Ayn Rand and the World She Made - Anne C. Heller [292]
Rand’s reply is missing: This letter, if it exists, was excluded from the published LOAR, and a copy was not provided by ARI to the Isabel Paterson Papers at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, although copies of other letters appear to be on file there.
“I am seriously vexed”: Unpublished letter from IP, November 1944 (Isabel Paterson Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, box 4).
“If you take any more of that benzedrine”: Unpublished letter from IP, June 7, 1944 (Isabel Paterson Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, box 4).
She looked forward to seeing Paterson: Letter to IP, August 28, 1945 (LOAR, pp. 186–87).
but the two women must have argued: There are no surviving letters between AR and IP from August 28, 1945, to February 7, 1948, following another trip by AR from California to New York.
He was a mere zero: BBTBI.
“You can knock the world for a loop now”: Unpublished letters from IP, February 17, 1944, and July 30, 1945 (Isabel Paterson Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, box 4).
“I admired her”: Author interview with Ruth Ohman and Allan Ryskind, August 24, 2006. Ryskind, Ohman’s brother and the owner and editor of Human Events, recalled AR more acerbically. “There were a couple of times when she was talking about anti-Communism when she was not so much attractive as a tractor. She would be making a lot of sense, and then go way over the edge,” he said.
“furiously nervous”: Letter to Gerald Loeb, April 23, 1944 (LOAR, p. 135).
“I am becoming more antisocial”: Letter to IP, July 26, 1945 (LOAR, p. 179).
came to live on the ranch in the spring of 1945: Account is based on two interviews with Thaddeus Ashby, conducted for the author by Wendy de Weese in Hawaii, June 19 and July 17, 2005.
invited him to lunch: BBTBI.
remained for between five months and a year: In an unpublished interview conducted by BB in 1960–61, AR set his visit at five or six months; BBTBI.
spending long weekends at the ranch: “Ayn Rand’s Family and Friends.”
part-time secretary during those years: June Kurisu worked as AR’s secretary from June 1947 until November 1949 (100 Voices, June Kurisu, pp. 86, 89).
intensive planning of Atlas Shrugged: April 6, 1946, to August 31, 1946 (JOAR, pp. 399–548).
“They spent an awful lot of time in there”: Author interview with June Kurisu, December 31, 2004. In an interview with ARI oral historian Scott McConnell, Kurisu said of FO, “He always seemed like the strong one that could stand on his own and be the guard to the castle” (100 Voices, June Kurisu, p. 106).
another young man named Walter Abbott: BBTBI.
couldn’t raise the additional capital: BBTBI.
at $150 a week: Project-specific file cards archived in the Hal Wallis Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, box 95. In an example of AR’s willingness to help others who she believed deserved help, she also offered to assist June Kurisu in getting a secretarial position at Paramount (McConnell, “Recollections of Ayn Rand I,” based on his interview with Kurisu).
Bernstein … tried out for the composer’s role: Thomas Pryor, “Young Conductor May Star in Film,” NYT, August 21, 1945, p. 17.
Monogram announced plans for its own Tchaikovsky movie: “Two Studios to Film Tchaikovsky’s Life,” NYT, October 3, 1946, p. 38. According to this report, Abbott started writing the script in 1945.
saw a lot of Jack Bungay: Unpublished letter from Bert Allenberg to Hal Wallis, April 12, 1944 (Hal Wallis Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, box 95).
joined the male trio: Unpublished letter from Albert Mannheimer to IP, April 26, 1947 (Isabel Paterson Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, box 23).
“She was a very sensual woman”: 100 Voices, Jack Bungay, pp. 59–63.
were her only regular visitors: BBTBI.
“He looked like Frank”: Author interview with RBH, June 8, 2005.
“a lot of sex in her face”: 100 Voices, Jack Bungay, p. 59.
“I don’t know what would have happened”: TPOAR, p. 250.
developed a paranoid fixation: Interview with Thaddeus Ashby, July 17, 2005. The fact that von Strachow