Liberation (116 page)

Bailey, Jeffrey ( Jeff ).
American writer, of short stories for little magazines. He interviewed Paul Bowles, James Leo Herlihy, Isherwood, Gavin Lambert, Anaïs Nin, John Rechy, Muriel Spark, Gore Vidal, and Edmund White, some for
The Paris Review
. As Isherwood records, Bailey visited in 1972 with another aspiring writer, Michael McDonagh, after he and McDonagh spent their junior year abroad at the Loyola University Center in Rome in 1971–1972. Later, he lived in Morocco, working for the Peace Corps there, and in Europe. McDonagh settled in San Francisco where he became an arts journalist, mostly for the
Bay Area Reporter
, and published some of his poems.

Bailey, Paul (b. 1937).
British novelist; educated at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He worked as an actor and wrote a radio play before publishing his first novel,
At the Jerusalem
, in 1967. Isherwood was on the panel which awarded Bailey the first E.M. Forster Prize given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1974. Bailey's other novels include
Peter Smart's Confessions
(1977),
Old Soldiers
(1980),
Gabriel's Lament
(1986),
Kitty and Virgil
(1998),
Uncle Rudolf
(2002), and
A Dog's Life
(2003). There are varied works of biography and autobiography. He has won numerous prizes and twice been on the Booker Prize shortlist. He was authorized to write a life of Henry Green for Chatto & Windus, as he mentioned to Isherwood in 1978, but after some preliminary research, abandoned it for other projects. Later, he supplied an introduction to a paperback reprint of Henry Green's novel
Living
.

Balanchine, George (1904–1983).
Russian-born choreographer, son of a composer. He studied ballet at the Maryinsky and piano at the St. Petersburg music conservatory. In 1924, he emigrated via Berlin and spent a decade working in Europe, mostly for Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe. In 1933, Lincoln Kirstein persuaded him to emigrate again, to New York, and together they founded the American School of Ballet, struggling off and on for another decade to finance and house the company which would eventually become the New York City Ballet. Balanchine made over four hundred ballets and is known for his Modernist approach—abstract, technically demanding, and based on a committed understanding of music. He was to twentieth-century ballet what Picasso was to painting and Stravinsky to music, and he collaborated with Stravinsky a number of times. He married five times.

Bangladesh.
In the Pakistani elections in 1970, the Awami League, led by Mujibur Rahman, won almost all the seats in East Pakistan (formerly East Bengal, and sharing a long border with West Bengal, in India). Despite winning no seats in West Pakistan, the league had a clear constitutional majority; nonetheless, it was prevented by the government in power from forming a national government with Rahman as Prime Minister. On March 1, 1971, the president of Pakistan, Yahya Khan, indefinitely postponed the next session of the national assembly, provoking a General Strike in East Pakistan and sympathetic protests in India. The Awami League was banned, Mujibar Rahman was arrested, and his close supporters fled to India where they formed a provisional government. In East Pakistan, the Pakistani army initiated bloody reprisals against supporters of Bengali independence. As Isherwood mentions, Indira Gandhi was elected Prime Minister of India on March 10, in a landslide victory for her Congress Party. On March 26, the Awami League declared independence for Bangladesh, and India joined with Bangladesh in the ensuing war of liberation from Pakistan.

Barada.
A senior nun at the Santa Barbara convent, born Doris Ludwig; after sannyas she was called Pravrajika Baradaprana. Barada was interested in music and composed Vedantic hymns. Isherwood first met her at the Hollywood monastery in 1943; she appears in
D.1.

Barnett, Jimmy.
American monk of the Ramakrishna Order, also known as Sat and as Swami Buddhananda. He lived at Trabuco during the 1960s and later at the Hollywood Vedanta Society. Eventually, he left the order and settled in Sedona, Arizona, where he became a Native American chieftain and worked as an artist, counsellor, and medicine man. He is mentioned in
Lost Years
and
D.2.

Barrie, Jay Michael (1912–2001).
A one-time singer with financial and administrative talents; friend and secretary to Gerald Heard from the late 1940s onward. He met Heard through Swami Prabhavananda and lived at Trabuco as a monk until about 1955. He was friendly with Isherwood and Bachardy throughout the 1950s, and they rented Barrie's house, at 322 East Rustic Road, for roughly two months in 1956. Barrie nursed Heard through his five-year-long final illness until Heard's death in 1971. He appears in
D.1
and
D.2.

Baxter, Anne (1923–1985).
American actress, a granddaughter of Frank Lloyd Wright; educated in New York private schools. She studied acting with Maria Ouspenskaya, debuted on Broadway at thirteen, and had made her first movie by seventeen. Her films include
The Magnificent Ambersons
(1942),
The Razor's Edge
(1946), for which she received an Academy Award as best supporting actress,
Yellow Sky
(1949),
All about Eve
(1950), for which she received an Academy Award nomination,
The Outcasts of Poker Flat
(1952),
The Blue Gardenia
(1953),
The Ten Commandments
(1956),
Cimarron
(1960), and
Walk on the Wild Side
(1962). From 1971, as Isherwood records, she returned to Broadway, replacing Lauren Bacall in
Applause
. She also acted on T.V., including, from 1983 to 1985, “Hotel.” Her first husband was the actor John Hodiak, with whom she had a daughter; the second, from 1960 to 1968, was Randolph Galt, an outdoorsman and adventurer with whom she had two daughters; the third was David Klee, an investment banker. With Galt, Baxter went to live in the Australian outback on a cattle station; after the marriage failed, she published a book about her experience there,
Intermission: A True Story
(1976). She was a client and friend of Jo Masselink, and she appears in
D.1
and
D.2.

Baxter, Keith (b. 1933).
Welsh actor, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). His first film role was in
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
(1957), and he later worked in T.V. His theater roles include Orson Welles's
Chimes at Midnight
(1960), and, on Broadway,
A Man for All Seasons
(1961) and
Sleuth
(1970).

Beaton, Cecil (1904–1980).
English photographer, theater designer, author, and dandy. He photographed the most celebrated and fashionable people of his era, beginning in the 1920s with the Sitwells and going on to the British royal family, actors, actresses, writers, and others. From 1939 to 1945 he worked successfully as a war photographer. Isherwood and Beaton were contemporaries at Cambridge but became friendly only in the late 1940s when Beaton visited Hollywood with a production of
Lady Windermere's Fan
and was helpful to Bill Caskey, then trying to establish himself as a photographer. Returning later to Hollywood, Beaton designed costumes and productions for
Gigi
(1958) and
My Fair Lady
(1964) and both times won the Academy Award for costumes. He collected many of his photo graphs into books and travel albums, often with commentary, and he published five volumes of diaries. He appears in
D.1
,
D.
2, and
Lost Years
.

Bedford, Brian (b. 1935).
British stage actor and, later, director; an American citizen from 1959. He trained at RADA and starred in the West End and on Broadway in Shakespeare and other classic dramas as well as new plays by Stoppard, Shaffer, and others. During 1969, he was in revivals of
The Cocktail Party
and
The Misanthrope
for Ellis Rabb's APA-Phoenix Theater repertory program on Broadway. In 1971, he won a Tony Award for his role in
The School for Wives
. He acts regularly at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada, and on T.V. and in films. He appears in
D.2.

Beesley, Alec (1903–1987) and Dodie Smith Beesley (1896–1990).
She was the English playwright, novelist and former actress, Dodie Smith. He managed her career. They spent a decade in Hollywood because he was a pacifist and a conscientious objector during World War II. She wrote scripts there for Paramount and her first novel,
I Capture the Castle
(1949). Isherwood met them in 1942 through Dodie's close friend John van Druten, once a Christian Scientist like both the Beesleys. When Isherwood left the Vedanta Society in August 1945, his first home was the Beesleys' chauffeur's apartment. Dodie encouraged his writing, and he discussed
The World in the Evening
with her extensively. It was Dodie Beesley who challenged John van Druten to make a play from
Sally Bowles
, leading to
I Am a Camera
. In the summer of 1943, the Beesleys mated their dalmatians, Folly and Buzzle, and Folly produced fifteen puppies—inspiring Dodie's most famous book,
The Hundred and One Dalmatians
(1956), later filmed by Walt Disney. Her plays include
Autumn Crocus
(1931) and
Dear Octopus
(1938). The Beesleys returned to England in the early 1950s and settled in their cottage, The Barretts, at Finchingfield, Essex. They appear in
D.1
,
D.2
, and
Lost Years.

Behrman, S.N. (1893–1973).
American playwright, producer, screenwriter, short story writer, journalist. His successes on Broadway include
The Second Man
(1927),
End of Summer
(1936),
No Time for Comedy
(1939), the book (with Joshua Logan) for
Fanny
(1954), and
Lord Pengo
(1962). He also adapted work by others, including
Serena Blandish
and Maugham's short story “Jane.” He worked for the Hollywood studios off and on from 1930, specializing in dialogue, and was known for his contributions to Garbo's films
Queen Cristina
,
Conquest
, and
Two-Faced Woman
. He also wrote for
The New York Times
and published a number of long profiles in
The New Yorker
, including the excerpts that Isherwood writes about from his memoir,
People in a Diary
(1972). He is mentioned in
D.1
and
D.2.

Bell, Larry (b. 1939).
American painter and sculptor, born in Chicago, raised in California and trained at the Chouinard Art Institute. In 1958 and 1959, he worked in a picture framing shop in Burbank, where he grew intrigued by the reflective and refractive qualities of glass; during the 1960s, he became known for his glass cubes, in various sizes, made from clear and treated glass. His first solo show was at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1962, and he began showing at the Pace Gallery in New York a few years later, followed by countless solo and group exhibitions and installations in many cities. His work is held by major museums including the Albright-Knox, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hirshhorn in Washington, the Los Angeles County Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Walker Art Institute in Minneapolis. In the 1970s, he settled with his wife in Taos, New Mexico, where he sometimes taught at the Taos Institute of Arts. Later, he also continued to work in Los Angeles.

Ben.
See Masselink, Ben.

Bengston, Billy Al (b. 1934).
American artist, born in Kansas, educated at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, at Los Angeles City College, and at the Los Angeles County Art Institute (now Otis Art Institute). He had his first one-man show at the Ferus Gallery in 1958, followed, from the 1960s onward, by shows and public and private commissions throughout the United States, Canada, Germany, and Japan. His work includes painting, sculpture, textiles, lithography, and architectural design. He has been a guest artist and a professor at the Chouinard Art Institute, UCLA, and elsewhere, and has held numerous fellowships and grants, including a Guggenheim. Based for years in Venice, California, he moved in 2004 to Victoria, British Columbia, with Wendy Al, his Japanese-American wife of many years, but they returned in 2007. Isherwood met him through Bachardy who was commissioned to do Bengston's portrait, along with other prominent Los Angelinos, for
Harper's Bazaar
in 1967. He appears in
D.2.

Bergman, Ingrid (1915–1982).
Swedish star of stage and screen. David Selznick brought her to Hollywood in 1939 to remake Gustav Molander's
Intermezzo
(1936) for American audiences. She debuted on Broadway a year later in
Liliom
and went on to star in
Casablanca
(1942),
For Whom the Bell Tolls
(1943),
Gaslight
(1944; Academy Award),
Spellbound
(1945),
The Bells of St. Mary's
(1945),
Notorious
(1946), and
Joan of Arc
(1948), adapted from another Broadway role. In 1949, she fell in love with Italian director Roberto Rossellini while they were filming
Stromboli
and had his son although she was still married to Swedish dentist Petter Lindstrom. As a result, she was attacked by American women's groups, religious groups, and even in the Senate, lost custody of her daughter, Pia Lindstrom, and disappeared from Hollywood films. She married Rossellini in 1950 and had twin daughters, one of whom is the actress, Isabella Rossellini (b. 1952). In 1956, Bergman was welcomed back to Hollywood with an Academy Award for
Anastasia
. She split with Rosselini in 1958 and married a Swedish stage producer, Lars Schmidt, whom she divorced in 1975. She died of breast cancer after seven years of illness during which she continued to act. Later films include
Elena et les Hommes / Paris Does Strange Things
(1956),
The Inn of the Sixth Happiness
(1958),
Murder on the Orient Express
(1974, Academy Award), and
Autumn Sonata
(1978); she had numerous other stage roles and also appeared on T.V. As he tells in
D.1
, Isherwood first met her in 1940 on the set of
Rage in Heaven.