Liberation (169 page)

 

¹⁴⁹
Hollywood costume designer until 1936,when she collaborated with silent screen star Fred Cole to found the bathing suit company Cole of California.

 

¹⁵⁰
Hero of the Ramayana; he was prince of Ayodhya, an incarnation of God, and a perfect model of humanity.

 

¹⁵¹
Probably Jan v
o
n Adlmann, an art critic and curator.

 

¹⁵²
Dynia (b. 1944) had been an undergraduate at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and got a Ph.D. in Government from Georgetown in 1973; he had just begun teaching at Loyola.

 

¹⁵³
I.e., his green corduroy suit.

 

¹⁵⁴
Dunne became an interior designer and ran a local antique business, Lucullus.

 

¹⁵⁵
The sixth lecture in Isherwood's UCSB series “A Writer and His World,” given in the autumn of 1960; see
D.2.

 

¹⁵⁶
He was preparing a selection of Auden's work; see Glossary.

 

¹⁵⁷
“Song for St. Cecilia's Day.”

 

¹⁵⁸
“In Memory of W.B. Yeats.”

 

¹⁵⁹
Spoken by Master and Boatswain in
The Sea and the Mirror.

 

¹⁶⁰
See Glossary under Kitty's birthday.

 

¹⁶¹
Ramakrishna, Sarada Devi (Holy Mother), Vivekananda (Swamiji), and Brahmananda (Maharaj).

 

¹⁶²
Bengali actor, playwright, songwriter, and Ramakrishna devotee (1844– 1912).

 

¹⁶³
Meditation and Its Methods
; see Glossary under Chetanananda.

 

¹⁶⁴
Ecuador, where he visited with Bill Caskey in November 1947; see
The Condor and the Cows.

 

¹⁶⁵
Set decorator (1952–1985); he worked on a number of Hollywood films, including
Scarface
(1983) and
Prizzi's Honor
(1985), sometimes as production designer or production assistant.

 

¹⁶⁶
Lassally, born in Berlin in 1926, refugeed to England in 1939. He worked for Richardson on
A Taste of Honey
,
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
, and
Tom Jones
, and he won an Academy Award for
Zorba the Greek
(1964).

 

¹⁶⁷
Prince (1913–1996), American actor of stage, screen, and T.V. soaps, played Christopher Isherwood in the original Broadway production of
I Am a Camera
.

 

¹⁶⁸
Mentioned in
D.1
as typifying the Tragic American who is broke yet has a fancy car which symbolizes the success for which he longs; see December 1939, pp. 59 ff.

 

¹⁶⁹
I.e., the 1925 film, starring Lon Chaney, of Gaston Leroux's novel.

 

¹⁷⁰
American novelist and short story writer (1907–1997); he won a Pulitzer Prize for
Tales of the South Pacific
(1947), which became the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Other best-selling works include
Hawaii
(1959),
The Source
(1965),
Kent State: What Happened and Why
(1971), and
Centennial
(1974).

 

¹⁷¹
In
Lost Years
, which Isherwood was writing at this time, he describes how Jack Fontan was required to dress in shorts and sit front and center exactly like this for his role in
South Pacific
. See Glossary under Fontan.

 

¹⁷²
Mona Meredith, once married to Greg Meredith; her Sanskrit name was Chinmayi, and later she became Mona Reddick. Devotees took sides strongly.

 

¹⁷³
Former tennis star, mentioned in
D.1.

 

¹⁷⁴
Ross and Cockburn were in Berlin at the same time, but did not meet until after she moved back to London; see Glossary.

 

¹⁷⁵
John 14.8–11.

 

¹⁷⁶
Pronounced Avoya, but spelled Abhaya, as in the entry for March 25, 1973 (above), or Aboyha as in the entry for January 24, 1975 (below).

 

¹⁷⁷
When she tells how Falstaff cried out “God, God, God!” and then died, II.iii.

 

¹⁷⁸
The 1976 film of Maurice Maeterlinck's play
L'Oiseau Bleu
(1909) was a U.S.–Soviet coproduction.

 

¹⁷⁹
By President Gerald Ford on September 8 for any offences committed in office.

 

¹⁸⁰
The motorcycle stuntman (1938–2007) used a jet-powered sled launched from metal tracks for the three-quarter-mile leap, but his parachute deployed prematurely, and he fell into the canyon.

 

¹⁸¹
Mary Anita Loos (1910–2004), screenwriter and novelist; her first novel,
The Beggars Are Coming
, was published that year.

 

¹⁸²
Dewey Spriegel.

 

¹⁸³
Loos's adopted daughter.

 

¹⁸⁴
Dip
i
ka; she later became Pravrajika Vivekaprana.

 

¹⁸⁵
“And whosoever shall cause one of these little ones that believe in me to stumble, it were better for him if a great millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea.” Mark 9.42; see also Matthew 18.6, Luke 17.2.

 

¹⁸⁶
An early title for
No Home But the Struggle.

 

¹⁸⁷
A memorial stone was unveiled in Poets' Corner on October 2.

 

¹⁸⁸
Philip Carey as a secret agent who rescued women in danger—for Granny Goose Potato Chips.

 

¹⁸⁹
O'Brien beat Pope-Hennessy so that he choked to death; see Glossary.

 

¹⁹⁰
At Nicholas Wilder, 8225½ Santa Monica Boulevard, until November 23.

 

¹⁹¹
Mengers, Hollywood super-agent (she represented Vidal), was born in Germany in 1938 and escaped with her Jewish parents to New York, where she grew up. Her husband, Belgian-born screenwriter and director Jean-Claude Tramont (1934–1996), was half-Jewish. Producer Howard Rosenman—whose films include
Father of the Bride
(1991),
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(1992), and a 1996 documentary based on Vito Russo's book about homosexuality in the movies,
The Celluloid Closet
(1981)—was born in New York in 1945 to Israeli parents. Austen was also Jewish.

 

¹⁹²
Corderman was living in one of the Hilldale Avenue apartments owned by Isherwood and Bachardy and managing the building while Dobyns was out of town.

 

¹⁹³
Mahogany
; see Glossary.

 

¹⁹⁴
Evidently a proposed pseudonym for Heinz Neddermeyer.

 

¹⁹⁵
Departing Bengali travellers repeat the name of the protectress of the universe so she will watch over their journey.

 

¹
Photography assistant and lab man for Peter Gowland.

 

²
Isherwood spoke at the MLA Forum on Homosexuality and Literature, December 27, 1974, then had a drink with William S. Gray (d. 1992), born and educated in Louisiana, at Exeter, and briefly at Harvard, a friend of Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, and once employed by
The New Yorker
. That evening Isherwood attended an MLA symposium at which Alan Wilde and Carolyn Heilbrun discussed his work. On January 14, he wrote to Judith Moffett who was working on
James Merrill: An Introduction to the Poetry
(1984), deflecting her questions about Merrill's “sexual nature” and telling her he didn't know Merrill, though he admired what poems he had read.

 

³
American portrait painter (b. 1950).

 

^*
Larry Miller.

 

⁴
See
D.2.

 

⁵
A Hollywood devotee in the late 1940s; he helped with the magazine
Vedanta and the West.

 

⁶
Awarded by Brandeis University in recognition of lifetime achievement; Brandeis is in Waltham, Massachusetts, but until 1990, the ceremony was held in New York.

 

⁷
Maupiti is in the Leeward Islands, northwest of Tahiti; the youthful love affair is described October 19, 1967 in
D.2.

 

⁸
Spender had already edited
W.H. Auden: A Tribute
(1974), a collection about Auden; in the end, Mendelson wrote a two-part literary-critical biography of Auden on his own; see Glossary.

 

⁹
Neither piece was used. Von Wiedenmen had already published an interview with Bachardy, and W.I. Scobie contributed a piece about Isherwood a few months later; see below, April 19, October 23, and December 31, 1975.

 

¹⁰
Bachardy was on the cover of the March 12, 1975
Advocate
, No. 159. Two more photos of him appeared inside along with the earlier von Wiedenmen interview, a 1953 Arthur Mitchell shot of Isherwood and Bachardy together, and three Bachardy drawings—of Isherwood, Warhol, and Bette Davis.

 

¹¹
Assembly Bill 489 removed criminal penalties for adultery, oral sex, and sodomy between consenting adults; see Glossary.

 

¹²
Douglas Schoolfield Cramer (a producer of “Love Boat”) and his partner and companion Bud Baumes planned to produce the program, but it was never made.

 

¹³
Brian Finney, see Glossary.

 

¹⁴
Called “GayThink.”

 

¹⁵
Sieber (1898–1976), a Czech, married Dietrich in 1924, after giving her a small role in
Tragedy of Love
(1923), a German film for which he was a production assistant. They lived together for only about five years (and had a daughter), but the marriage was never dissolved. He was dying of cancer.

 

¹⁶
Spelled Swananda; in the end, Swananda became head of the Vedanta center in Berkeley, and Swahananda, head of the Berkeley center and with a confusingly similar name, took over in Hollywood. See Glossary.

 

¹⁷
December 4 at the Dootson-Calderhead Gallery, 311½ Occidental Street. Bachardy flew up with Nick Wilder, December 3, and did two commissioned sittings during the trip.

 

¹⁸
Also a manager, promoter, and producer (1941–1999) of the film musical
Grease
(1978) and the stage musical
La Cage aux Folles
(1983), among others.

 

¹⁹
Published December 17, 1975.

 

²⁰
Clark Waterman, a monk for a year or two; his wife, Elin, was renamed Kamala by Prabhavananda.

 

¹
His weight.

 

²
For this lecture and others mentioned in the day-to-day diary below, see
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda.

 

³
Son (b. 1955) of Richardson's friend Jeremy Fry; educated at a Rudolf Steiner School in England. He had a small part in the Anthony Shaffer thriller
Absolution
(1978), directed by Anthony Page, but never turned up on the set.

 

⁴
Christian-Albrecht Gollub, German-born American scholar, translator, poet, and, later, jewelry designer; he published an interview with Isherwood in a German periodical
Litfass: Berliner Zeitschrift für Literatur
, December 1978.

 

⁵
English literary scholar; he edited the Abinger critical edition of Forster's works with Elizabeth Heine and translated Knut Hamsen from Norwegian assisted by his wife, Gunvor.

 

⁶
Husband of Romney Tree and former companion of Hugh Chisolm with whom he appears in
D.1.

 

⁷
New York art critic, curator, author; he wrote books, catalogues and introductions on de Kooning and others. In 1966 with John Byers, he founded the Bykert Gallery, which he ran for a decade.

 

⁸
Wife of journalist and documentary maker, John Nugent, a reporter for
Newsweek
. The Nugents lived in Santa Monica.

 

⁹
Gay activist (b. 1950); he lobbied for A.B. 489 in Sacramento, and in 1977, with a health brief, was part of the first-ever gay and lesbian delegation admitted for meetings at the White House.

 

¹⁰
British stage actress (1883–1984), perhaps celebrating a few years late. She debuted on Broadway in 1916, made a small number of films—including
The Misfits
(1961),
Camelot
(1967),
The Producers
(1968), and
Murder by Death
(1976)—and often appeared on T.V.

 

¹¹
Rospo Pallenberg wrote the original story for Boorman's
Exorcist II: The Heretic
(1977) and later worked on the screenplays for
The Emerald Forest
and
Excalibur
; his wife, an actress, published a book about making
Exorcist II.