1939 January 19, Isherwood sails for America with Auden, arriving January 26
in New York where they settle; March, Goodbye to Berlin is published by the Hogarth Press and in the U.S. by Random House; the same month, Journey to a War is published by Faber and by Random House; early May, Isherwood applies for U.S. residency; May 6, he sets off for California with Vernon Old; June 9, Isherwood gets quota visa; July, Isherwood begins working with Berthold Viertel again and meets Swami Prabhavananda; early August, Isherwood begins instruction in meditation; October, Isherwood’s new story,
“I Am Waiting,” is published in The New Yorker; November, Isherwood gets his first Hollywood film job writing for Goldwyn Studios.
1940 January, Isherwood begins his first writing job at MGM, on Rage in Heaven for Gottfried Reinhardt; July 9, Uncle Henry Bradshaw Isherwood dies, Isherwood inherits the family estate and gives it to his brother, Richard; November 8, Swami Prabhavananda initiates Isherwood.
1941 By January 11, Isherwood finishes working on Rage in Heaven and then
“polishes” other MGM scripts; February 17, he breaks with Vernon Old and, in mid-March, moves next door to Gerald Heard; early May, Isherwood finishes his first year’s contract at MGM and leaves the studio; by mid-June, 292
Chronology
Denny Fouts moves in with Isherwood; July 15, Kathleen Isherwood returns to live at Wyberslegh with Richard; August 22, Isherwood flies east to visit Auden and meets Caroline Norment at the Cooperative College Workshop, a refugee hostel in Haverford, Pennsylvania; October 11, he moves to Haverford to work in the hostel; also during 1941, Gerald Heard begins to build his monastic community, Trabuco.
1942 June 30, Isherwood has a medical exam at the draft board; July 6, the Haverford refugee hostel closes, and Isherwood returns to California; July 13, he receives his draft classification, 4-E, and applies to Los Prietos Camp to do civilian public service; by October 12, Isherwood begins working on a translation of the Bhagavad Gita with Swami Prabhavananda; October, another story, “Take It or Leave It,” is published in The New Yorker; November 30, Isherwood starts work at Paramount on Somerset Maugham’s The Hour Before Dawn; December 31, Isherwood writes “The Wishing Tree” for the Vedanta Society magazine.
1943 January 29, Isherwood finishes at Paramount; February 6, he moves into the Vedanta Center, Ivar Avenue, in preparation for becoming a monk; May, Isherwood begins writing Prater Violet; August, Denny Fouts introduces Isherwood to Bill Harris.
1944 February and again in March, Isherwood stays with Aldous and Maria Huxley in Llano where Isherwood and Huxley work out a film story, Jacob’s Hands; April 17, Isherwood decides he cannot become a monk; during June, Isherwood spends a few days with Bill Harris at Denny Fouts’s flat in Santa Monica; Isherwood and Huxley complete draft of Jacob’s Hands; August, Isherwood and Prabhavananda’s translation of the Bhagavad Gita is published; September 25, Isherwood moves to Ananda Bhavan, the new Santa Barbara Vedanta Center in Montecito; November 17, Isherwood leaves Ananda Bhavan and moves to Laguna; late November, Isherwood returns to the Hollywood Vedanta Center on Ivar Avenue.
1945 February 5, Isherwood’s affair with Bill Harris ends; February 21, Isherwood starts three months’ work on Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White for Warner Brothers; June 2, Isherwood attends Bill Caskey’s twenty-fourth birthday party; June 4, he returns to Warner Brothers to work on Maugham’s Up at the Villa for Wolfgang Reinhardt; during the summer, Prater Violet appears in Harper’s Bazaar and New Directions publishes The Berlin Stories, containing The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin; August 23, Isherwood moves out of the Vedanta Center into the Beesleys’ chauffeur’s apartment; he begins translating Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination with Swami Prabhavananda; September 25, Isherwood and Bill Caskey move into Denny Fouts’s empty apartment, 137 Entrada Drive, Santa Monica; November, Prater Violet is published in the U.S. by Random House; towards the end of the year, Vedanta for the Western World, edited and introduced by Isherwood, is published by Marcel Rodd.
1946 January 12, Isherwood undergoes surgery to remove a median bar inside his bladder; April, Caskey quarrels with Denny Fouts, and Isherwood and Caskey move into Salka Viertel’s garage apartment, 165 Mabery Road, Santa Chronology
293
Monica; May, Prater Violet is published in the U.K. by Isherwood’s new English publisher, Methuen; during the summer, Isherwood revises his wartime diaries, 1939–1944; November 8, he becomes a U.S. citizen; towards the end of the year, Isherwood works with Lesser Samuels on a film treatment, Judgement Day in Pittsburgh.
1947 January 19, Isherwood sets out (via New York) on his first postwar trip to England; March 28, he signs deed of gift passing on Marple estate, including Wyberslegh, to his brother Richard; April 16, returns to New York; during the summer, he lives with Caskey at James and Tania Stern’s apartment at 207 East 52nd Street, Manhattan; in August, Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination is published; September 19, Isherwood sails with Caskey for South America to write a travel book, The Condor and the Cows; September 28, they arrive in Cartagena, Colombia; October 28, Isherwood and Caskey travel south via Bogotá; November, they continue through Ecuador and reach Lima, Peru, by year end; also in 1947, the first U.S. edition of Lions and Shadows is published by New Directions.
1948 January, Isherwood and Caskey travel in Peru and Bolivia; February, they leave La Paz, Bolivia, for Argentina and depart from Buenos Aires by ship in late March; April 1, they stop in Rio, then continue direct from Brazil to North Africa and France, arriving in Paris on April 22; April 30, they proceed to London; late May, Isherwood visits his family at Wyberslegh; June 9, Isherwood and Caskey sail for New York; June 15, Isherwood returns alone to California and on July 19 he starts work on The Great Sinner at MGM; mid-August, he meets Jim Charlton; that summer, Isherwood begins translating Patanjali’s yoga aphorisms with Swami Prabhavananda; September 20, Caskey returns; September 28, Isherwood moves with Caskey into 333 Rustic Road; October 9, Isherwood finishes work at MGM; November 12, Isherwood’s nanny, Annie Avis, dies; December 16, Denny Fouts dies in Rome.
1949 January 6–13, Isherwood works for Gottfried Reinhardt at MGM; April 12, he completes The Condor and the Cows; he begins to work intermittently on his proposed novel The School of Tragedy; by May, he begins working with Lesser Samuels on The Easiest Thing in the World; August 6–7, Isherwood meets Evelyn Caldwell (later Hooker); August, he finishes draft of The Easiest Thing in the World with Lesser Samuels; August 10, meets Igor and Vera Stravinsky and Robert Craft; also in August, he works on Below the Equator with Aldous Huxley and Lesser Samuels; September 7, Trabuco is dedicated as a Ramakrishna monastery; November 11, Caskey leaves for Florida; also in November, Methuen publishes The Condor and the Cows; December 1, Isherwood writes a memorial article on Klaus Mann; during 1949, Isherwood is elected to the U.S. Academy of Arts and Sciences.
1950 Isherwood works on a film script, The Vacant Room, with Lesser Samuels; late April, Caskey returns via Kentucky to Rustic Road; June 29, Bill Kennedy proposes that Isherwood begin reviewing regularly for Tomorrow; August 11, Isherwood and Peggy Kiskadden leave for Arizona and New Mexico by car; December 10, Isherwood moves with Caskey to 31152 Monterey Street, Coast Royal, South Laguna.
294
Chronology
1951 May 21, Isherwood leaves Caskey and moves to the Huntington Hartford Foundation, 2000 Rustic Canyon Road, Pacific Palisades; he works on The School of Tragedy; during the spring, John van Druten writes the play I Am a Camera, based on Goodbye to Berlin; by August 22, Isherwood is back in South Laguna with Caskey; mid-September, he decides to break finally with Caskey and returns to the Huntington Hartford Foundation; October, Isherwood goes to the East Coast for rehearsals of I Am a Camera, directed by van Druten; November 8, I Am a Camera opens in Hartford, Connecticut; November 28, I Am a Camera opens successfully on Broadway at the Empire Theater; December, Isherwood sails for England where he spends Christmas with his mother and brother in a London hotel; Caskey joins the merchant marine.