Pears, Peter (1910–1986). English tenor; longtime companion and musical partner to Benjamin Britten. He was sent down from Oxford, after failing his first-year music exams, became a prep school master, studied briefly at the Royal College of Music and then joined the BBC Singers in 1934. He shared a flat with Britten from early 1938, and they began performing together in 1939. The same year, they went to America and lived outside New York at Elizabeth Mayer’s house in Amityville and then in Brooklyn at George Davis’s house in Middagh Street. They also made a trip to California. Pears studied singing further in New York, where his voice developed and gained in strength. He returned to England with Britten in March 1942, and thereafter their lives became increasingly fused, with Britten writing a great deal of music for Pears, and Pears singing it expressly for Britten. He appears in D.1.
Peggy. See Kiskadden, Peggy.
Pentagon Papers. The 7,000-page top-secret document about U.S. involvement in Vietnam which was leaked to the press in 1971. Daniel Ellsberg (b. 1931), Harvard-educated doctor of economics and former marine, was the Defense Department analyst who leaked the document to The New York Times and then The Washington Post. Anthony Russo, a RAND fellow, was a friend who helped Ellsberg copy the documents. They were charged with espionage, larceny and conspiracy and tried in Los Angeles, beginning in January 1973. On May 12, the judge dismissed their case on grounds of government misconduct. The jury had no opportunity to make a decision. Seven of the ten jurors told the Associated Press they had been inclined to acquit.
Perry, Troy D. (b. 1940). American gay activist, from Florida. A Baptist minister at fifteen, he married and had two sons before moving to California where he came out, divorced, and founded the Metropolitan Community Church of Los Angeles in October 1968. It was the first of three hundred or more predominantly gay and lesbian churches in his Universal Fellowship of Christian Churches.
Peter. See Schlesinger, Peter.
Peters, Gilbert (Gib). High-school friend of Jim Gates in Claremont in the late 1960s; they were expelled with another friend, Doug Rauch, for wearing their hair too long, and graduated from Continuation School instead. They rented a house together, worked at menial jobs, and began to meditate under the guidance of an ex-monk from the Self Realization Fellowship (brought to the U.S. in 1920 by Paramahansa Yogananda), eventually moving with the ex-monk and several other friends to the San Gabriel mountains. Gib left for Oregon with another Claremont friend, Beth High; they married, and the ex-monk followed them and moved in with them. They continued to meditate together and began to study Esperanto, but Gates introduced Gib to Swami in July 1970, as Isherwood tells, when Gib was visiting Los Angeles on his way to an Esperanto conference in Austria, and Gib and his wife, who had already met Swami, soon moved south again to be near him, living at first in a tent in the backyard of the house Jim Gates and Peter Schneider rented in Venice. The marriage gradually dissolved as the monastic life took over.
Pfeiffer, Virginia (1902–1973). A sister-in-law and friend of Ernest Hemingway; born in St. Louis to a wealthy pharmaceutical manufacturer and raised on her family’s 60,000-acre farm in Piggott, Arkansas. During the 1920s, she travelled with her older sister Pauline Pfeiffer in Europe; they befriended Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, in Paris, and Pauline married Hemingway in 1927. Virginia was often with the Hemingways in Paris, Key West, Cuba, and Bimini during the 1930s, and she renovated a barn at the family property in Arkansas for Hemingway to work in. When it burned down, she renovated it again. She sometimes took charge of their two sons and of Hemingway’s son from his first marriage. Hemingway left Pauline for Martha Gellhorn in 1940, and Pauline died at Virginia’s house in Hollywood in 1951. Laura Archera lived with Virginia for many years before marrying Aldous Huxley. Virginia adopted two children, Juan and Paula, whom Laura helped her raise. After they married, the Huxleys settled in a house in Deronda Drive in the Hollywood Hills a few hundred yards from Virginia’s house, and Virginia and Laura continued to be frequent companions. In May, 1961, both houses burned down in a bush fire; Virginia moved, in the autumn, to a nearby house in Mulholland Drive and invited the Huxleys to join her there. Aldous Huxley died in that house a few months later. Virginia appears in D.2.
Plante, David (b. 1940). American writer; raised in Rhode Island and educated at Boston College. He lives in London and in New York, where he teaches writing at Columbia University. Of his more than twelve novels, the most admired are his Francoeur trilogy, The Family (1978), The Country (1981), and The Woods (1982). His non-fiction work includes Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three (1983) and essays for The New Yorker and The Paris Review. His companion for many years was Nicos Stangos.
Plomer, William (1903–1973). British poet and novelist born and raised in South Africa. He met Isherwood in 1932 through Stephen Spender after Spender showed Isherwood Plomer’s poems and stories about South Africa and Japan. Plomer was a friend of E.M. Forster and soon introduced Isherwood. In South Africa, Plomer and Roy Campbell had founded Voorslag (Whiplash), a literary magazine for which they wrote most of the satirical material (Laurens van der Post was also an editor). Plomer taught for two years in Japan then, in 1929, settled in Bloomsbury where he was befriended by the Woolfs who had published his first novel, Turbott Wolff (1926). In 1937, he became principal reader for Jonathan Cape where, among other things, he brought out Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. During the war he worked in naval intelligence. He also wrote libretti for Benjamin Britten, notably Gloriana (1953). He appears in D.1 and D.2.
Plowright, Joan (b. 1929). British actress; trained at the Old Vic Theatre School. She first appeared on the London stage in 1954 and joined Tony Richardson and George Devine’s London Stage Company in 1956. Isherwood met her when she was in the New York production of A Taste of Honey in 1960. During the same year, she starred with Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer at the Royal Court; she then appeared with Olivier in the film, and later in the stage and film versions of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. She became Olivier’s third wife in 1961, and they had two children, Richard (b. 1961) and Julie Kate (b. 1966). In the early 1960s, she and Olivier joined the National Theatre Company when it was founded at the Old Vic in London, and she played leads in Chekhov, Shaw, and Ibsen. Later, she played Shakespeare and had a long West End run in De Filippo’s Saturday, Sunday, Monday (1973), followed eventually by his Filumena. She also appeared in the stage (1973) and film (1977) versions of Equus. Among her other movies are Moby Dick (1956), Uncle Vanya (1963), 101 Dalmatians (1996), and Tea with Mussolini (1999). She appears in D.1 and D.2.
Poe, Barbara. American painter and art collector, née Reese. She was once married to screenwriter James Poe, who adapted Sanctuary for Tony Richardson and whose other work includes the screenplays for Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969). She later remarried and became Barbara Poe Levee.
Pope-Hennessey, James (1916–1974). British writer, educated at Oxford. He was literary editor of The Spectator from 1947 to 1949. His books include biographies of Queen Mary, Robert Louis Stevenson and Anthony Trollope, as well as a work on the Atlantic slave trade, Sins of the Fathers (1968). As Isherwood records, he was murdered by his one-time boyfriend, Sean O’Brien. O’Brien let two fellow criminals into Pope-Hennessey’s flat to rob him. During the robbery, Pope-Hennessey choked to death on his own blood after being battered in the head and throat by O’Brien.
Prabhaprana (Prabha) (d. 1998). Originally Phoebe Nixon, she was the daughter of Alice Nixon (“Tarini”) and after sannyas became Pravrajika Prabhaprana. The Nixons were wealthy Southerners. Isherwood first met Prabha in the early 1940s at the Hollywood Vedanta Society, where she handled much of the administrative and secretarial work, and he grew to love her genuinely. By the mid-1950s, Prabha was manager of the Sarada Convent in Santa Barbara. She appears in D.1 and D.2.
Prabhavananda, Swami (1893–1976). Hindu monk of the Ramakrishna Order, founder of the Vedanta Society of Souther
n California based in Hollywood. Gerald Heard introduced Isherwood to Swami Prabhavananda in July 1939. On their second meeting, August 4, Prabhavananda began to instruct Isherwood in meditation; on November 8, 1940 he initiated Isherwood, giving him a mantram and a rosary. From February 1943 until August 1945 Isherwood lived monastic-ally at the Vedanta Society, but he decided he could not become a monk as Swami wished. He continued to be closely involved with the Vedanta Society, travel led several times to its headquarters in India, and remained Prabhavananda’s disciple and close friend for life. Their relationship is described in My Guru and His Disciple, and Prabhavananda appears in D.1, D.2, and Lost Years, as well as providing inspiration for A Meeting by the River.
Prabhavananda was born Abanindra Nath Ghosh, in a Bengali village northwest of Calcutta. As a teenager he read about Ramakrishna and his disciples Vivekananda and Brahmananda and felt mysteriously attracted to their names. By chance he experienced an affecting meeting with Ramakrishna’s widow, Sarada Devi. At eighteen he visited the Belur Math, the chief monastery of the Ramakrishna Order beside the Ganges outside Calcutta. There he had another important encounter, this time with Brahmananda, and abandoned his studies for a month to follow him. When he returned to Calcutta, he became involved in militant opposition to British rule, and joined a revolutionary organization for which he wrote and distributed propaganda. At one time, he took charge of some stolen weapons, and some of his friends who engaged in terrorist activities met with violent ends. Because he was studying philosophy, Abanindra attended Belur Math regularly for instruction in the teachings of Shankara, but he regarded the monastic life as escapist and put his political duties first, until he had another compelling experience with Brahmananda and suddenly decided to give up his political activities and become a monk. He took his final vows in 1921, when his name was changed to Prabhavananda.
In 1923 he was sent to the United States to assist the swami at the Vedanta Society in San Francisco; later he opened a new center in Portland, Oregon. He was joined there by Sister Lalita and later, in 1929, founded the Vedanta Society of Southern California in her house in Hollywood, 1946 Ivar Avenue. Several other women joined them. By the mid-1930s the society began to expand and money was donated for a temple which was built in the garden and dedicated in July 1938. Prabhavananda remained the head of the Hollywood society until he died; he frequently visited the Ramakrishna monastery in Trabuco and the Sarada Convent in Santa Barbara and also stayed in the home of a devotee in Laguna Beach.
Isherwood and Prabhavananda worked on a number of books together, notably translations of the Bhagavad Gita (1944) and of the yoga aphorisms of Patanjali (1953). Prabhavananda contributed to two collections on Vedanta edited by Isherwood, and Isherwood also worked on Prabhavananda’s translation of Shankara’s Crest Jewel of Discrimination (1947). Prabhavananda persuaded Isherwood to write a biography of Ramakrishna, Ramakrishna and His Disciples (1964); this became an official project of the Ramakrishna Order.
pranam. Greeting of respect made by folding the palms, by taking the dust of the feet (i.e., touching the greeted one’s foot and then touching one’s own forehead), or by prostrating. Namaskar, from the same Sanskrit root, “nam” for a salutation expressing love and respect, can also be made in a variety of ways depending upon local tradition and social situation: verbally, by nodding, by folding the palms, by bending at the knees to touch the ground with the forehead, or by lying flat on the ground.
prasad. Food or any gift consecrated by being offered to God or a saintly person in a Hindu ceremony of worship; the food is usually eaten as part of the meal following the ritual, or the gift is given to the devotees.
Prema Chaitanya (Prema) (1913–2000). American monk of the Ramakrishna Order, originally named John Yale and later known as Swami Vidyatmananda; born in Lansing, Michigan, educated at Olivet College in Illinois, Michigan State College and later at the University of Southern California where he obtained a doctorate in education. He taught high school before moving to Chicago in 1938 and working as a schoolbook editor. In 1941, he tried unsuccessfully to join the navy, and then in 1942 he joined Science Research Associates (SRA), a publishing house which specialized in teaching tools and psychological tests, and which was later bought by IBM. He ran SRA during the war and eventually became a director. While he was there, the entire male staff was interviewed by Alfred Kinsey for his Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, so Yale recorded his sexual history with one of Kinsey’s assistants and was made ill by recounting it. He decided to give up sex, evidently because he was homosexual.
In 1948, after reading Isherwood and Prabhavananda’s translation of the Bhagavad Gita and other works on Vedanta, he moved to Los Angeles, where he began instruction with Prabhavananda that November and moved into the Vedanta Society in Hollywood in April 1950. Isherwood met him at the Vedanta Society in the spring of 1949. In August 1955, Yale took his brahmacharya vows at Trabuco and was renamed Prema Chaitanya. He continued to live at the Hollywood society and briefly at Santa Barbara but never at Trabuco. He developed the Vedanta Society’s bookshop, building a mail-order business. He also edited the Vedanta Society magazine, Vedanta and the West, collaborating with Isherwood on the magazine’s chapter-by-chapter publication of Isherwood’s biography of Ramakrishna. Prema’s own 1961 book, A Yankee and the Swamis, describing his journey in 1952–1953 to the Ramakrishna monastery and various holy places in India, was also published serially in Vedanta and the West and caused a scandal with its remarks about the residents of the various places Prema visited; offending passages were deleted by Swami Prabhavananda from the final text. Prema also edited What Religion Is: In the Words of Swami Vivekananda, for which Isherwood wrote the introduction, and What Vedanta Means to Me (1960), to which Isherwood also contributed. He appears in D.1, D.2, and Lost Years, and Isherwood drew on his sannyas experience in India in 1963–1964 for A Meeting by the River, originally intended to be dedicated to him.
In his unpublished memoir “The Making of a Devotee,” Vidyatmananda tells that he became estranged from Prabhavananda while living at the Belur Math in India, where he discovered that the family model of religious life adopted by Swami Prabhavananda for the Hollywood Vedanta Society was not approved by the Ramakrishna Order, which advocated a strict monastic model with the sexes separated—officially only men could join the order. Swami had initiated many women and allowed them to live alongside the men because there were not enough devotees in southern California to populate two separate orders; Vidyatmananda began lobbying to have the nuns turned out of the Hollywood Vedanta Society. He also expressed surprise over his discovery in India that despite being a Westerner, he might still hope to rise through the hierarchy of the order, and even be permitted to transfer away from the Hollywood center. He remained in India for nearly a year, hoping to live there permanently, but he failed to find useful work, and returned to Hollywood after falling severely ill with paratyphoid. Swami Prabhavananda felt Prema’s discussions with the elders of the Belur Math were disloyal, and when in 1966 Prema was invited to transfer to the Centre Védantique Ramakrichna, east of Paris in Gretz, France, Swami wrote saying he wanted nothing more to do with him. They met again, however, in 1973, and Prabhavananda gave Vidyatmananda his blessing.
Vidyatmananda remained in Gretz for the rest of his life. When he arrived, the center was in decline; the first generation of devotees had died or left following the death of the founding Swami, Siddheswarananda, and only a few new devotees had appeared. Vidyatmananda, as manager, saw to reorganizing, rebuilding and modernizing the property; he learned how to speak French and how to farm. The center was run as an ashram, and eventually thrived on the physical labor of young spiritual trainees who generally returned to secular life after a period of retreat there.
Premananda, Swami (1861–1918). A direct monastic disciple of Ramakrishna, from a pious Bengali family; born Baburam Ghosh. As a young man, he was taken to meet Ramakrishna at Dakshineswar by his Calcutta classmate, Rakhal Chandra Ghosh (
Brahmananda). Premananda’s sister was married to one of Ramakrishna’s most prominent devotees, Balaram Bose, and his mother also came to Dakshineswar as a devotee. Ramakrishna regarded him as especially pure and sweet-natured and recognized him as an Ishvarakoti (a perfect, free soul born for mankind’s benefit) like Brahmananda and Vivekananda. During the last decades of his life, Premananda was manager of the Belur Math.
Price, Kenneth (Ken) (b. 1935). American printmaker and ceramic artist, born in Los Angeles, trained at Chouinard, USC, the Art Institute of California, and the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. His first solo show was at the Ferus Gallery in 1960; later he showed at the Kasmin Gallery in London, the Whitney in New York, Nicholas Wilder, James Corcoran, Gemini GEL, and the Los Angeles County Museum, among others. Many major museums hold his work. He moved to Taos in 1970, then to Massachusetts in 1982, and later back to Los Angeles where he joined the faculty at USC. His wife is called Happy.
Price, Vincent (1911–1993) and Coral Browne (1913–1991). American actor, raised in St. Louis and Australian-born actress, his third wife. Price grew up in privileged circumstances and toured Europe on his high-school graduation. He studied art history at Yale and again at the Courtauld in London, where he made his stage debut in 1935. By 1938, he had a contract with Universal Studios and during the 1950s began to develop his often comic flair for villains and horror movies. His many films include The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), The Song of Bernadette (1943), Laura (1944), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), The Three Musketeers (1948), House of Wax (1953), The Fly (1958), The House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and Edward Scissorhands (1990). He appeared on T.V. in the “Batman” series, on “Hollywood Squares” in the 1960s and 1970s, and hosted the PBS series “Mystery” during the 1980s. From July 1977, he toured world-wide as Oscar Wilde in a one-man stage play, Diversions and Delights, written by John Gay. He was an art collector and a gourmet, and he published a number of art history books and cookbooks. He married Coral Browne in 1974 after they worked together in Theater of Blood (1973). She began her stage career in Australia, emigrated to England during World War II and played classic stage roles, including Shakespeare, as well as appearing in Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw (1969). Her films include Auntie Mame (1958), The Killing of Sister George (1968), The Ruling Class (1972), and Dreamchild (1985).
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