Ayn Rand and the World She Made

by Anne C. Heller

  working on a difficult and important section: This was the wedding-anniversary party scene in the Reardens’ house in Pennsylvania, where almost all the major characters come together for the first time (JOAR, pp. 583–85).

  to live elsewhere in California: Author interview with June Kurisu, December 31, 2004.

  Two of Rand’s Chicago cousins stopped by: Probably in the summer of 1946.

  Jack noticed that she had a needle: Author interview with Jack Portnoy, August 17, 2004.

  Joe O’Connor, now an itinerant actor: Author interview with MW, June 21, 2004.

  The four were talking about a newspaper article: 100 Voices, Rosalie Wilson, pp. 29–36.

  On hearing this story: Author correspondence with Barbara Branden, September 17, 2008.

  A few years later she would tell a friend: Author interview with Nathaniel Branden, December 11, 2008.

  Marna, had quit high school: Letter to Mimi Sutton, April 30, 1946 (LOAR, p. 275).

  She and Frank agreed to pay: Letter to Mimi Sutton, March 24, 1946 (LOAR, pp. 265–66).

  a strain developed: Author interview with MW, June 21, 2004.

  she did not see it as a moral duty: Alvin Toffler, “The Playboy Interview: Ayn Rand,” Playboy, March 1964, p. 40.

  the old and the lame, she complained: Letter to Marjorie Williams, June 18, 1936 (LOAR, p. 32).

  “I considered it an investment”: Author interview with MW, June 21, 2004.

  Similarly, when discussing Thaddeus Ashby’s long residence: BBTBI.

  “She had a certain tone of voice”: Interview with Thaddeus Ashby, July 17, 2005.

  plot of a story she had read at the studio: I was unable to identify this story.

  worked for tiny libertarian magazines: Brian Doherty, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern Libertarian Movement (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs, 2007), pp. 278–79.

  sent her a long letter: BBTBI.

  Rand had written lovingly: Letter to IP, August 4, 1954 (LOAR, p. 185).

  becoming impatient with each other: TPOAR, p. 210.

  her way of ceding control: JD, pp. 65–66.

  heard him snap: TPOAR, p. 210, based on interview with RBH.

  Frank, visibly angry: Interview with Thaddeus Ashby, July 17, 2005.

  “Sometimes I think I am the

  throne,”: 100 Voices, RBH, p. 126.

  Another acquaintance: TPOAR, p. 210.

  “To the Readers of The Fountainhead”: LOAR, pp. 669-73.

  “or as near to it as anyone I know”: Letter to Gerald James, August 18, 1945 (LOAR, p. 228), on which “To the Readers of The Fountainhead” was partly based.

  NINE: THE TOP AND THE BOTTOM: 1946–1949

  “The average man”: April 29, 1946 (JOAR, p. 474).

  “I had in my mind”: “To the Readers of The Fountainhead” (LOAR, pp. 669-73).

  questions concerning her background: Letter to Ross Baker, November 21, 1945 (LOAR, p. 233).

  scores of characters: She created almost two hundred characters in her four novels (Mimi Reisel Gladstein, The Ayn Rand Companion [Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984], pp. 41-69).

  “I am interested in men only”: “To the Readers of The Fountainhead” (LOAR, pp. 669-73).

  “An abstract theory”: W1AR, pp. 107-8.

  “Do not underestimate”: Letter to Henry Blanke, December 6, 1945 (LOAR, p. 247).

  Literary Guild issued its own edition: Letters to Ross Baker of Bobbs-Merrill, December 18, 1943, and December 11, 1945 (LOAR, pp. 107, 249); author correspondence with Becky Cape, archivist for the Literary Guild, August 10, 2006.

  without a guarantee: Letter to Walter Hurley, January 23, 1944 (LOAR, p. 121).

  the hand-drawn … illustrations: The illustrations were created by a well-known commercial artist named F. O. Godwin.

  “The artist has done a wonderful job”: Letter to MS, December 2, 1945 (LOAR, p. 240).

  Dominique is a passable replica of Rand: See The Illustrated “Fountainhead” (Irvine, Calif.: ARI, 1998), p. 18.

  loved the luminous rationality: AS, p. 54.

  assigned her to a silly gangster movie: Project-specific file cards listing scripts AR worked on and start and completion dates (Hal Wallis Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, box 95).

  stood for man’s greatness: January 2, 1946 (JOAR, pp. 312–26).

  “The responsibility of making [this] picture: JOAR, p. 312.

  “If there is such a thing as an average man”: Letter to M. Curtiss, November 30, 1945 (LOAR, p. 237).

  who had returned to his teaching post: American Prometheus, p. 351.

  endorsed her interpretation of Germany’s failure: TPOAR, p. 193.

  and told her, thrillingly: January 19, 1946 (JOAR, p. 342).

  found Oppenheimer enormously intelligent: January 15, 1946 (JOAR, p. 329).

  model for the character of Dr. Robert Stadler: BBTBI.

  borrowed the details of his office: TPOAR, p. 193.

  “Man can harness the universe”: January 19, 1946 (JOAR, p. 344).

  she had completed her outline: Editor’s note (JOAR, p. 311).

  190 on the verge of filming its own movie: According to David Harriman, editor of JOAR, Wallis knew about the MGM project from the beginning (JOAR, p. 311). The MGM film, The Beginning or the End, was released in 1947 and criticized for its muddled history and sentimental subplots.

  She was furious: TPOAR, p. 193.

  she figured out: “Paramount Studio Tour.”

  She wrote a second memo: Letter to Hal Wallis, March 19, 1946 (LOAR, p. 263).

  left the studio a week later: Dates courtesy of project-specific file cards and “Multiple Picture Contract with Ayn Rand,” dated July 5, 1944, both from Hal Wallis Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, box 95.

  drafted its first chapter: Ayn Rand Papers, LOC, box 6, folder 1.

  a prolonged tantrum: Beverly Fields, “Ayn Rand Rants for 1,168 Pages.”

  “Whatever pride of person I hold”: AS, pp. 235–36.

  “I’ll give you a hint”: AS, p. 188.

  “a raw commodity”: A People’s Tragedy, p. 73.

  The novel is full of detailed parallels: Author interview with Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, July 5, 2005.

  “This [Galt’s face] was the world”: AS, p. 643.

  a railroad map above her desk: Lewis Nichols, “Talk with Ayn Rand,” NYT, October 13, 1957, p. 272.

  Rand wrote hundreds of pages: Editor’s note, JOAR, p. 390.

  She was setting out, she wrote, to show: January 1, 1945 (JOAR, p. 394).

  John Galt, like Howard Roark: BBTBI.

  was basing Dagny Taggart: BBTBI.

  “hunger for her own kind”: April 14, 1946 (JOAR, p. 417).

  based on this view of O’Connor: January 1, 1945 (JOAR, p. 398).

  “the sensitive, poetic kind of writer”: April 13, 1946 (JOAR, p. 411).

  “she cannot reach her enemies”: April 11, 1946, to April 17, 1946 (JOAR, pp. 410–18).

  “I think I represent”: May 4, 1946 (JOAR, p. 480).

  had given a dinner party in her

  honor: BBTBI.

  “I have written such a book”: Leonard Read, foreword to the Caxton Press edition of Anthem, originally published in July 1953 (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton, 2004), p. 8.

  had already issued: John Blundell, “Liberty at Its Nadir: Interview with Leonard Liggio,” Liberty, July 2004 (vol. 18, no. 7).

  ninety-eight-page booklet: James Howard, “Nightshirt Fringe Applauds Ayn Rand’s Ten-Year-Old Book,” PM, October 22, 1947.

  appeared in July 1946: “Author’s Foreword” to Pamphleteer’s edition of Anthem, written in April 1946 (copy of the first printing of Anthem, Bennett A. Cerf Collection, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New York, box 436; letter to Walt Disney, September 5, 1946 [LOAR, p. 317]).

  sold for a dollar a copy: Unpublished letter from Leonard Read to Ann Watkins, April 10, 1946/7 [two dates on letter, one a t
ypo] (A. Watkins Collection, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 152).

  U.S. purveyor of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion:”Nightshirt Fringe.” The reporter, and PM, unfairly used the connection to discredit AR and Anthem.

  “What can be loved”: Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pp. 14–15.

  “Ayn Rand is a phenomenon”: Quoted in EOA, p. 58.

  the parent of The Fountainhead: Letter to Henry Blanke, September 5, 1946 (LOAR, p. 315).

  Stanwyck wasn’t interested: Letter to Barbara Stanwyck, September 7, 1946 (LOAR, pp. 317–18).

  Wallis turned it down: “Paramount Studio Tour.”

  With the rumored silent backing: Robert Mayhew, Ayn Rand and “Song of Russia” (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2005), p. 78.

  “the rising tide” of Communism: Motion Picture Alliance “Statement of Principles,” AMPTP Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, box 11, MPA folder. The MPA was organized in February 1944; Rand joined in the summer of 1944, as soon as it was clear that she was going to remain in Hollywood.

  Members met weekly at MGM: An Oral History with Robert M. W. Vogel, interviewed by Barbara Hall, Beverly Hills, Calif.: Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Oral History Program, 1991.

  Rand sat on the MPA executive board: Motion Picture Alliance records, Hedda Hopper Collection, Margaret Herrick Library.

  The Vigil: “Textbook of Americanism,” 1946; Motion Picture Alliance Records.

  “Fascist anti-Semites!”: After the end of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, American opponents of the Soviet Union were accused of being pro-Hitler, i.e., pro-Fascist and anti-Semitic (“Emergency Committee of Hollywood Guilds and Unions Announcement,” Hollywood Reporter, June 23, 1944; “To the Membership of the Motion Picture Alliance,” Hollywood Reporter, June 27, 1944; James Kevin McGuinness, “Double Cross in Hollywood,” The New Leader, July 15, 1944, p. 119; Morrie Ryskind, “A Reply to Elmer Rice about the MPAPAI,” The New Leader, December 23, 1944.)

  suspected her own treasured literary agent: Unpublished letters to Benjamin Stolberg, September 26, 1946, and October 9, 1946 (Benjamin Stolberg Collection, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library).

  remained her New York agents: Alan Collins died in 1968. Perry Knowlton, who later replaced Collins as president of Curtis Brown, Ltd., in the United States, acted as her primary agent from 1957 until 1982 (100 Voices, Perry Knowlton, p. 307).

  “we were all seeing ghosts”: An Oral History with Robert M. W. Vogel, interviewed by Barbara Hall, Beverly Hills, Calif.: Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Oral History Program, 1991.

  monopoly over the nation’s literary output: “Writers Form Group to Combat Control by Unit Assailed as Red,” NYT, September 13, 1946, p. 1.

  formed the American Writers Association: “Cain Plan Scored by Writers’ Group,” NYT, May 8, 1947, p. 14; “22 Authors on Board,” NYT, October 16, 1947, p. 34.

  joined the board: Letter to Benjamin Stolberg, September 27, 1947 (LOAR, p. 380).

  “chop his head off”: “Paramount Studio Tour.”

  201 met as often as three times a week: Song of Russia, p. 79, based on AR’s desk calendars.

  composed the “Screen Guide for Americans”: “Screen Guide for Americans” was published in the November 1947 issue of Plain Talk.

  wrote the first sentence: Ayn Rand Papers, LOC, first draft of AS, reel 2, chapter 1.

  worked on a movie called House of Mist: Dates courtesy of project-specific file cards (Hal Wallis Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, box 95).

  “I don’t believe in unhappiness”: “First Temporary Yellow” screenplay of House of Mist, dated December 30, 1946, Hal Wallis Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, box 95.

  shelved in October 1947: Dates courtesy of project-specific file cards (Hal Wallis Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, box 95).

  never to return: Her contract was cancelled in November 1948 (“Termination of Employment Agreement,” November 29, 1948, Hal Wallis Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, box 95).

  steering Dagny and Hank Rearden: First draft of AS, Ayn Rand Papers, LOC, reel 3, chapter 6, “The Noncommercial.”

  predicted that she would finish it: Letter to Alan Collins, June 24, 1946 (LOAR, p. 284).

  But when she began to consider: BBTBI.

  “Why is the mind important?”: October 6, 1949 (JOAR, p. 610).

  boarded a train for the nation’s capital: Song of Russia, p. 79.

  hottest show in town: Willard Edwards, “List 18 as Leaders in Red Film Invasion,” Chicago Tribune, October 21, 1947, p. 1.

  supplied most of the twenty-four friendly witnesses: Hollywood Party, p. 178.

  “Are you now, or have you ever been”: Victor Navasky, Naming Names (New York: Viking, 1980), p. viii.

  “a lot of fools”: “Ayn Rand’s HUAC Testimony,” appendix 1, in Song of Russia, pp. 179–90.

  later identified themselves as members: Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle, Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997); see McGilligan’s interview with Paul Jarrico, pp. 326–50. During HUAC testimony in 1951, Richard Collins stated that he had been a Communist Party member and also named his Song of Russia co-script writer, Jarrico.

  naming sixteen: Samuel A. Tower, “Film Men Admit Activity by Reds, Sam Wood Lists Writers by Name,” NYT, October 21, 1947, p. 1.

  not be able to secure work for the next seven years: Naming Names, pp. 104–06.

  a “little black book”: Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Anchor Books, 1989), p. 363.

  accused seven screenwriters: “Film Men Admit Activity by Reds, Sam Wood Lists Writers by Name.”

  had been promised an opportunity to make a full statement: Song of Russia, p. 96.

  Not listed in the schedule: “From the FBI Files: Schedule for the October 1947 HUAC Hearings,” FBI FOIA file no. 100-138754, appendix 3; Song of Russia, pp. 195–99.

  she remembered having a “violent scene”: Song of Russia, p. 97.

  205 “Still handling the chicken shit, 204 I see”: Tender Comrades, p. 414.

  press coverage had turned negative: “Hearing Halt Laid to Move by Reds,” Washington Post, November 1, 1937, p. 3.

  flacks hailed the curtailment of the hearings: Joseph Loftus, “Expert Balked It,” NYT, October 31, 1947, p. 1.

  “nothing but disappointments”: Song of Russia, p. 97.

  “nightshirt fringe”: “Nightshirt Fringe Applauds Ayn Rand’s Ten-Year-Old Book,” PM, October 22, 1947.

  fair game in the political as well as the literary press: Thanks to Robert Mayhew’s research on the public reaction to AR’s testimony in Song of Russia, pp. 159–69; Naming Names, p. 80.

  annoyed Louis B. Mayer: Song of Russia, p. 173, based on AR’s notes in preparation for her HUAC testimony.

  “a disgusting spectacle”: TPOAR, p. 201.

  was a crime: “Suggestions Regarding the Congressional Investigation of Communism,” 1947 (JOAR, pp. 381–86).

  Hoover, who turned her down: Memorandum from A. B. Hood of the Los Angeles Bureau of the FBI to J. Edgar Hoover, October 17, 1947, FOIA. AR asked to see Hoover again in 1957 and was again turned down (FOIA memo to author from U.S. Department of Justice, December 11, 2003).

  real-life equivalent: This job was held by a man named A. H. Wright (letter to William Duce, AR’s taxattorney, October 1, 1949 [LOAR, p. 457]).

  showed Archibald Ogden: Letter to William Duce, AR’s tax attorney, October 1, 1949 (LOAR, p. 457).

  finally met Rose Wilder Lane: Letter to Rose Wilder Lane, December 13, 1947 (LOAR, p. 383).

  In their hotel room after dinner: Author interview with MW, December 16, 2006.

  “You are the ultimate in human beings”: Quoted in “AR’s Family and Friends.”

  “She was afraid that she would lose him”: Taped interview with MS, conducted by BB, January 20, 1983.

  “The ‘Screen Guide for
Americans’ did it”: Song of Russia, p. 176.

  Plain Talk, whose editor: Letter to William Duce, October 1, 1949 (LOAR, p. 457).

  The Sunday New York Times picked up the story: Thomas F. Brady, “Hollywood Don’ts,” NYT, November 16, 1947, p. X5.

  “all the points I made”: Song of Russia, p. 176.

  preferred to sell screen rights outright: Thomas F. Brady, “Hollywood’s Uneasy Labor Truce,” NYT, November 2, 1947, p. X5.

  finally able to get hold of a print of the film: She first saw the film in May 1947 (letter to John C. Gall, May 28, 1947 [LOAR, p. 368]). She also sat for a viewing in New York (letter to William B. Duce, October 1, 1949 [LOAR, p. 458]).

  From Valli: R. W. Bradford, “The Search for We the Living,” Liberty, November 1988, p. 24, citing AR’s friend Erika Holzer.

  opened to packed theaters: The 1942 movie apparently also “had a big box office” in Nazi Germany and Vichy France (unpublished letter from Donald Downes to Armitage Watkins, May 16, 1946; A. Watkins Collection, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 80).

  ordered the film to be withdrawn: Letter to John C. Gall, July 12, 1947, LOAR, p. 370.

  and prints and negatives destroyed: “The Search for We the Living,” p. 22, quoting Massimo Ferrara, legal counsel to Scalera Films in 1942. Based on additional interviews with experts and historians, Bradford goes on to argue that the film wasn’t banned and that (1) the actors Alida Valli and possibly Rossano Brazzi lied to Rand, or (2) that Rand made the story up herself for publicity purposes, or (3) Rand and the actors misunderstood each other based on difficulties with English.