The Sixties

by Christopher Isherwood

  Have just looked through my papers and it seems that all I have of Lulu material is just one paperbound book; the cut version of the two plays in German, made by Kadidja Wedekind. So am feeling less put-upon and less indignant with Tony Page.

  A beautiful pearly evening with flamingo sunset. Just back from the gym where my weight is exactly 155 lbs.; it has come down just a bit from an alltime high of about 157-8. Something drastic must be done. I blame it largely on eating dates. Nicked my hand on a barbell; it bled.

  Last night we had supper with David Sachs. He bores me terribly but that’s because he is still awed by me and makes professor talk, carefully weighed and measured generalizations about life, etc. He’s turning into a little old Jewish professor of philosophy; last time I saw him, he was still a brash cute little Jewboy grotesquely masquerading as a professor.

  December 25. We talked to Vera Stravinsky in New York this morning. She was very pleased to be called, I think. She said that they have got possession of the manuscripts of Igor’s works which are now their only important assets, but that she’s afraid the lawyers will charge a lot for having got them. Igor is wonderfully better. Vera is all right, only so tired—“morally tired” the doctor had told her. It was all touching and sad, because you got a feeling that, no matter how much money came out of the sale of the manuscripts, it would be frittered away on these astronomical hotel and medical bills which they keep running up. And Vera seems so defenseless now and an old lady.

  Ben Underhill talked to me too, phoning from the airport on his way back to San Francisco. He is now in charge of a school for children up to fourteen in a little town called Paicines, south of Hollister, where they have vineyards. Very cheerful as usual and with his slightly amused, calm, self-sufficient air.

  Went to see the new James Bond movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, with a much less good Bondfn859 and little to recommend it except scenes of skiing and an avalanche in Switzerland. Going to a performance at half past twelve in the morning was chiefly significant as a symbolic act of schedule breaking. But I had no business to do it. Should have started chapter 10 of Kathleen and Frank. I did fudge my way to the end of a rough rough prefirst draft of a foreword to the Narada Bhakti Sutras, however.

  Now I’m waiting for Don to call me and tell me what happened when he had lunch with Irving Blum today and discussed his show. He agreed to do this because we can’t very well talk about it at the two parties we’re to go to tonight—at Charles Aufderheide’s and at Leslie Caron’s.

  Don just called, and Irving Blum seems really to mean business; the show is to be late February or early March. So that’s a good solid Christmas present—the best we could have.

  December 29. On Christmas Eve, they reran “The Legend of Silent Night,” and it had my name on it, not “Magda Bergmann,”fn860 despite all the fuss I made last year. However, it seems that my residual won’t be shared with the man who wrote the additional material, so I’ll get the full ten thousand, minus taxes etc.

  We have sent a cable to Clement Scott Gilbert, trying to get a definite statement from him about the deadline for deciding on a director and the possibility of opening our play in March. Have heard nothing from Tony Richardson.

  Jim Gates is just back from a week at Trabuco; a great success. His description of it consisted of wow-s. He liked Mark and Krishna the best of the monks.

  Don is busy drawing people for his show.

  Terrific winds, such as I’ve hardly ever experienced before in this town. Driving was really quite dangerous even in Beverly Hills.

  Ray Henderson is getting married, but the girl has to get divorced first, so they’ve gone to Maryland to do it. I think Elsa is more upset about this than she’ll admit.

  After a dip, during which it seemed that this might be the end at last, Gerald is a tiny bit better. We saw him today.

  December 31. Chilly but beautiful. Don is in Pasadena, drawing two people, both for Irving Blum’s show. There has been a big earthslide on the Golden State Freeway; hope he wasn’t held up by it.

  I’ve been to the gym; was there yesterday too and the day before. Weight still just over 150. Did some more work on the introduction to Narada this morning and will now try to start chapter 10 of Kathleen and Frank.

  Nothing from Clement Scott Gilbert, nothing from Tony Richardson and nothing from [Daniel] Selznick about our play; he asked us for a copy to show to Irene Selznick in New York.fn861

  Don’t know if we’ll spend this evening with Jack and Jim or just watching T.V. in bed. Jim is full of rehearsals; his film starts almost at once.fn862

  Ted may be starting another attack.

  Swami is mildly sick, at Santa Barbara, but it’s thought to be no more than the usual congregation fatigue.

  fn1 Isherwood often began a fresh notebook of diaries near his birthday, August 26. He titled this one “August 26, 1960—October 16, 1962” with a note: “(A separate volume covers April—October 1961—a visit to England).”

  fn2 Isherwood had worsening arthritis in his right thumb, so in this entry he gave up writing by hand and began to type his diaries on loose sheets which he clipped into a binder.

  fn3 Down There on a Visit (1962), begun in 1955 and now nearing its final form though still titled The Lost.

  fn4 A gated community on the beach.

  fn5 For a film for Richard Burton; see Glossary under Burton.

  fn6 Props for Tony Richardson’s New York production of Shelagh Delaney’s play.

  fn7 First-ever think tank. The Research ANd Development Institute, created by the U.S. Army Air Forces at the end of W.W. II to advise them on aircrafts, rockets, satellites, and other new technology; based in Santa Monica, California.

  fn8 The Algerians had been fighting for independence since 1954, attracting growing public support in France where activists refused to fight against them and even secretly assisted them. In February 1960, President de Gaulle promised self-determination for Algeria, but the war continued until 1962.

  fn9 Last section of Down There on a Visit.

  fn10 In May, Isherwood had accepted a new job teaching English at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB); he was to begin September 22.

  fn11 Ramakrishna and His Disciples (1965); see Glossary for Ramakrishna and for other Hindu names and terms.

  fn12 The magazine of the Vedanta Society of Southern California, Vedanta and the West, in which Isherwood’s Ramakrishna biography was appearing in installments; it was edited by Prema Chaitanya.

  fn13 Charles Laughton had taken a break from the play they were writing about Socrates while he did some television work and underwent a gall bladder operation in mid-August.

  fn14 Geller was then Isherwood’s film agent; French, representing Richard Burton, was trying to make a package deal of the project. Later French became Isherwood’s film agent. See Glossary.

  fn15 I.e., the University of California at Los Angeles. Richardson’s adaptation of the Orestes myth was nominated for several drama awards in 1959–1960.

  fn16 Laughton’s spare house next door to Isherwood and Bachardy.

  fn17 Solomon Hurok (1888–1974), Russian-born impresario who produced classical music, ballet and theatrical events under his rubric, “Sol Hurok presents .…”

  fn18 “How I Write a Novel,” delivered May 5, 1960 at the University of Southern California.

  fn19 “What Is the Nerve of the Interest in a Novel”; see Glossary under Lectures 1960.

  fn20 The American pianist (b. 1934), also a southerner.

  fn21 Isherwood and his guru, Swami Prabhavananda, began translating the Bhagavad Gita in October 1942; it was published in August 1944. Isherwood tells about living as a monk at Vedanta Place in Diaries: Volume One 1939–1960 (D.1). See also Glossary under Prabhavananda and Vedanta Place.

  fn22 The third section of Down There on a Visit, set during August and September 1938.

  fn23 Isherwood’s first university post, at Los Angeles State College, from September 22, 1
959 to June 1960.

  fn24 Angela Lansbury, Plowright, Nigel Davenport, Andrew Ray, and Billy Dee Williams were to open on Broadway on October 4; Ure was not in the play but was sharing Tony Richardson’s West L.A. house.

  fn25 A veterans’ hospital on Sawtelle Boulevard.

  fn26 The 1945 collection of essays edited and introduced by Isherwood. Davenport (b. 1928), an Oxford-educated British actor, played supporting and character roles on the London stage, in films—including Look Back in Anger (1959), A High Wind in Jamaica (1965), A Man for All Seasons (1966), Chariots of Fire (1981)—and on T.V.

  fn27 Williams (b. 1937) is black; he was raised in Harlem, was a child actor and entertainer, and later became known in the made-for-T.V. film “Brian’s Song” (1971), in two films opposite Diana Ross—Lady Sings the Blues (1972) and Mahogany (1975)—and others.

  fn28 Drawing portraits and fashion illustrations.

  fn29 Not his real name.

  fn30 Not her real name.

  fn31 Before marrying, Flam had homosexual affairs.

  fn32 British colonial administrator (1732–1818); Governor of Bengal (1772), first Governor General of India (1773–1785).

  fn33 Warshaw was a painter (see Glossary); Bachardy’s drawing of Vera Stravinsky was reproduced by photostat.

  fn34 Not his real name.

  fn35 English translation ofJean Anouilh’s Becket, ou l’Honneur de Dieu (1959).

  fn36 Lanchester, his wife. The Laughtons’ main residence was on Curson Avenue in Hollywood.

  fn37 Not his real name.

  fn38 Not his real name.

  fn39 Not his real name.

  fn40 Elsa Lanchester—Herself, at UCLA.

  fn41 William Randolph Hearst’s first Los Angeles paper, a New York-style tabloid.

  fn42 R. R. Bouché (1906–1963), Czech-born portrait artist and fashion illustrator whose work often appeared in Vogue.

  fn43 By James Costigan; it opened December 1 but lasted only two weeks. Both poster designs were based on Bachardy’s drawings of cast members.

  fn44 Evidently, to the Channel City Club in Santa Barbara on October 21. Isherwood was to reuse this lecture, or the title anyway, on February 10, 1965 at UCLA.

  fn45 The Herald and Express was Hearst’s evening paper; the Examiner, mentioned October 3, appeared in the morning. The Examiner merged with the Herald, but not until 1962; possibly Isherwood didn’t know (or care) enough about the papers to distinguish between them.

  fn46 An optical phenomenon caused by the refraction of light through the atmosphere as the sun drops below the horizon; most easily seen in clear air across an unobstructed view like the ocean.

  fn47 With six students, at KEYT in Santa Barbara, October 20.

  fn48 In Goodbye to Berlin, Sally Bowles “practically live[s] on” Prairie Oysters—raw eggs mixed with Worcester sauce—and she offers one to the Christopher Isherwood character when he visits her flat in the Kurfurstendamm. See Glossary for Layard, a Berlin friend.

  fn49 In his day-to-day diary, Isherwood noted: “Marge?”

  fn50 A pleasant, dark-haired gay friend in his mid-thirties; he kept an apartment in New York.

  fn51 Russian-born, English-educated producer and writer Anatole de Grunwald (1910–1967) and his wife.

  fn52 The fourth and final presidential debate took place October 21; Richard Nixon, formerly a congressman and a senator for California and currently Eisenhower’s vice president, was deemed to have lost to John Kennedy, then senator for Massachusetts.

  fn53 English playwright and screenwriter (1907–2005), often on Christian subjects; best known for The Lady’s Not for Burning (1948) and Venus Observed (1950), and his translations of Anouilh, Giraudoux, and Ibsen.

  fn54 I.e., Faulkner’s Sanctuary and its sequel Requiem for a Nun, which Richardson amalgamated for his film.

  fn55 Adjacent to the UCSB campus.

  fn56 Professor of English at L.A. State, 1955–1978.

  fn57 Kennedy’s victory, November 8, was slim. In fact, when absentee ballots were counted a week later, Nixon was to prove the winner in California. See Glossary under Presidential Election 1960.

  fn58 At the Sarada Convent, Montecito; see Glossary.

  fn59 Probably Kimmis Hendrick, Pacific News bureau chief from 1947 through the 1960s.

  fn60 See Glossary under Presidential Election 1960.

  fn61 Harry Girvetz (1910–1974), first Chairman of the Philosophy Department at UCSB, from 1957 to 1964, wrote books about liberalism and the modern welfare state, served on the California State Democratic Central Committee, and wrote speeches for Governor Edmund Brown in 1959 and 1960.

  fn62 Administrator of the Arts and Lectures program at UCSB; from 1959 to 1981, she planned theater, lectures, and arts events to complement the academic program.

  fn63 Genevieve Watson Haight (1904–1964) joined the English department in 1941 and mostly trained teachers of English. Her children’s literature course had legendary popularity.

  fn64 William Harrison Ainsworth’s The Tower of London describes the tower in its account of the imprisonment and beheading of Lady Jane Grey, the nine-day child queen, by her cousin Mary I. Isherwood tells more about the book in Lost Years: A Memoir, 1945–1951.

  fn65 He was being asked to lecture there during the coming year.

  fn66 At Berkeley.

  fn67 C.P. Snow (1905–1980), novelist and Cambridge scientist, knighted in 1957 and made a life peer (Baron Snow of Leicester) in 1964, was a grammar school boy and the son of a shoe-factory clerk. His wife was the English writer Pamela Hansford Johnson (1912–1981).

  fn68 First section of Down There on a Visit.

  fn69 Not his real name. An occasional bed partner. He was a schoolteacher.

  fn70 A Vedanta devotee at the nearby Santa Barbara Vedanta Society.

  fn71 Academy Award winning costume designer (1902–1982), then working at MGM.

  fn72 Minelda and Bob Jiras.

  fn73 Auden and Isherwood had worked on the musical before (see D.1); now the London impresario Oscar Lewenstein was interested. See Glossary under Curtis Brown, Auden and Isherwood’s New York agency, where Cindy Degener handled drama, and under Carter Lodge who had rights in John van Druten’s play I Am a Camera.

  fn74 Lambert had already helped Isherwood (in 1959) to revise this film script, originally written by Isherwood with Lesser Samuels in 1950.

  fn75 Dr. Max Cutler, trained at Johns Hopkins and the Curie Institute in Paris; head of the Tumor Institute in Chicago before opening his practice in Los Angeles. He had previously removed a papilloma from Michael Barrie.

  fn76 Homosexuals.

  fn77 On December 30, Laos requested U.N. help, claiming North Vietnamese troops had crossed its northern border; see Glossary under Laos Crisis.

  fn78 Henry V, III.vi.

  fn79 Ted’s Grill, a local restaurant.

  fn80 Also by Cather.

  fn81 By Thomas de Quincey.

  fn82 By John Ford.

  fn83 Robert B. Haas, on the staff of the UCLA University Extension.

  fn84 The lectures were announced as “The Forefathers: Dickens, Conrad, Bronte, and Others,” “Our Group and Its Older Brothers: Joyce, Hemingway, and Others,” “The Young Novelists: Williams, Capote, Kerouac, Mailer, Bradbury, and Others,” for three Sunday evenings in March.

  fn85 Random sample.

  fn86 February 14 (Valentine’s Day), 1953, when Don Bachardy first spent the night with Isherwood. The building is on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

  fn87 His sexually explicit 1959 short story (never published); see D.1.

  fn88 Now J.F.K.; Isherwood typed Idyllwild, like the town in the San Jacinto mountains where he stayed in John van Druten’s cabin in the 1940s. See D.1.

  fn89 Canadian-born American stage and film star (1914–1992).

  fn90 Revelation, 18.21.

  fn91 September 1948—December 1950 when Isherwood lived with Bill Caskey at 333 East Rustic Road. Caskey was often away; see D.1.


  fn92 Isherwood tells in D.1 and in My Guru and His Disciple about differences between Heard and Swami over asceticism, women, the role of the guru, drugs, and mysticism. And see Glossary under Heard.

  fn93 At Evelyn Hooker’s, 400 South Saltair Avenue, Brentwood, where Isherwood lived in 1952–1953.

  fn94 E. Phillips Oppenheim (1866–1946), Edwardian spy writer.

  fn95 I.e., wings which carry the immortal soul upwards, toward Truth; see Henri Estienne (Stephanus) edition (1578), pp. 246–257.

  fn96 Othello, V. ii. Isherwood typed, “the pearl.”

  fn97 I.e., Alfred Kinsey, the sex researcher.

  fn98 Viennese actress (1885–1983); she played Fräulein Schneider in the original stage production of I Am a Camera, appeared in other Broadway shows, worked in T.V., and later had small film roles.

  fn99 Civilian Public Service camp, for conscientious objectors during W.W.II.

  fn100 Isherwood’s mother, Kathleen Isherwood, died in June 1960. Sidebotham was the family solicitor.

  fn101 I.e., to Johnny Zeigel.

  fn102 Softened and receptive—as to the light and power of God or inspiration of the Spirit—the sense which Isherwood learned from the Quakers during his early years in the U.S.

  fn103 Masselink’s novel.

  fn104 Not their real names.

  fn105 Fran’s daughter.

  fn106 Pianist and composer head of Columbia Records and his wife, ballerina Vera Zorina.

  fn107 Irish-Catholic American star Rosalind Russell (1907–1976).

  fn108 Merula; see Glossary.

  fn109 Richard and Sybil Burton’s house.

  fn110 Spender, his son.

  fn111 Fifteen hundred U.S.-trained Cuban exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs on April 17, counting on a sympathetic uprising to overthrow Fidel Castro’s revolutionary socialist regime; they were killed or captured by his troops.

  fn112 Referring to the red “L” on a white plate that British learner drivers must display.

  fn113 The 1949 book was by the 11th Marquess, Francis Archibald Kelhead Douglas (1896–1954), with Percy Colson, but he was no longer the present Marquess. Lord Alfred Douglas’s father was the 9th Marquess. Gide’s book was Les Nourritures terrestres (Fruits of the Earth, 1897).