Ayn Rand and the World She Made - Anne C. Heller [272]
a rapid evaluation to become a permanent resident: Author interview with Marian L. Smith, historian, Department of Homeland Security, May 19, 2005.
proved that she wasn’t wanted for crimes in Soviet Russia: Alice O’Connor’s petition for citizenship, courtesy of Marian L. Smith, historian, Department of Homeland Security.
“a shotgun wedding”: TPOAR, p. 93.
which of them would marry her and rescue her from deportation: TPOAR, p. 93.
Months earlier she had moved out: AR shared her first apartment with a Studio Club friend named Nell McKenzie. O’Connor family lore had it that Nell had to leave when FO visited (taped interview with MS, conducted by BB, February 18, 1983).
“He loved Ayn better”: Taped interview with MS, conducted by BB, February 18, 1983.
a small apartment at 823 North Gower Street: 1930 U.S. Census, City of Los Angeles, sheet 11A, lines 8–9.
“Just after the wedding, Ayn said”: Taped interview with Millicent Patton, conducted by BB, December 5, 1982.
July 1929: Noted in AR’s “Application for a Certificate of Arrival and Preliminary Form for Petition of Citizenship,” October 15, 1930 (C-File number C-3447608, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Washington, D.C.).
Ivan Lebedeff: AR, p. 36.
version of The Angel of Broadway: Ivan Lebedeff also played Rosengoltz in the 1943 film Mission to Moscow, the subject of AR’s voluntary testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee in October 1947.
helped Rand to get a full-time clerical job: AR, p. 36; McConnell, “Paramount Studio Tour,” speech given on the Paramount Studio lot at the ARI premiere of the movie Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life, November 2, 1996.
eventually became the department boss: Millicent Patton told an interviewer in 1982 about AR’s career in the RKO wardrobe department: “Anybody who got in her way she just brushed aside and stepped ahead. Anybody who was over her she naturally just—she’d see to it that that person got out of her way and would rise up over that one and get to the next one. She had such drive. Maybe she just learned a few little things about somebody who wasn’t doing what they should be doing and just let it be known.” This, of course, is a tactic Peter Keating perfects in TF (taped interview with Millicent Patton, conducted by BB, December 15, 1982).
started at a salary of twenty dollars: TPOAR, p. 94.
began to send money: Author correspondence with Michael Berl iner, September 27 and 28, 2005, based on unpublished Rosenbaum family letters.
Soviet government was desperate for foreign currency: Thanks to Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, professor of Russian and European intellectual history at Fordham University in New York, who provided this information and also cited Eugene Lyons’s Assignment in Utopia (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937).
“I loathed [that job]”: TPOAR, pp. 93–94.
“to cook, and wash dishes, and such”: Unpublished letter to Sarah Lipton, November 27, 1932, courtesy of FB.
He decorated their new apartment: BBTBI.
“I came to America to write”: Unpublished letter to Sarah Lipton, November 27, 1932, courtesy of FB.
film scenario, called Red Pawn: AR apparently composed two film scenarios in 1930–31, Red Pawn and another called Treason, which has been lost (“Ayn Rand’s Family and Friends”).
The story begins: In a thirteen-page synopsis of Red Pawn later written by AR, the American character Joan becomes a Russian character called Tania Sokolova. Tania seduces the prison commandant by teaching him the basic joy of living rather than the specific sensual superiority of Western values. Paramount owned Red Pawn, and AR showed the new version to both Hal Wallis and Barbara Stanwyck (letter to Barbara Stanwyck, September 7, 1946 [LOAR, pp. 317–18]; copy of the synopsis courtesy of Al Ramrus, to whom AR gave it in the 1960s).
displaying too much “ability”: Red Pawn, TEAR, pp. 154–227.
“a right to the joy of living”: Letter to Hollywood producer Kenneth MacGowan, May 18, 1934 (LOAR, p. 6).
“building a story in tiers”: Letter to Kenneth MacGowan, May 18, 1934 (LOAR, p. 6).
the kind of romantic