Ayn Rand and the World She Made - Anne C. Heller [266]
sailed for America aboard the French liner S.S. De Grasse: De Grasse Ship Manifest, February 19, 1926; vol. 8626, p. 2, line 13, National Archives Microfilm Publication T715, roll 3800, “Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, N.Y., 1897–1957,” National Archives and Records Administration Northeast Region, New York, N.Y.
She had a first-class cabin: AR:SOL, DVD.
the five-foot-two, dark-eyed Russian girl: Her Russian passport stated her height as five foot four, according to ARI (100 Voices, p. 539), but she said she was five foot two, and acquaintances recalled her as closer to that height.
a light snow had begun to fall: TPOAR, p. 63.
This was the dollar decade: James Warren Prothro, The Dollar Decade (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1954), p. 39.
“the will of man made visible”: Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (New York: Plume, 1994), p. 463; also, “finger of God” (Nora Ephron, “A Strange Kind of Simplicity,” NYT Book Review, May 5, 1968, p. 8).
The ship’s manifest noted that she had promised to return: National Archives and Records Administration, De Grasse Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United States, February 10, 1926, column 19.
that she was engaged to marry a Russian man: Quoted in a syndicated interview with AR, “New York Notes,” appearing in the Marion [Ohio] Star, June 9, 1936.
re-enter the United States: TPOAR, p. 68.
“One must never attempt to fake reality in any manner”: “The Objectivist Ethics,” TVOS, p. 28.
an obligation to be truthful ends: TPOAR, p. 354.
She stayed in New York for four days: Author interview with Susan Belton, great-granddaughter of Mandel and Anna Stone, October 24, 2006.
the guest of relatives of Mandel Stone: Author correspondence with FB, April 10 and 17, 2005.
lived in a new, stately enclave: Author interview with Susan Belton, October 24, 2006.
she had only fifty dollars of her travel money left: TPOAR, p. 63.
“all mispronounced”: Jack Stinnett, “A New Yorker at Large,” syndicated column appearing in the Florence [S.C.] Morning News, May 22, 1936, p. 4.
“I’ll never forget it”: TPOAR, p. 68.
movies, which then cost thirty-five or fifty cents: 1927 Film Year Book, cited in a note to author by Greg Walsh, librarian, the Margaret Herrick Library.
She kept a journal: Russian Writings on Hollywood, pp. 173–214.
By the time she boarded a New York Central train: AR’s present-day followers at ARI have stated that she chose her two-part pseudonym while still in Russia and cite as evidence an unpublished letter written to AR by her mother, mentioning the name “Ayn Rand” while the De Grasse was still at sea.
knew she would need a professional name: AR:SOL, p. 59.
“Ayn” was a Finnish female name: Letter to a fan, January 30, 1937 (LOAR, p. 40).
borrowed it from a Finnish writer: TPOAR, p. 63. There has been some speculation that AR was referring to Finnish novelist Aino Kallas (1878–1956).
once claiming that she made it up herself: Author correspondence with JMB, March 21, 2005.
Remington Rand typewriter: “I can swear that I remember giving her her last name—from her typewriter, the Remington Rand,” FB told me in 2004. “Sitting in my mothers dining room, where we were sleeping, was an old-fashioned round table. She had her typewriter. We were looking—[I] said, ‘Should it be Remington?’ She said no, she liked a small name. And I said, ‘What about “Ayn Rand”?’ and we took the name right off the Remington Rand” (author interview with FB, March 18, 2004).
Rand repeated this story: AR told the typewriter story to BB, who repeated it in her book TPOAR. BB later told me in an interview that AR must have lied to her about this, though she wasn’t able to explain why.
the Remington Rand was not yet on the market in 1926: The Remington Rand Company was formed in 1927.
her family seems to have been aware of her new surname before she wrote to them: James S. Valliant, The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics: The Case against the Brandens