Lost Years (70 page)

Mangeot, André, Olive, Sylvain and Fowke.
Belgian violinist and his English wife and two sons. Isherwood met the Mangeots in 1925 and worked for a year as part-time secretary to André Mangeot's string quartet which was organized from the family home in Chelsea. The Mangeots' warm and chaotic household offered an irresistible contrast to the cool formality of Isherwood's own, and Olive, energetic but easygoing, was an attractive rival to Kathleen in the role of mother. Isherwood brought all his friends to meet Olive when he was in London. She is the original of “Madame Cheuret” in
Lions and Shadows
and Isherwood drew on different parts of her personality for the characters “Margaret Lanwin” and “Mary Scriven” in
The Memorial
. She had an affair with Edward Upward and through his influence became a communist. Later she separated from her husband and for a time lived in Cheltenham with Jean Ross and her daughter.

Mann, Erika (1905–1969).
German actress and author; eldest daughter of Thomas Mann. Isherwood first met Erika Mann through her brother Klaus in the spring of 1935 in Amsterdam; she had fled Germany in March 1933. Her touring revue, The Peppermill (for which she wrote most of the satirical, anti-Nazi material), earned her the status of official enemy of the Reich, and she asked Isherwood to marry her and provide her with a British passport. He felt he could not, but contacted W. H. Auden who agreed, and the two met and married in England in June 1935. In September 1936 Erika emigrated to America with Klaus and unsuccessfully tried to reopen The Peppermill in New York. As the war approached, she lectured widely in the USA and wrote
anti-Nazi books, two with Klaus, trying to revive sympathy for the non-Nazi Germany silenced by Hitler. She worked as a journalist in London during the war, for the BBC German Service and as a correspondent for the New York
Nation
. Later, she became increasingly close to her father, travelling with her parents and helping Thomas Mann with his work. She also appears in
D1
.

Mann, Klaus (1906–1949).
German novelist and editor. Heinrich Klaus Mann was the eldest son of Thomas Mann; Isherwood became friendly with him in Berlin in the summer of 1931. By then Klaus had written and acted with his sister, Erika, in the plays which launched her acting career, and he had published several novels in German (a few appeared in English translations) and worked as a drama critic. He travelled extensively and lived in various European cities even before he left Germany for good in 1933; in 1936, when his family settled in Princeton, he emigrated to America and lived in New York, continuing to travel to Europe as a journalist, and later settling for a time in Santa Monica. He founded two magazines:
Die Sammlung (The Collection)
in Amsterdam in 1933, and
Decision,
which appeared in New York in December 1940 but lasted only a year because of the war. Klaus became a U.S. citizen and served in the U.S. Army during the war. He wrote his second volume of autobiography,
The Turning Point
(1942), in English. Isherwood wrote a reminiscence about Klaus for a memorial volume published in Amsterdam in 1950,
Klaus Mann—zum Gedaechtnis
, and describes their friendship in
D1
.

Mann, Thomas (1875–1955).
German novelist and essayist; awarded the Nobel Prize in 1929. Mann was patriarch of a large and talented literary family; he and his wife Katia Pringsheim Mann (whose father was a mathematics professor and Wagner scholar) had six children. Mann's novels and stories are among the greatest German literature of this century. They include
Buddenbrooks
(1901),
Tonio Kröger
(1903),
Death in Venice
(1912),
The Magic Mountain
(1924),
Doktor Faustus
(1947), and
The Confessions of the Confidence Trickster Felix Krull
(1954). Mann lectured in support of the Weimar Republic both in Germany and abroad during the 1920s, and he publicly dissociated himself from the Nazi regime in 1936, taking Czech citizenship (though he had remained in Switzerland since a 1933 holiday). Isherwood first met him in Princeton where Mann was a visiting professor after his flight from the Nazis. Then in 1941, Mann moved with his family to Pacific Palisades and became part of the circle of German emigrés and artists with which Isherwood was intimate; he is sometimes mentioned in
D1
. Later the Manns returned to Switzerland.

Markova, Alicia (b. 1910).
English prima ballerina; her real name was Lilian Alicia Marks. She danced for the Ballets Russes in 1924 and afterwards for various companies in England where she was partnered for many years by the British dancer Anton Dolin (also a former member of the Ballets Russes). In 1935, Markova and Dolin founded their own ballet company and toured internationally. Later she became a professor of dance at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio.

Martinez, José (Pete) (c. 1913–1997).
Mexican-born ballet dancer; also known as Pete Stefan. Isherwood met him through Lincoln Kirstein in 1939.
Martinez was among the first students at the American School of Ballet (founded by Kirstein and Balanchine), and during the 1940s he danced with the American Ballet Caravan and the Ballet Society, forerunners of the New York City Ballet. He created the scenario for
Pastorela
(1941) and toured in it to Latin America. In 1942, Martinez worked with Isherwood at the refugee hostel in Haverford, Pennsylvania, while waiting to be drafted into the army. Isherwood records their life together in
D1
. Martinez's family then moved from Texas to Long Beach, and Isherwood saw him in Long Beach in 1943 before Martinez left to fight in northern France from 1943 to 1945. Afterwards they met occasionally in New York and California. When the war was over, Martinez danced for two more years: he was in the original cast of Balanchine's
Four Temperaments
(1946), and he created the role of the minister in William Dollar's
Highland Fling
(1947). A knee injury forced him to retire in 1947, and he became a teacher, opening his own studios in Virginia, Ohio and, finally, California where he worked until the mid-1960s and then remained for the rest of his life.

Masselink, Ben (1919–2000).
American writer. Massehnk was in the marines during the war; one night on leave, he got drunk in The Friendship, the bar in Santa Monica Canyon, and Jo Lathwood took him to her apartment nearby and looked after him. When the war was over he went back to her and stayed for over twenty years. Masselink had studied architecture, and Isherwood helped him with his writing career during the 1950s. His first book of stories,
Partly Submerged
, was published in 1957, followed by two novels about his war experience—
The Crackerjack Marines
(1959) and
The Deadliest Weapon
(1965), the second of which Isherwood admired—and a story for teenage boys,
The Danger Islands
(1964). Masselink also wrote for television throughout the 1950s and in 1960 worked at Warner Brothers on the script for a film of
The Crackerjack Marines
. In 1967, when Lathwood was in her late sixties, Masselink, still in his forties, left her for a younger woman. There are numerous passages about the Masselinks in
D1.

Masselink, Jo (c. 1900–1988).
Women's sportswear and bathing suit designer from Northville, South Dakota; among her clientele were movie stars such as Janet Gaynor and Anne Baxter. She had worked as a dancer and was briefly married to a man called Jack Lathwood (whose name she kept professionally); also, she had a son and a daughter with a North Dakotan, Ferdinand Hinchberger. From 1938 onwards she lived on West Channel Road, a few doors from The Friendship, and by the late 1940s she knew many of Isherwood's friends who frequented the bar—including Bill Caskey, Jay de Laval, and Jim Charlton. She never married Ben Masselink, though she lived with him and used his surname. She appears often in
D1
.

Matta Echaurren, Roberto Sebastián (b. 1911).
Chilean-born surrealist painter. Matta trained as an architect with Le Corbusier and began painting in Paris towards the end of the 1930s. During World War II, he worked in New York with other European surrealists who had emigrated there, such as André Breton, Max Ernst, and Yves Tanguy.

Maugham, William Somerset (Willie) (1874–1965).
British playwright
and novelist. Maugham was married and had a daughter, but for a long time his usual companion was Gerald Haxton, eighteen years younger, whom he met in 1914 working in an ambulance unit in Flanders. Maugham and Haxton travelled, and they entertained on Cap Ferrat at the Villa Mauresque which Maugham bought in 1926. After Haxton's early death, Maugham's subsequent companion and heir was Alan Searle. Isherwood met Maugham in London in the late 1930s and saw him whenever Maugham visited Hollywood, where many of Maugham's works were filmed; later Isherwood also made several visits to Maugham's house in France. Their friendship is described in
D1
. Shri Ganesha (the character about whom Maugham consulted Swami for the film of
The Razor's Edge
) was based on Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950), an Indian holy man Maugham met in 1936. Later, in 1956, Swami and Isherwood both advised Maugham again on his essay “The Saint,” about Ramana Maharshi. “The Saint” was published in Maugham's
Points of View
(1958).

Mauriber, Saul.
Assistant to the photographer and writer Carl Van Vechten. He was still a student when he met Van Vechten and worked with him for twenty years. Later, Mauriber also became a designer.

McClendon, Carlos (b. 1923).
American designer and shop owner. McClendon was born in California and worked as an apprentice set designer at MGM and as a dancer before opening his shop, Chequer, in New York in 1954. He sold clothes of his own design for men and women, furniture, and art objects, and he travelled widely to acquire raw materials and finished goods, including ethnic textiles and folk art from Japan, Indonesia, Mexico and elsewhere. He spent time living in Haiti and in Mexico as well as in New York, and he eventually opened Chequer West in West Hollywood, frequented like his New York shop by theater, movie and entertainment people, and designers and costumiers. Isherwood met McClendon through Denny Fouts and John Goodwin in the 1940s when McClendon often visited the beach in Santa Monica. The friendship continued long after McClendon left Los Angeles in the early 1950s. Eventually McClendon settled in New Mexico.

McDowall, Roddy (1928–1998).
British actor and photographer. McDowall began his education at a Catholic school in a south London suburb and made his first movie when he was eight years old. When the Blitz began, he was evacuated to the USA and became a Hollywood star as a teenager after appearing as the crippled boy in
How Green Was My Valley
(1941) and, with Elizabeth Taylor, in
Lassie Come Home
(1943). During the 1950s he took stage and television roles in New York, where he won a Tony Award for his supporting role in
The Fighting Cock
in 1960. He returned to Hollywood in the 1960s and starred in
Planet of the Apes
(1968), most of the sequels, and the television series. Other films include
My Friend Flicka
(1943),
Thunderhead, Son of Flicka
(1945), Orson Welles's
Macbeth
(1948),
The Subterraneans
(1960),
The Longest Day
(1962),
Cleopatra
(1963),
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
(1971),
The Poseidon Adventure
(1972),
Funny Lady
(1975), and
Fright Night
(1985). He published several books of his photographs, mostly of celebrities.

Medley, Robert (1905–1995).
English painter. Robert Medley attended Gresham's School, Holt, with W. H. Auden, and the two remained close friends after Medley left for art school at the Slade. In London, Medley became the longtime companion of the dancer Rupert Doone, and was involved with him in 1932 in forming The Group Theatre, which produced
The Dog Beneath the Skin, The Ascent of F6
, and
On the Frontier
. Medley also worked as a theater designer and teacher, founding the Theatre Design section at the Slade in the 1950s before becoming Head of Painting and Sculpture at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in 1958.

Menotti, Gian Carlo (b. 1911).
Italian-born composer, librettist, and conductor. Menotti emigrated to the USA, where he studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and began to establish an international reputation with his operas from the late 1930s. He won Pulitzer Prizes for
The Consul
(1950) and
The Saint of Bleecker Street
(1954), and his widely known opera,
Amahl and the Night Visitors
(1951), was the first to be written expressly for American television.

MGM.
The preeminent Hollywood studio from the mid-1920s to the mid-1940s; Isherwood began writing for MGM at the start of 1940, his second Hollywood job. Formed by a three-way merger between Loewe's Incorporated (owner of the Metro Pictures Corporation), the Goldwyn Studios, and the Louis B. Mayer Pictures Corporation, the studio was run by Mayer with Irving Thalberg and Harry Rapf Stars included Garbo, Norma Shearer, Gable, Joan Crawford, the Barrymores, Elizabeth Taylor, Garland, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, and Greer Garson; among the directors and producers were George Cukor, Clarence Brown, Victor Fleming, Mervyn Leroy, Vincente Minnelli, Busby Berkeley, David Selznick and Arthur Freed. MGM reached its apogee between 1935 and 1945, then management conflicts gradually developed and enforcement of the Sherman antitrust laws eroded its power. Financial losses and further management upheavals plagued the studio throughout the 1960s, and MGM has been the object of various corporate takeovers since then.