradbury’s inspired novel of censorship and defiance. Read by the author himself, this audio edition of an American classic is as resonant today as it was when it was first published nearly fifty years ago.
SELECTED BOOKS BY RAY BRADBURY
The Best of Ray Bradbury: The Graphic Novel. New York and London: Simon & Schuster, 2003.
Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales
. New York: William Morrow, 2003.
The Cat’s Pajamas: Stories. New York: William Morrow, 2004.
Classic Stories 1: Selections from The Golden Apples of the Sun and R Is for Rocket. New York: Bantam, 1990.
Classic Stories 2: Selections from A Medicine for Melancholy and S Is for Space. New York: Bantam, 1990.
The Complete Poems of Ray Bradbury. New York: Ballantine, 1982.
Dandelion Wine. New York: Doubleday, 1957.
Dark Carnival. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1947.
Death Is a Lonely Business. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985; London: Grafton, 1986.
Dogs Think That Everyday Is Christmas. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1997.
Driving Blind. New York: Avon, 1997.
Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine, 1953.
From the Dust Returned. New York: William Morrow, 2001.
The Golden Apples of the Sun. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1953.
A Graveyard for Lunatics: Another Tale of Two Cities. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
Green Shadows, White Whale. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.
The Halloween Tree. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972.
The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981.
The Illustrated Man. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1951.
I Sing the Body Electric! New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969.
Let’s All Kill Constance: A Novel. New York: William Morrow/HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.
Long After Midnight. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.
The Machineries of Joy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1964.
The Martian Chronicles. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1950.
A Medicine for Melancholy. New York: Doubleday, 1959.
A Memory of Murder. New York: Dell, 1984.
The October Country. New York: Ballantine, 1955.
One More for the Road. New York: William Morrow, 2002.
Quicker Than the Eye. New York: Avon, 1996.
R Is for Rocket. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962.
S Is for Space. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966.
Something Wicked This Way Comes. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962.
The Stories of Ray Bradbury. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980.
Switch on the Night. New York: Pantheon, 1955.
They Have Not Seen the Stars: The Collected Poetry of Ray Bradbury. Lancaster, PA: Stealth Press, 2002.
The Toynbee Convector. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
Twice 22. New York: Doubleday, 1966.
The Vintage Bradbury: Ray Bradbury’s Own Selection of His Best Stories. New York: Vintage Books, 1965.
When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed: Celebrations for Almost Any Day in the Year. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973.
Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run ’Round in Robot Towns. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977; London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1979.
With Cat for Comforter. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1997.
Witness and Celebrate. Northridge, CA: Lord John Press, 2000.
Yestermorrow: Obvious Answers to Impossible Futures. Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1991.
Zen in the Art of Writing. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1990.
NOTES
THE FOUNDATION of this book came from the hundreds of hours of conversations I had with Ray Bradbury. All quotes and information came from RB during these interviews, unless otherwise noted.
CHAPTER 1
Page 11: “Ray Douglas Bradbury arrived in the world …”: Certificate of Birth, Ray Douglas Bradbury, August 22, 1920, Lake County Clerk’s Record #4750.
Page 12: “Born to Mr. and Mrs. Leo Bradbury …”: Waukegan Daily Sun, Aug. 29, 1920.
Page 12: “… a friend of Ray’s …”: Letter dated July 10, 1947, from Ray Bradbury to Anthony Boucher. From RB’s private collection.
Page 14: “The first people …”: Osling, Historical Highlights of the Waukegan Area; Holmes, The History of Waukegan.
Page 15: “As urban legend has it …”: Waukegan News-Sun, Nov. 5, 1984.
Page 15: “A town member who attended the event …”: Waukegan Historical Society extracts of Waukegan daily papers from February 1909.
Page 15: “Another noteworthy Waukegan event …”: Holmes, The History of Waukegan.
Page 16: “Waukegan, in 1920 …”: The Fourteenth Census of the United States.
Page 16: “Bradbury genealogical records …”: Lapham, The Bradbury Memorial.
Page 16: “On July 26, 1692 …”: Boyer, The Salem Witchcraft Papers.
Page 16: “I am wholly innocent …”: Ibid.
Page 17: “The charges against Mary Bradbury …”: Ibid.
Page 17: “… on September 6, 1692 …”: Ibid.
Page 18: “From her …”: Kunitz, 20th Century Authors.
Page 18: “Samuel Irving Bradbury …”: Obituary of Samuel I. Bradbury, “Yard Scrapbook,” Waukegan Historical Society.
Page 18: “… Dec. 1st, felled the first tree …”: Ibid.
Page 18: “Little more than a month …”: Ibid.
Page 19: “Sam and Mary had three children …”: Lapham, The Bradbury Memorial.
Page 19: “Samuel Hinkston Bradbury was born …”: State of Illinois Death Certificate of Samuel Hinkston Bradbury, Lake County Clerk’s Record #1023.
Page 19: “Samuel Sr. had moved …”: Obituary of Samuel I. Bradbury, “Yard Scrapbook,” Waukegan Historical Society.
Page 19: “… but it once stood at 22 North State Street …”: Bradbury Collection, Waukegan Historical Society.
Page 19: “… with its cellar roots …”: Bradbury, From the Dust Returned.
Page 20: “… a mouse in every warren …”: Ibid.
Page 21: “… on January 21, 1896 …”: State of Illinois Certificate of Birth Record, local file #602.
Page 21: “… By the time the 1900 …”: No Bradbury daughter appears on the 1900 United States Census.
Page 21: “But, oddly enough …”: Rose M. Bradbury appears on the 1910 United States Census, enumerated on June 19, 1910.
Page 22: “After returning home …”: The 1906–1907 Waukegan City Directory lists Leonard S. Bradbury’s occupation as “printer.”
Page 23: “In 1912, Leonard Bradbury …”: Author interview with Leonard “Skip” Bradbury Jr. Additionally, the earliest existing photograph of Leonard S. Bradbury and Esther Marie Moberg, taken during their courtship, is dated on the back, 1912.
Page 23: “Leonard and Esther married …”: Marriage Certificate of “Leo Bradbury” and “Esther Moberg,” from the papers of Ray Bradbury.
Page 23: “Like many other Swedes …”: Gustaf Moberg’s occupation as a heater at the local wire mill is listed in all Waukegan City Directories in the collection of the Waukegan Historical Society dating from early 1905 to 1922.
Page 23: “… worked as a driver …”: Waukegan City Directories, the Waukegan Historical Society.
Page 24: “On July 17, 1916 …”: Author interview with Leonard S. “Skip” Bradbury Jr.
Page 24: “… on September 30, 1918 …”: State of Illinois Death Certificate.
Page 25: “For that fine madness …”: Annual Waukegan High School 1912.
Page 25: “… Captain Sam Bradbury was buried …”: Letter from Jacques R. Adelée of the American Battle Monuments Commission, European Office, to RB, dated August 25, 1989. Captain Samuel H. Bradbury is located in Plot C, Row 12, Grave 18. Fourteen years after his death, in September 1932, Ray’s grandmother Minnie Bradbury, a Gold Star Mother, traveled aboard the SS Leviathan to France to visit, at long last, the grave of her son. “I have traveled over 3,000 miles to see and visit a bit of earth over which stands a white cross,” she said in the September 16, 1932, edition of the Waukegan News-Sun. “… [O]nly a mother who has seen her son go off to war happy in the thought that he is serving his country, but with the fear in her heart as the result of the realization that he may never come back, will underst
and.”
Page 25: “He was just an ordinary little boy …”: Author interview with Edna Hutchinson.
Page 26: “About seven o’clock …”: Bradbury, Dandelion Wine.
Page 27: “… It was February 1924 …”: Advertisements for The Hunchback of Notre Dame indicated it played in Waukegan for the first time in mid-February 1924.
Page 28: “When I talk of myself …”: Cunningham, 1961 UCLA Oral History Program transcript.
CHAPTER 2
Page 30: “I have often thought that Neva …”: Ray’s essay about his aunt Neva, “The Wingless Bat,” was likely written in the mid- to late 1940s. It has never been published.
Page 32: “autobiographical fantasy …”: Mogen, Ray Bradbury.
Page 32: “On the morning of Friday …”: State of Illinois Death Certificate of Samuel Hinkston Bradbury, Lake County Clerk’s Record #1023.
Page 32: “… after lying in a coma for six days …”: Waukegan News-Sun, June 5, 1926.
Page 32: “… when all the fireworks …”: Don Congdon/RB interviews, 1971.
Page 32: “… and my uncle Bion had cracked a few windows …”: Bion’s first wife, Ray’s aunt Edna Hutchinson, recalled the origins of the brass cannon: “Bion was a tool-and-die maker and he made the canon and they always used to bring it out and shoot it on the Fourth of July. I was scared to death of the thing. I thought that someone would get hurt.” As legend would have it, the fate of the brass cannon is uncertain. Edna Hutchinson divorced Bion and recalls hearing that the old cannon was buried in the beach at Lake Michigan by a group of children on a Fourth of July many years later. Bradbury memorabilia collectors take note: Uncle Bion’s infamous brass cannon, to the best of anyone’s recollection, is, to this day, still buried deep in the sand on the Lake Michigan shoreline in Waukegan, Illinois.