Entry tags:
Christopher Isherwood & W.H. Auden
Annemarie Schwarzenbach (23 May 1908 – 15 November 1942) was a Swiss writer, journalist, photographer and traveler.Annemarie Schwarzenbach was born in Bocken, near Zurich, Switzerland. Her father, Alfred, was a wealthy businessman in the silk industry; her mother, Renée, the daughter of a Swiss general and descended from German aristocracy, was a prominent hostess, horsewoman and photographer.
From an early age she began to dress and act like a boy, a behaviour not discouraged by her parents, and which she retained all her life—in fact in later life she was often mistaken for a young man.
At her private school in Zurich she studied only German, history and music, and liked dancing, but her heart was set on becoming a writer. She studied in Zürich and Paris, and earned her doctorate in history at the University of Zurich at the age of 23. She started work as a journalist while still a student. Shortly after completing her studies she published her first novel "Freunde um Bernhard" (Bernhard's Circle), which was well received.
In 1930 she made contact with Erika Mann (daughter of Thomas Mann). She was fascinated by Erika's charm and self-confidence. A relationship developed, which much to Annemarie's disappointment did not last long (Erika had her eye on another woman: the actress Therese Giehse), although they always remained friends. Still smarting from Erika's rejection, she spent the following year in Berlin. There she found a soul-mate in Klaus, brother of Erika, and settled in with the Manns as an extended family. With Klaus she started experimenting with the use of drugs. She led a fast life in the bustling, decadent, artistic city that was Berlin towards the close of the Weimar Republic. She lived in Charlottenburg, drove fast cars and threw herself into the Berlin night-life. "She lived dangerously. She drank too much. She never went to sleep before dawn", recalled a friend. Her androgynous beauty fascinated and attracted both men and women.
Erika Mann and Annemarie Schwarzenbach
Erika Mann was a German actress and writer, the eldest daughter of novelist Thomas Mann. Her first noted affair was with actress Pamela Wedekind, whom she met in Berlin, and who was engaged to her brother Klaus. She later became involved with actress Therese Giehse, and journalists Betty Knox and Annemarie Schwarzenbach, whom she served with as a war correspondent during World War II. As was later written, her relationships were both sexually passionate and intellectually stimulating.
In June 1939, in an effort to combat her drug addiction and escape from the hovering clouds of violence in Europe, Annemarie Schwarzenbach embarked on a trip to Afghanistan with the ethnologist Ella Maillart. They set off from Geneva in a small Ford car and travelled via Istanbul, Trabzon and Teheran and from Herat to Kabul. In Kabul they split up, Maillart despairing of ever weaning her friend away from her drug addiction. The adventure was made into a movie, The Journey to Kafiristan, in 2001.
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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annemarie_Schwarzenbach
Chester Simon Kallman (January 7, 1921 – January 18, 1975) was an American poet, librettist, and translator, best known for his collaborations with W. H. Auden and Igor Stravinsky.Kallman was born in Brooklyn of Jewish ancestry. He received his B.A. at Brooklyn College and his M.A. at the University of Michigan. He published three collections of poems, Storm at Castelfranco (1956), Absent and Present (1963), and The Sense of Occasion (1971). He lived most of his adult life in New York, spending his summers in Italy from 1948 through 1957 and in Austria from 1958 through 1974. In 1963 he moved his winter home from New York to Athens, Greece and died there at the age of 54.
Together with his lifelong friend (and sometime lover) W. H. Auden, Kallman wrote the libretto for Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress (1951). They also collaborated on two librettos for Henze, Elegy for Young Lovers (1961) and The Bassarids (1966), and on the libretto of Love's Labour's Lost (based on Shakespeare's play) for Nicolas Nabokov (1973). They also wrote a libretto "Delia, or, A Masque of Night" (1953), intended for Stravinsky, but never set to music. They were commissioned to write the lyrics for Man of La Mancha, but Kallman did no work on the project, and the producers decided against using Auden's contributions.
Kallman was the sole author of the libretto of The Tuscan Players for Carlos Chávez (1953, first performed in 1957 as Panfilo and Lauretta).
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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_Kallman
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (August 26, 1904 – January 4, 1986) was an Anglo-American novelist.Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed. After his father was killed in the First World War, he settled with his mother in London and at Wyberslegh.
Isherwood attended preparatory school St. Edmund's, Surrey, where he first met W. H. Auden. At Repton School he met his lifelong friend Edward Upward, with whom he wrote the extravagant Mortmere stories, only one of which was published during his lifetime (a few others appeared after his death, and others were summarised in his Lions and Shadows). He deliberately failed his tripos and left Corpus Christi College, Cambridge without a degree in 1925. For the next few years he lived with violinist André Mangeot, working as secretary to Mangeot's string quartet and studying medicine; during this time he wrote a book of nonsense poems, People One Ought to Know (published 1982), with illustrations by Mangeot's eleven-year-old son, Sylvain.
In 1925 he was reintroduced to W. H. Auden, and became Auden's literary mentor and partner in an intermittent, casual liaison, as Auden sent his poems to Isherwood for comment and approval. Through Auden, Isherwood met Stephen Spender, with whom he later spent much time in Germany. His first novel, All the Conspirators, appeared in 1928; it is an anti-heroic story, written in a pastiche of many modernist novelists, about a young man who is defeated by his mother. In 1928-29 Isherwood studied medicine at King's College London, but gave it up after six months to join Auden for a few weeks in Berlin.
@Stathis Orphanos
Christopher Isherwood (1904 - 1986) was an Anglo-American novelist. Born in Los Angeles, California, Don Bachardy was the life partner of writer Christopher Isherwood, whom he met on Valentine's Day 1953, when he was 18 and Isherwood was 48. They remained together until Isherwood's death in 1986. A number of paperback editions of Isherwood's novels feature Bachardy's pencil portraits of the author. A film about their relationship, titled Chris & Don: A Love Story, was released in 2008.
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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Isherwood
Achille "Claude" Clarac, former Ambassador of France to Thailand from 1959 to 1968 died on 11 January 1999, in his 96th year, in his residence at Haute-Roche, Oudon. He was born in 1903 in Nantes, and obtained his Licerlce-en-Droit in Paris. He entered the French Diplomatic and Consular service in 1930, and served in Washington, Teheran, Tetuan, Algiers, Lisbon, Chungking, Saigon, Baghdad, Munich, and Syria. His last posting was as Ambassador in Bangkok, and he retired from Thailand with the rank of Ministre Plenipotentiaire, hors classe. He was made Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur in 1946 and Officier de la Legion d'Honneur in 1953.
In addition to his diplomatic functions, he was a keen supporter of the arts. An accomplished artist and photographer himself, he acquired, while in Thailand, a large collection of modern paintings, and was active in the functions of the Siam Society. After his retirement, he divided his time between a traditional Thai house he had built by the Chao Phraya at Phra Padaeng and his estate of 35 hectares of vines overlooking the Loire in France some 30 km east of his native Nantes. With increasing years, though, it became more difficult for him to reach his Thai riverside home by boat, and he settled permanently in France, where he continued to receive old friends known in Thailand, and where he developed with loving care a magnificent rock garden beside his chateau.
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Donald Jess "Don" Bachardy (born May 18, 1934) is an American portrait artist. He resides in Santa Monica, California. (Picture: Bachardy at 19 – Photo by Carl van Vechten (January 1954))Born in Los Angeles, California, Bachardy was the life partner of writer Christopher Isherwood, whom he met on Valentine's Day 1953, when he was 18 and Isherwood was 48. They remained together until Isherwood's death in 1986. A number of paperback editions of Isherwood's novels feature Bachardy's pencil portraits of the author. A film about their relationship, titled Chris & Don: A Love Story, was released in 2008.
Bachardy studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and the Slade School of Art in London. His first one-man exhibition was held in October 1961 at the Redfern Gallery in London.
Since that time he has had many one-man exhibitions in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Houston and New York. More recently, he exhibited at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, in 2004–2005.
His works reside in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum of Art in San Francisco, the University of Texas, Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California, the University of California, Los Angeles, the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University, Princeton University, the Smithsonian Institute, and the National Portrait Gallery, London.
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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Bachardy
( more pictures )
( Paintings )
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Bachardy
Back in the early 80s, I had the great privilege to be introduced to Mr. Isherwood by the legendary LA gay activist, Morris Kight. At the time, I had not read anything Mr. Isherwood had written, and out of nerves, I blurted this out to him. What a relief when he laughed and made me feel as though I'd just said the most charming thing he'd ever heard. Afterward, I picked up and read "Christopher and His Kind"; and by our next meeting I was able to tell him I had read something he had written. --Aaron Fricke
When I stumbled upon "Christopher Isherwood Diaries" I was transfixed – a volume of Isherwood’s personal sentiments spanning 1939-1960. Though not always a daily account this volume defines his move from England to California and his formative years there as a writer. His diaries tell how he became a disciple of the Hindu monk Swami Prabhavananda, his pacifism in World War II, his work as a Hollywood screenwriter and his friendships with artists and intellectuals like Garbo, Chaplin, Bertolt Brecht, Stravinsky, Olivier, Richard Burton, and many others. In luminous prose he reveals his most intimate and passionate relationships, with Bill Caskey and later with the very young artist… Don Bachardy. A fascinating read! --Charlie David
In Goodbye to Berlin, the character Sally Bowles is so ingrained in public awareness—thanks to the screen and many stage versions of Cabaret—most people think they know this book already. But Sally Bowles appears in only one relatively short chapter. The whole book is undoubtedly one of the best recreations of pre-WWII Berlin ever written. Sally is one of scores of equally memorable and touching characters. Isherwood writes in such clear, unaffected prose, his accomplishments as a stylist are sometimes overlooked. And he somehow managed to make of himself the most interesting character in his entire body of work, all while appearing to remain discreetly in the background. --Stephen McCauley
We all know the Sally Bowles stories from The Berlin Stories that became Cabaret, and they hold up gloriously well. Even so, it’s the novella, “Mr. Norris Changes Trains” that is my absolute favorite Isherwood and I got to read a section in front of a star studded Hollywood crowd for the celebration of Isherwood’s hundredth anniversary. Not only is Mr. Norris a perfect anti-hero, he is the shady forerunner of so many morally ambiguous, delightfully immoral, and frightfully illegal heroes that populate 20th Century books, plays and films. Even funnier and sadder is watching Berlin’s tres Gay ‘Twenties characters transform themselves into Hitler’s uptight Third Reich. --Felice Picano
Erika Julia Hedwig Mann (November 9, 1905 – August 27, 1969) was a German actress and writer, the eldest daughter of novelist Thomas Mann and Katia Mann.Erika Mann was born in Munich and was the firstborn daughter of the writer and later Nobel-prize winner Thomas Mann and his wife, Katia (née Pringsheim), the daughter of an intellectual German family of Jewish heritage. She was named after Katia Mann's brother Erik, who died early, Thomas Mann's sister Julia Mann, and her grandmother Hedwig Dohm. She was baptized as a Protestant, just as her mother had been. (Picture: Annemarie Schwarzenbach)
Thomas Mann expressed in a letter to his brother Heinrich Mann his disappointment about the birth of his first child:
"It is a girl; a disappointment for me, as I want to admit between us, because I had greatly desired a son and will not stop to hold such a desire. [...] I feel a son is much more full of poetry [poesievoller], more than a sequel and restart for myself under new circumstances."Nevertheless, he later candidly confessed in the notes of his diary, that he "preferred, of the six, the two oldest [Erika and Klaus] and little Elisabeth with a strange decisiveness".
Erika and Karl Mann
Thomas Mann’s two eldest children, Erika and Klaus, were unconventional, rebellious, and fiercely devoted to each other. Empowered by their close bond, they espoused vehemently anti-Nazi views in a Europe swept up in fascism and were openly, even defiantly, gay in an age of secrecy and repression. Erika and Klaus were serious authors, performance artists before the medium existed, and political visionaries whose searing essays and lectures are still relevant today.
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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erika_Mann
Heinz Neddermeyer was a German citizen born about 1915. He is also considered to be the first great love of writer Christopher Isherwood. Heinz and Christopher met in Berlin on March 13, 1932 when Heinz was 17. Christopher would often describe their relationship as an adoption, being the Heinz was so much younger and not entirely mature. The couple lived together in Berlin until May 1933 when, due to the uprising of Hitler, they were forced to flee the country. The photograph is of Heinz (left) and Christopher (right) during this time. They traveled Europe and North Africa until May 12, 1937 when Heinz was expelled from Luxembourg and forced to return to Germany. The next day he was arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to three and half years of forced labor and military service. He survived the forced labor which was brief. Being conditionally free, he married a woman named Gerda in 1938 and had a son named Christian, his only child, in 1940.( Read more... )
Source: http://gayhistory.wikidot.com/heinz-neddermeyer
Klaus Mann (November 18, 1906 – May 21, 1949) was a German writer.Born in Munich, Klaus Mann was the son of German writer Thomas Mann and his wife, Katia Pringsheim. His father was baptized as a Lutheran, while his mother was from a family of secular Jews. He began writing short stories in 1924 and the following year became drama critic for a Berlin newspaper. His first literary works were published in 1925.
Mann's early life was troubled. His homosexuality often made him the target of bigotry, and he had a difficult relationship with his father. After only a short time in various schools, he travelled with his sister Erika Mann, a year older than himself, around the world, and visited the US in 1927. In 1924 he had become engaged to his childhood friend Pamela Wedekind, the eldest daughter of the playwright Frank Wedekind, who was also a close friend of his sister Erika. The engagement was broken off in January 1928.
He travelled with Erika to North Africa in 1929. Around this time they made the acquaintance of Annemarie Schwarzenbach, a Swiss writer and photographer, who remained close to them for the next few years. Klaus made several trips abroad with Annemarie, the final one to a writers' congress in Moscow in 1934.
In 1932 Klaus wrote the first part of his autobiography, which was well received until Hitler came to power. In 1933 Klaus participated with Erika in a political cabaret, the Pepper-Mill, which came to the attention of the Nazi regime. To escape prosecution he left Germany in March 1933 for Paris, later visiting Amsterdam and Switzerland, where his family had a house. In November 1934 Klaus was stripped of German citizenship by the Nazi regime. He became a Czechoslovak citizen. In 1936, he moved to the United States, living in Princeton, New Jersey and New York. In the summer of 1937, he met his partner Thomas Quinn Curtiss, who was later a longtime film and theater reviewer for Variety and the International Herald Tribune. Mann became a US citizen in 1943.
Klaus Mann and his sister
Klaus Mann was a German writer, son of Thomas Mann. In November 1934, Klaus was stripped of German citizenship by the Nazi regime. In the summer of 1937, he met his partner Thomas Quinn Curtiss, who was later a longtime film and theater reviewer for Variety and the International Herald Tribune. Their relationship lasted for several years, but eventually Tomski (as Curtiss is called in Mann's diaries) left him because of Mann's on-going heroin addiction. Mann's suicidal novel Vergittertes Fenster is dedicated to him.
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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Mann
Thomas Quinn Curtiss (June 21, 1915 New York City – July 17, 2000, Poissy, France) was a writer, and film and theatre critic.The son of Roy A. Curtiss and Ethel Quinn, he graduated from the Browning School in New York in 1933. He went on to study film and theatre in Vienna and Moscow, where he was a student of the film director Sergei Eisenstein.
In summer 1937, he met writer Klaus Mann in Budapest and followed him through Europe. Their homosexual relationship lasted for several years, but eventually Tomski (as Curtiss is called in Mann's diaries) left him because of Mann's on-going heroin addiction. Mann's suicidal novel Vergittertes Fenster is dedicated to him.
Curtiss enlisted in the New York 7th Regiment before World War II. He was stationed with Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe in 1944 and later with the US 8th Air Force, where he secured the hidden film library from the Luftwaffe for the Allies. This act that won him the Legion of Honor from the French government, which was presented by General Charles de Gaulle.
After the war, he became a film and theatre critic for various newspapers and magazines, including New York Herald Tribune, The New York Times, and Variety, before joining the International Herald Tribune for which he continued to write until long after his retirement.
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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Quinn_Curtiss
Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973), who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet, born in England, later an American citizen, regarded by many critics as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. His work is noted for its stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety of tone, form and content. The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature.Auden grew up in and near Birmingham in a professional middle-class family and read English literature at Christ Church, Oxford. His early poems, written in the late 1920s and early 1930s, alternated between telegraphic modern styles and fluent traditional ones, were written in an intense and dramatic tone, and established his reputation as a left-wing political poet and prophet. He became uncomfortable in this role in the later 1930s, and abandoned it after he moved to the United States in 1939, where he became an American citizen in 1946. His poems in the 1940s explored religious and ethical themes in a less dramatic manner than his earlier works, but still combined traditional forms and styles with new forms devised by Auden himself. In the 1950s and 1960s many of his poems focused on the ways in which words revealed and concealed emotions, and he took a particular interest in writing opera librettos, a form ideally suited to direct expression of strong feelings.
He was also a prolific writer of prose essays and reviews on literary, political, psychological and religious subjects, and he worked at various times on documentary films, poetic plays and other forms of performance. Throughout his career he was both controversial and influential. After his death, some of his poems, notably "Funeral Blues" ("Stop all the clocks") and "September 1, 1939", became widely known through films, broadcasts and popular media.
In 1939 W.H. Auden met the poet Chester Kallman, who became his lover for the next two years (Auden described their relation as a "marriage" that began with a cross-country "honeymoon" journey). In 1941 Kallman ended their sexual relationship because he could not accept Auden's insistence on a mutual faithful relationship, but he and Auden remained companions, sharing houses and apartments from 1953 until Auden's death. Kallman died less than two years after Auden, seemingly of a broken heart.
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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._H._Auden
Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time by Elisa RollePaperback: 760 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition (July 1, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1500563323
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/4910282
Amazon (Paperback): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1500563323/?tag=e
Amazon (Kindle): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MZG0VHY/?tag=e
Days of Love chronicles more than 700 LGBT couples throughout history, spanning 2000 years from Alexander the Great to the most recent winner of a Lambda Literary Award. Many of the contemporary couples share their stories on how they met and fell in love, as well as photos from when they married or of their families. Included are professional portraits by Robert Giard and Stathis Orphanos, paintings by John Singer Sargent and Giovanni Boldini, and photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnson, Arnold Genthe, and Carl Van Vechten among others. “It's wonderful. Laying it out chronologically is inspired, offering a solid GLBT history. I kept learning things. I love the decision to include couples broken by death. It makes clear how important love is, as well as showing what people have been through. The layout and photos look terrific.” Christopher Bram “I couldn’t resist clicking through every page. I never realized the scope of the book would cover centuries! I know that it will be hugely validating to young, newly-emerging LGBT kids and be reassured that they really can have a secure, respected place in the world as their futures unfold.” Howard Cruse “This international history-and-photo book, featuring 100s of detailed bios of some of the most forward-moving gay persons in history, is sure to be one of those bestsellers that gay folk will enjoy for years to come as reference and research that is filled with facts and fun.” Jack Fritscher
Marion Dickerman (April 11, 1890 – May 16, 1983) was an American suffragette, educator, vice-principal of the Todhunter School and an intimate of Eleanor Roosevelt.
Nancy Cook (August 26, 1884 – August 16, 1962) was an American suffragette, teacher, part owner of the Todhunter School and an intimate of Eleanor Roosevelt. She taught first at Fulton, New York, where she taught art and handicrafts to high school students from 1913 to 1918. It was here that she again met Syracuse classmate Marion Dickerman, who taught arts and handicrafts at the same School. These two women become lifelong partners, spending almost their entire adult lives together.
Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time by Elisa Rolle
Nicola "Nichi" Vendola (born 26 August 1958) is an Italian left-wing politician and LGBT activist who was President of Apulia from 2005 to 2015. Vendola's partner is Canadian Eddy Testa (born 1980), freelance graphic designer and creative consultant. Testa studied design and communication at Concordia University in Montreal, Ottawa University and Urbino. He made a show VianDante (Dante on the way) - trip from Paradise to Hell and return, and worked as an art director for "Nichi's Factories". Eddy and Nichi live together in Terlizzi since 2004. Their first official appearance together was in 2015 when Canadian James Fox visited and wanted to meet his compatriot.
Johannes Adrianus Menne Warren (Borssele, 20 October 1921 - Goes, 19 December 2001) was a Dutch writer. Much of his fame in the Netherlands derives from having published a collection of diaries in which he described his life and homosexual experiences in a country that deeply repressed homosexuality. He is also known for his poetry, his literary criticism, and his translations of poetry from Modern Greek.
Michael Jeter (August 26, 1952 – March 30, 2003) was a Tony– and Emmy-winning American actor of film, stage, and television. His most notable television roles are as Herman Stiles on the sitcom Evening Shade from 1990 until 1994 and for playing Mr. Noodle's brother, Mr. Noodle on Elmo's World from 2000 until 2003. His film roles include Zelig, Waterworld, Air Bud, The Green Mile, Jurassic Park III and The Polar Express among many others. On March 30, 2003, Jeter was found dead in his Hollywood home, at age 50. Although he had HIV, he had been in good health for many years. His partner since 1995, Sean Blue, stated publicly Jeter died of an epileptic seizure. (P: 
Michael Jeter was born in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. His mother, Virginia (née Raines; May 6, 1927), was a housewife. His father, William Claud Jeter (March 10, 1922 – March 1, 2010), was a dentist. Jeter had one brother, William, and four sisters, Virginia, Amanda, Emily, and Larie. Jeter was a student at Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis) when his interests changed from medicine to acting. He performed in several plays and musicals at the Circuit Theatre and its sister theatre, the Playhouse on the Square, in midtown Memphis. He left Memphis to further pursue his stage career in Baltimore, Maryland.
For the 2015 Featured Blog Tour
Gay for Pay: An All Cocks story (All Cocks Stories) (Volume 1)
Fame and Fortune, An All Cocks story, book 2 (Tentative release date, September 1st 2015)
Author bio and links: A military brat born and raised at Ft. Benning Georgia; Smith is an avid reader, reviewer and writer. She now calls Texas home from her small town on the outskirts of the DFW Metroplex. Most days you can find her curled up with her kindle and a good book alongside a glass of something aged and red or a steaming cup of coffee! 
Wrong Room, Right Guy by Liam Livings