Latest Blog Posts
Wiesenthal considered
By Tom Teicholz on September 3, 2010
Tom Segev’s “Simon WIesenthal” The life and Legends” (Doubleday) has just been published and is getting some interesting response. A positive and stirring review from Dwight Garner in the New York Times, “The Man Who Refused to Forget,” and a more critical by equally passionate one by Ron Rosenbaum, “Self made Golem” at Tablet, the online publication.
I have not read the book yet but I look forward to doing so.
Disclosure: i know Tom and we emailed when he began the project — and of course, my father knew Wiesenthal. Segev told me he had come across some correspondence between them and I am curious to see if any of that turns up or informs the book.
From the reviews, it sounds like Segev pretty much agrees with the take I took in my obituary column on Wiesenthal:
a complicated individual, a man with great faults who cared when others didn’t and made the world pay attention when they didn’t, who pursued those Holocaust criminals who imagined no one would survive to make the account for their crimes, or worse yet no one would care, who was, in the words of one of the reviews, “a necessary irritant.”
Alain Corneau, famous French director, dies
By Tom Teicholz on August 31, 2010
Alain Corneau, the famous French director and writer is dead.
Here is his New York Times obit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/movies/31corneau.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries
He was most famous for “Tous les matins du monde” which starred Gerard Depardieu but the reason I was familiar with his work was because he the director and co-writer of “Police Python .357″ a movie that I’ve been attempting to produce a remake of for almost a decade (if not more).
Police Python is a great thriller starring Yves Montand and Simone Signoret — It is a classic “policier” a cop thriller of the 70s –. I am tempted to write about the challenges of the police thriller in today’s marketplace — and maybe I will do so. But for now, adieu Alain Corneau.
TOLDJA! Skirball’s copy of Nuremburg laws reclaimed by National Archives
By Tom Teicholz on August 26, 2010
Nikki Finke has made TOLDJA one of her signature blog exclamations, but I couldn’t help borrowing it in this case.
A few years ago when I wrote about the sketchy provenance of the Huntington Librarys Nazi holdings, gifts by General George Patton of items he took possession of at war’s end, some thought I was making a mountain out of a molehill. I warned that while these documents were on display in LA one should hurry to see them because one day they might be taken away.
That day has come to pass. TOLDJA!
To read my original article “Whose Nuremberg Laws are They?” click on the link below:
http://tommywood.com/2007/05/whose-nuremberg-laws-are-they.html
THE CIRCUS BACK IN TOWN - BETTER THAN EVER!
By Tom Teicholz on July 16, 2010
“Funundrum” this years Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey show, is filled with new technology and harks back to the circus’ roots and tradition. I have to say that it may be their best show in recent years.
THEY ARE PLAYING IN LOS ANGELES AT STAPLES THIS WEEKEND(JULY 16, 17,18), AND THEN WILL BE AT THE CITIZEN’S BANK ARENA IN ONTARIO (JULY 21-25), AND THEN ANAHEIM HONDA CENTER (JULY 28-AUG 8). TICKETS AVAILABLE — CHECK THE WEB….
What I liked most is that it is filled with acts and full of FUN!!!– the three rings have returned and are being filled and the pace is fast — one of my objections to the Circque du Soleil shows is that every motion is protracted to squeeze the maximum amount of artiste sensibility, but there is too much time between acts and the whole thing moves somewhat glacially.
Most of my readers know that I have a soft spot for the circus — particularly for the old fashioned three ring variety, full of showbiz hokum and razzle dazzle, with high wire artists, acrobats, and animal acts.
For the last several years my daughter has been kind enough to indulge going with me. Each year I fear she’ll say she’s too old, and each year she says she still wants to go. And, in truth, I always think: If I’m not too old for the circus, why would she be?
My daughter’s review: “It was really great — really eye-catching. We loved the llamas! And the family of motorcyclists in the metal cage was really scary — and cool.” And there you have it!
There was much use of Segways and other new technology: There were metal scrims on which there are projections of images and illustrations harking back to Barnum of old — the sideshows, the wild west show, even a souped up version of the old clown car routine, etc…. At the same time the acts themselves now wear brighter colors and often like like cartoon and superheroes to hold the attention of kids reared on a steady diet of TV and video games.
There were some truly mind boggling acts this year: from chinese contortionists and Ukrainian acrobats, to a Mongolian strongman and a high wire act that involved going up a 45 degree angle.
The other night on cable I watched Trapeze, the Burt Lancaster-Tony Curtis-Gina Lollabrigida circus love triangle movie, that centered on the attempt to do a triple on the trapeze. That film is around 50 years old. Well The Flying Carceres Trapeze act began with a triple, but when they attempted to do a quadruple they failed — showing that the essential verities and boudaries of human ability are still being pushed and as difficult as ever.
There were clowns aplenty (although we did miss BELLO) and dancers and singing numbers. There was the ringmaster who, at every opportunity called out to “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN AND CHILDREN OF ALL AGES.”
And yes, there were the animal acts — jumping dogs, prancing llamas, donkeys. There were horses, and tigers of course — (not as fearsome as in years past) and yes there were the elephants and even a 1 year old baby born the day before the current president’s inaugauration and named Barack in his honor.
This show was produced by sisters Nicole and Alana Feld and written by Bradley Zweig and what they have figured out brilliantly is that at this point the Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey Circus is a matter of tradition — of people who recall going with their parents, and of people wanting to create memories and traditions of going with their children — and that it is the traditional elements that people are paying to see when they come to this circus — they want more animal acts not less, more death-defying trapeze and aerial acts –they want the traditions [AND YES PLEASE ONCE AGAIN BRING BACK THE HUMAN CANNONBALL]at the same time using the technology to make it all seem as contemporary as possible — and fast paced!!!! provides for a three ring circus that remains, a treasure for CHILDREN OF ALL AGES, such as my daughter, her friend, — and me!
THEY RINGLING BROTHES BARNUM AND BAILEY CIRCUS IS PLAYING IN LOS ANGELES AT STAPLES THIS WEEKEND(JULY 16, 17,18), AND THEN WILL BE AT THE CITIZEN’S BANK ARENA IN ONTARIO (JULY 21-25), AND THEN ANAHEIM HONDA CENTER (JULY 28-AUG 8). TICKETS AVAILABLE — CHECK THE WEB…
Skirball Concert Series
By Tom Teicholz on May 14, 2010
From Brittany Lambertus, publicist at Rock Paper Scissors, here’s info about the Skirball’s Summer concert series:
Each week, the Skirball Cultural Center presents a new world music artist in an effort to connect people to one another and share their many different cultural heritages.
“Though many think of the Skirball as a primarily Jewish organization, our mission is about inclusion.
- Jordan Peimer, Skirball Director of Programs
And in their fourteenth year, they’ve really learned how to please a crowd. Putting a heavy focus on booking groovable music and creating an atmosphere welcoming the dance floor fanatics, the organization is dedicated to delivering the perfect outdoor concert.
“People like to be outdoors and move. So we offer something that people can get involved in and really dance to. It’s festive and boisterous.” - Yatrika Shah-Rais, Skirball Music Director
Sunset Concerts Series 2010 Lineup…
07/22 Parno Graszt (Hungarian gypsies) http://tinyurl.com/ParnoGraszt
07/29 Natacha Atlas (Arabic-flavored electronica vocalist) http://tinyurl.com/NatachaAtlas
08/05 Steve Riley & The Mamou Playboys (Cajun n’ Creole) http://tinyurl.com/SRiley
08/12 La Excelencia (revolutionary salsa ambassadors) http://tinyurl.com/LaExcelencia
08/19 Jews on Vinyl Revue (revered veterans alongside the up n’ coming) http://tinyurl.com/Jvinyl
08/26 Kenge Kenge (Kenyan roots music) http://tinyurl.com/KengeKenge
Concert details…
Skirball Cultural Center
2701 North Sepulveda Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA
Thursdays, (July 22-August 26)
Doors Open: 7:00 pm, Show: 8:00 pmFree
No reservations
Limited seating on a first-come, first-served basis
On-site parking available:
$5 per car containing three or more people,
$10 otherwise (cash only)
No street parking permitted
Ph: 310.440.4500
Q & A with JEFF BRIDGES by Tom Teicholz
By Tom Teicholz on March 11, 2010
When Jeff Bridges won the Academy Award for best actor for his performance in “Crazy Heart,” and spoke so wonderfully about his parents and their influence on his being an actor, it reminded me that many, many years ago, in 1982, I had interviewed Jeff Bridges for Andy Warhol’s INTERVIEW magazine and that he had expressed the same sentiments — so much so that the article was titled “Families: A Hollywood tradition continues.”
The interview took place at Interview’s offices on Union Square (the second factory), and I recall that we ended up having lunch in the wood paneled boardroom and that Andy Warhol came by and joined us and spoke very knowledgeably about the artwork in the room (late 19th Century or early 20th Century American), almost like an art history professor.
Recalling all this made me head for my garage in search of a copy of the INTERVIEW published in the April 1982 issue (Clio Goldsmith of “The Gift” was on the cover), which is not available digitally online from Interview’s archives. Turns out that when I got my copy, I had Andy sign it.
One other funny coincidence — in the interview Bridges talks about the possibility of a TRON II — well, this year a remake of TRON is coming out! So, for it seems all the more appropriate to revisit my conversation with Jeff Bridges as it appeared in the April 1982 issue of INTERVIEW.
Families: a Hollywood tradition continues
Jeff Bridges
by
Tom Teicholz
Acting is the family business for Jeff Bridges. With father Lloyd Bridges (of television’s “Sea Hunt’’) and older brother Beau as examples, it didn’t take long before Jeff followed. Acclaim proceeded soon thereafter with an Academy Award nomination for “The Last Picture Show” in 1971, and again for his performance in “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” (1974). Other credits include John Huston’s “Fat City” (1972), “Rancho Deluxe” (1974), the infamous “Heaven’s Gate,” “Cutter’s Way” and the fantastic computer adventure “Tron.” Jeff Bridges can currently be seen in 20th Century Fox’s “Kiss Me Goodbye” with Sally Fields and James Caan. This spring he will be very visible when The Invisible Studio—which Claire Townsend and William Richert formed—re-releases two films which Mr. Richert wrote and directed and in which Jeff Bridges stars. “Winter Kills”(which co-stars John Hus ton and Tony Perkins) and “Success” (which features Bianca Jagger).
TOM TEICHOLZ: Is there anything, when you read scripts, that makes you choose the films you do? Is there anything you’re looking for?
JEFF BRIDGES: Each one is for a different reason. Often it’s the people involved who you want to play with. The story and the character have a lot to do with it. In some movies, Tron for instance, I wanted to do that just because of the groundbreaking aspects of the technology.
TT: What was it like to act in Tron—I saw it twice—in a lot of the scenes you must have been acting in the black?
JB: Right, it was very weird. White leotard, dance belt and black velvet.
TT: Do you think that acting is in any way easier because you grew up with it?
JB: Well, it was definitely easier to get into it—one of the toughest things about acting is trying to get your foot in the door, so that came quite easily.
TT: You did some episodes of “Sea Hunt.”
JB: Yes, even before that I sometimes played the little baby who was carried on. But yes, I did three or four “Sea Hunts.”
TT: Did your brother also?
JB: Yes, but the three of us never worked together.
TT: Your brother is eight years older. Are there any other children?
JB: Cindy, my sister.
TT: What does she do?
JB: She occasionally acts, but primarily she’s a mother, raising a family.
TT: And your father was in “Airplane.”
JB: Yes. He’s also in “Airplane II” and probably III.
TT: Is there going to be a “Tron II”?
JB: I hope so. A new “Tron.” If there is, it will really make this one seem very primitive because this one was totally experimental. We all learned so much and the next one should be really exciting if there is one. It will depend on how it does.
TT: We all know about your father and your brother, what about your mother?
JB: She’s the real star of the family.
TT: How so?
JB: God, where do you begin on Dorothy? She used to do this thing with her kids that was quite interesting where every day for an hour she would give each child what she called “time,” and that meant she wouldn’t take any phone calls and would be totally dedicated to that particular child. She had three kids so that meant three hours of every day would be spent with the kids, but intensely. The kids could include their friends if they wanted to or the other brothers and sisters, or not do the time, but it was always there for them. When we were little kids, we would get her make-up out and make her up—draw weird stuff all over her face or have her be a horse and carry us all under the tables.
TT: She continued to have this time with you all the way through?
JB: Still today, if we want our time, she’s there. The other thing that was so exciting about it—I didn’t appreciate it then, but I do now—it was done with no sense of sacrifice on her part. She really looks at her children as sort of treasures and it gives her great pleasure to spend time with us.
TT: Did she encourage you in your acting career or did she say, “Be a carpenter, enough of this.”
JB: No. I was watching her with my sister’s little boy and she was having him go through the paces, saying “Look happy. Look sad. Now look like you love me.”
TT: Did you do that as a child?
JB: Sure, are you kidding?
TT: So she was your first acting coach?
JB: Yes. Probably before my father and brother there was my mother and Christmas plays and everything. She’s also a terrific writer. She’s been married for 45 years and she’s kept a diary every day and now she’s in the process of breaking the diary down according to the children and, like, wherever my name is mentioned in the diary, put that in my book—what she was feeling at different times of my own life, what she was going through—it’s interesting. She’s in the process of doing that and also has a publishing deal. She wrote, I think, six chapters from this diary, so she’s in the process of making a book out of it based on those writings. She’s a remarkable woman and occasionally she acts—very rarely, but that’s where my father met her, at the U.C.L.A. drama department.
TT: When they were students?
JB: My father was the president of the drama department there and my mother was the young starlet.
TT: Were you ever, or are you ever, competitive with your brother in terms of acting?
JB: No, we’re sort of on the same team and get a lot of support from each other and encouragement and so forth.
TT: After you finished high school you came to New York to study acting?
JB: Yes, briefly. At the Berghoff Studio.
TT: You decided you needed the training or needed to get away from California?
JB: Let’s see, what was it? My father was doing Cactus Flower out here at the time. I was about to go into the Coast Guard Reserve. -
TT: A little Sea Hunt experience?
JB: That was definitely the in. It was pretty much just coming out here with the family and then looking for something to do and I figured I’d see what the acting class would be like. I studied with Alice Spivak—she was very nice. I can’t really remember too much of what went on.
TT: Did you join the Coast Guard?
JB: Yes, I did.
TT: How many years?
JB: God, it must have been seven or eight years. It wasn’t that bad. There were some good elements to it.
TT: Were you opposed to the war in Vietnam? Was there a conflict between you and your family?
JB: No, they wanted to make sure they did everything they could to make sure I didn’t get offed.
TT: Did this get you out of the draft basically? Was that your primary motivation?
JB: I remember when this decision actually came over whether or not to get into the Coast Guard, I was 16 or 17. I didn’t have too much political consciousness at the time. My basic motivation was just saving my ass.
TT: That certainly is a motivation.
JB: Yes, it’s probably the big one. To do the Coast Guard thing, you had to sign up two or three years before you were even eligible. So I made the choice pretty early.
TT: For a while you seemed to be a searcher and seemed, at least publicly, to be searching for something through drugs, personal development, things like that. Are you still searching?
JB: Oh, a little bit. Celebrating more.
TT: Celebrating what?
JB: What I’ve found, I guess.
TT: What’s that?
JB: It’s like “There’s no place like home’ ‘—all those things that you … you know, love….
TT: What do you think is necessary to find those things? Do you think you have to go through—
JB: I didn’t have to necessarily, I just did. Most of the searching or exploring—I didn’t really learn so much new as much as it supported what I already had inklings that it was about. I haven’t changed that much since I was a little, tiny kid. I’m involved with a group called the Los Angeles World Hunger Event—I’m involved with a couple of different organizations, but this particular one is involved with doing media events to try to do something about ending world hunger. We were talking about that searching. You see that where the journey leads is finally out into the world. So for the last five or six years I’ve been looking at, and exploring, what I can do to make the world fit into more positive pictures.
TT: Has all this helped your acting?
JB: Oh, yeah. You’re constantly learning new things. It’s funny, when you get married and have a kid, it’s a big change.
TT: Do you live mostly in LA?
JB: I live in Montana.
TT: I know Rancho Deluxe was shot out there. Is that close to where you live?
JB: Yes. As a matter of fact, that’s where I met my wife, on that picture.
TT: She was an actress?
JB: She was working on a dude ranch. She’s from North Dakota originally. We live right in the valley where we met. It’s very romantic for us there.
TT: Is that near Tom McGuahe’s property?
JB: Yes, near.
TT: Do you see much of him?
JB: Yes, we see each other when we’re there.
TT: Now, two films that you did, “Winter Kills” and “Success,” have been recently re released just like “Cutter’s Way.”
JB: Yeah, that got a little resurrection which felt real good, too.
TT: It’s interesting that they re-release films which probably didn’t get the attention they deserved. Did you enjoy working with John Huston in “Winter Kills”?
JB: Very much. He had directed “Fat City” and it was interesting how different it was working with him as an actor. In “Fat City” he really didn’t go out of his way—this is my own impression of him and, as a matter of fact, I never talked to him about it—he knew that I was in awe of him—he was a master and here I was working with the stars, relatively new at the game. He really didn’t go out of his way to make me feel especially comfortable. I think he liked that little edge he was getting, kind of keeping me on my toes. Working with him as an actor, he went out of his way to let everyone know he was just one of the boys, one of the players, and he was very respectful of the director—really terrific to work with. I really admire him.
TT: So what are your future projects?
JB: I have no idea. Nothing is set yet. I’d like to do more of a dramatic role next time out if I get the right script.
TT: Does stage work interest you?
JB: Yes. The time that it keeps you out of circulation as far as movies go is kind of scary to me, but now I understand they’re doing a lot of short run shows here with movie actors and I guess they’re taping them and putting them on cable.
TT: You haven’t done that much television.
JB: I did in the early part of my career but I just haven’t done that too much lately.
TT: For any reason?
JB: There seems to be a little less care in TV for some reason, although I just did Shelly Duvall’s “Fairytale.”
TT: Which one were you in?
JB: Rapunzel, with Gena Rowlands as the witch and Shelly as Rapunzel. It was very fast. What you would take fifteen days to shoot in a movie, they shoot in a day or even quicker than that.
TT: So you like your job?
JB: Love it.
TT: What does it do for you?
JB: There are so many elements I love. For one thing I’m a totally different person when I’m working than when I’m off work. When I’m not working I kind of get over-mellow and gain about fifteen pounds and grow all the hairs on my body. The rationale for that is that I might go out and play a fat guy. Then about two months before a picture I usually chisel a character into shape in terms of what the guy should look like. I have this strange pattern I’m trying to break where I get in shape like almost training for a fight, get all my vices out, my bad habits, and get to work, and then to reward myself after the movie, I go wham, and over-indulge myself. But for a movie, I get in good shape and feel terrific and when I’m working I’m usually just full of energy. Sometimes I can’t control my self, I’m just shaking with excitement, wanting to get going to work. Also, you’re working with terrific people and it’s really interesting in that it’s a communal art form. It’s almost as if in the ideal circumstances I find, it’s like working in the same brain, like a bunch of little impulses darting around the same mind and the target is making the best movie it could possibly be. It’s great to work with a bunch of people who are constantly going after that effort.
It’s really a great excuse to tell the truth.
My new blog: http://www.virtualjerusalem.com/blogs_tom.php
By Tom Teicholz on March 3, 2010
I’m writing a new blog for the folks at virtual Jerusalem called Our Times
How is it different than this? Well for one thing, I may earn some money from it….. They are sharing ad revenue with me — which means that if people actually click on the ads – something that doesn’t happen as often as you would think it might — well then a few pennies might flow my way.
Beyond that –I’m taking the title to heart and thinking of not what is “of Tommywood” but what is “our times” and if that makes sense to you…. well then you are my ideal reader.
and if it doesn’t…you are still my ideal reader.
Barry Hannah R.I.P.
By Tom Teicholz on March 3, 2010
Middlebury College in Vermont has a 4-1-4 structure and January was the month when you could spend your time in the pursuit of a solitary subject or a frivolous one or both. Barry Hannah who did a stint as a teacher in the English dept at Middlebury was our advisor for a winter term project focused, as I recall, on the Beat Generation, which culminated with a reading of Ginsberg’s “Howl” in a dorm basement cafe and some poetry made up on the spot to musical accompaniment.
I can no longer recall much of what Hannah did or said, although I have a strong memory of sitting with him in a bar in Middlebury — in those more enlightened times the drinking age was 18.
I do recall him telling us a story that he went to Ole Miss in Oxford, the air was so filled with Faulkner veneration that one night, after imbibing more than a few, he went out and peed on Faulkner’s home.
Barry hannah was something of a legendary crazy man, of a set with Warren Zevon, and Tom McGuane. When I interviewed Tom McGuane for Interview, he told some Hannah stories. One gets the impression that a lot of people did.
Of course no one would have anything to say about Hannah if his stories weren”t so good — alive and weird, yet rooted in the way things happen, go wrong, and keep going.
The Genius that was Gertrude Berg
By Tom Teicholz on February 1, 2010
Yesterday the UCLA Film and Television Archives had a showing of remastered episodes of “The Goldbergs” the Gertrude Berg TV program that Aviva Kempner featured in her recent documentary “Yoohoo Mrs Goldberg” about Berg. A panel about Berg featured writer producer Margaret Nagle, as well as film and TV professor Vincent Brook moderated by journalist Michael Hammond.
Gertrude Berg was one of the most succcessful entertainers of the 1930s, 40s and 50s — During the Depression was the 2nd most well paid woman in America. Her radio program was one of the most successful throughout the 1940s and when TV came around, Berg who over the course of her career wrote, produced and starred in her programs was the first woman to win an Emmy — before Lucy.
So why is she so little remembered today — the most significant is that her programs were not preserved. They were done live and there was no record of them — they never appeared in re-runs.
Much is made of the fact that The Goldbergs were so obviously Jewish and were more ethnic than any sitcom since or would be today — and that no one objected. But as was discussed by Brooks and Nagle — at that time, the earliest days of TV, only 10% of Americans owned TVs and those that did lived in urban settings. Once TV had to appeal to a national large audience, they abandoned programming that focused on a niche. — and we all know that the people in charge of programming decisions at Network have always been visionaries. One could say that were are wrong then, as they are today —
I had never seen “The Goldbergs” until yesterday– and I have to admit — the woman was a genius — a genius in how she put her material across, how she involved the viewers and made them complicit in her program. Also the setting and the camera work — all prefigured the mold — the setting in the home which characters come in and out of — which sitcoms would follow and which many still follow to this day.
UCLA Film archives have released a DVD of Goldberg episodes that is now available. And “Yoohoo Mrs Goldberg” should be available on DVD this summer.
J.D. Salinger, novelist of modern anomie, dead at 91
By Tom Teicholz on January 28, 2010
J. D. Salinger, the novelist whose “Catcher in the Rye,” was the gateway drug for a generation of teenagers, readers and writers resisting the social conformity, and who became almost as famous for being reclusive as he was for his novel and his collections of short stories, died at his home in New Hampshire, at 91. He last published in 1965; Salinger claimed that he continued to write and would no longer be published during his lifetime.
With Salinger’s death, the literary world awaits to find out, after more than 50 years of waiting, whether in fact,Salinger left completed work — stories, novels, even poems — and whether it is coherent and intelligible, interesting or out-of-date — whether any of it is good, or even perhaps, great.
In Catcher in the Rye created a teenager character who spoke the feelings of teenagers of all ages, in decrrying the behavior of “phonies.” In his subsequent short story collections, Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenter” Salinger described characters at odds with themselves — and though many readers found them plain odd, they found them compelling. “The Catcher in the Rye” remains one of the perennial best-selling novels, read in schools across the country and the globe, holding a special place on the bookshelves of many. But Salinger’s last published stories, increasingly influenced by Salinger’s own experiments in eastern thinking, give one pause about what direction his unpublished writing may have taken. Hopefully we will know soon.
After Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon, he was found with a copy of “Catcher in the Rye.” and various writers and filmmakers have expounded on the connections between the two. Readers formed great attachment to “Catcher in the Rye” and perhaps this as much as anything was reason for Salinger to remove himself from society and live as a recluse in New Hampshire.
Born Jerome David Salinger in New York City in 1919, his father Sol, worked in the food industry. One of the accounts I read online claims that Salinger’s mother was born Marie but called herself Miriam and it was only after his bar-mitzvah that Salinger discovered that she was not in fact Jewish.
Salinger attended everal schools in New York including McBurney before attending Valley Forge Military Academy, and several colleges including New York University and Columbia University’s evening program where he attended a writing class taught by Whit Burnett of Story Magazine who would publish some of his early work.
In 1941 The New Yorker Magazine accepted “Slight Rebellion off Madison Avenue,” a short story featuring a character named Holden Caulfield.
At that time, Salinger also courted Oona O’Neil, playwright Eugene O’Neil’s daughter, who was a teenager at the time — she would eventually marry Charlie Chaplin. The courtship is mentioned in Aram Saroyan’s “Trio” his account of the young lives of Oona O’Neil, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Carol Matthau (Saroyan’s mother).
It is also reported that around that time Salinger worked on a cruise ship, and perhaps performed on board.
Salinger served in World War Two, landing in France on D-Day and fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. While in France, he met Ernest Hemingway, who impressed Salinger and who was in turn impressed by Salinger’s writing — they began a correspondence. Salinger also served in a Counter-Intelligence Unit that interrogated prisoners of war and he was among the first soldiers to enter a recently liberated concentration camp. Shortly therafer, Salinger reportedly had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for combat-related stress in an Army hospital.
Upon his return to the States, Salinger continued to write short stories. “A perfect day for Bananafish” was published in the New Yorker and established Salinger as an important contemporary writer. At the same time, Salinger became interested in Buddhism and various variants of eastern religions and religious practices, which he would continue to explore the rest of his life.
With the publication of “Catcher in the Rye,” Salinger who was living in Westport, Connecticutt, moved with his then wife Claire to Cornish N.H., which continued to be his residence until his death. Salinger had two children, Margaret and Matt who survive him.
Salinger continued to publish stories in The New Yorker, many of them about The Glass family, until 1965, with ” Hapworth 16, 1924,” his last published story. After that Salinger claimed that he continued to write but would no longer publish during his lifetime.
At first, Salinger gave interviews to the local paper and high school but he stopped that after a certain while. For awhile, journalists would take it upon themselves to travel to New Hampshire and wait in town for Salinger to pick up his mail and then try and strike up a conversation. Salinger gave his last interview in 1980.
Over the last many decades several persons have written memoirs of knowing Salinger. These include his daughter Margaret, and writer Joyce Maynard who dated Salinger as a teenager.
Salinger was protective of his life and his work and over the years sued to block publications biographies, and unauthorized collections of his short stories, or works too closely inspired by his own.
My own Salinger experiences begin with “Catcher In the Rye,” one of four books a bookstore clerk insisted I needed to read, as a teenager, to educate myself (the other three were Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World” and “George Orwell’s 1984″ and Richard Farina’s “Been Down So Long”) — and yes, I became attached to the book. Whenever I had a swimming meet against the McBurney School I thought of Salinger and his description of his fencing team adventure in Catcher — And when we thought of where to meet near Grand Central, we thought of the clock in the Vanderbilt Hotel.
When the New York Times Magazine published Joyce Maynard on its cover — I was not alone in developing a crush and felt validated in my attraction when it was reported that she had begun an affair with J D Salinger. The fact that Salinger was so much older didn’t matter — the creator of Holden was, no doubt, in touch with his inner teenager.
A few years later, I learned that a friend of mine’s high school girlfriend had also had a relationship with Salinger which had developed by correspondence. According to the gossip, third hand, Salinger loved to come to New York, much like any tourist, and have tea at the Plaza, see a show and visit friends at the New Yorker and in the city — by being a recluse, he had created anonymity for himself in New York — no one knew what he looked like, no one recognized him.
One summer in the mid-1970s I found myself in the Catalyst bookstore in Santa Cruz. There on the counter by the cash register were two paperbacks, “The Uncollected Stories of J.D. Salinger” volumes 1, and 2. Someone had taken all the stories that Salinger had published over the years in magazines that remained uncollected and published them. I remember holding them in my hands and poring over them, looking at stories I had never heard of. Shortly thereafter, Salinger sued to halt what the publishers called a “samidzat publication” — and those copies were not seen again.
Matt, Salinger’s son, is an actor and producer who has lived for many years in LA — I don’t know if he still does — I met him once (possibly twice) — he seemed nice and very unaffected. Given that his father wanted at some point to be an actor and/or entertainer — perhaps his father found some pleasure in his son being a working actor who turns up on TV programs with some regularity. In any event. please accept our condolences on your loss.
Although Salinger had one of his early stories optioned for film, the way in which his work was mangled for the screen convinced never to again option any of his work. Joyce Maynard once commented that the only one who could ever have played Holden was Salinger himself.
Holden is dead. Long Live Holden.