Ayn Rand and the World She Made - Anne C. Heller [270]
“Achievement is the aim of life”: July—September 1927 (JOAR, p. 8).
Born Charles Francis O’Connor … in 1897: “Mrs. O’Connor Dies Today,” Lorain [Ohio] Times Herald, July 19, 1911, p. 1. Also, author interview with FO’s niece MW, June 21, 2004.
a hard-drinking Catholic steel-worker: “Pioneer Lorain Steelman Dies,” obituary of Dennis O’Connor, FO’s father, Lorain [Ohio] Journal, December 22, 1938, p. 15.
Mary Agnes O’Connor became ill with breast cancer: “Mrs. O’Connor Dies Today,” Lorain [Ohio] Times Herald, July 19, 1911, p. 1.
dropped out of his Catholic high school: O’Connor dropped out of school in the summer of 1911.
“even more of an atheist than I am”: The Phil Donahue Show, April 29, 1980.
spelled phonetically: According to RBH and her husband, Dr. Burroughs Hill, friends of AR’s and FO’s during the 1940s, FO could hardly spell. In 1951, the Hills received a thirteen-page letter from FO, the only example of his writing they had ever seen. The letter shocked RBH. “It wasn’t the case of a poor speller,” she said. “He didn’t know how to spell words.” Not wanting anyone to say that FO “wasn’t intelligent,” she destroyed the letter. (Author interview with RBH, May 26, 2005).
a rubber worker in the tire mills at Akron: Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920—Population,” State of Ohio, County of Summit, Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
a film extra for D. W. Griffith: AR:SOL, DVD.
“Frank had some feminine tendencies”: Taped interview with Millicent Patton, a friend of AR and the O’Connor brothers from 1929 through the 1930s, in California and New York, conducted by BB, December 5, 1982.
was his first part in Hollywood: AR:SOL, DVD.
later told the tale of their meeting and courtship: TPOAR, pp. 78–94.
“What I couldn’t forget [was] the profile”: AR, p. 35.
“it was an absolute that this was the man I wanted”: TPOAR, p. 81.
he couldn’t understand a word she said: TPOAR, p. 81.
where eighty-odd young women: “Studio Club Bids Called: Promoters Will Meet at Home of Mrs. DeMille Next Week,” Los Angeles Times, May 8, 1925, p. A1.
Joe, also an aspiring actor: Author interview with MW, FO’s niece, June 21, 2004.
“grim and remote”: TPOAR, p. 92.
bought black silk lingerie: TPOAR, p. 92.
the studio had stopped providing her with fulltime work: From January until April, DeMille paid AR only fifty dollars, the equivalent of two weeks’ work and the smallest sum paid to any of the studio’s dozen writers (“Administration Expenses,” January 1, 1928 to April 14, 1928 [Cecil B. DeMille Collection, Harold B. Lee Library, box 784, folder 1]).
DeMille closed his studio: The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille, p. 290.
didn’t take Rand with him: DeMille took a dozen or so of his former staff members with him to MGM, including scriptwriter Jeannie Macpherson (note dated July 2, 1928 [Cecil B. DeMille Collection, Harold B. Lee Library, mss. 1400, box 778, folder 1]).
she was left without a job: She, in turn, lost some of her reverence for DeMille in 1928. She came to see him as a “box-office chaser” (BBTBI).
worked as a waitress: “New Yorker at Large,” p. 4.
famous within a year of reaching Hollywood: BBTBI.
borrow small sums from her Chicago relatives: Author interview with FB, June 21, 2004.
twenty-five-dollar monthly subsidy from them: Author correspondence with Michael Berliner, September 27, 2005, who consulted unpublished Rosenbaum family letters on my behalf. In a 1997 interview conducted by ARI oral historians for 100 Voices, AR’s youngest sister recalled that AR had sent the family photographs of herself from Hollywood and that Anna and Natasha had taken them to the state bank and received permission to send AR money every month.
the custom in the movie industry: Author interview with Marian L. Smith, historian, History Office and