The Sixties

by Christopher Isherwood

  Yesterday Don painted a really beautiful portrait of Collin Wilcox; one of his best. I keep hoping that he will go into another satisfactory work period. He denied that he really liked this picture, but no doubt that was partly out of superstition; he doesn’t want to let the demons of the air hear him.

  Jack [Larson] and Jim [Bridges] came to supper last Thursday. As usual Jim was silent and sleepy and seemingly bored in Jack’s presence. This used to irritate me, but I have seen a good deal of Jim lately, while Jack and Don were both in New York, and now I think I understand his relation to Jack much better.

  Jack, says Jim, is terribly worried about old age. He doesn’t use a lot of cosmetics but he spends a great deal of time staring at his face in the mirror. Joan Houseman upset him by remarking (the bitch!) that it was good that he finally looked his age, because now one would take what he said seriously and not treat him like a child.

  […]

  While Jack was away, Jim told me that he felt wonderfully free, because when Jack is there he feels like a guest, he never feels that the house belongs to him. They are very formal about keeping separate accounts and each paying his share. After a quarrel it has always been Jim who has had to make the first advance and say he’s sorry—but the other day, to Jim’s amazement and delight, Jack said he was sorry.

  Jack’s too strict with Jim about clothes and disapproves if he dresses eccentrically. “I’m wild,” said Jim, “sometimes I’d like to dress in velvet and put postage stamps all over my face.”

  Jim is terribly scared and worried by Jack’s mental attacks. […] But during these manic attacks, Jack also gets brilliant ideas—for example, it was during an attack that he saw how to rewrite the second part of the Byron opera.

  Jim told me that at present he is “off” Gavin, Nellie Carroll and Clyde Ventura. He feels that Nellie is making use of him, particularly with regard to Miguel.fn627 The other day, Nellie told Jim that Miguel had spent forty dollars on taxis. When Jim was astounded, Nellie said that Miguel’s car had broken down and that of course he couldn’t be expected to take a bus when he went to see his wife! Miguel has been building a workroom for Jim out in the garden. Jim had unwisely agreed to pay him by the day, and Nellie cut down Miguel’s working hours by insisting that she and Miguel should make love in the mornings before he started out. As for Gavin, Jim feels that Clint [Kimbrough] has changed him—he is now so negative about everything. (Jim’s specific charge was that Gavin had hated Beckett’s Happy Days—which Nina Foch and Ted Marcuse performed at Pasadena the other day, very well—so violently that he refused even to discuss it.) Jim thinks that Gavin is terrifically impressed by show biz personalities, such as Natalie Wood. (This I don’t believe.) Jim says that Gavin is such a careless writer, he never polishes anything or takes any real trouble. (This too I doubt.) As for Clyde, Jim complains that he’s such a liar. I’m sure he is, but he’s also truly charming, and if you ask him to the house he really sings (and dances) for his supper.

  December 19. Another beautiful though slightly chilly day. Yesterday we went on the beach and something happened to my hip, I must have pinched a nerve or something. It is very painful if I make a wrong move. Christmas looms. Joe LeSueur is arriving tomorrow, Tony Richardson on Thursday—to spend a divorcee Christmas with Vanessa. Sometime in the next few days, Clint is to have his screen test for In Cold Blood—astoundingly enough, he has made his way right up to the finals—and it is largely my doing! I dread his gratitude, if he wins—or rather, the gratitude which he will feel he must feel. How utterly strange it is, the way things of this sort come to pass! I met Richard Brooks all those years agofn628—and what are the fruits of our meeting? That I took his house as a setting for the opening scene of The World in the Evening, and that I was able to call him and personally recommend Clint for the part in Cold Blood.

  Some clinical notes: Y. and Z. have a lot of their sex in threesomes. Y. likes to jack off, but only with other people present. If Y. and Z. have had sex with someone together, then it’s okay for either one of them to have that person separately later. But if either one goes with an outsider, the other is jealous.… Y. and Z. don’t sleep together, and they never touch each other except when having sex.…One time, when Z. had been away, Y. welcomed him home by fixing a very strong martini, taking a mouthful of it and then squirting it into Z.’s mouth. After they had done this a few times, Y. got Z. into the bath-tub and peed on him.fn629

  The other day, Dr. Allen’s wife committed suicide—this I heard from Gavin, who had happened to call his office. So I wrote Allen a note. Now we get a Christmas card, with a printed greeting from both of them. Inside this card there is another printed card, as follows: “Official reports of December 7, 1966 stated that my wife Jeri Selma Allen had died. However, Christmas Season and what it represents are strong reminders that the report is limited in what it is able to express. I am sure you will—in the true Spirit of Christmas—have no difficulty in understanding that this message and card which we picked out together some time ago comes to you now from both of us as always.”

  Danny Mann called me last night. It seems that “Silent Night” is really all set to be filmed—the only remaining decision is to be about the budget. Anyhow, my work on it is complete. And Danny is off to Austria either this week or right after Christmas. Now I have told Lamont Johnson that I want to work on Shaw’s Black Girl in Search of God. And I am planning if possible to go to England next year and work on The Torrents of Spring and the adaptation of the Wedekind plays. This means that I won’t be going to Riverside to teach. That’s partly laziness—it would be an awful sweat to give formal classes.

  As for the Hero-Father book, I still don’t know. I’m still searching for the tone of voice to tell it in. I seem to have lost my confidence in autobiography for autobiography’s sake.

  A mad thought—after seeing Antonioni’s The Blow-Upfn630—that maybe I could write my first version of Down There on a Visit (the Mexican one) as a film script. But of course it would still have to mean something.

  This morning I got a letter from Emilie Jacobson at Curtis Brown saying that Vogue wanted me to write a “profile interview” with Vanessa Redgrave (to go with some photographs they are publishing) “about how it feels to be in her shoes, her reaction to the limelight, the feelings of this young actress at peak fame about the theater in general, etc.”

  Here’s my answer. Don advised me, quite rightly, not to send it, and I shan’t. It is absurdly aggressive and, as Don points out, calculated to put Emilie Jacobson off even trying to find me any more job offers. I’m recording it here because it gives an all-too-true picture of the cantankerous side of me. Indeed, it is very unfair and bitchy. And yet, at the same time, it does say something I feel strongly.

  “.… Just for your information, not Vogue’s, I will explain why I’m refusing. To me, as a friend of Vanessa’s, it would seem positively insulting to ask her how she feels about being a star, etc. You see, Vanessa is a professional, and the child of a professional family, and she has been an admired actress for years already. The only sense in which she is now a star is that she happens to have been hired by a big studio to engage in a somewhat dubious bit of pop art!fn631 If some unknown person has a lucky break, one can ask her or him how it feels—but not a professional whose importance has been belatedly recognized by a business concern, ages after everyone who cared for the theater was already aware of it. In Vanessa’s case, this success is not a matter of luck, and it is insulting to suggest that it is. Of course, one doesn’t expect Vogue to see that.”

  December 20. Yesterday was real winter solstice weather; thick white sea-fog, so that we could barely find our way down the Marina peninsula, to have supper with Michael [Leopold] and Henry [Guerriero]. The shack town was lost in fog, which made it snug to arrive and find lights and books and mobiles and drinks and a fire amidst the chilly whiteness. We talked about Costa Rica, which Michael had recommended to Gavin (without ever having been there) as the Switzerland of
Central America, no Indian problem, political stability, the largest colony of North American residents south of the Mexican border, and a marvellous climate. Anyhow, Gavin is going there after Christmas, to work with the producer of the musical he is writing about Napoleon and Josephine.

  With Michael and Henry there is much conversational ground which is usually avoided. One doesn’t ask, “How crazy has Mikey been lately?” “How are you off for money?” “Are either of you in trouble with the police?” “How much longer do you think you can go on like this—and what do you plan to do when you can’t?” Merely appearing gives both parties some reassurance, of course—this is the chief value of a visit.

  I’m afraid Iris may be very seriously ill. I got a letter from her a bit less than a month ago, dated November 9, with a postscript dated November 24, in which she says:

  … since writing it appears that I must go back to the stocks in Harley Street—I hope no slicing this time—so I shall be at Ivan’s 2 Tregunter Road SW 10. Concerning death, life seems to become increasingly precious, which is unfair of it. At twenty death looks like a far, rather decorative portal, now a mean door in the hospital corridors, shut with a neat, inaudible click. Whereas one was at first so uneasy in it, with time one grows accustomed to life, like your description of driving on the freeway.* “Now more than ever seems it rich to die.” The nightingale has changed tune, and the old ’uns with ear trumpets, limping and groping, quaver “Darkling I listen”fn632 with the hope that, after all, cockcrow will take over and breakfast coffee will bubble. I have just eaten an excellent fresh brown egg. The only thing is love, fresh brown love, that I miss, I never get used to the pangs of indifference. But you have a long way to go before you suffer such deprivations.…

  (*The reference is to A Single Man which Iris had just read and which had moved her to write the first part of the letter. After praising it, she said that the portrait of me in the book lacked the warmth which she felt towards me, as she looked back: “The feeling that we were together in one boat, becalmed, on flood, down waterfall.…Your friendship was to me like a star sapphire shining above the lesser lights in California. I wear it still on my finger as I write with praise, with love.…’)

  Some weeks ago, Geoffrey and Collin Horne decided, in their horrendous way, that it would be nice if each of the children sacrificed the belonging he valued most as a Christmas present to a member of a very poor family, preferably Watts-Negro. The problem was to find the right family. So we consulted Dorothy Miller, and she said she knew one. So the Hornes sent their presents over, and then paid the family a visit. To their dismay, Geoffrey and Collin found that this family owned a Cadillac (an old one, to be sure) and also a color T.V. set—which the Horne children had wanted but had been told they couldn’t afford! However, the visit itself was quite a success.

  December 21. Books I’m reading or dipping into just now: Two Views, Uwe Johnson (a good situation, but so stodgily written I hardly know if I can get through it), The Last 100 Days, John Toland (the sort of journalism that fascinates me. I feel such strong identification with so many of the characters, particularly on the German side—quite upset, for example, when Wenck is injured in the auto accident and prevented from leading the counterattack on the Russians!fn633 Because you know the Germans will lose, and indeed want them to lose, you get a kind of objectivity toward the whole struggle and are sad whenever the efforts of any heroic figure are frustrated.) Elizabeth the Great, Elizabeth Jenkins. (Although Jenkins writes well and Toland sloppily, I feel much the same about both books, strong identification. Fascinated by Elizabeth’s hesitations, particularly the story of the signing of Mary Stuart’s death warrant.)

  Clint just called, in great excitement after taking his test for In Cold Blood. He thinks it went well. Once again, these hysterical warnings against telling anyone. Clint swears that somebody in the studio casting office told him Brooks actually signed someone else for the part, and then this someone talked to the press about it, and Brooks refused to have him and bought out his contract!

  December 22. Am bothered by a pain through the right side of the groin, quite sharp; at times I can feel it in the hip and the back and down my right thigh. It started last Sunday, while I was lying on the beach with Don.

  This morning, George Knox, the present head of the English department, called from U.C. Riverside. He wanted to know if I am coming to them for the spring quarter. I told him no. This decision is partly because of my vague intention of going to England next year, but also because of laziness and the probability of having enough money anyhow. It somehow depressed me, after I’d definitely made it, because it seems bad to start the post-solstice period with a negative decision and no particular plans. The Black Girl project is really postponed for a long while, because they have to get permission first from the Shaw estate. So I’m thrown back on Hero-Father.

  A letter from Anne Geller. She has the thickest kind of Jewish skin. After having had the nerve to tell me I should give her this money from the Cabaret royalties (or rather, that the Frenches should) in memory of Jim, she now sulks because it isn’t enough. “And this brings me to your enclosed check. Chris, I don’t know what to say because my first thought was that it is a pretty bleak one. However, if you agree that it is all that your agents should rightfully release, then we’ll let it go at that. And I do thank you dear, for thinking of me.” Don says I should never have sent her any money in the first place.

  Last night we had supper with Swami. The latest domestic crisis is that [one of the boys] has had a nervous breakdown. He came to Swami and said, “Swami, I know I have an ego and you want to destroy it, but please don’t poison me.” Swami told him he was crazy, but he began staying away from meals for fear of being poisoned. However, he doesn’t seem violent. He has given up his gun, which he used to keep in his car, and Swami has it locked in the closet in his room until it can be handed over to [the boy]’s father, who is coming to take him away.

  The fuss is still going on with Belur Math about the status of the nuns here. Are they part of the Ramakrishna Order, or are they part of the Sarada Convent in India? The girls mind this very much and no doubt it has political implications; spiritually speaking, it seems irrelevant. In one way, I must say it seems to me that Vidya’s mischief making (if he really did make mischief, which I still slightly doubt) seems to have been heaven inspired; because it has indirectly caused the setting-up of this monastery in Hollywood, which may well become the safe retreat and stronghold of the boys against the bossiness of the girls. At least, in times to come, they’ll have a household of their own which the girls can’t interfere with.

  After seeing Swami, we went on [to] Gavin’s, where Jack and Jim were having supper. Clint, rather sententiously drunk, was holding forth about acting. When he was doing the test he had to read a speech from Night Must Fallfn634 in which the word “murder” occurs. So Brooks had addressed him, and the crew, on the significance of the word, saying that murder is something extraordinary, something that no one present had ever done. He told Clint not to pause on the word, but to give it significance, etc. etc. Gavin was a bit scornful but not wanting to show this too much, lest Clint should be hurt or put off or shaken in his morale. Gavin’s happiness about all this is truly touching. Jim seemed to be bitching Jack, meanwhile. We watched Truman Capote’s T.V. show, “A Christmas Memory,” which was quite astonishingly weak.

  This morning it was chilly but fine, so we had breakfast out on the deck and opened letters and Christmas cards. A letter from Bob Regester to us both, written when drunk, and full of love. Don said, “Bob’s love—where does it liveth?” and we both laughed wildly. I didn’t really understand what he meant by saying “liveth” and I doubt if he did, either; but it touched off one of those subliminal flashes of understanding which are possible between intimates.

  Have just finished Two Views. I don’t think it works. And yet the idea is very good. The boy is attracted to the girl simply because he can’t get at her, she is
on the other side of the Berlin Wall. So he makes arrangements for her escape, and she does escape. But when she finally meets him again it means nothing to her. Either the boy and the girl should have been made far more interesting as people—so that you would give a damn about their relationship, which you don’t—or else this should have been a short story. There is an evident lack of communication here, between Johnson as author and me as reader. I feel his intelligence and I am sure I am missing something of his intention. I would like to talk to him frankly about it, but of course we never could, even if we met.

  December 24 [Saturday]. This pain in my hip and groin has got steadily worse. Lyle Fox massaged it, and seemed to locate it in my hip, towards the back, but it aches right through and makes me feel sick. I have taken a codeine pill for it, but it’s hardly any less. I can’t see Dr. Allen about it until Tuesday, I guess, and meanwhile we have quite a social program to fulfil, including seeing Tony and Vanessa this evening and again at lunch tomorrow, going to Jennifer’s with Joe LeSueur, then Swami’s birthday on Monday and a “star” party for Joe LeSueur on Tuesday evening which we are giving with Gavin at our house because Gavin is leaving on Wednesday for Haiti.

  Am depressed, because of the pain and because I got drunk two nights in a row, to ease it. On Thursday night I was very drunk. Don heard me say in my sleep, “I’m so happy.…I like being happy.” This somehow strikes me as a rather sick masochistic thing to say. It smells of self-pity.

  December 28. The Christmas Eve gathering, which was to have been at that curious rather down-at-heel “English pub” The Mucky Duck, was transferred to Chez Jay’s because it was too late at the Mucky Duck for them to serve fish and chips. So eleven of us ate and drank a dinner which must have cost Tony and Vanessa close on a hundred dollars—probably more, except that they saved on Rachel Harrison’s meal because she wouldn’t eat anything, only drink brandy and sing Welsh songs and quarrel semiseriously with Tony, to such an extent that I felt sure she was about to throw her drink at him across the table, and so kept guarding one of Don’s precious mod ties which I happened to be wearing. Meanwhile, David Hemmings, looking treacherous smiling Sir Mo[r]dred to the life, in his wisps of beard, kept whispering with Guinevere-Vanessa or Lancelot-Franco Nero, as the case might be.fn635 As for Rachel, when not quarrelling with Tony, she informed me that we were both geniuses, that she was a barren woman, and that she was Welsh; then turned to Franco and told him he was beautiful; then expressed her love-hate for Rex [Harrison], who smiled smugly. Don says that Rachel is his clown and that he encourages her to behave in this way.