The Bradbury Chronicles
Page 47
Page 34: “… These windows …”: Today, visitors to the old house at 619 W. Washington will only find one of the stained glass windows still intact. Somewhere over the course of time, one of the windows has been removed. Even still, it’s hard not to stand below the remaining window and imagine a little boy behind it, peering out with an altered perception.
Page 35: “… For a brief time …”: While he has been coined “The World’s Greatest Living Science Fiction Writer,” Ray Bradbury was not a big believer in the idea that Earth had been visited by extraterrestrials. “I believe there is life on other worlds but we’ll never know. It’s all too far away. It’s a secret thing in our hearts; we wish it were true, because we’d love to have these visitors.”
Page 37: “On March 27, 1927 …”: The birth date of Betty Jane Bradbury is, sadly, listed on her State of Illinois Death Certificate issued less than a year later.
Page 38: “The concept of this soul-image …”: Hillman, The Soul’s Code.
Page 38: “I have a strange and incredible Muse …”: From the 2002 RB essay, “My Demon, Not Afraid of Happiness.”
CHAPTER 3
Page 39: “… enrolled at Chicago’s School of the Art Institute …”: From the records of the School of the Art Institute, Chicago.
Page 39: “When mother and father and I …”: From the unpublished RB essay, “The Wingless Bat,” circa mid-1940s.
Page 40: “… the newly constructed Genesee Theatre …”: The complete history of the Genesee Theatre is listed on the theater’s official Website, www.geneseetheatre.org. In February 2001, the city of Waukegan approved funding of up to $20 million to renovate the grand old palace.
Page 40: “on the morning of February 8, 1928 …”: State of Illinois Death Certificate, County Clerk’s Record #11856.
Page 40: “At dawn, men arrived …”: Various published chronologies of Ray Bradbury’s life, including the timelines in David Mogen’s critical tome, Ray Bradbury, and William F. Nolan’s The Ray Bradbury Companion, list Elizabeth Bradbury’s death in 1927, when in fact it was 1928.
Page 41: “His show had lots of action …”: Author interview with Blackstone biographer Daniel Waldron.
Page 43: “… has a large following among science fiction readers …”: Knight, Ray Bradbury, Modern Critical Views series.
CHAPTER 4
Page 45: “In 1929 …”: Bradbury introduction, Williams, Buck Rogers: The First 60 Years in the 25th Century.
Page 47: “… Skip, the family athlete …”: Author interview with Leonard “Skip” Bradbury Jr.
Page 48: “At breakfast …”: RB introduction, Porges, Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan.
Page 50: “… the twin Schabold brothers …”: Ray made brief mention of the Schabold twins—an homage of sorts—in the short story “The Lake.”
Page 50: “In the last week of 1931 …”: Blackstone’s appearance was widely advertised in the Waukegan News-Sun.
CHAPTER 5
Page 52: “Ray wrote of this simple, childhood memory …”: “Someone in the Rain” did not appear until 1997 in the collection Driving Blind.
Page 52: “Once I learned to keep going back …”: RB, “Just This Side of Byzantium.”
Page 53: “… Bradbury scholar Wayne L. Johnson noted …”: Johnson, Ray Bradbury.
Page 54: “… the annual lakefront festival …”: The Labor Day Weekend Festival on the lakefront was written up in the Waukegan News-Sun, Aug. 31, 1932.
Page 54: “… steaming calliope, strung mazda bulbs …”: RB, from Nolan’s Ray Bradbury Review. The Ray Bradbury Review had a print run of 1,200 copies and is a relatively rare publication.
Page 55: “Lester Thomas Moberg …”: Interviews with RB, Skip Bradbury, Ray’s cousin Vivian, and Lester Moberg’s daughter Carol Moberg Treklis.
Page 55: “He worked as an attendant …”: State of Illinois Death Certificate listed his occupation, marital status, and children.
Page 55: “Monday evening …”: Descriptions of the events come from the Lake County Coroner’s Inquest and a newspaper report in the Oct. 18, 1932, edition of the Waukegan News-Sun.
Page 55: “Ghost stories …”: RB, “House Divided,” from Driving Blind. RB: “I wrote ‘House Divided,’ the story about fingerprinting Vivian, in the 1940s when I still lived with my parents and I left it lying around the living room and my mother picked it up and read it. And she went into shock. All these years I’d had this secret affair with Vivian. Her son! She said, ‘Why, you dirty … how could you write a thing like that?’ I said, ‘Ma, I lived it.’”
Page 57: “The first time …”: RB, The Ray Bradbury Review.
Page 57: “It was an experience …”: Eller and Touponce, Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction.
Page 58: “Lester Moberg’s death certificate …”: State of Illinois Death Certificate, Lake County Coroner’s Inquest, Waukegan News-Sun, Oct. 24, 1932, and The Independent Recorder, Oct. 27, 1932
Page 58: “But Ray Bradbury was …”: Interviews with RB, Skip Bradbury, Ray’s cousin Vivian, and Lester Moberg’s daughter Carol Moberg Treklis.
Page 59: “There was also no record …”: From an author interview with Fred Dahlinger Jr., director of Collections and Research at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, WI. Dahlinger had no record of “Mr. Electrico.” He did find entries in his collection for a “Mlle. Electra” (1911–1914) and a “Miss Electricia” (1926 and 1946). Bradbury researchers have commonly mistaken the popular 1930s traveling outfit “The Sam B. Dill Circus” for RB’s mythic “Dill Brothers Combined Shows.” The circus trade magazine White Tops, however, in its Jan.–Feb. 1955 issue, stated the Sam B. Dill Circus was in Crawfordsville, IN, on Labor Day. RB said emphatically that it was not the Sam B. Dill Circus. In Waukegan on that Labor Day weekend coincidentally were two other circuses: the popular Hagenbeck-Wallace and the Downie Brothers circuses. The Waukegan News-Sun did mention a lakefront carnival but not by name. The Dill Brothers Combined Shows and Mr. Electrico, to this day, remain a mystery.
CHAPTER 6
Page 62: “Little did we know …”: RB, “The Inspired Chicken Motel,” I Sing the Body Electric!
Page 63: “We both wanted to be magicians …”: Author interview, John Huff.
Page 66: “Opened to much fanfare …”: Gleisten, Chicago’s 1933–34 World’s Fair: A Century of Progress.
Page 68: “The kids found out …”: Author interview with Lydia V. McColloch.
CHAPTER 7
Page 72: “… He was horny”: Author interview with Vivian Gneuwich.
Page 72: “In those days …”: RB article “George, Marlene and Me” from Life magazine, July 1991.
Page 76: “Eventually, though, Burns …”: Ibid.
Page 77: “When I think back on how I must’ve looked …”: Congdon interviews.
CHAPTER 8
Page 81: “Ray was a suffering …”: Author interview with Bonnie Wolf.
Page 83: “The boy persevered …”: RB, “Death’s Voice,” Anthology of Student Verse for 1937.
Page 85: “… he acted in 106 films …”: Author interview with Forrest J Ackerman.
Page 85: “Ray was a rather …”: Ibid.
Page 86: “On November 22 …”: Letter from Burroughs to RB, from RB’s private collection.
Page 87: “… A Truck Driver After Midnight …”: RB, Anthology of Student Verse for 1938.
CHAPTER 9
Page 89: “… He was aggressive …”: Author interview with Bob Gorman.
Page 90: “… He saw the film …”: Author interview with Forrest J Ackerman.
Page 90: “We had a mutual interest in dinosaurs”: Author interview with Ray Harryhausen.
Page 90: “and all the Merian Cooper pictures”: Merian C. Cooper was the codirector and coproducer (along with Ernest B. Schoedsack) of King Kong.
Page 91: “The future to me …”: Author interview with Ray Harryhausen.
Page 92: “Filled with sorrow …
”: Sometime soon after, Ray’s aunt Neva brought her cremated remains back to Waukegan, where she was to rest next to her husband, Ray’s grandfather, Samuel Hinkston Bradbury. Both are buried at Union Cemetery on Waukegan’s west side.
Page 92: “… he caught a double matinee …”: RB’s 1939 calendar, from his private collection.
Page 95: “… stylishly dressed in the fashions of the 25th century …”: Pohl, The Way the Future Was.
Page 95: “I just kind of thought …”: Author interview with Forrest J Ackerman.
Page 95: “… recalled fans mobbing writers …”: Author interview with Julius Schwartz.
Page 96: “… Asimov noted in …”: Asimov, Asimov on Science Fiction.
Page 96: “The number of young people …”: Author interview with David A. Kyle.
Page 96: “… so typical of us all …”: Ibid.
Page 96: “It was a dollar …”: Author interview with Forrest J Ackerman.
CHAPTER 10
Page 98: “Robert Heinlein was …”: From http://heinleinsociety.org; a biography by William H. Patterson Jr.
Page 99: “… led by a promising brunette …”: Katz, The Film Encyclopedia.
Page 100: “He asked very earnestly …”: Author interview with Laraine Day.
Page 101: “I, like many other …”: RB letter to Arkham House publishers August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, Nov. 23, 1939.
Page 102: “still so brash …”: Williamson, Wonder’s Child: My Life in Science Fiction.
Page 104: “If I were to give advice …”: Cunningham, 1961 UCLA Oral History Program transcript.
Page 104: “Schwartz sold ‘Pendulum’ …”: Schwartz and Thomsen, Man of Two Worlds, and Schwartz’s story sales for RB, from RB’s private collection.
CHAPTER 11
Page 105: “Two hundred and thirty miles …”: Van der Vat, Pearl Harbor.
Page 106: “… with the headline proclaiming: war declared by u.s....”: Los Angeles Evening Herald Express, Dec. 8, 1941.
Page 106: “Skip desperately wanted …”: Author interview with Skip Bradbury.
Page 106: “‘Gabriel’s Horn’ and ‘The Piper’ fetched sixty dollars …”: While “Gabriel’s Horn” and “The Piper” both sold in the last quarter of 1941, the stories were not published until the first quarter of 1943.
Page 107: “… though Leigh’s was spelled …”: Clute, Nicholls, Peter, Stableford, and Grant, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
Page 107: “… Leigh Brackett, as writer Jack …”: Williamson, Wonder’s Child: My Life in Science Fiction.
Page 108: “In the early forties, Leigh lived …”: Leigh Brackett’s beachside bungalow was not far from the house that Ray used as imaginative inspiration for the residence of his character Constance in the books Death is a Lonely Business, A Graveyard for Lunatics, and Let’s All Kill Constance.
Page 108: “… Ray was ‘an ebullient kid’ …”: Walker, Speaking of Science Fiction: The Paul Walker Interviews.
Page 108: “When Leigh showed Ray …”: Congdon/RB interviews, from RB’s private collection.
Page 108: “… what Bradbury scholar Garyn Roberts …”: Wetzel, Book magazine, Sept.–Oct. 2003
Page 109: “She cemented her name …”: Clute, Nicholls, Peter, Stableford, and Grant, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
Page 110: “… Julie Schwartz sold ‘The Candle’ …”: Schwartz’s story sales for RB, from RB’s private collection.
Page 110: “On February 15, 1942 …”: Freedom of Information/Privacy Act No. 0966766-001.
Page 110: “On Monday morning …”: RB, “Drunk and in Charge of a Bicycle,” from Zen in the Art of Writing.
Page 110: “Soon after Ray registered with the draft board …”: Many published chronologies of Ray Bradbury’s life list the family’s move to Venice in 1941. But according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s file on Ray Bradbury, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, when he registered for the draft in February 1942, he still listed his address as 30541⁄2 West Twelfth Street.
Page 111: “The Bradburys’ house in Venice …”: Author interview with Kevin Miller, owner of record of 670 Venice Boulevard, 2004.
Page 112: “I realized I had …”: RB, “Run Fast, Stand Still,” Zen in the Art of Writing.
Page 113: “It was September …”: RB, “The Lake,” Dark Carnival.
Page 113: “In a 1961 interview”: Cunningham, 1961 UCLA Oral History Program transcript.
Page 114: “Ray appeared on July 16 …”: Freedom of Information/Privacy Act No. 0966766-001.
Page 115: “The day after Ray’s appearance …”: Schwartz’s story sales for RB, from RB’s private collection.
Page 115: “Did I learn a hard, fast, or even an easy lesson …”: RB, “Run Fast, Stand Still,” Zen in the Art of Writing.
Page 115: “… the first ‘classic’ Bradbury story …”: Nolan, The Ray Bradbury Companion.
Page 116: “… Ray sold twelve stories …”: Schwartz’s story sales for RB, from RB’s private collection.
Page 119: “… he sold twenty-two tales.”: Ibid.
Page 119: “Derleth, who was planning …”: RB to Derleth, May 17, 1944, from RB’s private collection.
Page 119: “Initially, Derleth and …”: Ibid.
Page 119: “Corresponding with Derleth …”: RB to Derleth, July 5, 1944, from RB’s private collection.
CHAPTER 12
Page 122: “First, I want to thank you …”: RB to Derleth, Jan. 29, 1945, from RB’s private collection.
Page 123: “The cover jacket might possibly illustrate …”: RB to Derleth, Mar. 8, 1945, from RB’s private collection.
Page 123: “[M]any of my short stories …”: Cunningham, 1961 UCLA Oral History Program transcript.
Page 125: “… eating, almost exclusively, hamburgers …”: Ray often joked that when he died, he wanted his ashes placed in a can of Campbell’s tomato soup that could be rocketed to Mars and buried in the soil of the Red Planet.
Page 126: “We got out in the jungle …”: Congdon/RB interviews, from RB’s private collection.
Page 129: “Dear Mr. Elliott …”: Letter from Don Congdon, dated Aug. 27, 1945, from RB’s private collection.
CHAPTER 13
Page 133: “urge you strongly …”: Telegram from American Mercury editor Charles Angoff, Apr. 15, 1946, from RB’s private collection.
Page 133: “Yet, interestingly …”: Eller and Touponce, Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction.
Page 134: “Other early weird tales, such as ‘The Poems,’ ‘The Ducker,’ ‘Trip to Cranamockett,’ and ‘The Watchers’ …”: “The Poems,” “The Watchers,” and “The Ducker” had all previously appeared in the pages of Weird Tales. “Trip to Cranamockett” was unpublished and would remain that way until it finally appeared as “West of October” in 1988’s The Toynbee Convector. It would resurface again as part of the narrative fabric of 2001’s loosely connected novel of vampire family stories, From the Dust Returned.
Page 136: “They put together an entire October issue …”: RB, afterword, From the Dust Returned.
Page 137: “I was dazzled …”: Author interview with Maggie Bradbury.
Page 137: “His energy was enchanting …”: Ibid.
Page 138: “I think it’s something …”: Ibid.
Page 138: “Once I figured …”: Ibid.
Page 139: “Marguerite Susan McClure …”: Ibid.
Page 140: “He couldn’t keep his hands …”: Ibid.
Page 141: “Earlier that month …”: RB to Derleth, June 2, 1946, from RB’s private collection.
Page 142: “I was kept constantly inebriated …”: RB to Derleth, Oct. 30, 1946, from RB’s private collection.
Page 142: “It will become sort of a Christmas Carol …”: RB to Addams, Feb. 11, 1948, from RB’s private collection.
Page 142: “Those ideas revolved …”: Congdon/RB interviews.
Page 144: “But with ‘
The Man Upstairs’ …”: Western Union telegram from Harper’s editor Katherine Gauss to RB, dated Dec. 24, 1946, from RB’s private collection.
Page 144: “On April 29, 1947 …”: RB to Derleth, Apr. 29, 1947, from RB’s private collection.
Page 144: “He also received word …”: RB to Derleth, Apr. 23, 1947, from RB’s private collection.
CHAPTER 14
Page 146: “I just felt …”: Author interview with Norman Corwin.
Page 146: “… New Yorker editor Katharine S. White …”: K. S. White to RB, July 26, 1947, from RB’s private collection.
Page 147: “I don’t have to tell you …”: Don Congdon to RB, May 6, 1946, from RB’s private collection.
Page 147: “Schwartz had been moving out …”: Author interview with Julius Schwartz.
Page 147: “… his final Bradbury sale …”: Schwartz’s story sales for RB, from RB’s private collection.
Page 147: “The minister asked …”: Author interview with Maggie Bradbury.
Page 148: “In the afternoon …”: Author interview with Ray Harryhausen.
Page 148: “We were just dressed …”: Author interview with Maggie Bradbury.
Page 149: “… a loud avalanche of big red trolley car …”: RB, Death Is a Lonely Business.
Page 149: “Other nights we’d walk down to Ocean Park …”: Graham, H20: The Magazine of Waterfront Culture.
Page 150: “I called out for Ray …”: Author interview with Maggie Bradbury.
Page 151: “His short story ‘Powerhouse’ …”: Rejection letters from Harper’s editor Katherine Gauss to RB, dated Oct. 17, 1946, and from Collier’s associate fiction editor MacLennan Farrell, dated Aug. 5, 1946, from RB’s private collection.
Page 152: “In early 1949, Don Congdon …”: Author interview with Don Congdon.