Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1
Page 108
The Selznicks are back in town, and no word—so I fear Tender Is the Night is off.
Glorious weather. Today I was on the beach, but the ocean is too cold for swimming. Don is working very hard and the lessons with Vernon are still a success. He now plans to take two a week. I’m really impressed by the painting he is doing now.
March 7. This shameful laziness. It’s partly the result of drinking too much last night at the Duquettes’—too much, for me, being now almost any amount of hard liquor whatsoever. Taina Elg169 was there. We kicked. I was silly.
But I must pull myself together. Look at it like this—the effective part of one’s life, barring sickness, falls into three thirds—twenty-five to forty, forty to fifty-five, fifty-five to seventy. My impression is that I packed a terrific amount into the first third, and that I’ve wasted a great deal of the second. (In the first third, I produced twelve works—including two translations and three collaborations: the plays. In the second third, I have so far produced four works—including two translations. Maybe I can pack in the novel and the Ramakrishna book before the August 1959 deadline—but I doubt it.)
March 12. Strange weather—sunshine, rainstorms, wind, cold, sunshine. I made a terrific scene on Sunday with Marguerite because she’d been telling Curtis Harrington that I did not like Wald’s picture—The Long Hot Summer. At least, I’m not sure exactly what she did tell, but I seized the opportunity of bawling her out. The truth is, I don’t like her and thus it was actually a great mistake, because now there will have to be a reconciliation.
Meanwhile great excitement because Don Murray has got the rights to Jean-Christophe—an option for six months. He’ll ask Joshua Logan to direct it. I have to be careful not to get involved, until a workable agreement has been reached with Fox—who, of course, own the screenplay which I wrote. Otherwise, I’ll be in the doghouse with Fox and not get to work on the script for Don’s production.
Despite the utter uncertainty of business, I must say that I’m very happy right now. Partly because I’m working steadily without letup on the Ramakrishna book and the novel—chiefly because of good relations with Don, who is happy (I think and hope) in his work and couldn’t be sweeter.
March 13. Today I suddenly got the call to see Selznick next Monday—on Mary Magdalene. Don’t know if this is a novel they’ve bought or an original story, or what. Very dubious about working for Selznick, anyway. He sounds so horrible.
Showers continue.
The Hine kids are digging a big hole in the waste lot opposite. Greg peels off his shirt—in imitation of his father?—and tosses it nonchalantly to the girls before digging. Roy Parry is painting the platform of his monster TV antenna. The pretty Sammet boy, now grown enormous, still comes to play with the kids.
To see Swami last night. He seems listless, complains of headaches. Prema thinks it’s nothing serious. Swami was saying that the people at the Belur Math had written saying that Krishna had been utterly transformed by sannyas, in a single day—but they didn’t say how! Swami was much intrigued. Krishna had written: “Three days ago, I became a Brahmin. Two days ago I became a ghost170—one always becomes what one fears! Yesterday I became Krishnananda.” There is a majestic note of impersonality in this last sentence. Like when you say in the ritual: “I am He.”
Don Murray is sending the screenplay to Logan.
March 18. The day before yesterday was perhaps the highest high point in my relations with Don. I don’t mean that anything happened—actually we went to a stag party at Jerry Lawrence’s, followed by a very bad TV show (Jeanette MacDonald in The Girl of the Golden West171). But we had a talk—that sounds so dry; it was really a kind of verbal duet—in which we both quite spontaneously declared how completely we belong to each other. This is my whole happiness, now.
But altogether it is a very happy time, with work and thought calmly flowing. I’m even very sorry that it seems as if it would shortly end in a job. I talked to Selznick this morning and he was quite charming; and I like his plans for Mary Magdalene. She will be rather like Brett in The Sun Also Rises.
Jim [Charlton] and his wife are going to have a baby. Today I wrote him a note asking him to pay the rest of the money he owes me. This was a kind of psychological victory, and might even end in my forgiving him. (If he pays, of course!)
March 21. This morning, we had a runaround with Selznick. After the most cordial talk last night—at which you’d have thought we were just a pair of buddy-buddy artists whom the word money would make wince—Selznick suddenly comes up with the most impudent proposition: $1,000 a week, and the balance up to $1,250 retroactively if I get my name on the picture. This we refused. So now Selznick has gone to $1,250 and the balance retroactively up to $1,500. This at least saves my face. But it makes me wonder how long we’ll last together.
Selznick’s attitude may have had something to do with the depression. At the social security office yesterday, a brown-eyed, long-nosed young man (rather like Gore Vidal) with a knot of anxiety between his eyes, was holding forth about how tough everything was. “I tried to get into the police. They told me I didn’t have enough teeth. Hell—I had enough for the marines. Hell, there were guys with us no bigger’n I am, could have taken any of those cops and turned them inside out.” He expressed hatred of the Bank of America, and huge satisfaction because a little old lady went into one of its branches a few days ago, stuck them up and got $2,000. (The Bank of America is where we cash our social security checks.) A little later, at my bank, I heard two other boys speaking of her, also with approval—a typical folk heroine of the depression.
My thumb is so painful I can hardly write. I’m going with Jessie Marmorston tomorrow to have it X-rayed.
Don had a terrific scene with his mother on the phone this morning. She feels unwanted, she says. Don reduced to fury by her sadistic masochism. Later I phoned and persuaded her to come to supper, tomorrow.
March 28. I haven’t written, because my thumb has been bad. They found traces of arthritis in it when they X-rayed it. I’m supposed to have some treatment, but that’s hardly possible, now that I’m working with Selznick. I started last Monday. Am greatly worried about it. I don’t feel it’s going well.
A huge slide on the Pacific Highway. One car was carried right to the edge of the waves. Others may be buried. They’re still digging.
Jim has invited us to a party at his house. I doubt if Don’ll go.
Swami told me that he has only recently discovered that God’s grace is actually in the mantram. Maharaj had told him that this was so.
I have never been so fat.
March 29. Sunshine again, after so much rain. But they say more is coming. I have just had a visit from George Koniaris, a young Greek student at UCLA who is to be our technical advisor.172 He knows Greek and Latin, archaeology, philosophy, history—and he longs to be connected with the theater! In other words, he is slightly too good to be true.
Still worried about the Magdalene project. I don’t feel at all sure that I have anything.
My thumb is still bad.
April 3. Terrific winds, more landslides; they say the Coast Highway can never be used again. It must be rebuilt out on the beach, or inland, or something.
A bad time with Don, at the beginning of the week. A visit from the personality I call “Black Tom.”
Oh God, how easily I get sad and discouraged!
Work with Selznick is going better, but I fail to get on with the Ramakrishna book and my novel. Why?
Saw Aldous, looking very old, at an absurd lunch for Radha-krishnan173, at the Ambassador. He is quite belligerent about his drugs and their power to provide labor-saving spiritual insights. He knows Swami won’t approve.
April 4. A really bad cold starting—the worst in a long time. My throat is raw. The pills and vitamins don’t help.
Yesterday evening we went to a weird dinner at the Duquettes’. Tony wanted to railroad me into doing “an English pantomime” for them to play at the studio. Their braz
en arrogance—and the amazing tactlessness of asking all these rich half-witted women to be present. Jimmy Pendleton’s pathetic old henna-haired bag of a wife said, “We’ve been together twenty-five years—and I’ve been so happy—so happy.” It was heartbreaking, like Long Day’s Journey into Night.
Today Krishnananda returned from India.
April 6. Well, Happy Easter!
A lousy day. Another of those big rainstorms has hit the coast. Causing more slides, probably.
We had a third strange meal last week—supper with Jim Charlton and his wife. She’s a dowdy little thing, brown eyed with glasses. Very snug in her new pregnancy. I quite liked her; Don and Jo don’t. Jim seemed a bit pathetic; I think he’s beginning to realize the jam he’s gotten himself into. He seemed to be appealing for help—in vain, of course. Who can help him? He was very grateful that we came.
Henrietta [Ledebur] was also there, with a tacky little [admirer], a bit piss-elegant, saying that San Francisco isn’t a real city. And awful old Mrs. Lautner.174 And square, square Oliver Andrews, being aesthetic about skin diving and the kelp.
Looking back over the last two years, to Easter 1956, I’m really most agreeably surprised to find how much activity we’ve packed into them—
A whole draft of the new novel. A whole screenplay (Christophe). A good start on the Ramakrishna book.
A journey round the world.
Hepatitis, had and recovered from. My first operation for tumor.
Don’s definite embarkation on art study, which really seems to be getting him somewhere, largely thanks to Vernon.
All-round development and growth of Don, outwardly demonstrated by muscles and moustache.
Acquisition of the first house I have ever bought, and the development of a happy life in it, despite obstacles.
Against this, I must own that I am fatter, a bit blinder, and much tenser than ever. Much of my physical breakdown could be checked and even reversed, if I wasn’t so lazy.
Again, I must say, as so often before, I have no excuse whatever to be unhappy. My relationship with Don is by far the happiest I have known. I have quite good health, lots of work in prospect. I even have a job, in these hard times. And I have Swami, and all he stands for.
What have I to complain of, as of this moment? Arthritis in my thumb! And even that could be cured if I wasn’t too lazy to see Jessie and take shots.
Much talk about the stabbing of Lana Turner’s boyfriend by her daughter.175 Some say Lana did it and the daughter covered up. On the corpse was found a bracelet—“I’ll always be yours: Lanita.”
April 8. Woke this morning feeling very good. Partly just because the weather was really beautiful, without the least threat of rain—for the first time in days.
But also I had the feeling, “My devil has left me.” This black mood has gotten off my back. It has been sitting there a long while. If it weren’t for Don, I’d be far more conscious of its presence than I usually am.
Resolves to work more, quit stalling, fidgeting, mugging. Maybe to join the gym—American Health—that Howard Kelley goes to. I saw him and Bobo last night. Howard looks good. Bo is like a shrunken old man, a bit foolish, very gentle. I went by to have dinner with them after seeing Selznick. The interview was quite friendly—he was dead tired after Easter—but I got the feeling our work together was about to end. Today, however, I saw him again and it was much better—partly because our meeting was up at his house; not in his tacky Culver City office. His daughter Mary Jennifer’s dog was eating the shrubs. Selznick said to the nurse: “Your dog’s eating the shrubs.” “It’s not my dog,” she snapped. One sensed a feud.
For the first time, we called each other “Chris” and “David.”
April 12. Don went off this morning in a black state, exclaiming, “I feel awful!” This was apparently because of a conflict: should he stay home and enjoy the marvelous weather on the beach, or go and paint at Vernon’s? I really dread his return. I dread these moods. I feel utterly unable to cope with them. I feel like M. with Richard.
And there is the question of selfishness. Isn’t it selfish of me to demand that Don shall be perpetually cheerful?
Arnold Dobrin just called to tell me he is the father of a boy. What shall he call it? He favors Andrew, or possibly Lincoln.
On good terms with Selznick right now. We have decided that the screenplay is to be a Shavian comedy with a background of violence; not a “Jewish Western.”
To visit Gerald Heard this afternoon, to ask him some questions—how much does he meditate nowadays? how does he feel about the mantram? how does he feel toward the Vedanta Society?
Gerald, of course, replied indirectly, in a fascinating rigmarole. I learned that he thinks Soviet Russia is approaching the caste system and the psychological revolution. (Only one person in ten is capable of inductive reasoning.) Mescaline may be bad for the eyes—both Gerald and Michael find themselves losing focus constantly—Gerald thinks he’ll give it up. Gerald got nothing out of his formal meditations except distractions and the willpower to force himself to meditate. So now he meditates “when the tide is flowing,” chiefly at night. He uses his “short mantram.” (Swami gave him two.) He has never thought much about the mantram as a chain of power between the guru and the disciple, leading back to Ramakrishna. As for the Vedanta Society—but here we were interrupted by Michael, come to take photographs of Gerald, Margaret Gage and Mary Wigman.176
Talking of the mantram reminds me that, about six or eight months ago, I suggested that Don should try repeating “Om” to himself. The other day he told me that he had given it up, because it scared him; he felt he might be getting too deep into something he didn’t want or, at any rate, couldn’t control.
My thumb is very painful. Luckily I don’t have to write much by hand.
April 17. Two encounters this week with professional crazyman, Oscar Levant. On Monday last I went to supper with him, visiting the psychiatric ward at Mt. Sinai Hospital (where he has lately been shut up), an Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills (where he nearly had a fist fight with a fan), the house of Ira Gershwin (where he played the piano). Then I was on television with him the next day.
A bad thumb and the impending arrival of Stephen Spender makes me unwilling to write more.
April 19. Stephen leaves tonight—more about his visit tomorrow. It has been truly enjoyable, though, of course, it has unsettled our working schedule and utterly retarded my own work.
All I want to record today is Swami’s strange, rather ominous concern about Aldous. Aldous has been constantly in his thoughts, he says, and he has been praying for him. Swami telephoned Aldous to find out if he is all right, but Aldous has been away—in New York, presumably.
April 22. Stephen left as scheduled. We felt in him [at least then,] quite a considerable [sense of difficulty in his marriage]. He seems [perhaps to be a little bit restless]. Otherwise he was charming, and I think he enjoyed his visit, if only because it gave him lots of time to sleep and rest up.
A wind today. It makes my bad thumb kick up.
But I have written a page of Ramakrishna and a page of novel—this despite a session with Selznick, during which he fell asleep and snored. We are fairly badly stuck, but on marvellously good terms. His constant anxiety about the builders on the opposite hill. Will he be overlooked? Shouldn’t he have bought more adjacent lots? All this while I’m reading him from the Gospels, about how Jesus said the rich man couldn’t enter the Kingdom of God.
April 24. At Swami’s last night. He said that visions don’t matter—only devotion matters. He told me “to remember the Lord.”
Yesterday and this morning, they’re working on our roof, giving us a new one. An unpleasant feeling, every moment, that they’re about to bang a hole in it.
A nice young man named Bill Brame drove me up to Vedanta Place, because he wanted to talk to me, and because I had no car. He is directing a production of I Am a Camera here. Interested in mental hospitals and psychotherapy.
Tomorrow will be one of the test days for Selznick. He may quite possibly call off our project.
April 25. Last night I dreamed about John van Druten—for the second time.
In the first dream, several weeks ago, Johnnie came to me and suggested we have lunch. So I answered: “But, Johnnie, you’re dead.” Johnnie seemed slightly amused, slightly embarrassed: “Oh, yes, so I am—aren’t I!” He said this exactly as Johnnie would have said it.
In the second dream, Johnnie was very sick and yellow faced, lying in bed. He explained that he was already dead, and soon he’d disappear altogether. His bed was out of doors. He said death had been “most unpleasant.” As happens in dreams, I went away, then remembered I wanted to ask him all sorts of questions: What about God? Did Johnnie still believe in Joel Goldsmith’s teachings? etc. I hurried back. Johnnie was now terribly cold. He complained of the inefficiency of an old Dutch nurse, who wore velvet. I called her and ordered more blankets, for which she went into the house which was nearby. I came to the bed and held Johnnie in my arms. He said: “Chris, I want to tell you something—” I waited. He was very weak. I woke up, before he could summon the strength to speak.
April 28. Rosamond Lehmann left today—at least, I hope she didn’t miss her train (Don started late to drive her down to the depot)—because, quite as I like her, her presence here was much more of an intrusion than Stephen’s.