1949
On January 4, Christopher’s books arrived from New York.1 All this while, they had been stored in the cellar of 207 East 52nd 1 The day-to-day diary’s list of books Christopher read in 1948 includes: The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens, The Bostonians ( James), The Mint (T. E.
Lawrence), Nostromo (Conrad), Le Sabbat (Maurice Sachs), The Loved One (Evelyn Waugh), Hindoo Holiday ( J. R. Ackerley), End as a Man (Calder Willingham), Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (Dylan Thomas), Ape and Essence (Aldous Huxley), I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith), Cry, the Beloved Country (Alan Paton), The Seven-Storey Mountain (Thomas Merton), The Plague and Caligula (Camus), The American People (Geoffrey Gorer), No Exit (Sartre), A Treasury of Science Fiction (edited by Groff Conklin). There are more thrillers listed this year than usual, probably because Christopher did so much travelling and therefore required travel reading.
Christopher got interested in Steffens through knowing Ella Winter and her terrifically sexy son Pete Steffens. He found the Autobiography very curious; there is something a bit fiendish and inhuman in Steffens’s personal liking for the men he exposed and ruined. The Bostonians is still my favorite long novel by James––indeed, the only one I really like. Christopher read The Mint while staying with Victoria Ocampo at Mar del Plata (see The Condor and the Cows
[chapter ten]); it hadn’t yet been published. It was a bit of a disappointment to him, since he had been expecting something prodigious, but it left many vivid new impressions of demure, humble-arrogant, masquerading Lawrence––
about whom Forster, after hours of reminiscence, had sadly delivered the verdict, “One didn’t altogether like him.” Christopher found Nostromo noble and masterly but unmemorable. Le Sabbat, which he noticed by chance in a Buenos Aires bookstore, appealed to him as sex gossip about people who interested him. He had never heard of Sachs before and liked his shamelessness.
He read the book in French; there was then no English translation. He passionately hated The Loved One for its condescending attitude toward California. Later readings, while working with Tony Richardson on the film, have convinced me that this is a mean-minded, sloppily written production, 176
Lost Years
Street. The Sterns had long since reoccupied their apartment there, and Jimmy Stern had written Christopher a letter telling him that the cellar had somehow been flooded and that he was afraid some of Christopher’s books were damaged. So Christopher was prepared for a shock, but not sufficiently. When he saw several of his especially beloved volumes stained and crinkled and cracked, he shed tears. Later he got a few of them rebound, but this seemed to destroy their identity.
On January 6, Christopher went back to MGM for additional
work on The Great Sinner and stayed there till January 13. During this week, he saw a rough cut of the whole film. I don’t remember what probably Waugh’s worst and utterly unworthy of his talent. Hindoo Holiday must have been a rereading. I wish I could remember what Christopher thought of it in the light of his now increased knowledge of things Indian, but I don’t. End as a Man was an exciting discovery and the beginning of Christopher’s (more or less) constant enthusiasm for Willingham’s work.
He loved Portrait of the Artist, particularly the chapter called “One Warm Saturday.” He was shocked by Ape and Essence, feeling that Aldous’s besetting distaste for the world and the flesh had gotten quite out of control here and produced something cheap and nasty. Against his will, he had to agree with Peggy Kiskadden on this. Peggy, as usual, had no qualms about expressing her opinion unasked for; she told Aldous exactly what she objected to. Christopher kept his mouth shut. But he was forced to say something complimentary to Dodie Smith about I Capture the Castle, though it seemed to him mere magazine writing. Cry, the Beloved Country was recommended to Christopher by James Stern. The opening seemed so technicolored that Christopher nearly put the book down, but he read on and was tremendously moved. In the November 6 journal entry, Christopher says that he is reading The Seven-Storey Mountain and that he is repelled by Merton’s Catholic arrogance. But he was also attracted by the very grimness of the Trappist death to the world––which is admittedly far more terrifying but also perhaps easier than trying to be a monk at the permissive Vedanta Center. Christopher admired The Plague; it seemed to him altogether different from Camus’ fakey Stranger. He read into it an antiheroic, anti-Hemingway message––that suffering and death are not romantic and that even a brave and noble doctor would much rather not have to fight a plague. Caligula is dimly remembered for one funny scene in which the emperor holds a poetry competition. Christopher thought No Exit as phoney as L’Étranger. He was delighted with Gorer for saying that, while the European male fears that the homosexuals will seduce his children, the American male fears that they will seduce him. Groff Conklin’s science fiction anthology was recommended, I think, by Gerald Heard. (Gerald’s story, “The Great Fog,” is in it.) The Conklin anthology Christopher read first was the one published in 1948; later he got an earlier one, published in 1946. The story which made the greatest impression on Christopher was Lawrence O’Donnell’s “Vintage Season.” These books were his introduction to the new school of science fiction writers.
¾ 1949 ¾
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work he did––some of it may have been on passages of narration, in which “Fedor” is presumably quoting from the novel he has just written about the experiences shown on the screen.
On January 14, Jay Laval and Brad Saunders left for the Virgin Islands. Jay had been hired to organize and open a chic restaurant there and he took Brad along as his assistant. Meanwhile, Jay’s restaurant in the Canyon stayed open, with Lennie Newman doing most of the cooking. I believe the Virgin Islands restaurant was a success; but Jay’s association with Brad wasn’t. They quarrelled, and their affair was over by the time they returned to California.
On January 25, Christopher was called back again to MGM. He
worked there for three days.
On January 29, he finished chapter seven of The Condor and the Cows.
On February 4, he worked at MGM for one day only. I think
this may have been a day on which they were recording the
narration passages. These, of course, had to be spoken by Gregory Peck. But there was one scene which required a different male actor’s voice over the shot. Fedor, down and out, goes into a church to pray. Then be becomes aware of the sound of coins being dropped into the poor box. He is tempted to steal from it and is just about to do so when he thinks he hears a voice, coming from the carved figure on a nearby crucifix. It shames him, and he withdraws his hand from the box.
This voice was to have been Frank Morgan’s; he had played a part in the film––Pitard, a ruined gambler who shoots himself and later appears to Fedor as a ghost––but Morgan didn’t show up that day because he was sick. (He was to die a few months later.) Since Christopher happened to be in the recording studio and this was an emergency, someone (maybe Gottfried) suggested that he should speak the lines. And so, more or less in a spirit of fun, Christopher took on the role of Christ at five minutes’ notice.
In order that his voice should reverberate spookily, they made him stand in a small concrete passageway which led to one of the exits.
He was given a hand mike at the end of a long cable, like an
announcer. Since he couldn’t see into the studio and watch the screen on which his scene was being projected, they rigged up a signal light to let him know when to begin. Whenever the light went on, he was to speak his lines––until they got the reading they wanted.