Goyen, William (1915–1983) . American novelist, playwright, teacher, and editor; born in Texas, where much of his work is set. His novels include The House of Breath (1950), for which Isherwood wrote a blurb, and In a Farther Country (1955); he also wrote many short stories.
Grant, Alexander (b. 1925) . New Zealand-born ballet dancer and director.
He spent his whole dancing career with the Sadler’s Wells, later the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden.
Green, Henry (1905–1973) . Pen name of Henry Yorke, the novelist. Yorke came from a privileged background, was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford, worked for a time in a factory belonging to his family and then made his way up through the firm to become managing director. His novels draw on his experience of both working-class and upper-class life, and also on his time in the National Fire Service during World War II; best known Glossary
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among them are Living, Party Going, and Loving. Isherwood also mentions Yorke’s wife, who was known as Dig.
Greene, Felix. A half-German cousin of Isherwood, on Kathleen Isherwood’s side. Greene worked for the BBC in New York, then with Peggy Kiskadden’s second husband, Henwar Rodakiewicz, in Rodakiewicz’s documentary film unit, and, during the war, for the Quaker Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia. He had a genius for administration and practical arrangements and made himself indispensable to Gerald Heard in founding Trabuco. Greene decided to move to California in the summer of 1941 to be Heard’s disciple, and by the following summer he had already completed the building of the monastery, large enough for fifty. Isherwood tells about this in D 1. Towards the end of the war Greene upset Heard by deciding to marry.
Halliburton, Richard (1900–1939) . American explorer and adventurer; educated at Lawrenceville Academy and Princeton. During the 1920s he climbed the Matterhorn and swam various famous bodies of water (the Nile at Luxor, the Hellespont, most of the Sea of Galilee, the Panama Canal). He also flew from Paris to Manila in his airplane, The Flying Carpet, in 1931. In 1934
he attempted but failed to cross the Alps on an elephant. He wrote a number of bestselling books about his adventures and lectured widely. After selling the movie rights to his first book, The Royal Road to Romance (1925), he settled in Hollywood where he narrated and co-directed a travel film about India, India Speaks (1933). Halliburton was homosexual and had relationships with the film stars Rod la Rocque and Ramon Novarro. He was lost at sea in the Pacific.
Hamilton, Gerald (1890–1970) . Isherwood’s Berlin friend who was the original for “Mr. Norris” in Mr. Norris Changes Trains. Hamilton’s mother died almost immediately after his birth in Shanghai, and he was raised by relatives in England and educated at Rugby (though he did not finish his schooling).
His father sent him back to China to work in business, and while there Hamilton took to wearing Chinese dress and converted to Roman Catholicism, for which his father, an Irish Protestant, never forgave him. He was cut off with a small allowance and eventually, because of his unsettled life, with nothing at all. So began the persistent need for money that apparently motivated some of his dubious behavior. Hamilton was obsessed with his family’s aristocratic connections and with social etiquette, and lovingly recorded in his memoirs all his meetings with royalty, as well as those with crooks and with theatrical and literary celebrities. He was imprisoned from 1915 to 1918 for sympathizing with Germany and associating with the enemy during World War I, and he was imprisoned in France and Italy for a jewelry swindle in the 1920s. Afterwards he took a job selling the London Times in Germany and became interested there in penal reform. Throughout his life he travelled on diverse private and public errands in China, Russia, Europe, and North Africa. He returned to London during World War II, where he was again imprisoned, as Isherwood records, for attempting to promote peace on terms favorable to the enemy. After the war, Hamilton posed for the body of Churchill’s Guildhall statue and later became a regular contributor to The Spectator.
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Glossary
Harford, Betty. Irish-born actress; she acted for John Houseman in numerous stage productions and made a few movies, including Inside Daisy Clover. Harford was a close friend of Iris Tree. Her son with Oliver Andrews
––Christopher, born in the 1950s––was named after Isherwood.
Harkness, Alan. Australian-born actor; director of The High Valley Theatre in the Ojai Valley, where he specialized in teaching and directing the plays of Chekhov. A few members of the group first met in the late 1930s at the theater school at Dartington founded by Michael Chekhov (nephew of the playwright) and followed Chekhov to Connecticut. When Chekhov’s school broke up during the war, they went on to southern California, continuing to study and act together while also doing obligatory war work (they were mostly pacifists). Eventually the group was able to purchase a schoolhouse in the Upper Ojai Valley and converted it themselves into a theater. The High Valley Theatre aimed to be a school as well as an acting company. Harkness continued to follow Michael Chekhov’s approach to acting, which was derived from the teachings of Rudolf Steiner and the methods of the Moscow Art Theater. He emphasized creating a character from the imagination and from observation and giving autonomous life to this character on stage rather than impersonating. The group frequently worked by improvisation. Harkness was killed in Carpinteria when his car was hit by a train at a railroad crossing.
Harrington, Curtis (b. 1928) . American director; he made underground films and then moved on to features and television. At a party in 1954, Isherwood punched Harrington in the face after a friend of Harrington also at the party made advances to Don Bachardy; Harrington sued Isherwood and they eventually settled out of court.
Harris, Bill (d. 1992) . American artist. Isherwood met him in the summer of 1943, and they began a love affair the following spring. The relationship lasted only as a casual friendship. Harris later moved to New York where he became successful as a commercial art retoucher. Isherwood refers to Harris as “X.” in his 1939–1945 diaries (see D 1), and he calls him “Alfred” in My Guru and His Disciple.
Hartford, Huntington. Grandson and heir of the A&P grocery stores multi-millionaire, Huntington Hartford, for whom he was named. He produced films and took an active interest in the arts. He was ultra-conservative, anti-communist, and homophobic. He set up the Huntington Hartford Foundation in 1949 to nurture artists, writers, and musicians. Frank Taylor assembled the board of directors, which included Isherwood, W. H. Auden, Speed Lamkin, Michael Gaszynski, and Robert Penn Warren, among others. Isherwood records more about the foundation in D 1. The job of board members was to give away fellowships bringing young artists to live and work at the foundation for three months. By 1951 there were 150 people living there ––a western Yaddo. The board members resigned one by one as Hartford’s views gradually emerged in intolerable forms (for instance, he wanted each of them to submit to a graphology test which he believed would reveal their respective sexual inclinations). Hartford disliked avant-garde art; he also founded a museum of contemporary art in New York to foster his theories, and the building later Glossary
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became his New York headquarters. Isherwood never respected Hartford and found the management of the foundation inefficient and too easily swayed by gossip and favoritism; he resigned in 1952 when a resident writer was ousted from his fellowship for having an unauthorized overnight guest. Eventually the foundation became an arts and crafts colony.
Hatfield, Hurd (1918‒c .1998) . American actor; from New York City, educated at Columbia. He made his debut on the London stage and later appeared on Broadway. Hatfield began working in films in 1944 and played the lead in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), but stardom eluded him, and he is mostly admired for his stage roles. Later films include Joan of Arc (1948), El Cid (1961), and Crimes of the Heart (1986), among others.