This Day in Literary History (Death of Christopher Isherwood, ‘Cabaret’ Chronicler)

Jan. 4, 1986—Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, memoirist, and diarist Christopher Isherwood died of prostate cancer at age 81 in Santa Monica, CA.

Thousands of Broadway playgoers and even more movie and TV fans may have seen the Cabaret without associating it with Isherwood, whose Berlin Stories inspired the musical about decadent Weimar Germany. The latter came from the first decade of his writing career, when as part of the “Auden Circle” of modernist British and Irish writers, he became associated with left-wing politics and was hailed as “the hope of English fiction” by critic Cyril Connolly.

After emigrating to America with W.H. Auden as Britain was on the brink of war in 1939—a move denounced as cowardice in the face of the Nazi threat by the pair’s critics—Isherwood moved his career and lifestyle in entirely new directions—including, for that atheist, a conversion to Hinduism (and even a brief time as a monk in the 1940s) and three decades of what he cheerfully admitted was hackwork as a Hollywood screenwriter.

Most significantly, following his decision to publicly acknowledge his own sexual orientation in 1971, he emerged as a kind of godfather figure to gay authors including the likes of Truman Capote, Edmund White, Armistead Maupin, Patricia Highsmith, and Gore Vidal.

Did Isherwood deserve Vidal’s praise in a 1976 New York Review of Books assessment as “the best prose writer in English”? I’m inclined to see that as exaggeration—or, more charitably, an expression of Vidal’s gratitude for championing his work at the start of his career. Even so, Isherwood is an important writer and his work contains considerable merit.

The clarity, even transparency, of his prose masks how complex his artistic vision could be, just as his much-discussed wit and charm could often obscure his complicated personality.

Perhaps the most famous line in all of his work, from Berlin Stories (1930)—“I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking”—encourages a sense of his objectivity. That is crucial because, as an early practitioner of metafiction, Isherwood frequently      created a persona explicitly named “Christopher Isherwood.”

Conversely, his memoirs, which readers would normally view as more reality-based than his fiction, also employed composite characters, chronicled events out of sequence, or reshaped the telling of events in ways that differed from the actual occurrences as recorded in his diaries.

Isherwood’s style is uncluttered, concise and graceful, adding to the believability of both his fiction and nonfiction. Whether in bohemian Berlin of the interwar period or the European emigres and New Age devotees of Southern California’s postwar era, his nonjudgmental “eye” takes in all it sees.

Though influential and helpful to many people, Isherwood was not always admirable. Interviews and documentary evidence from his extensive diaries led biographers Peter Parker and Katherine Bucknell to conclude that he could also be drunken, neurotic, promiscuous (an an estimated 400 lovers by age 44), and even antisemitic.

I find Isherwood’s relationship to Hollywood particularly fascinating. His movie and TV assignments often involved subjects he surely did not find congenial (for example, as I mentioned in this post from 17 years ago about “Silent Night” composer Franz Gruber).

But what Hollywood chronicler Tom Dardis called “Some Time in the Sun” for famous novelists-turned-screenwriters like F. Scott Fitzgerald not only gave Isherwood a lifestyle far more comfortable than he had enjoyed in Britain but also fueled his creativity. Prater Violet (1945), for example, is still considered one of the best fictional representations of the Hollywood “dream factory.”

When it came time to adapt Cabaret from stage to screen, director Bob Fosse made an unexpectedly felicitous decision, by casting Michael York—practically a dead ringer for the young Isherwood—in the role of the author’s alter ego “Brian.”

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. Paul to the Thessalonians, on ‘Children of the Light’)

“You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.”—1 Thessalonians 5: 5-11 (New International Version)

The 1612 image accompanying this post, Apostle St. Paul, was painted by the Spanish Renaissance painter, sculptor, and architect El Greco (1541-1614), and hangs in Museo del Greco, Toledo, Spain.

This Day in Science History (Why Leonardo’s Flight Experiment Failed)

January 3, 1496—The restless curiosity of Leonardo da Vinci took wing literally, as the Renaissance painter tested a flying machine of his own device, a precursor of today’s helicopter. Unfortunately, the experiment failed, as he was unable to overcome the limitations of his time.

In a blog post from six years ago on Leonardo as a “Renaissance Man,” I discussed how science represented only one facet of his many interests: painting, sculpting, botany, architecture, urban planning, public spectacle and pageantry, and music.

But Leonardo’s aviation experiments, particularly on this occasion, deserve more in-depth analysis of how they foundered—and why his failure to disseminate his ideas slowed scientific progress for the next four centuries.

It took Leonardo a few more years before he realized that human beings did not have the appropriate proportion of muscles to weight that enabled flight of the birds that long fascinated him (more than 35,000 words and 500 sketches dealing with flying machines, the nature of air, and bird flight). At that point he turned his attention to gliders.

But besides this initial failure of understanding, Leonardo was handicapped by the lack of lightweight material like aluminum or strong propulsion systems like engines that later made man-made flight possible.

Science history is filled with examples of how technology trigger new ways of thinking that in turn make new inventions possible. Leonardo didn’t have trouble with concepts or imagining new realities. But the lack of necessary technology meant that his flying machine would be incapable of momentary flight, let alone the sustained kind.

The title of the podcast “The Brilliant, Groundbreaking, and Wildly Overrated Leonardo da Vinci" concisely summarizes the contrary negative view of Leonardo’s scientific achievement. To be sure, Sam Kean makes a couple of valid points: that Leonardo couldn’t concentrate enough to bring projects to fruition, and that by working in isolation he was unable to benefit from research by others that would either spark his creativity or correct his hypotheses.

However, Kean doesn’t take into account a few factors about Leonardo’s intellect and environment that may have affected how he worked.

First, why couldn’t the artist concentrate, particularly when the inability to do so severely disappointed patrons? I wondered if this might have been because he was manifesting adult ADHD, and sure enough that was strongly suggested in a 2019 study by King's College London researcher Professor Marco Catani.

The lack of collaboration requires even more context. At least as far as his painting was concerned, Leonardo did collaborate, through a common artistic practice of the Renaissance—employing young assistants who, by carrying out his instructions, could learn the craft themselves.

But when it came to science, he may have been afraid to let others know his thoughts. It was less a matter of paranoia that someone else might steal his ideas than a more justifiable fear that unconventional scientific conclusions could contradict Roman Catholic teaching and lead to heresy charges.

Consider, for instance, Copernicus (unwilling to publish his theory of a sun-centered universe until he was on the brink of death in 1543) or Galileo (who, a century after Leonardo, did attract the unfortunate attention of the Inquisition with his own astronomical studies).

Finally, Leonardo's opportunities to work with other scientists were few to far between. The first scientific society didn't start until Rome's Accademia dei Lincei (Lincean Academy) in 1601, two centuries after his speculations on flight.

In any case, posterity had no opportunity to benefit from his notes (in which the left-handed artist used "mirror writing," most likely either to prevent smudged notes or to force concentration).

Leonardo's 28,000 surviving pages, in notebooks and codices, were scattered after his death in 1519. After his papers were collated and decoded, they would not be published until  well into the 1800s, by which time most of the important early work in aerodynamics had been published.

Quote of the Day (Eudora Welty, on a Teenaged Girl’s Winter ‘Visit of Charity’)

“It was mid-morning—a very cold, bright day. Holding a potted plant before her, a girl of fourteen jumped off the bus in front of the Old Ladies’ Home, on the outskirts of town. She wore a red coat, and her straight yellow hair was hanging down loose from the pointed white cap all the little girls were wearing that year. She stopped for a moment beside one of the prickly dark shrubs with which the city had beautified the Home, and then proceeded slowly toward the building, which was of whitewashed brick and reflected the winter sunlight like a block of ice. As she walked vaguely up the steps she shifted the small pot from hand to hand; then she had to set it down and remove her mittens before she could open the heavy door.

“ ‘“I’m a Campfire Girl. ... I have to pay a visit to some old lady,’ she told the nurse at the desk.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning Southern novelist, short story writer, and photographer Eudora Welty (1909-2001), “A Visit of Charity,” in The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (1983)

TV Quote of the Day (‘All in the Family,’ With ‘Archie Bunker's Bicentennial Minute’)

Archie Bunker [played by Carroll O’Connor] [to liberal son-in-law Mike Stivic]: “That ain't the American way, buddy. No, siree. Listen here, professor. You're the one who needs an American History lesson. You don't know nothin' about Lady Liberty standin' there in the harbor, with her torch on high, screamin' out to all the nations in the world: ‘Send me your poor, your deadbeats, your filthy.’ And all the nations send 'em in here, they come swarming in like ants. Your Spanish P.R.'s from the Caribboin, your Japs, your Chinamen, your Krauts, and your Hebes, and your English fags. All of 'em come in here and they're all free to live in their own separate sections where they feel safe. And they'll bust your head if you go in there. That's what makes America great, buddy.” [exits the Stivic house]

Mike Stivic [played by Rob Reiner] [to Gloria]: “I think we just heard ‘Archie Bunker's Bicentennial Minute.’"—All in the Family, Season 6, Episode 7, “Mike Faces Life,” original air date Oct. 27, 1975, teleplay by Mel Tolkin, Larry Rhine, and Johnny Speight, directed by Paul Bogart

I felt a shock of recognition when I heard about these lines a few weeks ago. For starters, it was Archie’s benighted view of immigration—one, with its nonstop onslaught of slurs and utter disregard for any notion of a "melting pot," that might have seemed ready to fade into the margins a half-century ago, but resurgent now, with the issue even central to the 2024 Presidential election.

But that phrase “Bicentennial Minute” also struck a chord with me. These short educational segments commemorating the American Revolution aired on CBS—the same network that ran All in the Family—from July 4, 1974, until December 31, 1976.

During that two-year period, one of my high school’s history teachers thought of including similar segments during morning announcements. I was selected to write them. 

Though I enjoyed learning about such bits of history, I came to groan each time as I watched members of my homeroom roll their eyes when the pieces were read into a microphone in the principal’s office and heard all over the school.

It’s funny how the world turns. Public television viewers were lucky to take in Ken Burns’ documentary series on the Revolutionary War, rolling out with greater depth and complexity than those “Bicentennial Minutes.”

On the other hand, the White House has announced the Salute to America 250 Task Force (“Task Force 250”). One of its early initiatives, “The Patriot Games,” doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence, with a name sounding all too much like “The Hunger Games.” How much will its participants learn about the groups that heeded the call of Lady Liberty?

This Day in New York City History (‘Beau James’ Walker Inaugurated Mayor)

Jan. 1, 1926—In a pattern that held true for his attendance at major public meetings for the next seven years, Jimmy Walker was late—by 90 minutes—for his own inauguration as New York mayor.

This time, he had a valid excuse: he and wife Allie were helplessly mired in the traffic that had come to clog the streets of Gotham with the rise of the automobile—a problem he intended to alleviate once he took the oath of office.

As he becomes the focus of the same ceremony, Zohran Mamdani maintains a relationship with the electorate significantly different from Walker’s, going beyond the fact that the former is an insurgent with democratic socialist sympathies while the latter was a product of the Tammany Hall political machine.

No, those who cast their ballots for Walker (and even many of those who didn’t) couldn’t help liking him; Mandami’s voters believe in him. If that trust is ever broken, God help him.

Sharing a hotel room with Walker on a trip to Albany, Gov. Alfred E. Smith, remarking on his protégé’s slender form in multicolored pajamas, compared him to a candy cane. In time, the wisecrack assumed a double meaning. Like that confection, Walker was fun to take in but not as substantive as might be wished.

By the conclusion of his time in office—induced by a wide-ranging corruption probe by Judge Samuel Seabury—Walker earned several nicknames, including “Gentleman Jimmy,” “The Night Mayor,” “The Jazz Mayor,” and, inevitably, given an incurable tendency to tardiness that even delayed him from meeting with President Calvin Coolidge for 40 minutes, “The Late Mayor.”

But I prefer the one I heard nearly half a century ago, the title of a 1957 biopic starring Bob Hope: “Beau James,” a moniker that underscored his reputation as a dandy.

If you want a more complete idea of Walker’s colorful personality, then I urge you to read my blog post from nearly 16 years ago that took as its point of departure Red Smith’s dazzling reminiscences.

But the post you’re reading now focuses on several of the flamboyant politician’s policies—and the extent to which his managerial strengths and weaknesses, along with the contemporary environment, affected his ability to implement them.

In the attached blog post from nearly five years ago, longtime NYC archivist Kenneth Cobb paid Walker the compliment of taking his work seriously—something that the mayor all too often did not. 

Similar to Bill O’Dwyer at City Hall 20 years later, Walker was a glad-handing pol with great ability to maneuver others toward a desired outcome, but often beset by stress and ill health and disposed towards delegating matters to energetic but hard-pressed staffers.

In contrast to O’Dwyer, Walker’s ailments were more severe and self-induced. His epic nocturnal partying required him to sleep it all off, exacerbated his allergy towards handling difficult problems early in the morning, and drove him towards frequent vacations, including to Europe and Palm Springs—a total of 143 days in his first two years alone. 

The result: for seven years, New York not only had a “night mayor,” but a part-time one.

The place to start in assessing Walker is his inaugural address, where he outlined several key areas of concern: health, business conditions, housing, transportation, education, parks and recreation, child welfare, and police and fire protection.

This is the kind of speech almost any New York mayor would give. In fact, its surprising aspects, considering Walker’s prior reputation as a witty party leader in the State Senate and his subsequent bantering with the press, are its lack of memorable lines and overall seriousness.

It turned out that Walker did achieve some of his goals, including:

*establishing the Department of Sanitation—implementing “the first major improvement in the city’s sewage problem in its history,” according to Donald Miller’s history of Jazz Age Manhattan, Supreme City;

*creating a City Committee on Plan and Survey that ended up watered down by Democratic borough sachems and eventually eliminated through budget cuts in the Depression, but not before advancing the ideal of an objective master plan for the city;

*expanding parks and playgrounds by purchasing thousands of acres;

*enhancing public health by consolidating 26 municipal hospitals under a single commissioner, authorizing massive hospital construction and modernizing Bellevue’s psychopathic division;

*supporting civic aviation by initiating construction of Floyd Bennett Field, the city’s first municipal airport;

*maintaining the five-cent subway fare;

*presided over the opening of the first section of the Independent (IND) subway system; and,

*spearheaded construction of the West Side Highway.

Ironically, the beginning of the end for Walker began within only a few days of his greatest political triumph: a reelection victory in November 1929, as he took 60% of the vote compared with 25% for Republican Fiorello LaGuardia and 12% for Socialist Norman Thomas.

But the stock-market crash that occurred on “Black Tuesday” at the end of October meant that the mayor could no longer count on a vigorous private sector to fund his ambitious new programs—and that there would be less patience for stunts like signing into law a pay raise for himself as the first order of business in his second term.

Franklin Roosevelt, now in charge in Albany and with his eye on the White House, instigated the Seabury inquiry that turned up the heat on Walker through the spring and summer of 1932. 

But in the end it was Walker’s mentor Al Smith—no longer in office but out of patience with the "candy cane's" blatant philandering and laziness—who delivered the coup de grace, bluntly telling him, “You’re through.” That night, at the beginning of September, Walker wrote his letter of resignation, effective immediately.

Charm and generosity have enabled many politicians to survive all kinds of disasters, and Walker demonstrated those attributes to an unusual degree.

You will find no argument from me that he was fiscally fraudulent. (Herbert Mitgang’s history of the Seabury investigation, Once Upon a Time in New York, leaves no doubt on that score.) 

But his corruption pales next to the current Presidential administration, and unlike the present Oval Office incumbent he spurned attempts at naming after himself initiatives he had championed. “The mayor of New York still believes himself to be a public servant and not a potentate,” he said.

Moreover, for everyone who rightly recalls the bribes and what Walker termed “beneficences” that came his way for those courting favors, you will discover someone else with ancestors who survived in difficult times through charity arranged or personally distributed by him.

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Horse Feathers,’ With Groucho in a Unique College Football Moment)

Referee [sees Wagstaff lying in the middle of the field with a cigar]: “What are you doing with that cigar in your mouth?”

Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff [played by Groucho Marx)]: “Why? Do you know another way to smoke it?”—Horse Feathers (1932), written by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, S.J. Perelman, Will B. Johnstone, and Arthur Skeekman (uncredited)

Wouldn’t you find the football game in Horse Feathers a lot more unexpected and entertaining than any of the bowl games you’ll watch on TV today?