Lost Years (73 page)

Reinhardt, Gottfried (1911–c.1993).
Austrian-born film producer. Reinhardt emigrated to the United States with his father, the theatrical producer Max Reinhardt, and became assistant to Walter Wanger. Afterwards he worked as a producer for MGM from 1940 to 1954 and later directed his own films in the United States and Europe. His name is attached to many well-known movies, including Garbo's
Two Faced Woman,
which he produced in 1941, and
The Red Badge of Courage
, which he produced in 1951. He was Salka Viertel's lover for nearly a decade before his marriage to his wife, Silvia, in 1944. Through Salka and Berthold Viertel, Reinhardt gave Isherwood his second Hollywood film job in 1940, and Isherwood worked for him a number of times after that. There are numerous passages about him in
D1.
Reinhardt and his wife eventually returned to Europe and settled near Salzburg.

Reinhardt, Wolfgang.
Film producer and writer; son of Max Reinhardt, brother of Gottfried. He produced
My Love Come Back
(1940),
The Male Animal
(1942),
Three Strangers
(1946),
Caught
(1948), and
Freud
(1962), for which he won an Academy Award as co-writer. As Isherwood records in
D1,
Reinhardt and Isherwood tried to work together several times. With Aldous Huxley they discussed making
The Miracle,
a film version of the play produced by Max Reinhardt in the 1920s, but nothing came of it. Reinhardt hired Isherwood to work on Maugham's 1941 novel
Up at the Villa,
but the film was never made. Much later, in 1960, Reinhardt approached Isherwood to write a screenplay based on Felix Dahn's four-volume 1876 novel,
Ein Kampf um Rom (A Struggle for Rome),
about the decline and fall of the Ostrogoth empire in Italy in the sixth century, but Isherwood turned the project down. Wolfgang's wife was called Lally.

Renaldo, Tito.
Mexican actor. He played the first son in
Anna and the King of Siam
(1946). He was known as an exceptional cook at the Vedanta Center, which he joined and left five times. During the late 1950s and 1960s, he worked for a time in Carlos McClendon's shop in West Hollywood. Afterwards, in the 1970s, Renaldo returned in frail health to his family in northern Mexico and fell out of touch with his Los Angeles friends. He is often mentioned in
D1
.

Repton.
Isherwood's public school, near Derby.

Richardson, Tony (1928–1991).
British stage and film director. Richardson is most admired for his work in the theater, especially at the Royal Court in London during the 1950s, and he made movies from many of his productions there. His films include
Look Back in Anger
(1958),
The Entertainer
(1960),
Sanctuary
(1961),
A Taste of Honey
(1961),
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
(1962), and
Tom Jones
(1963), for which he won an Academy Award.
He was married for a time to Vanessa Redgrave, with whom he had two daughters during the 1960s. Isherwood became friends with Richardson in Hollywood in 1960, and in 1964 Richardson hired him to adapt Evelyn Waugh's
The Loved One
for film; Richardson then gave Isherwood's script to Terry Southern who wrote most of the dialogue. Later projects with Richardson included a script for
Reflections in a Golden Eye
(which John Huston did not use when he took over the film),
The Sailor from Gibraltar
(based on Marguerite Duras' novel), and adaptations with Don Bachardy of Robert Graves's
I, Claudius
and
Claudius, the God
which were never made because Richardson fell out with his proposed Caligula, Mick Jagger. Richardson appears in
D1
.

Robson-Scott, William (1901–1980).
English teacher and scholar of German; educated at Rugby School, University College, Oxford, and in Berlin and Vienna. Robson-Scott was lecturing in English at Berlin University in 1932 when Isherwood first met him. He summered at Rügen Island that year with Isherwood, Heinz Neddermeyer, Stephen Spender, and others, and remained a close friend through the 1930s. When he returned to London, Robson-Scott became a lecturer in German, and later in German language and literature, at Birkbeck College, University of London, where he continued to teach until 1968. He married in 1947 and, with his wife, made a translation of Freud's letters to Lou Andreas-Salomé, published in 1972.

Rod.
See Owens, Rodney.

Rodd, Marcel.
English bookseller and publisher living in Hollywood. Rodd published Prabhavananda and Isherwood's translation of the Bhagavad Gita and
Vedanta for the Western World
as well as the magazine,
The Voice of India
(later
Vedanta and the West
).

Roder, Hellmut.
German emigré; Peggy Kiskadden helped Roder and his friend Fritz Mosel escape from Germany via France and Spain, then onward to Mexico and Los Angeles. Later, the pair moved to New York where they designed jewelry, especially for opera costumes. They also dealt in metal and feathers. Eventually Fritz Mosel committed suicide, and after a time, Hellmut Roder apparently did the same.

Rodman, Selden (b. 1909).
American writer and editor; educated at Yale. In the 1930s and early 1940s, Rodman published narrative poems—one about T. E. Lawrence, another about airmen. During the same period, he was co-founder and editor of a review called
Common Sense
and later co-founder of another magazine,
Our House
. He also became a director of the Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, worked to promote Haitian art, and eventually wrote a number of books about Haiti and about Haitian art, as well as a verse play about the 1791 liberation of Haiti. In later years, Rodman wrote travel and guide books about Central and South America, and he produced various volumes of autobiography and commentary on modern art and poetry.

Roerick, Bill.
American actor. Isherwood met him in 1943 when John van Druten brought Roerick to a lecture at the Vedanta Center. His companion for many years was Tom Coley.

Ross, Alan (b. 1922).
English poet and journalist; editor of John Lehmann's
The London Magazine
from 1961 onwards. Isherwood probably met him when he returned to London for the first time after the war.

Ross, Jean (d. 1973).
The original of Isherwood's character Sally Bowles in
Goodbye to Berlin
. Isherwood met Jean Ross in Berlin, possibly in October 1930, but certainly by the start of 1931. She was then occasionally singing in a nightclub, and they shared lodgings for a time in Fräulein Thurau's flat. Ross's father was a Scottish cotton merchant, and she had been raised in Egypt in lavish circumstances. After Berlin, she returned to England where she became close friends with Olive Mangeot. She joined the communist party and had a daughter, Sarah (later a crime novelist under the name Sarah Caudwell), with Claud Cockburn, though she and Cockburn never married.

Roth, Sanford (Sandy).
American photographer; known for his pictures of actors and actresses, and especially of James Dean. Isherwood first met Roth in 1951 when Roth photographed Isherwood with Julie Harris costumed as Sally Bowles.

Sachs, David (1921–1992).
American philosopher, born in Chicago; educated at UCLA and Princeton, where he obtained his doctorate in 1953. He taught philosophy at Cornell, Brandeis, Iowa State, Rutgers and Johns Hopkins—he was on the faculty there for many years—and he held visiting posts at many other universities in the USA and in Europe. Sachs lectured widely and published numerous philosophical essays on ethics, ancient philosophy, and philosophy of the mind; his subjects included literature and psychoanalysis, and his work appeared in journals such as
The Philosophical Review
(of which he was editor),
Mind, Philosophical Studies
, and
Dissent
. In 1951 he reviewed Walter Kaufmann's
Nietzsche
for Eileen Garrett's
Tomorrow
. He also published poems in
Poetry, Epoch, Voices, The New York Times
, and elsewhere.

Salka.
See Viertel, Salka.

Samuels, Lesser.
American screenwriter. In 1940 Isherwood was hired to polish dialogue on Samuels's script for a remake of
A Woman's Face
; not long after, Samuels asked Isherwood to help him on Maugham's
The Hour Before Dawn
. Like Isherwood, Samuels had worked for Gaumont-British during the 1930s. In subsequent years they often worked together, sometimes on their own ideas, including
Judgement Day in Pittsburgh
(for which they were paid $50,000),
The Easiest Thing in the World
, and
The Vacant Room
. Samuels was married and had a daughter. There are a number of passages about him in
D1
.

Sansom, William (1912–1976).
British writer, born in London. Sansom travelled in Europe during the 1930s and wrote stories about the Blitz when he was in the London Fire Service during the war; these were published in 1944 as
Fireman Flower
. Afterwards he published many further volumes of stories, and he also wrote travel books and novels, including
The Body
(1949) and
The Cautious Heart
(1958).

Sarada.
“Sarada” Folling was a young nun at the Vedanta Center when Isherwood arrived in Hollywood in 1939. She was of Norwegian descent, had
studied music and dance, and while at the center learned Sanskrit. Her father lived in New Mexico. Sarada later moved to the convent at Santa Barbara where Isherwood occasionally saw her. She was a favorite of Prabhavananda, who gave her the Sanskrit name Sarada, but eventually left the Vedanta Society rather suddenly after becoming interested in men. Thereafter, Prabhavananda forbade her name to be mentioned to him. Isherwood tells about her in
D1
.

Saroyan, William (1908–1981).
American writer of Armenian parentage, born in Fresno, California. Saroyan turned down a Pulitzer Prize for his play
The Time of Your Life
(1939). Other plays include My
Heart's in the Highlands
(1939),
Love's Old Sweet Song
(1941),
The Beautiful People
(1941),
Get Away Old Man
(1944), and
The Cave Dwellers
(1957). He also published many volumes of short fiction, and his novels include
The Human Comedy
(1943),
The Adventures of Wesley Jackson
(1946),
Rock Wagram
(1951),
Mama, I Love You
(1956),
Papa, You're Crazy
(1957),
Boys and Girls Together
(1963), and
One Day in the Afternoon of the World
(1964). Some of his novels and plays were made into films:
The Human Comedy
(1943) won an Academy Award. From the 1950s onward, Saroyan turned increasingly to autobiography and memoirs.

Schindler, Mr. and Mrs.
German actor and his wife. He had worked with Max Reinhardt in Europe. Isherwood met them when they arrived at the Haverford refugee hostel, via an Italian concentration camp, in March 1942; he records in
D1
that they left Haverford by the end of June.

Schlee, George.
New York financier of Russian background. Schlee met Greta Garbo towards the end of the 1930s at his wife Valentina's New York dress shop, and the three became involved in a long-running ménage a trois. In the late 1940s, Garbo bought an apartment in the Schlees' building on East 52nd Street, and when Schlee died in his sleep in 1964, he was in a suite adjoining Garbo's at the Hotel Crillon in Paris.

Scott-Kilvert, Ian.
British cultural administrator. He matriculated at Gonville and Caius, Cambridge, in 1936 as a classicist but changed to English and took his B.A. in 1940. Afterwards he became Head of the Recorded Sound Department at the British Council. He appears as “Graham” in
Lions and Shadows
.

Searle, Ronald (b. 1920).
English artist and cartoonist. He created the St. Trinian's schoolgirls and achieved more serious recognition for the drawings he made while held as a prisoner of war by the Japanese during World War II. He was for many years a theatrical illustrator for
Punch,
contributed to
The New Yorker
and
The New York Times
among other publications, and had numerous one-man gallery shows. Later he also designed animated films and film sequences.

Shankara.
Hindu religious philosopher and saint (of between the sixth and eighth centuries
AD
), widely recognized as an emanation of Shiva. Shankara wrote commentaries on the Brahma Sutras, the principal Upanishads, and other religious texts, as well as philosophy, poems, hymns, and prayers. Much of his work is not attributed with authority. He probably organized the Hindu mendicant orders.

Shearer, Moira (b. 1926).
Scottish-born ballet dancer and, later, actress. She also became a writer, publishing biographies of Balanchine and of Ellen Terry as well as reviewing books. See also Ludovic Kennedy, her husband.

Shivananda, Swami (d. 1934).
Hindu monk; a direct disciple of Ramakrishna. Shivananda was originally named Tarak Nath Ghoshal, and his father was legal advisor to a rani. He met Ramakrishna in 1880, when he was about twenty-six, and though he afterwards married, he remained celibate and eventually renounced the world to live as a monk. After Ramakrishna's death, there followed a period of wandering; then Shivananda founded a Ramakrishna monastery at Benares, and in 1922 he became President of the Ramakrishna Order.

Sister Lalita (Sister) (d. 1949).
Carrie Mead Wykoff, an American widow, met Vivekananda on one of his U.S. lecture tours and became a disciple of Swami Turiyananda (another direct disciple of Ramakrishna). Turiyananda gave her the name Sister Lalita. In 1929 she invited Swami Prabhavananda to live in her house in Hollywood and within a decade they had gathered a congregation and built the Hollywood temple in her garden. She appears in
D1
.