Liberation (122 page)

Dill, Guy (b. 1946).
American sculptor, educated at the Chouinard Art Institute. By the 1970s, he was having several one-man shows each year, and he has won major fellowships and prizes. He taught sculpture at UCLA, where he was head of the department from 1978 to 1982. His work is in the Los Angeles County Museum, the Norton Simon Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Smithsonian, the Guggenheim, the Whitney, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and many smaller public and private collections. He is the younger brother of Laddie John Dill.

Dill, Laddie John (b. 1943).
American painter and sculptor; older brother of Guy Dill. Born in Long Beach, California; trained at the Chouinard Art Institute. He ran a framing company with Chuck Arnoldi while he was still at Chouinard, and afterwards became an apprentice printer at Gemini in West Hollywood, where he assisted Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns. He lived with Johns in New York for a few months during the 1970s. His father was a scientist who designed lenses, and Dill refers to that as an inspiration for his interest in technical experimentation and in unconventional materials such as neon and argon tubing, sand, cement, and plate glass. He has had countless one-man shows, and his work is held by many major museums.

Divine (1945–1988).
Transvestite singer and actor; his real name was Harris Glenn Milstead. He appeared in John Waters's underground films, including
Pink Flamingos
(1972),
Female Trouble
(1974),
Polyester
(1981), and the mainstream hit
Hairspray
(1988).

DMSO.
Dimethyl sulfoxide, a by-product of wood pulp manufacture, used as a solvent and, experimentally from about 1963, as a topical pain-killer.

Dobbin.
A pet name for Isherwood, known in his lifetime only to himself and Bachardy. Other names included Dubbin, Dub, Drubbin, and Drub, all associated with his private identity as a reliable, stubborn old workhorse.

Dobyns, Dick.
A friend of Paul Millard who lived in and helped to manage the apartment building Millard owned. He appeared in
D.1.

Dodie.
See Beesley, Alec and Dodie Smith Beesley.

Don.
See Bachardy, Don.

Donadio, Candida (1929–1971).
Isherwood's New York literary agent, from the mid-1970s when she opened her own agency. Later, she formed a partnership with Eric Ashworth and finally with Neil Olson. Her other clients included Thomas Pynchon, Joseph Heller, for whom she sold
Catch-22
, and Philip Roth, for whom she sold
Goodbye, Columbus
. The first book she handled for Isherwood was
Christopher and His Kind
, which she sold away from Simon & Schuster to Farrar, Straus and Giroux. After her death from cancer, Neil Olson ran the Donadio and Olson Literary Agency on his own and continued to represent Isherwood. He also became a novelist with
Icon
(2005).

Donoghue, Mary Agnes (b. 194[6]).
American screenwriter and director; born in Queens. She first moved to Los Angeles to become Assistant Director of Publicity at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and later scripted
The Buddy System
(1984),
Beaches
(1988),
Paradise
(1991), which she also directed,
White Oleander
(2002), and
Veronica Guerin
(2003), among others. She lived with artist Joe Goode for several years and then married British writer Chris Robbins in 1976.

Doone, Rupert (1903–1966).
English dancer, choreographer and theatrical producer; founder of The Group Theatre, for which Isherwood and Auden wrote plays in the 1930s. His real name was Reginald Woodfield. The son of a factory worker, he ran away to London to become a dancer, and then went on to Paris where he was friendly with Cocteau, met Diaghilev, and turned down an opportunity to dance in the corps de ballet of the Ballets Russes. He was working in variety and revues in London during 1925 when he met Robert Medley, his longterm companion. He died of multiple sclerosis after years of increasing illness. He appears in
D.1
,
D.
2, and
Lost Years.

Downer, The.
See Franklin, Bill.

Druks, Renate (1921–2007).
Austrian-American painter, actress, film director, scenic designer; born in Vienna, where she studied at the Vienna Art Academy for Women. Later, she studied at the Art Students League in New York. She settled in Malibu in 1950. Her paintings were mostly allegorical portraits of women friends—Anaïs Nin, Joan Houseman, Doris Dowling—in naive, magic-surrealist style. Druks had a role in Kenneth Anger's experimental film
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome
(1954) and in other underground films. She often sat for Don Bachardy. She appears in
D.2.

Dub, Dub-Dub, Dubbin.
Isherwood; see under Dobbin.

Dunne, John Gregory (1932–2003).
American writer, raised in Connecticut and educated at Princeton. Younger brother of novelist and journalist Dominick Dunne. He worked at
Time Magazine
until 1964, when he married Joan Didion and moved with her to Los Angeles to write screenplays, including
Panic in Needle Park
(1971),
Play It as It Lays
(1972), adapted from one of Didion's novels,
A Star is Born
(1976), and
True Confessions
(1981), adapted from one of his own novels. Dunne wrote two non-fiction books about Hollywood,
The Studio
(1969) and
Monster: Living Off the Big Screen
(1997), as well as an autobiography,
Vegas
(1974), and political and cultural essays.

Dunphy, Jack (1914–1992).
American dancer and novelist; born and raised in Philadelphia. He danced for George Balanchine and was a cowboy in the original production of
Oklahoma!
He was married to the Broadway musical-comedy star Joan McCracken, and from 1948 he became Truman Capote's companion, although in Capote's later years they were increasingly apart. He published
John Fury
(1946) and
Nightmovers
(1967). He appears in
Lost Years
and is mentioned in
D.2
.

Dupuytren's Contracture.
A disease of the hand in which the connective tissue underneath the skin of the palm and fingers develop fibrous bumps or cords. The cords gradually shorten, contracting the fingers into a bent position so they cannot be straightened. It usually affects only the third and fourth fingers. Cortisone injections can alleviate the condition and wearing a splint at night can slow its progress, but eventually, the bumps and cords have to be removed surgically, in particular to prevent the middle joint of the fingers from becoming fixed in a bent position and in severe cases, where nerve and blood supplies are cut off, to prevent the fingers from requiring amputation. The cords can grow back after surgery and are more difficult to remove the second time. The disease is more frequent in men than in women, and more common in middle age.

Duquette, Tony (191[4]–1999) and Elizabeth (“Beegle”) (d. 1994).
Los Angeles interior designers. Bachardy worked for them in 1955. They appear in
D.1.

Durga.
A name for the divine mother, consort of Shiva. She is shown with ten arms, riding a lion, and sometimes with her four children. Durga puja, the biggest of the Hindu festivals in Bengal, is celebrated in September or October over a ten-day period. On the first day of the puja, the goddess leaves the Himalayas to visit her parents below. Clay idols of the goddess are newly made each year and stood on pandals; on the last day of the festival, the idols are immersed in the ocean or a river to symbolize Durga's return to her celestial abode. Vedanta Society devotees in southern California worship a photograph of Durga; the photo is not immersed, but stored for the following year.

Eckstein, Tony.
See Abedha.

Edward.
See Upward, Edward.

Elan, Joan (1929–1981).
British actress. She settled in Hollywood after making her first film,
The Girls of Pleasure Island
(1953), but subsequent appearances in film and T.V. were undistinguished, apart from a small role in the Broadway production of Jean Anouilh's
The Lark
. She was a friend of Marguerite Lamkin, and in the mid-1950s she had a love affair with Ivan Moffat. She frequently sat as a model for Don Bachardy in the 1950s and early 1960s. Later she married an advertising executive, Harry Nye, and lived with him in New York until she died young, of a heart attack. She appears in
D.1.

Elsa.
See Lanchester, Elsa.

Emily, or Emmy.
See Smith, Emily Machell.

Energy Crisis.
Energy prices rose two hundred percent during the autumn of 1973 after Arab oil-exporting countries imposed an embargo in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Long lines at gas stations became ubiquitous, and stringent energy-saving measures were implemented throughout the cold winter of 1973–1974. But on the very day that Isherwood mentions the fuel shortage, January 6, 1974,
The New York Times
reported that large quantities of crude oil could be seen flowing from tankers into U.S. refineries in New Jersey and that the major U.S. oil companies were refusing to tell government officials or anyone else how much refined oil they were producing and how much they already had stored. This contributed to widespread suspicion that the oil companies were contriving the shortage to keep prices high for their own benefit.

Ennis, Bob.
Black actor and dancer, his professional name was Exotica. He was tall, glamorous, and feminine looking. He had a part in Jim Bridges's
The Babymaker
, and he also worked as an extra cameraman and miscellaneous crew on other films.

Epstein, Barbara (1928–2006).
American editor and journalist, born in Boston and educated at Radcliffe. She was one of the five founders, during the
New York Times
strike in 1963, of
The New York Review of Books
, and she co-edited it with Robert Silvers for forty-three years. Before that she was a book editor, oversaw Anne Frank's
Diary of a Young Girl
(1952) for Doubleday, and worked at
The Partisan Review
. She was married from 1954 to 1980 and had a son and a daughter.

Evans, Gregory.
Longtime companion and assistant to David Hockney; raised in Minnesota. Isherwood met him in Los Angeles, where he surfaced as a lover of Nick Wilder. He became Hockney's lover by 1974, his most frequent model and, later, managed Hockney's studios, travels, and complex array of interests and commitments. He had problems with alcohol and drugs until the mid-1980s, when he joined Alcoholics Anonymous and changed his way of life.

Exotica.
See Ennis, Bob.

Fairfax, James (b. 1933).
Australian art collector and philanthropist, educated at Oxford. He was the last family chairman, from 1957 to 1987, of the Fairfax newspaper empire. He appears in
D.2.

Falk, Eric (1905–1984).
English barrister, raised in London. Falk, who was Jewish, was a school friend from Repton, where he was in the same house as Isherwood, The Hall, and in the History Sixth. He helped Isherwood edit
The Reptonian
during Isherwood's last term, and they saw one another during the school holidays and often went to films together. Falk introduced Isherwood to the Mangeots, whom he had met on holiday in Brittany. He appears in
Lions and Shadows
,
D.1
,
D.2
, and
Lost Years.

Faye, Alice (1915–1998).
American actress, singer, comedienne; born and raised in New York, where she went on the stage at fourteen. She starred in Hollywood musicals from 1933 to 1945—including
Every Night at Eight
(1935),
Poor Little Rich Girl
(1936),
Alexander's Ragtime Band
(1938),
The Gang's All Here
(1943)—but quit movies over conflicts with Darryl Zanuck at Twentieth Century-Fox and focused back on radio and stage. She made only a few further films. In 1972 and 1973, she revived the musical
Good News
on Broadway, then toured in it for a year, including to Los Angeles. She was a childhood favorite of Bachardy. She appears in
D.2.

Finney, Albert (b. 1936).
English actor, trained at RADA; son of a bookie. He acted in Shakespeare from the mid-1950s for the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and came to prominence on the London stage in
Billy Liar
(1960). Afterwards, he appeared in several John Osborne plays directed by Tony Richardson, receiving great praise for
Luther
in 1961, and taking the role to Broadway in 1963. In 1965, he joined the National Theatre Company and appeared in Peter Shaffer's
Black Comedy
(1965) and Peter Nichols's
A Day in the Death of Joe Egg
(1967); then, after a hiatus, he returned to the company to star in
Hamlet
,
Tamburlaine
,
Macbeth
, and others. His film career was launched with
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
(1960), and he became an international star in Richardson's
Tom Jones
(1963). His other films include:
The Entertainer
(1960),
Night Must Fall
(1964),
Scrooge
(1970),
Murder on the Orient Express
(1974),
The Dresser
(1983),
Under the Volcano
(1984),
The Browning Version
(1994),
Erin Brokovich
(2000), and
Traffic
(2000). He appears in
D.2.