Ayn Rand and the World She Made - Anne C. Heller [276]
“the state,” “the public,” or “the common good”: Quoted phrases from Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: New American Library, 1966), pp. 11–34.
cannot be broken: circa 1930 (JOAR, p. 59).
would have chanced death: TPOAR, p. 60. In about 1930, AR told Millicent Patton that she had risked death by walking across the Russian border, working her way west from St. Petersburg and finally “creeping through barbed wire in the snow.” If Patton was remembering correctly, AR seemed to be trying Kira Argounova’s story on for size (taped interview with Millicent Patton, conducted by BB, December 5, 1982).
she re-edited it: Revised for publication in 1959 (EOWTL, p. 185).
“I loathe your ideals”: WTL, pp. 41, 92–3.
St. Petersburg section was her favorite: BBTBI.
was writing for newspapers: Taped interview with MS, conducted by BB, February 18, 1983, courtesy of MSC.
Ivan Lebedeff was in and out of town: TPOAR, p. 121.
friend of Sinclair Lewis: Hiram Haydn, Words & Faces (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1954, 1974), p. 93.
“All achievement and progress”: Unpublished correspondence with Ethel Boileau; cited in “The Hero in the Soul Manifested in the World.”
aspiring playwright named Albert Mannheimer: TPOAR, p. 121.
graduate student at the Yale School of Drama: Mannheimer attended but did not graduate, according to the archives of the Yale School of Drama; phone interview, December 5, 2005.
tall, fair, and curly haired: Interview with Frances Schloss, who dated Mannheimer in 1950–51, December 8, 2005.
screenwriter Budd Schulberg: BBTBI. Schulberg is best remembered for his best-selling 1947 novel What Makes Sammy Run? Interestingly, the narrator is named Al Manheim, and Manheim’s lover, a woman “who likes sex,” is called Billie Rand.
Ring Lardner, Jr.: “Ayn Rand’s Family and Friends.”
a mutual theatrical acquaintance introduced them: BBTBI.
it was she who would convert him: BBTBI.
a vehement advocate of capitalism: AR, quoted in “Ayn Rand’s Family and Friends.”
recently staged a play by John Howard Lawson: Lawson’s Gentlewoman had been staged at the Cort Theater in the spring of 1934. On Lawson as a Communist, see Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley’s Hollywood Party (Rocklin, Calif.: Forum, 1998), pp. 47–48.
would … share the spotlight: AR and Hellman were the first screenwriters hired by Wallis when he started his own production company after storming off a Warner Bros. set (Paramount Contracts Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, file 3, box 95).
kept promising that casting and rehearsals would begin any day: Letter to Mary Inloes, March 16, 1935 (LOAR, p. 21).
her “highfalutin” courtroom speeches: TPOAR, p. 122.
reportedly Shubert’s mistress: TPOAR, p. 122.
tirades about how ponderous ideas had no place: What AR could not have known was that ex-millionaire Woods was broke at the time of the production and was under pressure to turn The Night of January 16th into a commercial hit. Royalties from the play were one of his few discovered sources of income when he declared bankruptcy in February 1936. By then, he was a mere employee of the Shubert Organization, working for $150 a week (“Ex-millionaire Reported Broke,” Los Angeles Times, February 8, 1936, p. 2).
removing elements of the motivation of her characters: Unpublished letter cited in Shoshana Milgram’s “Ayn Rand’s Unique and Enduring Contributions to Literature,” lecture, ARI Centenary Conference, July 7, 2005, San Diego. According to Milgram, AR wrote about what was taken out of her play and the fact that she found the first “tier” unsatisfactory as a result.
she reportedly told him: “The Hero in the Soul Manifested in the World.”
Hayes and Weitzenkorn: “Second Arbitration on Play Royalties,” NYT, January 17, 1936, p. 15.
to siphon off one-tenth of her royalties: “Agency Agreement with Ann Watkins,” October 30, 1935 (A. Watkins Collection, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 80).
the support of Mrs. Vincent Astor: “News of the Stage,” NYT, January 27, 1936, p. 20.
“miserably painful”: “The Hero in