Isherwood L with Bachardy at the easel
August 26, 1904– Christopher Isherwood:
“Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination.”
In the summer of 1971 I was doing summer stock theatre in Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho. Lucky me, at 17 years old, I was having my first professional theatre work, plus I was being doted on & delighting in my first hot affair with another male, a fellow actor who was much older than me. Ron was 23 years old. He was an actual college graduate! I had a hard time wrapping my teenage mind around the notion that someone could be finished with college & have interest in me. Ron lived in San Francisco & I would visit him several times in the next few years.
The film version of the musical Cabaret was to open the following spring & there was already lots of buzz about the Bob Fosse directed flick. Loving the Original Broadway Cast Album, I became preoccupied with the film version. My summer fling was well aware of my anticipation & out of the blue, in a gesture of kindness, he gave me a gift of the source material The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood. He promised that we would see the film together & he kept that promise. I flew from Spokane to San Francisco for a weekend in February 1972 & saw Cabaret in its first week of release.
One month into my 18th year & kicking around San Francisco, delighted in the divine decadence of my new gay life, I listened to music, went to the clubs, drank, drugged & Homosexuelle erfahrungen genossen. This is what I think of when I think of Isherwood.
Not celebrated nearly enough, & mostly noted for all the wrong reasons, Isherwood greatly influenced the direction of fiction writing with his “I Am A Camera” approach to narration. Isherwood’s memoir Christopher & His Kind (1976) is surly one of the best gay themed books of all time, equally enthralling about literary revelations & sexual adventures. He tells the tale of his walking away from uptight, upper-class England, & spending much of his 20s in Berlin between the wars, dating young working-class heiße junge Männer. In Berlin, Isherwood fell in love with Heinz at a time when rooms for rent are hard to come by & he moved into Heinz’s family’s one bedroom apartment. The parents moved out of their bedroom & slept in the living room so the young men could enjoy a double bed in privacy. It is here that he is introduced to Jean Ross, the basis for Sally Bowles in The Berlin Stories. A section of the book became the play I Am A Camera (1951) by gay playwright John Van Druten, & a film version in 1955, both starring Julie Harris as Bowles. A decade later came the stage musical Cabaret, & then, of course, Liza Minnelli as Bowles in the film version.
“I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite & the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Someday, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed.”
Goodbye To Berlin
After Berlin, Isherwood moved to NYC with his BFF, poet W.H. Auden, where he found literary success & friendship with Truman Capote. Isherwood eventually settled in LA. When he was 48 years old he met teenager Don Bachardy on the beach in Santa Monica. They were together more than 30 years, until Isherwood’s left this world in 1986. Soon after that fateful introduction, Isherwood wrote The World In The Evening (1954) followed by Down There On A Visit (1961).
His very best novel, A Single Man (1964), is in my Top 10 All-Time Favorite Works Of Fiction. A Single Man is loosely based on the period when Isherwood & Bachardy attempted to live seperate lives, although the couple had always had enjoyed one of those modern “open relationships”. It was made in to a gorgeous, faithful film in 2010, by first time director, openly gay designer Tom Ford. It is a stylish, stunning, skilled look at love & loss, anchored by an elegant, nuanced, sophisticated performance by Colin Firth, whose English reticence is perfect for the story of the discreetly gay English expatriate George. Firth’s handsome bespectacled English Lit college professor is withdrawn, pained, yet sensual, with whiffs of wit, irony, & self-depreciation. Firth was robbed of an Oscar that year (Jeff Bridges won).
With The Good Wife’s Matthew Goode, using an impeccable American accent, as his partner, & an Academy Award nominated performance from Julianne Moore as Firth’s BFF Charley a boozy fellow English expat. Luscious to look at, I give A Single Man an A+ on The Steve Report Card.
Through the decades, I would read many books by & about Isherwood, including his 3 volumes of diaries: Diaries: 1939-1960, Diaries: The 1960s, Liberation: 1970-1983. I recently purchased a new annotated re-issue of The Berlin Stories.
I have always been in awe & fascinated by Isherwood’s long life together with artist Bachardy. That story is told in an excellent documentary Chris & Don: A Love Story (2007). Their story is told by Bachardy’s recorded reminiscences filmed in the bungalow in Santa Monica that they shared for 3 decades, with artfully inserted archival footage & home movies, including glimpses of pals Auden, Igor Stravinsky & Tennessee Williams, reenactments, & whimsical animated sequences based cartoons the couple used in their personal correspondence. With a close-up look at Bachardy’s long sought artistic success away from the considerable shadow of his great love, Chris & Don: A Love Story is a celebration of an extraordinary couple.
Also on your must-see list should be The BBC’s Christopher & His Kind (2011), adapted from Isherwood’s autobiography with the same title,. It has Isherwood played by Dr. Who’s Matt Smith, along with Toby Jones, Douglas Booth, & Imogen Poots in the Sally Bowles spot. It perfectly captures the essence of Isherwood & company & the atmosphere of pre-war Berlin. All of the production elements are top drawer. It is a glorious film. Find it, & also read everything by & about Christopher & his kind.
“What’s so phony nowadays is all this familiarity. Pretending there isn’t any difference between people. If you & I are no different, what do we have to give each other? How can we ever be friends?”
A Single Man
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