Liberation (143 page)

Swami.
Used as a title to mean “Lord” or “Master.” A Hindu monk who has taken sannyas, the final vows of renunciation in the Hindu tradition. Isherwood used it in particular to refer to his guru, Swami Prabhavananda, and he pronounced it
Shwami
; see Prabhavananda.

Swamiji.
An especially respectful form of “Swami,” but also a particular name for Vivekananda towards the end of his life.

Sweet, Paula.
American painter, from Carmel, New York, trained at Syracuse and at the Sir John Cass College of Art in London. She is also a sculptor and a jewelry and clothing designer.

Szczesny, Berthhold.
Isherwood met Szczesny in The Cosy Corner on his first brief visit to Berlin in March 1929 and returned to Germany hoping to spend the summer with him in the Harz Mountains. But Szczesny, then called “Bubi,” was in trouble with the police, fled to Amsterdam, and from there shipped out to South America. Subsequently he came to London working on board a freighter and smuggling refugees into England. As Isherwood tells in
The Condor and the Cows
, Szczesny eventually returned to Argentina, became part-owner of a factory and married an Argentine woman of privileged background, with whom he had two sons. He is mentioned in
D.1
and
Lost Years
. One of his sons, Juan Szczesny, is mentioned in this diary; he sat for Bachardy, May 10, 1980.

Tadatmananda.
See Markovich, John.

tamas.
See guna.

Ted.
See Bachardy, Ted.

Tennant, Stephen (1906–1987).
British poet, aesthete, eccentric; youngest son of Lord Glenconner, a Scottish peer, and Pamela Wyndham, a cousin of Oscar Wilde's paramour, Lord Alfred Douglas. He studied painting at the Slade and worked for decades on a novel which he never completed. He was known for his extravagantly camp dress and manners, his interior decorating, and spending the last seventeen years of his life mostly in bed. He was an intimate friend of Cecil Beaton and was photographed by him several times, and he had a long affair with Siegfried Sassoon. He is said to be a model for Sebastian Flyte in Evelyn Waugh's
Brideshead Revisited
and for Cedric Hampton in Nancy Mitford's
Love in a Cold Climate
. He is mentioned in
D.2.

Tennessee.
See Williams, Tennessee.

Thakur.
Literally master or lord; a familiar name for Ramakrishna among his devotees. See also Ramakrishna.

Thompson, Nicholas.
American theatrical agent, based in London. He was introduced to Isherwood and Bachardy by Robin French and became the London agent for
A Meeting by the River
. He appears in
D.2.

Thomson, Virgil (1896–1989).
American composer, music critic, author; born in Kansas and educated at Harvard. During the 1920s, he lived off and on in Paris, where he studied with Nadia Boulanger and met the young French composers, including Poulenc and Auric, who were known as “Les Six” and who were, like him, influenced by Satie. He became friendly with Gertrude Stein, who supplied libretti for his operas
Four Saints in Three Acts
(1934) and
The Mother of Us All
(1947). In 1940, he returned permanently to New York. He was the music critic for the
Herald Tribune
for a decade and a half, published eight books on music, including
American Music Since 1910
(1971), and composed prolifically. His third and last opera,
Lord Byron
, on a libretto by Jack Larson, was planned for the Metropolitan Opera in New York, but instead premiered at the Juilliard Opera Center in April 1972. His film scores include
The Plough That Broke the Plains
(1936) and
The River
(1938), both directed by Pare Lorentz, and
Louisiana Story
(1948), directed by Robert Flaherty. His companion for many years was Maurice Grosser. He appears in
D.2.

Tony.
See Richardson, Tony.

Trabuco.
Monastic community sixty miles south of Los Angeles and about twenty miles inland; founded by Gerald Heard in 1942. Heard anonymously provided $100,000 for the project (his life savings), and he consulted at length with various friends and colleagues as well as with members of the Quaker Society of Friends about how to organize the community. In 1940, he planned only a small retreat called “Focus,” then he renamed the community after buying the ranch at Trabuco. Isherwood's cousin on his mother's side, Felix Greene, oversaw the purchase of the property and the construction of the building, which could house fifty. By 1949 Heard found leading and administering the group too much of a strain, and he persuaded the Trustees to give Trabuco to the Vedanta Society. It opened as a Vedanta monastery in September 1949.

Turner, Charles.
African-American actor and director, trained at Yale School of Drama, which is among the several places he has also taught. He has performed on and off Broadway and in T.V. and films.

Turville-Petre, Francis (1904–1941).
English archaeologist, from an aristocratic Catholic family. Isherwood met the eccentric Turville-Petre through Auden in Berlin in 1929, and it was at Turville-Petre's house outside Berlin that Isherwood met Heinz Neddermeyer in 1932. In 1933, when Isherwood and Heinz fled Germany, they spent nearly four months on Turville-Petre's tiny island, St. Nicholas, in Greece. Turville-Petre, known among the boys in the Berlin bars as “Der Franni,” inspired the character of the lost heir in Auden's play
The Fronny
and in Auden and Isherwood's
The Dog Beneath the Skin
(1935); he is also the model for “Ambrose” in
Down There on a Visit
.

Tynan, Kathleen.
See entry for Tynan, Kenneth.

Tynan, Tracy.
See entry for Tynan, Kenneth.

Tynan, Kenneth (Ken) (1927–1980).
English theater critic, educated at Oxford. During the 1950s and 1960s, he wrote regularly for the London
Evening Standard
, then for
The Observer
,
The New Yorker
, and other publications. He was literary adviser to the National Theatre from its inception in 1963, but his anti-establishment views brought about his departure before the end of the decade. His support for realistic working-class drama—by new playwrights such as Osborne, Delaney and Wesker—as well as for the works of Brecht and Beckett, was widely influential. Many of his essays and reviews are collected as books. At the end of stage censorship in 1968, he devised and produced the sex revue
Oh! Calcutta!
, which opened in New York in 1969 and in London in 1970. His first wife, from 1951, was the actress and writer Elaine Dundy, with whom he had a daughter, Tracy Tynan, later a costume designer for films. In 1963, he began an affair with the newly married Kathleen Halton Gates (1937–1995), a Canadian journalist and, later, novelist and screenwriter, raised in England; they married in 1967 and settled for a time in the U.S. with their children, Roxana and Matthew. Isherwood first met Ken and Elaine Tynan in London in 1956, and they are mentioned in
D.1
and
D.2.

UCLA.
University of California at Los Angeles.

Unger, Ray (d. 2006).
American artist and astrologer. He was the companion of Jack Fontan for fifty-three years, and, like Fontan, was known for his beauty. For some years, they managed a gym together in Laguna Beach, the Laguna Health Club. Unger was well read, well informed, talented and intelligent, without ambition for public recognition. He was an especially close friend to Bachardy.

Upward, Edward (1903–2009).
English novelist and schoolmaster. Isherwood first met him in 1921 at their public school, Repton, and followed him (Upward was a year older) to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Their close friendship was inspired by their shared attitude of rebellion toward family and school authority and by their literary obsessions. In the 1920s they created the fantasy world Mortmere, about which they wrote surreal, macabre, and pornographic stories and poems for each other; their excited schoolboy humor is described in
Lions and Shadows
where Upward appears as “Allen Chalmers.” Upward made his reputation in the 1930s with his short fiction, especially
Journey to the Border
(1938), the intense, almost mystical, and largely autobiographical account of a young upper-middle-class tutor's conversion to communism. Then he published nothing for a long time while he devoted himself to schoolmastering (he needed the money) and to Communist party work. From 1931 to 1961 he taught at Alleyn's School, Dulwich, where he became head of English and a housemaster; he lived nearby with his wife, Hilda, and their two children, Kathy and Christopher. After World War II, Upward and his wife became disillusioned by the British Communist party and left it, but Upward never abandoned his Marxist-Leninist convictions. Towards the end of the 1950s, he overcame writer's block and a nervous breakdown to produce a massive autobiographical trilogy,
The Spiral Ascent
(1977)—comprised of
In the Thirties
(1962),
The Rotten Elements
(1969), and
No Home But the Struggle
. The last two volumes were written in Sandown, on the Isle of Wight, where Upward retired in 1962. They were followed by four collections of short stories. Upward remained a challenging and trusted critic of Isherwood's work throughout Isherwood's life, and a loyal friend. He appears in
D.1
,
D.2
, and
Lost Years
.

Urquhart-Laird, Tommy (b. 1943).
Secretary and lover to John Lehmann during the 1970s. He arrived in London from Scotland in 1961 hoping to become an actor. Instead, he did odd jobs, including working as a builder, until he met Lehmann in 1972 and moved into his flat in Cornwall Gardens. He remained there until 1978 when the arrangement collapsed because of Urquhart-Laird's drinking.

Usha.
A nun at the Vedanta Society and later at the convent in Santa Barbara; originally called Ursula Bond and, after sannyas, Pravrajika Anandaprana, which was sometimes shortened to Ananda. She was a German Jew, educated in England, and came to the U.S. as a young refugee during the war. Until the war ended, she worked for the U.S. government as a censor. She had been married before taking up Vedanta, and she had a daughter, Caroline Bond; she left three-year-old Caroline with the child's father, but Caroline later joined the Hollywood convent where she was known as Sumitra, took brahmacharya vows, and remained for about ten years before leaving to join an ashram that emphasized Sanskrit and scriptural study. Later, Sumitra did graduate work in Sanskrit and became a free-lance editor. Anandaprana appears, as Usha, in
D.1
and
D.2.

Vaccaro, Brenda (b. 1939).
American stage, screen, and T.V. actress; born in Brooklyn, raised in Dallas, trained at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. She began her career on Broadway, where she appeared in
Cactus Flower
(1965),
How Now, Dow Jones
(1967), and
The Goodbye People
(1968). Her films include
Midnight Cowboy
(1969),
Once is Not Enough
(1975; Academy Award nomination),
Ten Little Indians
(1990), and
The Mirror Has Two Faces
(1996).

Valen, Mark.
A local friend introduced to Isherwood and Bachardy by Rick Sandford; he grew up in Los Angeles and worked for the Landmark Theater chain, beginning as a ticket taker and eventually selecting and programming their films all over the country. He sat for Bachardy many times.

Vandanananda, Swami (1915–2007).
Hindu monk of the Ramakrishna Order. He arrived at the Hollywood Vedanta Society from India in the summer of 1955 and eventually became chief assistant, replacing Swami Asheshananda. In 1969 he returned to India, was head of the Delhi Center, and later, at Belur Math, became Assistant Secretary of the order, and then General Secretary. He appears in
D.1
and
D.2
.

van Druten, John (1901–1957).
English playwright and novelist. Isherwood met him in New York in 1939, and they became friends because they were both pacifists. Van Druten's family was Dutch, but he was born and educated in London and took a degree in law at the University of London. He achieved his first success as a playwright in New York during the 1920s, then emigrated in 1938 and became a U.S. citizen in 1944. His strength was light comedy; among his numerous plays and adaptations, many of which were later filmed, were
Voice of the Turtle
(1943),
I Remember Mama
(1944),
Bell, Book, and Candle
(1950), and
I Am a Camera
(1951), based on Isherwood's
Goodbye to Berlin.
Van Druten acquired a sixty percent share in material that he used in
I Am a Camera
from
Goodbye to Berlin
; Isherwood retained a forty percent share. Anyone acquiring rights after van Druten needed his agreement or, after his death, the agreement of his estate. In 1951, van Druten directed
The King and I
on Broadway. He also wrote a few novels and two volumes of autobiography, including
The Widening Circle
(1957). He usually spent half the year in New York and half near Los Angeles on the AJC Ranch, which he owned with Carter Lodge. He also owned a mountain cabin above Idyllwild which Isherwood sometimes used. A fall from a horse in Mexico in 1936 left him with a permanently crippled arm; partly as a result of this, he became attracted to Vedanta and other religions (he was a renegade Christian Scientist), and in his second autobiography he describes a minor mystical experience which he had in a drug store in Beverly Hills. He was a contributor to Isherwood's
Vedanta for the Western World
, and there are numerous accounts of him in
D.1
,
D.2
, and
Lost Years
.