on the grounds that it was anti-Fascist: Ironically, according to documents in the A. Watkins Collection, AR had been just about to sell Italian film rights to a production company headed by Mussolini’s second son, Vittorio Mussolini, in March 1940. The war intervened; otherwise it might have been Vittorio’s production that his father’s troops would allegedly have seized.
This proved the kinship: Letter to John C. Gall, July 12, 1947 (LOAR, p. 370).
Rossano Brazzi: In R. W. Bradford’s chronicle of the film in Liberty, Brazzi is quoted as saying that he and Rand became “very good friends.” Brazzi went on: “She was a funny woman, very strong. Difficult woman. She was bisexual. She loved women. But … what a mind!”
Rand contacted Jack Warner: Letter to Jack Warner, February 14, 1948 (LOAR, p. 385).
paid her $35,000: “The Search for We the Living,” p. 24.
buy a new mink coat: TPOAR, p. 317.
It was not until 1972: Rand reportedly obtained her own print of the film but lost it sometime in the 1950s. In 1968, Henry and Erika Holzer, both attorneys, set out to find a copy. Unable to obtain one from Brazzi or Valli, in August 1968 they located the original negative and a print through a vintage film dealer in Rome, purchased it, and, with film producer Duncan Scott, re-edited it and added subtitles. Since then, Scott has offered occasional screenings of the film (“The Search for We the Living,” pp. 25–26).
item in a Hollywood gossip column: Hedda Hopper, “Looking at Hollywood,” Los Angeles Times, January 29, 1948, p. 18, and February 16, 1948, p. 14.
Cooper was welcome news: Gary Cooper was AR’s favorite film actor. But according to AR’s second cousin FB, AR wrote the family a letter saying she expected FO to get the part of Howard Roark and “was livid” when Gary Cooper got it; taped interview with FB, Minna Goldberg, and MS, conducted by BB, February 20, 1983.
she fired her Hollywood agent: Unpublished telegram from Alan Collins to H. N. Swanson, March 10, 1948, and unpublished letter from H. N. Swanson to Alan Collins, March 30, 1948 (H. N. Swanson Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, box 27).
She “went through hell”: BBTBI.
back in a Warner Bros. office: Letter to John B. Williams, March 27, 1948 (LOAR, p. 393).
hinted that Lauren Bacall had accepted the part: Hedda Hopper, “Looking at Hollywood,” Los Angeles Times, February 16, 1948, p. 14.
Margaret Sullavan said she wanted it: Hedda Hopper, “Looking at Hollywood,” Los Angeles Times, May 7, 1948, p. 19.
his eye on Jennifer Jones: BBTBI.
In early June: Patricia Neal, p. 58.
a twenty-two-year-old ingenue: Hedda Hopper, “Looking at Hollywood,” Los Angeles Times, June 21, 1948, p. 16.
she was horrified: BBTBI.
“After dinner we never saw the two of them again”: Stuart M. Kaminsky, Coop: The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980), p. 154.
completed the screenplay in late June: Letter to John L. B. Williams, June 26, 1948 (LOAR, p. 398).
a quarry near Fresno: Letter to Archibald Ogden, July 10, 1948 (LOAR, p. 402).
remained on the lot: TPOAR, p. 209.
turned in her script in a blaze of glory: Letter to Archibald Ogden, June 26, 1948 (LOAR, p. 398).
promised not to make any changes: Letter to Henry Blanke, June 26, 1948 (LOAR, p. 397).
was an excellent director: Letter to Archibald Ogden, June 26, 1948 (LOAR, p. 398).
ended with her plot and theme intact: She saw a rough cut the week of October 2 (letter to Ross Baker, October 2, 1948 [LOAR, p. 407]).
“For the first time in Hollywood history”: Letter to John Chamberlain, November 27, 1948, LOAR, p. 415.
were in an uproar of excitement: Letter to Alan Collins, January 8, 1949 (LOAR, p. 419).
“The whole thing was an enormously miserable experience”: TPOAR, p. 210.
constantly caved in to pressure: BBTBI.
on time and under budget: BBTBI.
no more changes made to the script: AR:SOL, DVD.
she defied them all: TPOAR, p. 211.
one line had been cut in final editing: BBTBI.
wrote a second article: Bosely Crowther, “The Screen in Review” and “In a Glass House,” NYT, July 9 and July 17, 1949, pp. 8 and XI, respectively. AR wrote and the Times published a long rebuttal, in which she said, confusingly, “My script was shot verbatim; this, to my knowledge, was the first and only instance of its kind in Hollywood” (“Ayn Rand Replies to Criticism of Her Film,” NYT, July 24, 1949, p. X4).
“Cooper in Race for Longest-Speech Oscar”: Harold Heffernan, The Bell Syndicate, 1949.
“In all the years I knew her”: Barbara Branden, “It’s a Dirty Job, But …,” unpublished essay, 2007, courtesy of the author.
It was the trip of a lifetime: Letters to IP, February 7 and February 14, 1948 (LOAR, pp. 188–96).
contacted her good pal: The Woman and the Dynamo, p. 304.
didn’t mention her former mentor’s help: Author interview with BB, December 16, 2005.
“I have seldom enjoyed anything”: Letter to IP, February 7 (LOAR, p. 188).
“It was the security of being first”: AS, p. 225; italics the author’s.
the greatness of man: Letter to IP, April 24, 1948 (LOAR, p. 212).
she reminded Paterson: Letter to IP, May 8, 1948 (LOAR, p. 211).
Altruism was like sawdust: Letter from IP to AR, May 13, 1948 (LOAR, p. 214).
She conceded to having: Letter to IP, May 17, 1948 (LOAR, pp. 215–17).
raise money for a new magazine: BBTBI.
in honor of Albert Jay Nock’s 1920s libertarian weekly: A Life with the Printed Word, pp. 136–37.
She wrote to the older woman: Letter to IP, May 17, 1948 (LOAR, p. 216).
She had not enjoyed the flight: The Woman and the Dynamo, p. 312.
would never really work again: The Woman and the Dynamo, p. 322.
The first hint of trouble: Summary of Paterson’s 1948 visit based on BBTBI.
After Ryskind left: TPOAR, p. 203.
The next incident took place: BBTBI.
“[That woman] ought to be kept out of sight”: The Woman and the Dynamo, p. 313.
Rand suspected: “I suspect that [Paterson] really hated The Fountainhead,” Rand once told Barbara Branden, “that she liked certain aspects of it dutifully, or rather that she talked herself into liking it” (BBTBI).
According to Rand’s later account: BBTBI.
She didn’t like the sex: Author interview with NB, May 5, 2004.
was “gone” … was “no good”: BBTBI.
in February 1959: Author interview with Muriel Hall, July 4, 2004.
she also hoped: The Woman and the Dynamo, p. 381.
admitted that she had reservations: The Woman and the Dynamo, p. 382.
He couldn’t imagine: Author interview with NB, May 5, 2004.
Close friends had no idea: It was BB who discovered the friendship between Rand and Paterson while researching TPOAR.
“No one helped me”: AR expanded on this heroic version of herself on The Les Crane Show in the fall of 1964. Asked to give her view of taxation, she erupted, “I had the longest period of struggle [before TF was purchased as a movie]. I was not paid by any big business interests. I had a dreadful period of struggle to reach the day when I could make money. I had to write part time while holding odd jobs and making a living. No one helped me in that period, nor did I at any time or any moment believe that anybody should. I never expected the government or other people to help me with my struggle. I earned what I made. I felt that [taxes on my income were] a monstrous moral injustice with which I had to put up;” Selfishness as a Virtue, audio CD of AR’s appearance on The Les Crane Show.
had as little reality for her: In a famous exchange in TF, Toohey says to Roark, “We’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me?” and Roark replies, “But I don’t think of you” (TF, p. 389). Roark’s line came from FO, AR tells us in her in
troduction to the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition.
“If she didn’t love it”: Author interview with BB, December 16, 2005.
“She was not interested in process”: Author interview with NB, May 5, 2004.
TEN: THE MEANS AND THE END: 1950–1953
“I have nothing to sell”: WTL, first handwritten draft, dated April 18, 1933 (Ayn Rand Papers, LOC, box 26, folder 2, p. 35). Quoted in EOWTL, pp. 26–27.
opened in July 1949, to moderate box-office success: TF press book, Warner Bros. Press Books, Series 1.4, United Artists Collection, courtesy of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research.
“Monumental Best-Seller!”: TF press book, Warner Bros. Press Books, Series 1.4, United Artists Collection, courtesy of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research.
ample books waiting in local bookstores: Internal note dated June 16, 1949, Bobbs-Merrill Collection, courtesy of the Lilly Library.
In three weeks, fifty thousand copies were sold: BBTBI.
“It was the greatest word-of-mouth book”: “A Strange Kind of Simplicity,” p. 8.
By the mid-2000s: Courtesy of the ARI, May 2007.
“metaphysics, morality, politics, economics and sex”: BBTBI. ARI archivist JB notes that AR first described her work this way during an interview with a reporter from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in mid-1948, during the filming of TF; correspondence with the author, May 14, 2007.
only one had personal meaning: BBTBI.
He was trying to write a novel: Author correspondence with BB, June 24, 2008.
he could summarize: “The Benefits and Hazards,” p. 40.
would like to know more: JD, p. 39; letter to NB, December 2, 1949 (LOAR, p. 461).
he sent another letter: TPOAR, p. 232; JD, p. 40.
ended her letter with a short reading list: She recommended IP’s The God of the Machine and Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson (LOAR, p. 465).
just starting a difficult chapter: When AR received NB’s second letter, in January 1950, she had just begun the chapter called “The Sanction of the Victim” (part 2, chapter 4), in which Francisco d’Anconia speaks at length to Hank Rearden about the purpose and meaning of sex (Ayn Rand Papers, LOC, box 7, folder 6).
asked for his telephone number: Letter to NB, January 13, 1950 (LOAR, pp. 462–65).
phoned the Hollywood apartment: Author interview with EK, December 13, 2008.
interpreted his lack of fear: JD, pp. 40–43.
sensed that she had made a discovery: BBTBI.
His … parents had never fully assimilated: JD, p. 16.
“Oh, foolish child”: JD, p. 44. NB’s other favorite book in his teen years was Romain Rolland’s ten-volume novel Jean-Christophe. AR argued him out of his attachment to the book by calling attention to the author’s sympathy with socialism and by asking, characteristically, “Tell, me, would you want to meet Jean-Christophe in real life?” “No,” NB answered, “but I would want to meet Howard Roark.” Thus in their first meeting NB gave his full allegiance to AR (Ayn Rand, “The Goal of My Writing,” The Objectivist Newsletter, October 1963, p. 37).
things as they might be and ought to be: Again, AR may have picked up Aristotle’s dictum about the difference between history and literature from Albert Jay Nock, who quoted it, both in English and in Greek, in Memoirs of a Superfluous Man. Memoirs appeared in 1943, alongside TF; AR owned a copy of the book and annotated it with margin notes (The Library of Ayn Rand, p. 39). Her first published reference to things as they “might be and ought to be” appeared in 1945, in “To the Readers of The Fountainhead,” LOAR, p. 670.
she was the only Jewish child: Karen Reedstrom, “An Interview with Barbara Branden,” Full Context, October 1992, p. 1.
She liked him and admired him: Author interview with BB, December 16, 2005.
continued to want more: JD, pp. 30–39.
“Ayn Rand is fascinating”: TPOAR, p. 233.
feel appreciated, understood: JD, p. 46.
Rand had given every appearance of liking him, too: JD, p. 45.
phoned on Sunday evening: WIAR, p. 221.
“seemed to be staring right down to the bottom of your soul”: BB to Ron Grossman, “Passions: A Disciple Confronts Ayn Rand’s Power,” Chicago Tribune, September 9, 1986, p. 1.
“It’s a wonderful fiction event!”: TPOAR, p. 235.
“ideas matter”: TPOAR, p. 236.
astounded by her energy: BB, radio interview with Don Swaim, WOUB (Ohio University) online, June 27, 1986.
conversation could go on for hours: “The Curious Cult of Ayn Rand,” p. 101; “The Benefits and Hazards.”
“You will”: JD, p. 60.
worked for days and sometimes weeks: BBTBI.
looking after the alfalfa: 100 Voices, RBH, p. 126.
“Not the sort of thing Howard Roark would do!”: Author interview with RBH, June 2, 2005.
Rand never met Aretha: Interview with RBH, June 8, 2005.
her “kind of face”: BBTBI.
possessed the best mind: JD, p. 62.
“and I really mean genius”: BBTBI.
finally found one: BBTBI, reprinted on Objectivistliving.com.
as “the children”: Lewis Nichols, “In and Out of Books: Class of ‘43,” NYT, December 22, 1957, p. 136.
didn’t mean anything parental by it: JD, p. 57.
“relatives through choice, not blood”: Author interview with RBH, June 2, 2005.
“Certainly not”: JD, p. 64.
shared her view of families: JD, p. 55.
like one of his mother’s cousins: JD, p. 82.
warning “the children”: TPOAR, p. 241.
“One could not encounter a human being”: TPOAR, p. 235.
“She had a Sherlock Holmes ability”: Author interview with NB, December 11, 2008.
“everything is something”: AS, p. 136.
defined as “the faculty that identifies and integrates”: “The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, p. 20.
both lacked respect for the human will: Letter to Stanley Greben, October 15, 1950 (LOAR, p. 482).
“Emotions are not tools of cognition”: FTNI, p. 17.
“the head has its reasons”: AR was reformulating JH’s reformulation of Pascal, who wrote in Les Pensées, “The heart has its reasons that reason does not understand” (letter to JH, January 3, 1961 [LOAR, p. 526]).
claimed that she could account rationally: TPOAR, p. 194.
Branden talked of more personal matters: JD, p. 70.
bet he wouldn’t even notice: Author interview with NB, December 11, 2008.
If she could make his life’s path any easier: Nathaniel Branden, My Years with Ayn Rand (Hoboken, N.J.: Jossey-Bass, 1990), p. 67.
could see that Barbara was very intelligent: BBTBI.
some kind of mind-body split: MYWAR, p. 29. Years later, in a private journal, AR suggested that it was NB who had the mind-body split. “‘I felt, give me the intellect and sex,’” AR quoted NB as having said to her, “‘and to hell with emotions, leave them to others!’ Through all the years this seems to have been his attitude, which never changed,” AR wrote. “Yet emotions are the form in which one experiences one’s values” (TPOARC, RPJ, July 4, 1968, p. 320).
sorting them helped her organize: Author correspondence with RBH, August 21, 2005.
a girl as bright as Barbara: MYWAR, p. 59.
wasn’t madly, passionately, sexually in love: TPOAR, p. 238.
“Love is our response”: AS, p. 454.
Rand’s doctrine of man worship: Author correspondence with BB, June 23, 2008.
summer of 1950: JD, p. 78.
gave them eighteen completed chapters: Author interview with NB, May 5, 2004; letter to NB, September 1, 1950 (LOAR, p. 479).
who had already heard each new section: Letter to Archibald Ogden, April 23, 1949 (LOAR, p. 437).
“We were hearing”: TPOAR, p. 245.
“I can’t fully communicate the exhilaration”: “Int
erview with Barbara Branden,” p. 12.
“plot, theme, characterization, style”: TPOAR, p. 242.
selected some of Barbara’s favorite passages: The Art of Fiction, p. 10, from contemporaneous recordings of private lectures. Interestingly, AR is quoted as saying that Thomas Wolfe’s “appeal is usually to people under twenty. Wolfe presents an empty mold to be filled by any reader, the general intention being aspiration, undefined idealism, the desire to escape from the commonplace and to find ‘something better in Life’ “(p. 111). Except for the reference to “an empty mold,” AR could be describing her own appeal.
“into a destructive vise”: TPOAR, p. 243.
She wore short skirts: JD, p. 65; TPOAR, p. 240.
snapped at her about such carelessness: TPOAR, p. 210.
“top value”: The Phil Donahue Show, April 29, 1980.
“Frank is my rock”: TPOAR, p. 248.
“too disgusted with people”: JD, p. 66.
she didn’t divorce Frank: “Interview with Nathaniel Branden,” Karen Reedstrom, Full Context, September 1996, p. 7.
held his hand as they strolled: TPOAR, p. 247.
such as Zorro and the Scarlet Pimpernel: JD, p. 84.
raised by a doting mother and grandmother: Author interview with Florence Hirschfeld, Jonathan Hirschfeld, and EK, August 25, 2006.
Lavery … alleged that Mrs. Rogers had defamed him: “Debate Suits Ask $2,000,000,” Los Angeles Times, September 11, 1947, p. A1, and “Unproduced Play’s Value Question in Lavery Suit,” Los Angeles Times, August 4, 1951, p. B18.
settled for thirty thousand dollars: “Lavery Awarded $30,000,” Los Angeles Times, August 14, 1951, p. 2.
flirted pleasantly with Barbara: Author interview with BB, June 9, 2006.
lasted for only twenty-eight performances: In 1948, The Bees and the Flowers was released as the MGM movie Three Daring Daughters with Jeanette MacDonald.
When a girlfriend committed suicide: TPOAR, p. 193.
affected his rationality: JD, p. 63.
“I think we replaced him”: Author interview with BB, June 9, 2006.
“the only two … which I consider serious”: BBTBI.
“She was very, very close”: Author interview with BB, June 9, 2006.
“That’s the Dominique premise”: JD, p. 64.
Ayn Rand and the World She Made Page 65