“I went to a [lecture] once”: Unpublished taped interview with Bertha Krantz, conducted by BB, September 30, 1983.
gave up her job as a junior editor: Earlier, Barbara had worked for Archibald Ogden at RKO in New York.
“If one considers that Ayn was God”: “Ayn Rand and Her Movement,” p. 8.
“the most beautiful woman in the world”: Author interview with Don Ventura, March 19, 2004.
“I learned repression”: TPOAR, pp. 243, 304–305.
“the greatest human being”: MYWAR, p. 226.
struck her as well meaning: BBTBI.
“I saw her change”: Author interview with JKT, May 21, 2004.
“I thought that my fans disappointed and depressed me”: http://www.solopassion.com/node/1257.
At first, no one noticed: MYWAR, p. 209.
arrived by the hundreds every week: About two hundred; OHP, Robert Hessen, November 10, 2004.
stopped giving lectures on college campuses: AR seems to have made no college appearances between mid-1958 and 1960; “Ayn Rand as a Public Speaker.”
“I cannot fight lice”: MYWAR, p. 211.
spent hours playing solitaire: “The Liberty Interview: Barbara Branden,” p. 51.
“John Galt wouldn’t feel this”: “An Interview with Barbara Branden,” p. 8.
“I would hate for him to see me like this”: MYWAR, p. 213. In private notes from 1968, excerpted in Valliant’s TPOARC, AR writes that during this period she experienced “self-protective withdrawal—and I realized that this is a state without any use for one’s mind or rational faculty.”
carrying a jar of Dexedrine: Dr. Allan Blumenthal recalled that AR took Dexedrine, an amphetamine, in the 1950s and 1960s. BB has mentioned that she took Dexamyl (TPOAR, p. 173), a combination of Dexedrine and amobarbital, a barbiturate.
“Oh, these are for Ayn”: Author interview with Roger J. Callahan, November 4, 2003. There were other rumors over the years. For example, in February 1969, a person close to AR and the Brandens wrote a concerned letter to Barbara about rumors that the novelist’s doctor was upping her dose.
“she’d take another two”: Jeff Walker, “Ayn Rand, Objectivism and All That,” an interview with Roy A. Childs, Jr., Liberty, April 1993, p. 33.
“She was wired up”: Author interview with Robert Hessen, October 17, 2007.
“as well as Swiss chocolates”: Author correspondence with BB, June 26, 2008.
Joan Blumenthal recalled that Rand: Author interview with JMB and Dr. Allan Blumenthal, March 23, 2004.
“always had a very elevated pulse rate”: Author interview with JMB and Dr. Allan Blumenthal, September 2, 2004.
the telltale symptoms of suspicion: Everett H. Ellinwood, George King, and Tong H. Lee, “Chronic Amphetamine Use and Abuse,” in Floyd Bloom and Donald Kupfer, eds., Psyhopharmacology: The Fourth Generation of Progress (Nashville, Tenn.: American College of Neuropsycho-pharmacology, 2000).
“The atmosphere was like that of a hospital”: Author interview with NB, May 5, 2004.
withdrew into his painting: MYWAR, p. 212.
some of which she sometimes conceded: BBTBI.
“You are my lifeline”: MYWAR, p. 210.
“disappearing professor” act: TPOARC, RPJ, July 4, 1968, p. 323.
“he had always been arrogant”: TPOAR, p. 304.
“If all of you who look at me”: “Ideal,” Three Plays, p. 177.
She was paralyzed by disgust: TPOAR, pp. 302–3.
“Thinking is all I do”: JD, p. 240.
able to renew their intimacy: TPOAR, p. 304; MYWAR, p. 219.
She was never fastidious: According to RBH, AR’s friend from Chatsworth, California, NB approached BB and “asked her to ask AR to ‘clean up her act,’ though it wasn’t her act he wanted cleaned up.” RBH claimed to have heard this from BB, with whom she became friendly in the 1980s and 1990s. According to RBH, BB confided that “NB found her physically—unclean, not clean;” author interview with RBH, June 8, 2005. When asked if this story was true, Barbara replied, “No comment.”
“I needed all of my resources”: MYWAR, p. 219.
“How is it possible that we can be accused”: MYWAR, p. 209.
“it was more and more true”: Author interview with NB, August 10, 2004.
“the founder of a new and unusual philosophy”: The Mike Wallace Interview, February 25, 1959.
told the same story to both Brandens: The untruth that AR told to Wallace and the Brandens “is puzzling,” said BB in 2007 (author correspondence with BB, 2007).
Mr. Branden had received six hundred letters: The Mike Wallace Interview, February 25, 1959.
dumbfounded that Wallace had devoted half an hour: Author interview with Al Ramrus, March 1, 2007.
“Most of the media”: Author interview with Al Ramrus, March 1, 2007.
enjoyed the interview and admired her courage: Author interview with Mike Wallace, February 15, 2007.
“I remember with amusement her haircut”: 100 Voices, Mike Wallace, p. 156.
he and she dined together: Author interview with Mike Wallace, February 15, 2007.
“creature who sat on her shoulder”: Author interview with Mike Wallace, February 15, 2007.
“slavish followers”: Author interview with Mike Wallace, February 15, 2007.
received an advance copy of the noveclass="underline" Also, like MR, JKT initially had an adverse reaction to NB. “When I first met Nathan at Ayn’s, my immediate reaction to him was that he might be a wife-swapper in some sense. But then I said, ah, no” (Karen Reedstrom, “Interview with Joan Kennedy Taylor,” Full Context, October 1993, p. 4).
“when the whole world wanted her attention”: Author interview with JKT, May 21, 2004.
“I think she was kinder to people”: “Interview with Joan Kennedy Taylor,” p. 3.
“she respected creative people”: Author interview with JKT, May 21, 2004.
didn’t want to compose atonal music: “Interview with Joan Kennedy Taylor,” p. 3.
pulled up chairs and listened to their conversation: 100 Voices, Mickey Spillane, p. 232.
loved the fact that Spillane’s potboiling plots: BBTBI.
“Grays don’t interest me”: “The Curious Cult of Ayn Rand,” p. 100.
the Los Angeles Times and in other forums: In her private lectures on the art of writing, she often mentioned him as a favorable example of descriptive writing and use of slang. In her short-lived weekly column of commentary in the Los Angeles Times, she devoted a column to his writing, beginning with the sentence, “Mickey Spillane is one of the best writers of our time” (“The Ayn Rand Column,” Los Angeles Times, September 2, 1962).