The Bradbury Chronicles (17 page)

It was a highly autobiographical premise that was once again rooted in Ray's all-important childhood recollections. It had started as an outline under the title “The Small Assassins,” but was now renamed “The Blue Remembered Hills.” The title would soon change yet again, rechristened “The Wind of Time” and then “Summer Day, Summer Night.” At the time, it was only a concept, one that would take many years to come to fruition.

Although Congdon had high hopes of making him an offer, Ray felt he didn't yet have a book idea that was adequately developed enough to warrant a contract. So the two men promised to stay in touch until that time came.

Ray returned to Los Angeles and began work on the final stages of
Dark Carnival
. The book, scheduled for an April 1947 publication, was now in galley form, allowing for one last stage of revisions. Ray continued to make wholesale changes to the book, excising whole paragraphs from stories and replacing other tales altogether. August Derleth had been exceedingly patient with Ray throughout the long editorial process, allowing the author to fine-tune the collection to an unprecedented degree. Ray made so many changes to the book so late in the game that he even offered to personally pay for any expenses incurred by the many alterations. Derleth indicated to Ray that he had allowed more changes to be done to the
Dark Carnival
manuscript than had been made to all previously published Arkham House titles combined. It was time to let it go, but Ray hardly did that.

With his first story having been produced for the radio, Ray was inspired to try his hand once again at the medium. He wrote a one-act script, “The Meadow,” and submitted it to a contest sponsored by the World Security Workshop, a program on ABC. The script was selected, produced, and aired on January 2, 1947. Ray had sold his second piece to radio in less than a year. “I listened to radio all the time when I was a kid. And by the time I was in high school, I was seeing half a dozen films a week,” said Ray. “All this junk I put into my system, along with the great stuff—I was learning all the time. The best kind of learning is the secret learning you're picking up all along and then you go back later and you dredge through all this material and it helps you write radio scripts. By the time I wrote ‘The Meadow,' I was full up with radio.”

In March 1947, one month before publication, Ray sent in his final round of revisions for
Dark Carnival
. Around the same time, he sold two more tales from the collection to major magazines. He had placed “Cistern” with
Mademoiselle
(a sale he had set into motion during his autumn visit to New York), and “The Man Upstairs” to
Harper's,
his first sale to that publication. The latter story was yet another one culled from his Illinois childhood, this time using the memory of the stained glass window in his grandparents' home as a portal through which is viewed the sinister truth about a boarder in the home.

Harper's
had been a particularly difficult publication for Ray to break into. Editor Katherine Gauss had taken a pass on several Bradbury stories that would, ironically, later be recognized as Bradbury gems. Stories rejected by
Harper's
included “The Emissary,” “Jack-in-the-Box,” “El Dia De Muerte,” and “Powerhouse.” But with “The Man Upstairs,” which fetched $250, Ray had at long last made it into the pages of
Harper's
.

His star continued to ascend.
Dark Carnival,
originally intended as a retrospective of his best pulp fiction, had evolved into a book that showcased a rising literary force. On April 29, 1947, Ray received his first author's copy of
Dark Carnival
in the mail, one of the 3,112-copy initial print run.

He was wildly in love and engaged to be married. His first book had been published. He also received word that his short story “Homecoming,” which, of all ironies, had been rejected by
Weird Tales
and subsequently published by the more respected
Mademoiselle,
had been selected for
The O. Henry Prize Stories of 1947
. It was a magical time. Late one afternoon, with his copy of
Dark Carnival
held tightly in hand, Ray hopped on a red streetcar and headed to the intersection of Norton and Olympic, where he had sold newspapers from 1939 to 1942. He got off the railcar and rushed to the corner and waited until the late-day crowd of commuters began to emerge from their office buildings. One by one, he found many of his old customers, people who remembered the vociferous newspaper salesman. With great pride, Ray showed them his new book. He visited the drugstore on the block, the meat market, and the plumber. He couldn't contain his excitement. It was his first book. And it was just the beginning of a long rocket trip toward pop culture stardom.

In my opinion, Ray is the greatest practitioner of the short story in the twentieth century.

—
MARGUERITE BRADBURY

T
HINGS WERE
going well for Ray Bradbury, both personally and professionally. In early May 1947, Ray, who was engaged to be married to the love of his life, and August Derleth were contacted with the news that Hamish Hamilton, a British publisher, was interested in buying the rights to publish
Dark Carnival
. Ray's reach now extended overseas.

His professional progress didn't stop with his first foray into the world of international rights. Ray's recent inroads into radio led him to a meeting with one of the biggest players in the business—Norman Corwin. Corwin had already cemented a name for himself as an incomparable radio dramatist, a pioneer of the medium's Golden Age, who had redefined radio as an art form. His prominence was due in no small part to his wartime radio work, culminating in the airing of his acclaimed program “On a Note of Triumph,” broadcast the night of Germany's surrender in World War Two. Corwin's distinguished career has prompted many to refer to him as the poet laureate of Golden Age radio.

Norman Corwin resided in New York and kept a Los Angeles office in the same CBS building on Sunset Boulevard where Bill Spier worked. Like many Americans in the 1940s, Ray was an ardent Corwin fan. When Ray learned that Corwin worked in the building where
Suspense
was produced, he befriended Spiers's secretary and got Corwin's home address.

“I sent Norman a copy of
Dark Carnival
with a note saying, ‘If you like this book half as much as I love your work, I'd like to buy you drinks some day,'” recounted Ray. A week later, Corwin called the Bradbury bungalow at 670 Venice Boulevard. “You're not buying me drinks,” he said, “I'm buying you dinner.” Corwin was dazzled by the work of the young fantasist. “I just felt that this young man had a lot of power,” said Corwin. “Great reserves of power. He was very flexible. He could write what was conveniently called science fiction, he could write poetry, and he had a great sense of humor, which he employed very effectively.”

Of course, Ray accepted Corwin's offer to have dinner, meeting the great radio director at a fancy restaurant on the Sunset Strip. Over dinner, Ray was as ebullient as ever, sharing his ideas and enthusiasm with Corwin. One of the stories Ray told Corwin was about a new short story he had written, about a Martian woman named Ylla, who was having premonitions that Earthmen were coming to her planet. Corwin loved the idea and suggested that Ray write more Mars stories. Ray took the advice to heart. He didn't know it at the time, but
The Martian Chronicles
was coming together.

Ray was on a roll. By the summer of 1947, after reading Ray's tale in the
Best American Short Stories
collection of 1946,
New Yorker
editor Katharine S. White—wife of noted American author E. B. White—wrote Ray suggesting he submit some material. Ray took White up on her request, and sent her the short story “I See You Never,” the tale of a Mexican man deported back to his homeland. By mid-September, Ray received a response to his
New Yorker
submission. The story had sold. The “Poet of the Pulps” had waltzed right into the most revered literary magazine in the country.

In September 1947, Ray received a note from Simon & Schuster editor Don Congdon. “I got a letter from him saying, ‘I'm not going to be an editor anymore, I'm going to become an agent. Do you need one?' I wrote back to him and said, ‘Yes, I need one, but only for a lifetime.'”

Ray's words were prophetic. Ever since Congdon had contacted him in 1945, while Ray was traveling in Mexico, Ray had liked the man. In a May 6, 1946, letter, Congdon, still with Simon & Schuster, had expressed his admiration for Ray and his work.

 

I don't have to tell you, that I am thoroughly sold on the ability of one Ray Bradbury and I would be disappointed if somebody moved in on my chances to publish you, either in story collection or in novels.

 

Now Congdon was striking out on his own as a literary agent, and Ray was elated at the prospect of signing on with him. Since Ray had begun publishing in the mainstream literary magazines, he had been forced to submit all his stories on his own, as his pulp agent and friend Julius Schwartz did not handle sales to the slicks. In fact, Schwartz had advised Ray to procure the services of an agent who knew the mainstream literary field. Further, Schwartz had been moving out of the literary agent business; in 1944, he had taken an editing post with National Comics, publishers of
The Flash, Green Lantern,
and
All-American,
among others. As the company would later be acquired by DC Comics, he would go on to become a guiding editorial force in the “Silver Age” of comics. Schwartz and Ray amicably parted company, and Ray signed on with Don Congdon, who had joined the Harold Matson Agency. Schwartz continued to peddle a few last remaining Bradbury stories to the pulps; his final Bradbury sale was made in January 1948 with “The Black Ferris” to
Weird Tales
(the story would later become the cornerstone of the novel
Something Wicked This Way Comes
). While the business relationship with Schwartz was concluding, a lifelong friendship had only just begun. Julius Schwartz had been a valiant champion of Ray's early work, landing Ray's first professional sale, and giving invaluable editorial advice to many of Ray's best-loved early pulp tales.

In the autumn of 1947, Ray and Maggie finalized their wedding plans. They had made the necessary arrangements with a minister, but there was one stipulation. “The minister asked if Ray had been baptized and he hadn't,” recalled Maggie. She accompanied Ray to a church near her house, where a newborn baby and twenty-seven-year-old Ray Bradbury were baptized side by side. “It makes a wonderful picture,” recalled Ray, “the two of us at the baptismal font.”

On the morning of September 27, 1947, Ray and Maggie went to the Mount Calvary Church in Los Angeles to marry. Ray's pal Ray Harryhausen served as best man, while Maggie's best friend, John Nomland, a former classmate from UCLA, served as her untraditional male “maid” of honor. If anything, Maggie's gay friend acting in this role illuminated just how progressive Ray and Maggie were in 1947. Maggie and Ray avoided a big wedding celebration and they were the only four there. Bride and groom insisted on simplicity and understatement.

The financial status of the couple on their wedding day was one of Ray's favorite stories to tell, and he told it often. “Maggie took a vow of poverty when she married me,” said Ray. “The day we were married we had eight dollars in the bank and I put five dollars in an envelope and gave it to the minister. And he said, ‘What's this for?' and I said, ‘That's your fee for the ceremony today,' and he said, ‘You're a writer, aren't you?' I said, ‘Yes.' He said, ‘Then you're gonna need this,' and he handed the envelope back to me because we had no money.”

Ray and Maggie rented a one-bedroom apartment at 33 South Venice Boulevard, a few short blocks from the beach. After the brief morning ceremony, the small wedding party went to the Beverly-Wilshire Hotel for a reception. For ten dollars, they received a tiny wedding cake cut into four pieces, and a bottle of champagne. “In the afternoon,” Ray Harryhausen recalled, “I drove Ray and Maggie home and dropped them off at their new apartment.”

It was a completely new life for the couple. Maggie had always lived at home with her parents, as had Ray who, up until that week, still shared a bed with his older brother, Skip. Late in the day, the newlyweds walked hand in hand to a nearby pharmacy to buy new toothbrushes. On their way home, a group of children began to follow the couple. As twilight settled over Venice, the children began to sing: “Happy Marriage Day to you, Happy Marriage Day to you,” to the melody of the birthday song. The children had no way of knowing that the young couple had just married. “We were just dressed in ordinary clothing,” recalled Maggie, bewildered by the children's uncanny intuition. Added Ray, “How could they know? How could they know? It was very dear.” It was a sweet and profound beginning to Ray and Maggie's partnership—one of the couple's fondest memories.

Venice, California, in late 1947 was much as Ray described it in his mystery novel,
Death Is a Lonely Business
. Fog rolled in from the sea late in the night and sometimes kept its grip on the coastal community long into the day. Just to see some sunshine, on a few occasions, Ray rode the streetcar inland to Culver City, where he would sit on a bench and bask in the warmth. The train ran just a short distance from the Bradburys' new apartment. As he described it in his mystery novel, it was “a loud avalanche of big red trolley car that rushed towards the sea every half-hour and at midnight skirled the curve and threw sparks on the high wires and rolled away with a moan which was like the dead turning in their sleep....”

Venice was a poor community, as it had been when Ray and his parents and Skip had moved there in 1942. The old Venice pier, once a major tourist attraction, was closed and in disrepair. An old movie house stood on the pier, where Ray and Maggie saw the picture shows during their courtship. While they were in their seats, they heard and felt the rising of the tides beneath the cinema and the crashing of the waves against the pier's wooden support columns. In the 1950s, Venice would enjoy a rebirth as a haven for students and artists. Ray always considered himself and Maggie, with their literary interests and their meager bank account, as “early beatniks.”

In the early days of their marriage, Maggie took a secretarial job with Elwood J. Robinson, an advertising agency in Los Angeles. She soon found a better-paying position in the advertising department of Abbey Rents, a medical supply rental company with retail stores throughout California. Maggie was the editor of the company's monthly newsletter, “Abbey Rants and Raves.” She also served as a company secretary.

Meanwhile, Ray kept up his writing regimen. He had not faltered from his one-short-story-a-week schedule since he adopted it in the early 1940s. In the evenings, Maggie would come home from work and she would either cook a simple meal or they would go to Modesti's, a family-owned restaurant where they dined for eighty-nine cents apiece. One night Ray endeavored to make a black-bottom pie. The result was a culinary disaster—a burnt brick that was all bottom and no pie. Ray never attempted cooking again. “Other nights we'd walk down to Ocean Park,” recalled Ray, “get a couple of hot dogs and play at the penny arcade where the games were still a penny apiece.” More than once, the couple crammed into a coin-operated photo booth and posed for pictures. To this day, the weathered black-and-white prints capture the unmistakable newlywed glow of the young couple.

Maggie Bradbury was not the prototypical wife of the 1940s. Without question, it was she who made it possible for Ray Bradbury to blossom as a writer. She was the breadwinner in an era not known for wives working; she worked so that Ray could concentrate solely on his writing. Maggie believed wholly and completely in her husband's ability. Without her dedication, Ray would have been forced to find full-time employment and the future of the man known for writing about the future might have been very different.

Maggie and Ray woke each day at seven, and she would catch the big red car by seven-thirty. Most days, Ray would get straight to work on his short stories, but other days, he had a secret. “I didn't tell Maggie, but occasionally I would go back to bed after she left,” confessed Ray.

One evening, Maggie arrived home and walked into the apartment. “I called out for Ray, but there was no answer,” said Maggie. She put her belongings down and walked through the small living room into the tiny bedroom. Ray wasn't there either. She opened the closet door, and there, sitting on the floor of the closet, was Ray with a carton of ice cream in one hand and a big spoon in the other. The sugarmonger had been discovered. Ray's insatiable sweet tooth was curtailed only by the fact that the young couple was on a strict budget and there was no additional money for treats. They were so poor, in fact, that Ray had to buy one stamp at a time in order to send out his weekly manuscripts. To Maggie's credit, the girl who had everything she could ever want as a child never once complained about money to her husband. And so there she was, staring down at her husband, who was hiding in the back of the closet eating contraband ice cream. Maggie had married a man who was still very much a boy at heart and she knew it and she loved him for it.

“What are you doing?” she asked, pointedly.

“Eating ice cream,” he answered, sheepishly.

Lack of money didn't just keep Ray from devouring sweets. The tight finances also put a squeeze on his writing career. Here he was, at twenty-seven, establishing himself in the world of literature and radio; he needed to carry himself off like a pro. But Ray and Maggie couldn't even afford a telephone. Ever imaginative, Ray improvised.

“Right across the street from our apartment was a tiny gas station,” Ray said. “At the time, there was an outdoor phone booth. So I kept the window open in our front room and when the phone rang, I jumped up and ran across Venice Boulevard and answered the phone and people thought they were calling my home. That's how poor we were.”