she re-edited it: Revised for publication in 1959 (EOWTL, p. 185).
“I loathe your ideals”: WTL, pp. 41, 92–3.
St. Petersburg section was her favorite: BBTBI.
was writing for newspapers: Taped interview with MS, conducted by BB, February 18, 1983, courtesy of MSC.
Ivan Lebedeff was in and out of town: TPOAR, p. 121.
friend of Sinclair Lewis: Hiram Haydn, Words & Faces (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1954, 1974), p. 93.
“All achievement and progress”: Unpublished correspondence with Ethel Boileau; cited in “The Hero in the Soul Manifested in the World.”
aspiring playwright named Albert Mannheimer: TPOAR, p. 121.
graduate student at the Yale School of Drama: Mannheimer attended but did not graduate, according to the archives of the Yale School of Drama; phone interview, December 5, 2005.
tall, fair, and curly haired: Interview with Frances Schloss, who dated Mannheimer in 1950–51, December 8, 2005.
screenwriter Budd Schulberg: BBTBI. Schulberg is best remembered for his best-selling 1947 novel What Makes Sammy Run? Interestingly, the narrator is named Al Manheim, and Manheim’s lover, a woman “who likes sex,” is called Billie Rand.
Ring Lardner, Jr.: “Ayn Rand’s Family and Friends.”
a mutual theatrical acquaintance introduced them: BBTBI.
it was she who would convert him: BBTBI.
a vehement advocate of capitalism: AR, quoted in “Ayn Rand’s Family and Friends.”
recently staged a play by John Howard Lawson: Lawson’s Gentlewoman had been staged at the Cort Theater in the spring of 1934. On Lawson as a Communist, see Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley’s Hollywood Party (Rocklin, Calif.: Forum, 1998), pp. 47–48.
would … share the spotlight: AR and Hellman were the first screenwriters hired by Wallis when he started his own production company after storming off a Warner Bros. set (Paramount Contracts Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, file 3, box 95).
kept promising that casting and rehearsals would begin any day: Letter to Mary Inloes, March 16, 1935 (LOAR, p. 21).
her “highfalutin” courtroom speeches: TPOAR, p. 122.
reportedly Shubert’s mistress: TPOAR, p. 122.
tirades about how ponderous ideas had no place: What AR could not have known was that ex-millionaire Woods was broke at the time of the production and was under pressure to turn The Night of January 16th into a commercial hit. Royalties from the play were one of his few discovered sources of income when he declared bankruptcy in February 1936. By then, he was a mere employee of the Shubert Organization, working for $150 a week (“Ex-millionaire Reported Broke,” Los Angeles Times, February 8, 1936, p. 2).
removing elements of the motivation of her characters: Unpublished letter cited in Shoshana Milgram’s “Ayn Rand’s Unique and Enduring Contributions to Literature,” lecture, ARI Centenary Conference, July 7, 2005, San Diego. According to Milgram, AR wrote about what was taken out of her play and the fact that she found the first “tier” unsatisfactory as a result.
she reportedly told him: “The Hero in the Soul Manifested in the World.”
Hayes and Weitzenkorn: “Second Arbitration on Play Royalties,” NYT, January 17, 1936, p. 15.
to siphon off one-tenth of her royalties: “Agency Agreement with Ann Watkins,” October 30, 1935 (A. Watkins Collection, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 80).
the support of Mrs. Vincent Astor: “News of the Stage,” NYT, January 27, 1936, p. 20.
“miserably painful”: “The Hero in the Soul Manifested in the World.”
“Don’t read that! I’m going to destroy it”: Author interview with RBH, June 8, 2005.
Wick didn’t always pass their comments along to Rand: BBTBI.
wasn’t merely about postrevolutionary Russia: Letter to Jean Wick, July 19, 1934 (LOAR, p. 12).
the first novel on the subject written in English by a Russian writer: Based on a survey of fictional representations of Stalin in Russia by Rosalind Marsh, a professor of Russian studies at the University of Bath in England, AR’s claim appears to be true (Rosalind Marsh, Images of Dictatorship: Portraits of Stalin in Literature [Oxford: Routledge, 1989]).
as Wick took to arguing it did: BBTBI.
This was a theme the American public … needed to hear: Ayn Rand, “The Only Path to Tomorrow,” Reader’s Digest, January 1944, p. 88.
“the greatest problem of our century”: Letter to Jean Wick, October 27, 1934 (LOAR, pp. 17–19).
“We the Living is not a story about Soviet Russia in 1925”: Foreword to WTL, p. xiii.
all this sounded much too intellectual: BBTBI.
On September 8, Rand, O’Connor, and Nick Carter headed for Philadelphia: “Play Uses Audience in Jury Box on Stage,” NYT, September 10, 1935, p. 26.
summoned to make yet another round of last-minute changes: TPOAR, p. 123.
felt as if she were about to go under the knife: TPOAR, p. 123.
frustrated tears: “The Hero in the Soul Manifested in the World.”
the most wonderful thing: Letter to Gouverneur Morris, November 29, 1935 (LOAR, p. 23).
The Night of January 16th premiered: The play opened on Monday, September 16. The weather was reported in NYT, September 17, 1935, p. 25.
The theater was packed: Brooks Atkinson, “The Play,” NYT, September 17, 1935, p. 26.
The celebrity jury: “The Play,” p. 26.
The Wall Street Journal: “Audience Does Jury Duty,” Wall Street Journal, September 19, 1935, p. 11.
sat in the back row of the theater on opening night: TPOAR, p. 124.
this was no longer Ayn Rand’s work: The 1935 production version of The Night of January 16th was first published by Longmans Green & Co. in 1936 (RKO contract), and a separate, “cleaned-up” version for amateur theatricals appeared in print slightly later (Ayn Rand, introduction to The Night of January 16th, Three Plays, p. 3). In 1968, New American Library issued an authorized version of the play, with an introduction by AR.
publisher did not ask for cutting: Letter to Gouverneur Morris, November 29, 1935 (LOAR, p. 23).
recounted the story in the early 1960s: TPOAR, pp. 124–25.
Hicks had recently joined the U.S. Communist Party: Leah Levinson and Jerry Natterstad, Granville Hicks: The Intellectual in Mass Society (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), pp. 53–56, 85, and 195–99.
an admiring biography of the American Communist John Reed: Granville Hicks, John Reed: The Making of a Revolutionary (New York: Macmillan, 1936). Ironically, Hicks’s book appeared on the same Macmillan list as did WTL.
published We the Living on April 7, 1936: “Books Published Today,” NYT, April 7, 1936.
“my American father”: “Ayn Rand’s Family and Friends.”
Rand told a New York Times reporter: “Books and Authors,” NYT, April 26, 1936, p. BR14.
“wild cry for the right[s] of the individual”: Ida Zeitlin, “A Passionate and Powerful Novel of Conflicts in the Red Land,” New York Herald Tribune Books, April 19, 1936, sec. VII, p. 4. Zeitlin was married to Russian refugee artist Theodore Nadejen. Russian émigrés gave the novel some of its best reviews.
“would cause Boccaccio”: J. C. Rogers, “Reds and Whites: Ayn Rand’s We the Living Portrays Aristocrats Amid Russian Revolution,” Washington Post, April 26, 1936, p. B8.
her work compared with that of Joseph Conrad: AR may never have read Conrad. At least, she was unaware that he called himself a romantic realist (a designation she took as her own) according to longtime acquaintance JKT (author interview with JKT, May 21, 2004).
“inherent sentimentality”: “New Yorker at Large,” p. 1.
“slavishly warped to the dictates of propaganda”: Harold Strauss, “Soviet Triangle,” NYT Book Review, April 19, 1936, p. 7.
“out to puncture a bubble—with a bludgeon”: Ben Belitt, “The Red and the White,” The Nation, April 22, 1936, p. 523.
ended Ayn Rand’s expectations of receiving literary “justice”: BBTBI.
average American incomes were well under $1,500 a year: Based on data from the “Statistics of Income” report, IRS archives.
royalties of between $200 and $1,200 a week: Royalty statements, various dates (A. Watkins Collection, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 178).
closed on April 4, 1936: “Agreement with RKO Radio Pictures,” July 13, 1938 (A. Watkins Collection, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 152).
theatrical rights had been sold: “Agreement with RKO Radio Pictures,” July 13, 1938 (A. Watkins Collection, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 152); Lee Shippey, “The Lee Side o’ L.A.,” Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1936, p. A4.
filling seats in the El Capitan Theatre: Lee Shippey, “The Lee Side o’ L.A.,” Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1936, p. A4; “The Night of January 16 Unique Courtroom Drama,” Los Angeles Times, March 2, 1936, p. 17.
road show was about to open in Chicago: Introduction to The Night of January 16th, Three Plays, p. 3.
royalties of ten dollars: “Royalty Statements,” various dates (A. Watkins Collection, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 178).
certain that she was being ostracized: TPOAR, p. 127.
“She talks too much about Soviet Russia”: Shoshana Milgram, “AR as a Public Speaker.”
96“This [blacklisting] lasted until The Fountainhead”: Ayn Rand and Song of Russia, p. 77.
called herself shy: “The Hero in the Soul Manifested in the World.”
lectured at the then-famous New York Town Hall Club: “Book Notes,” NYT, May 14, 1936, p. 23; “Ayn Rand to Speak Tuesday,” NYT, May 22, 1936.
“two million snow-white [Stalinist] angels”: “Ayn Rand as a Public Speaker,” quoting the New York Journal American from May 1936.
In one New York newspaper interview: “Only High Ransom for Passports Opens Border, Says Miss Ayn Rand,” New York American, June 15, 1936.
to get an affidavit of support: AR, p. 52; Binswanger, dinner lecture, April 24, 2005. A question arises here, for AR’s Chicago relatives possessed more than enough money to sponsor the whole Rosenbaum family and pay their passage, had AR asked them for help. In fact, some of them never forgave AR for not alerting them to the dire conditions her family faced in St. Petersburg (taped interview with Minna Goldberg, FB, and MS, conducted by BB, Chicago, February 20, 1983).
Soviet agents might be watching her: As far as I was able to discover, neither AR nor the Rosenbaums has a GPU or KGB file.
notorious for their ruthlessness and skill: Author interview with Bernice Rosenthal, Ph.D., July 5, 2005.
was more compelling: Later, AR would occasionally recommend filial love above truth-telling, as in an aside at a 1960s lecture.
“She lied”: Interview with BB, July 5, 2006.
fallen in love with an engineer named Fedor Drobyshev: AR, p. 45; NR was married in 1931 (100 Voices, NR, p. 7).
married and teaching in a Soviet school: AR, p. 52; Binswanger, dinner lecture, April 24, 2005.
willing to make the journey: TPOAR, p. 125.
One of the reasons: Unpublished letter to Sarah Lipton, June 4, 1936.
letters between Rand and the Rosenbaums ceased: In 1997 or 1998, AR’s youngest sister, NR, told an interviewer, “Actually, she [AR] was the one who stopped writing to us. Probably because she did not have any use for us any longer” (100 Voices, NR, p. 18). Why NR would have assumed, bitterly, in the 1930s that her émigré sister had lost interest in the family is not clear. In 1974, when the sisters were briefly reunited in New York, AR was “extremely excited,” said a friend of the time, but the reunion was a disaster. See Chapter 16.
left Sixty-sixth Street: Binswanger, dinner lecture, April 24, 2005.
where the newspaper photograph was taken: Binswanger, dinner lecture, April 24, 2005; “A New Yorker at Large,” p. 4. Sixty-six Park Avenue is now the Kitano New York hotel.
bought a set of blond Art Deco bedroom furniture: Photographs, Binswanger, dinner lecture, April 24, 2005.
became her trademark in the 1940s: TPOAR, p. 137.
musing about its theme since her late teens: BBTBI.
made her first extensive notes about it in December 1935: December 4, 1935 (JOAR, p. 82).
life on earth: BBTBI.
now she was ready: BBTBI.
earned the right: BBTBI.
the first notes of marital discord: Based on taped interview with MS, conducted by BB, January 20, 1983.
far from sexually dominant, or even highly sexed: Author interviews with Thaddeus Ashby, RBH, and BB. Thaddeus Ashby, interviewed on June 19, 2005, called O’Connor “undersexed.”
didn’t fit her romantic image of him: BBTBI.
decorated their apartments inexpensively: Taped interview with MS, conducted by BB, January 20, 1983.
take over many household chores: TPOAR, pp. 94, 137.
“Mr. Ayn Rand”: TPOAR, p. 136.
“there would not have been so much hurt pride”: Taped interview with MS, conducted by BB, January 20, 1983.
did not complain: TPOAR, p. 148. On the other hand, in an interview with Mike Wallace in 1959, she seemed embarrassed to admit that she supported him.
withdrew from conversation: TPOAR, p. 135.
brimming with new ideas: March 13, 1936 to August 15, 1938 (JOAR, pp. 117–64).
dinner almost every night: TPOAR, p. 121.
charming, funny, well read, intelligent: Interview with MW, June 21, 2004.
collected disability payments: Letter to Nick Carter, October 5, 1944 (LOAR, p. 164). “Nick wanted to [write] but didn’t have the drive to succeed,” Millicent Patton recalled in 1982. “He was trying to write books but ended up writing a few articles” (taped interviewwith Millicent Patton, conductedby BB, December 5, 1982).
“He was Noel Coward”: Taped interview with MS, conducted by BB, February 18, 1983.
“peasant” face and figure: Taped interview with Millicent Patton, conducted by BB, December 5, 1982.
“My father was appalled”: Taped interview with MS, conducted by BB, February 18, 1983.
“a small white Dutch hat”: TPOAR, p. 137.
He was a homosexual: Author interview with MW, June 21, 2004.
“She would have been the last person on earth”: Author interview with JMB and Dr. Allan Blumenthal, June 21, 2004, quoting BB.
whom Rand had met at the Studio Club: Marjorie Booth Hiss was married to Philip Hiss, Alger’s cousin (author interview with Alger’s son Tony Hiss, February 21, 2008); AR met her in the Studio Club (BB interview with MS).
called him Cubbyhole: Letters to FO (“Cubby”), August 19 and August 21, 1936. In a taped interview from 1983, MS recalled having been told by Ayn that the nickname Cubbyhole came from a joke Nick told, which included the line, “Papa bear couldn’t find the cubbyhole” (LOAR, pp. 36–38).
called her Fluff: TPOAR, p. 185.
poring over architectural texts: EOTF, p. 38.
turn We the Living into a stage play: Letters to FO, August 19, 1936, and to Hollywood friend Gladys Unger, July 6, 1937 (LOAR, pp. 36, 41); retitled The Unconquered, the play version of V/TL ran for five nights and closed on February 17, 1940 (IBDB.com).
At Ann Watkins’s urging: TPOAR, p. 148.
rewrote a novella she had completed: Three Plays, p. 193. In his preface, LP seems to have misstated the date of composition of AR’s final play, Think Twice. AR’s correspondence suggests she wrote it in 1941, not 1939.
Called Ideal: Published in play form in 1983 and again in 2005 by Signet.
Greta Garbo—like movie star: Kay Gonda says to her ideal fan, the drifter Johnnie Dawes, “There was a great man once who said, ‘I love those who know not how to live today’ “(Three Plays, p. 178). The quote from Thus Spoke Zarathustra is: “I love those that know not how to live, except by going under, for they are those who cross over. I love t
he great despisers, because they are the great reverers and arrows of longing for the other shore” (Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Walter Kaufmann, trans. [New York: Penguin, 1978]).
“a string trembling to a note of ecstasy no man had ever heard”: Three Plays, p. 170.
first glimpse of Howard Roark: An observation neatly made by Merrill in The Ideas of Ayn Rand, p. 44.
negotiations broke down: “Ayn Rand’s Family and Friends.”
“truly heroic man”: Unpublished letter to Ann Watkins, cited in “The Hero in the Soul Manifested in the World.”
In July 1937: Letter to Gladys Unger, July 6, 1937 (LOAR, p. 41).
told friends, she was soon doing her best work: Letter to Gladys Unger, July 6, 1937 (LOAR, p. 41).
“It will be very good experience for him”: Letter to Gladys Unger, July 6, 1937 (LOAR, p. 41).
walked on the beach with visitors: See photo, AR, p. 65.
“I was going crazy”: BBTBI.
composed the short, futuristic novel: BBTBI.
“We are nothing”: Ayn Rand, Anthem (New York: Signet, 1995), p. 21.
“either condemned or exalted it”: Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, “The Russian Subtext of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead,” Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Fall 2004 (vol. 6, no. 1).
conceived Anthem as a four-act play: Leonard Peikoff, introduction to Anthem, p. viii.
during her university years: “An Illustrated Life.”
short story that tracks a primitive future man: Stephen Vincent Benét, “The Place of the Gods,” The Saturday Evening Post, July 31, 1937, p. 10.
start to finish in three weeks: Leonard Peikoff, introduction to Anthem, p. ix; Robert Mayhew, ed., Essays on Ayn Rand’s “Anthem” (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2005), p. 163.
admirers point out another, related difference: WIAR, p. 113.
couldn’t place Anthem: EOA, p. 24.
“does not understand socialism”: EOA, p. 24.
illustrated magazine version appeared in 1953: In June 1953 Famous Fantastic Mysteries devoted an entire issue to an illustrated Anthem.
Ayn Rand and the World She Made Page 60