The biggest social event of that fall was an all-star picnic organized by the Huxleys at Tujunga Canyon. There were about thirty guests—Aldous, Maria, their doctor and his family, Bertrand Russell, his wife Peter and two or three stepchildren, Krishnamurti, Rajagopal and his wife Rosalind,38 Anita Loos, with friends, Salka Viertel and Berthold and Garbo.
I had seen Garbo already, at the Viertels’, but we had only been together for a few minutes at a time. She was always full of secrets to be discussed in private with Salka, her closest confidante. She wore the famous straw gardening hat, with slacks, and a tiny patch of plaster between her eyebrows, to prevent wrinkles from forming. She was kittenish, in a rather embarrassing way; and her lack of makeup and general untidiness were obviously calculated. Just the same, I liked her and felt quite at ease in her company. She climbed the figtree in the Viertels’ garden to get me some specially ripe figs. I remember how she referred to some business dealings with the studio, and said that one must always pretend to be a child when talking to the front office. She had her own kind of little-girl slyness.
Garbo had been lured to the picnic under false pretences. They had told her it would be a very quiet affair—just the Huxleys and Krishnamurti. Garbo was anxious to meet Krishnamurti. She was naturally drawn to prophets—genuine and otherwise. Salka said that she was very unhappy, restless and frightened. She wanted to be told the secret of eternal youth, the meaning of life—but quickly, in one lesson, before her butterfly attention wandered away again. Hence Stokowski, and Dr. Hauser’s salads.39
We picnicked on the stony riverbed, high up the canyon, where the road ends. It was a beautiful place, with forest precipices towering above us, not unlike a scene in the lower Alps. Garbo, of course, had her special diet with her in a basket. She and Krishnamurti were put next to each other, but they didn’t speak much. I think they were both scared.
Krishnamurti was a slight, sallow little man with a scrubby chin and rather bloodshot eyes, whose face bore only faint traces of the extraordinary beauty he must have had as a boy. He was very quiet and modest, and never talked in ordinary company about philosophy or religion. He seemed fondest of animals and most at ease with children. Gerald complained that he got violently upset about trifles—like catching a train—and showed little sign of inward calm. Certainly, he didn’t impress me as Prabhavananda did; but he had a kind of simple dignity which was very touching. And—there was no getting away from it—he had done what no other man alive today has done: he had refused to become a god.
After lunch, most of our party wandered a little further up the canyon, to a place where the forest rangers had built a high wire fence, right across the riverbed, with notices warning against trespass. (I think this was because a dam was under construction, to control the annual floods of the Los Angeles River.) Somebody said it looked like a barricade around a concentration camp. Anita Loos suggested that we should burrow under it, like escaping refugees. It was a rather sinister joke, and the laughter was a bit forced, as several people began to dig, with their hands or pieces of rock. I remember Bertrand Russell holding forth to Aldous on some philosophical topic and digging as he talked, with the air of a father joining in a game to amuse the children. Only, in this case, he was both parent and child.
Inside a few minutes, there was quite a large, shallow pit. Most of us got into it and wriggled under the wire. It was funny to watch how, having done this, people became grown-ups again and strolled off in twos and threes, talking about the war. I don’t know why they had taken all this trouble, for they paid no attention to the scenery. Berthold especially—that born city dweller—might just as well have been walking down Fifth Avenue.
I held back to the end of the procession, because I wanted to walk with Garbo. I had drunk a lot of beer at lunch, and knew no shame. I only wished my friends could see me. As we started out, Garbo said: “As long as we’re on this side of the fence, let’s pretend we’re two other people—quite, quite different.” “You know,” I announced solemnly, “I really wish you weren’t Garbo. I like you. I think we could have been great friends.” At this, Garbo let out a mocking, Mata Hari laugh: “But we are friends! You are my dear little brother. All of you are my dear little brothers.” “Oh, shut up!” I exclaimed, enormously flattered.
I suppose everybody who meets Garbo dreams of saving her—either from herself, or from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, or from some friend or lover. And she always eludes them by going into an act. This is what has made her a universal figure. She is the woman whose life everyone wants to interfere with.
Just as we had finished our stroll and were returning to the wire fence by another path, we met a forest ranger who was cutting some wood. I could hardly believe my luck. What a situation! Of course, he would recognize her at once. Garbo evidently thought so, too, for she pulled down her wide hat brim. I fairly swelled with gallantry. When he asked us what the hell we were doing and took our names, I’d get in front of her and swear she was Miss Smith from Ocean Park, or maybe Mrs. Isherwood—and I’d give him my own address to let me know the amount of the fine. This, I thought, will really impress her.
The ranger looked us both over, quite pleasantly. Then he said: “Do you know what I’m doing here?”
“No,” I answered. (This sounded like the build-up for some heavy sarcasm about our trespassing.)
“I’m killing two birds with one stone. This ground has to be cleared; so I’m cutting me some firewood for my cabin.”
We passed on. Berthold, who had no straw hat and was nobody’s dear little brother, met a different ranger and got his name taken, with severe rebukes for smoking cigarettes in a fire area. Later, he was fined.
Throughout September and October, Berthold and I continued our collaboration. That is to say, we saw each other nearly every day, tinkered with the story (agreeing that the war had made it necessary to reconsider the whole idea on a different basis), drank coffee, smoked, joked, gossiped, swam. We even played with ideas for other stories. Berthold could hatch them out by the dozen.
About the beginning of November, to our utter amazement, I got a job. It was a spy story for Goldwyn. The story itself was so idiotic that there seemed nothing whatever to be done with it—but Berthold had the idea of scrapping it altogether and substituting one of our own, built around my character, Mr. Norris.
I went to see Eddie Knopf, of Goldwyn’s story department, with this idea and got it accepted at once. Knopf was one of those shrewd, rude, man-to-man Jews who exude hairy virility. In telling our story, I ad-libbed the line: “I’d sooner cut off my hand than do that!” It must have been one of those dreadful subconscious “errors.” I suppose I had already been told about Knopf’s amputation, and forgotten. At the word “hand,” his arm twitched, and I saw the stump jerk forward from his sleeve. It nearly stopped me dead.
(The story is that in Germany, after the 1914 war, Knopf went into a toy shop and saw a child buying what was supposed to be a toy hand grenade. Knopf saw at once that it was actually a live bomb—how it got there isn’t explained—and that the child had already pulled out the safety pin. He grabbed the grenade and ran out into the street, where it exploded.)
Knopf was smart. He was working for a cunning old miser with plenty of taste, who posed as a roughneck illiterate boor for the same reason as Garbo posed as a child. Goldwyn would shout and stamp. Knopf would take the victim out to lunch and calm him down, without neglecting to cash in on his shattered morale. In this case, the object of their bullying was to get me to surrender the rights of Mr. Norris Changes Trains without paying me for them or guaranteeing more than a few weeks’ work. Knopf soon discovered that I was down to my last fifteen dollars. Then he got tough. Against my better judgment, for Berthold’s sake and for Vernon’s, I gave way.
I continued to work with Berthold, on a fifty-fifty basis. Berthold was very fatherly during this period. He bewildered me with instructions. It was always assumed that the boot was on the wrong foot—that it was he who ought to be h
andling the interviews while I stayed at home. Actually, Knopf and Berthold would have gotten to death grips at once, and Berthold knew this. He was quite content to leave things the way they were, and poke fatherly fun at my maiden struggles with the Hollywood film world.
The Goldwyn Studios, at this time, were like a ghost town. The offices were emptying, the stages were standing idle, the employees were being laid off. Goldwyn was going into one of his hibernation periods; perhaps he was waiting to see how the war would develop. Soon, I was almost the only writer on the lot—except for a legendary lady named Jan Fortune, who, it was said, never got fired because nobody could find her. She dodged along the corridors from office to office, and always slept in the building. She was supposed to have parties there, at night.
I saw Goldwyn himself three or four times. The first time, he was friendly and flattering. The second, at his house in Beverly Hills, he was rude and unmanageable. “It’s all nonsense!” he shouted. “It’s stupid. The boy’s a damn fool. I want something clever.” I drank a big glass of whisky and felt superior—for by this time I knew that I had a job at MGM waiting for me after the New Year. Our last interview was a very curious one, because I had apparently succeeded in hurting his feelings, with a mock-polite letter I had written to the story department, outlining the various stages of our plot development, and Goldwyn’s contradictory suggestions and objections. I had tried to make this letter sound as much as possible like a clinical report, merely substituting “Mr. Goldwyn” for “the patient.”
Goldwyn sent for me in his office and put on an extraordinary act, in front of several subordinates. He asked, did I think him a stupid, obstinate hick who knew nothing about writers and couldn’t appreciate their work? If so, it was just too bad, because, although he was only a plain business man, he knew a good thing when he saw it—he knew I was a swell writer and a swell person, and he thought of me as a friend, etc. etc. I saw through him a yard, but just the same I was embarrassed. I grinned and mumbled protests. When we were through with the playacting, I told him about the Metro job. This didn’t please him at all. Automatically, he began a line about loyalty and checked himself: he knew that I knew he was going out of business. We said goodbye—one of those wordy Hollywood farewells which have no warmth but much superstition. Film people usually fear an unkind parting. It may bring you bad luck—especially if the other guy makes good, later.
Some months after this, I had a frank talk with Knopf, who had also left the Goldwyn Studio. “You touched Sam on his sore spot,” he told me. “Call him a son of a bitch and he’ll sock you on the jaw. Tell him he hasn’t acted like a gentleman, and he’ll crawl.”
It was only much later, discussing Goldwyn with John van Druten, that I realized how cleverly Berthold and I had been handled, right from the beginning. The insult technique is designed to put a writer on his mettle, and make him produce the maximum number of story ideas in a very short period. Then, when the writer has been well milked, he’s fired, and another writer is called in. Berthold had actually been tricked into presenting Goldwyn with three completely different stories.
Knopf told me of a talk he’d had with Goldwyn, the day I was hired.
Goldwyn: If we’ve got to use his characters, we must take care he doesn’t use any of ours. Nothing that’s in the original script—(looking through the outline of our story) What’s this about the Gestapo? He can’t use the Gestapo.
Knopf: But, Sam, the Gestapo isn’t our property.
Goldwyn (after deep thought, sadly): No—I guess you’re right, Eddie. It isn’t.
December 6. The war gets crazier every day. Italy denounces Russia, sends bombers against them to help the Finns—apparently with Hitler’s sanction. Russia reported demanding Bessarabia. No fighting on the western front. No air raids on London. No peace. “Very soon,” I told Berthold, “Britain and Germany will sign a mutual aggression pact—to keep at least five divisions facing each other on the Maginot line for the next ten years—while they both attack Russia.” As poor Toller predicted, “Nie wieder Frieden” is the new slogan.40
It is silly, old-fashioned, nowadays to write: “I wish I were dead.” I wish I were alive.
December 16. This evening, Gerald showed me a letter from Raymond Mortimer. He, and nearly every member of the Bloomsbury circle, seems to be pro-war. This war is not against men, against Germans—but against “a sort of cholera epidemic.” The Americans are criticized, for wanting the English to fight their battles—but the Americans are not to get into the war, for fear they should insist on a stupid, liberalistic peace. The peace should be dictated by France—partition and both banks of the Rhine.
A. A. Milne has repudiated his own book41—because, “This is really a civil war.” Harold Nicolson goes even further. He says it’s holy.
December 22. A stupid, ill-considered letter I wrote to Gerald Hamilton has been quoted by William Hickey’s gossip column in the London Daily Express. (Gerald, apparently, thought he was doing me a favor and getting me a little free publicity!) “The refugees here are very militant and already squabbling over the future German government. God help Germany if some of them ever get into power! Others are interested, apparently, in reconquering the Romanisches Café, and would gladly sacrifice the whole British army to make Berlin safe for night life …”
Berthold, who had this clipping sent him by an angry refugee colleague from London, wants me to publish some kind of explanation, or apology. I tried, but I shan’t send it. There is a disgusting mock-humility in eating your own words. After all, I meant what I said. I am opposed to Prince Löwenstein’s antics, Erika Mann’s hate lectures.42 My real offence is that I expressed myself badly. Berthold warns me that I have been very unwise, because my possibility of earning money here depends largely upon German refugees and their German-American-Jewish friends.
The alternative (which Berthold advises) is to use this occasion to make a statement about the war, my position, etc. etc. But the whole essence of my “position” is not to make statements. I am the only silent member of a community of all-too-noisy prophets. My motto: Nescio, Nescio.43
(I’m not sure, but I think that, by this time, Harold Nicolson had already published a mock-friendly article attacking Aldous, Gerald, Wystan and myself for not returning to England and taking part in the war effort.44 A London newspaper, maybe the Daily Express or the News Chronicle, cabled each of us, asking for our comment. I don’t know what Wystan said. Gerald didn’t answer. I believe Aldous wrote a letter. I answered that I agreed with Heard and Huxley “one hundred percent,” which was defiant rather than illuminating.
The publication of my letter to Gerald Hamilton seems to have touched off a whole press campaign against us, which lasted well into 1940. Questions were even asked in Parliament. I hardly refer to this at all in my diary, because, at the time, it made me feel so guilty—guilty, and, at the same time, defiant. There is a strange exhilaration in being attacked. Part of me wanted to turn and snarl back, like an animal trapped by hounds. I am glad now that I didn’t.
However, on Auden’s advice, I wrote to the British Embassy in Washington asking if these attacks represented the official British attitude and offering, if necessary, to return to England and serve in a noncombatant capacity. A secretary named Hoyer Millar45 answered, in a letter dated July 12, 1940: “I wish to assure you that your position in the United States, like Mr. Auden’s, is understood and that the offer of your services is much appreciated. If you have not already done so, I would suggest that you keep in touch with the British Consul at Los Angeles who will be able to give you the best advice from time to time.”
That was my first and last attempt to put myself in the right with the authorities. Much later, the consulate did appeal to all British residents to return to England—but only on condition that you signed a paper agreeing to accept any kind of service you were assigned to. This ruled out conscientious objectors. And, in any case, my attitude had somewhat altered. More of that in due course.)
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br /> Faced by Salka’s lost job at MGM, the Viertels are displaying a fatalistic extravagance. Sheaves of cables to Europe. Shopfuls of gifts from an expedition to Tijuana. They are a real Chekhov family. Berthold writing his journal, poems, letters to England, upstairs in the room overlooking the ocean—the lair into which he has carried like an animal all the books he can buy, borrow or steal. He reads everything—from modern American poetry to Hindu mysticism, from astronomy to Aeschylus—with a frantic, greedy haste. A kind of Faust.
And Salka, around whom still floats the melancholy, nostalgic glamor of the theater—the glamor of extravagance, hopeless debts, disillusioned love. “Children,” she exclaims, “I am absolutely exhausted!” She sinks sensually into a chair, like a big mother cat.
And Hans—the pale, unshaven “eternal student”—coming home at 4 a.m. from the Reinhardt School—stalking about the house in his bathrobe at noon—nervy, irritable, deaf; a horror to Berthold, who sees in him a slipshod caricature of his own youth, and loads him with reproaches, bitter, anxious, loving. Everybody bosses Hans, especially the women.
Etta [Hardt], the housekeeper, bosses everybody—Peter, when he is at home; dreamy, good-humored Tommy, with his untidy red hair, glasses and lisp; Mausi [Steuermann], Salka’s niece, always half-smiling with the secret superiority of a future great actress; cantankerous Lena,46 the cook; old rheumatic Buddy and the noisy younger dogs. Erect in her blazer and flannel trousers, she works from morning to night, like an undaunted pioneer, to prevent the home from relapsing into virgin Jewish jungle—hacking tirelessly at the ever-growing tangle of Berthold’s untidiness, Salka’s extravagance, Hans’s bad habits, his secret smoking and his late hours.
Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1 Page 16