The Bradbury Chronicles (10 page)

“I loved radio shows so much at the time and was going to broadcasts constantly,” Ray recalled. “I went into the tryouts for the student talent show which had no shape, no plans. I thought … What the hell? I'll write a radio-style show—all the bits and pieces and the introduction.”

The adviser, the junior choir instructor, was impressed with his speculative script. “She came to me,” Ray recalled, “and said, ‘My God, you've got the job.'” So he was assigned as writer and producer. On the day of the show, he was even onstage with the applause sign.

The Roman Revue was a resounding success. It was so popular, in fact, that for the first time in the history of Los Angeles High School, the student talent show returned for a repeat performance. Ray felt a sense of arrival. Suddenly, other students were looking at him with acceptance and appreciation.

During this time, Ray also began contributing to the school newspaper,
The Blue and White Daily
. He wrote movie reviews and a series of short articles that included a story on the popularity of the Jack Benny radio program. With the piece, Ray was not only writing about one of his many passions—radio—but he was also writing about Benny, a fellow native of Waukegan, Illinois.

That year, Blackstone the Magician made an appearance in Los Angeles. Ray, of course, was in the audience for the show. During the performance, Blackstone called out for a volunteer to assist him with an illusion. Before hands even went up, seventeen-year-old Ray bolted from his seat and hurried onstage. Blackstone was unaware that several years earlier the enthusiastic teenager had helped him with a different illusion in Waukegan, Illinois.

As the magician began his trick, he leaned into Ray. The boy smelled a heavy odor of whiskey on Blackstone's breath, which sent chills of disappointment and disenchantment through Ray. More than that, Ray realized he pitied the man. The boy who had once dreamed of becoming the greatest magician on Earth—in large part because of Blackstone—knew in that instance he had aspirations far beyond silk scarves and sleight-of-hand. “I realized that Blackstone was bored,” said Ray. “All those performances day after day doing the same thing. It got to him. From that moment onward, I made a promise to myself that I would never do the same thing. I never wanted to get bored.”

More and more, writing seemed the answer. Ray realized that he could captivate an audience through words, rather than through illusions. His stage props were different; as a writer he would use language and metaphor, but the outcome was much the same. Storytelling allowed him to enrapture an audience, oftentimes tricking them with literary bedevilment, and, in the end, entertaining them.

That fall, Ray spotted a handbill hanging in a secondhand bookshop on the corner of Western Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard, a flier advertising a local group called the Science Fiction Society. The group, a regional chapter of the national organization founded by
Wonder Stories
editor Hugo Gernsbach, was meeting Thursday night in downtown Los Angeles in the Brown Room at Clifton's Cafeteria. Excited, Ray took the flier and left his name and address with the bookshop's owner. Days later, he received an invitation in the mail from T. Bruce Yerke, the society's secretary, inviting him for a visit. The following Thursday, Ray took the streetcar downtown to Clifton's Cafeteria.

“I bought myself a ten-cent malt,” recalled Ray, “and went upstairs and I looked in the room at all these weird people.”

One person stood out in particular, a lanky, energetic young man named Forrest J Ackerman. The year before, Ackerman, at age twenty, started the group with a few other fans. A year later, in October 1937, the group was holding regular meetings in a wood-paneled room on the third floor of Clifton's.

Ackerman, credited with inventing the term “sci-fi” later in his career, would become a legend to collectors and creators. Known as “Forry,” “4E,” or “4SJ,” he acted in 106 films over the course of his life (mostly bit parts in B-movie monster matinees), and he served as a literary agent to science fiction and fantasy greats Isaac Asimov and L. Ron Hubbard, among others. He would also go on to create and edit the magazine
Famous Monsters of Filmland
.

Ackerman, who would later sell international rights to some of Ray's early pulp stories, remembered his first impressions of seventeen-year-old Ray. “Ray was a rather boisterous young boy. He liked to imitate Hitler and W. C. Fields. It's a wonder we didn't strangle him,” Ackerman declared.

Despite Ray's occasionally grating sense of humor, the members of the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society embraced him immediately. His energy was infectious. Ackerman said that Ray had “an overwhelming enthusiasm about his work.”

Meetings usually lasted an hour. Ackerman, who corresponded with science fiction writers across the country, gave updates on these exchanges. The members of the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society took the future seriously and invited guest speakers, often experts in the fields of science and technology. The presentations were discussions on the technology of the future, similar to what one might find in the feature stories of
Popular Science
magazine. Ray recalled guests pontificating on topics from painless childbirth to hydroponics. Scientist Jack Parsons (who later cofounded Jet Propulsion Laboratories) gave a lecture on space travel well before the technology existed. And among the other members in the room the first night Ray arrived were writers Roy Squires, Arthur K. Barnes, and Henry Kuttner.

Ray became an active society member immediately. In November, he wrote his longtime hero Edgar Rice Burroughs, and invited him to talk to the group. Burroughs, who cocreated the character Tarzan, lived in nearby Tarzana, California. To Ray's amazement, Burroughs replied; he declined the invitation, as he had a conflict on Thursday evenings. Ray persisted, writing Burroughs again and offering to make special arrangements to change nights to accommodate the author's busy schedule. On November 22, Burroughs again replied:

 

My dear Mr. Bradbury:

Now you have really put me on a spot and compelled me to explain to you that I never appear or speak in public, if there is any possible way in which it can be avoided.

I hope that you understand that it is not due to any lack of desire to co-operate with you and that I fully appreciate, and am grateful for having been honored by the invitation.

With all good wishes, I am,

Very sincerely, yours          

Edgar Rice Burroughs        

 

Though Ray was disappointed that Burroughs would not come talk, he was thrilled that his hero had written him two hand-signed notes.

Shortly thereafter, Ray bought his first real typewriter. He bought it from a fellow group member, but since Ray didn't have any money, he made a deal to pay the fellow a dollar a week until the debt was paid. To do this, Ray decided to forgo his twenty-five-cent school lunch and use the money to repay his loan.

During his last year of high school, things took a turn for the better, mostly because of the camaraderie Ray found in the Science Fiction Society. He had been befriended by a group of strange and imaginative outcasts like himself. “The group changed my life. They took me in. I was nowhere, I had nowhere to go. They gave me focus,” Ray explained.

Recognizing Ray's drive, Ackerman invited Ray to help put together the group's publication, a 'zine (shorthand for fanzine) titled
Imagination!
Ray accepted readily. As editor, Ackerman assigned Ray to hectograph the magazine—a process using gelatin-coated sheets to make multiple copies. By November 1937, Ray had contributed a short humor piece, “Foolosofy & Scientificrax,” and a drawing. In January 1938, his first short story, “Hollerbochen's Dilemma,” was published in
Imagination!
Ray was not paid for the story, but it was his first short fiction piece to see print. He was ecstatic. Sixty years later, Ackerman admitted that at the time he thought the short story was weak, but he needed material for the magazine. Ray agreed: “It was terrible.” For the first time, though, the frustrated writer felt that he had a purpose, and the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society and Forrest J Ackerman had provided it.

But obstacles got in Ray's way. In his two years taking the high school short-story class, Ray, with his tech-heavy tales of science fiction, was shut out of the school's annual anthology of short fiction. It is a great irony given all that he would one day achieve, but Ray was one of the few students
not
to place a story in the Los Angeles High School Fiction reader. Fortunately, he had better luck with his verse. In May 1938, before graduation, Ray's poem “A Truck Driver After Midnight” was selected for the school poetry anthology. The poem was about the lonely life of the truck driver, and, while he would later describe it as a bit heavy-handed and green, it nonetheless hinted at the visually evocative writing that portended Ray's future.

His senior year was coming to an end, and surprisingly for Ray, it was hard to leave. School had mostly been a painful hindrance for him. But in the last two years, he actually enjoyed himself. During his last term, Ray even managed a perfect report card: He received straight A's.

In June 1938, Ray graduated from Los Angeles High School. He attended commencement wearing the only suit he owned—the suit his uncle Lester had been shot in. One could still see the bullet hole underneath Ray's blue-and-white cap and gown. And ever the great storyteller, Ray made sure everyone knew about it.

I think Ray is one of the most important American writers of the 20th Century, because his books expanded the minds of millions who didn't realize there was more to the universe than one small planet orbiting a second-rate star.

—
SIR ARTHUR C. CLARKE
,
author

R
AY
B
RADBURY
hated waking at seven on school days, but thankfully those early mornings were behind him. He loved having finished school because he could now sleep in until nine
A.M
. Oh, the freedom!

Ray continued meeting with the Science Fiction Society at Clifton's on Thursday evenings and assisting with the society's fanzine,
Imagination!
He contributed more short humor pieces and artwork. And he remained steadfast about establishing himself as a big-name writer. But he wouldn't settle for anything less than becoming one of the greatest writers who ever lived. Somehow, some way, he would write a book that would be shelved alongside his heroes, Wells, Baum, and Burroughs. He was certain of it.

In the meantime, there were the petty, everyday irritants like finding work to contribute to the family coffers. In the summer of 1938, Ray's grandmother Minnie sold her house—and the adjacent house Ray had lived in—in Waukegan and headed to Los Angeles. She moved in with her twenty-eight-year-old daughter, Neva, in the apartment above Ray's on St. Andrews. Skip was back home too, after his duty in the Civil Conservation Corps, following in the footsteps of his father as a lineman for the Los Angeles Bureau of Power and Light.

In August, Ray landed a job. A former classmate who sold newspapers on a street corner offered his post to Ray for eighty dollars. It was an expensive endeavor, but Ray jumped at the opportunity. He borrowed the cash from his brother and father and was soon a newspaper salesman for the
Herald Express,
the late-afternoon edition of the Los Angeles
Herald Examiner,
a Hearst publication. Ray worked five days a week from roughly four to six-thirty
P.M
., which left the morning and most of the day—as well as weekends—for him to write. A bundle of newspapers would be dropped off on the northeast corner of Olympic and Norton each day, and Ray would stand in front of Acton's drugstore. A grocer and a plumber's office were next door, and the railcar clattered by, running down Olympic. It was a bustling corner—a fine place to sell newspapers. At first, Ray assumed the classic newspaper boy persona, crying out, “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” Then he decided to try a more subtle approach. “I experimented to see if I shut up, if I would sell just as many papers, and I did.” He realized that the shouting didn't help (though he didn't entirely shut up, for he was forever engaging his customers in conversation). “People either want a newspaper or they don't,” said Ray. His discovery of this sales pitch was similar to the way he was slowly discovering his writing method. At first, he imitated, then he found his own unique approach.

Ray was soon a well-known fixture on the corner of Norton and Olympic. He was charismatic and engaging, and there was a magnetic energy to the young, bespectacled man. Bob Gorman, who sold the competing Los Angeles
Daily News
at the same intersection, recalled working near Ray Bradbury: “He was aggressive and outward and very sociable as a salesman. He worked hard. He was real easy to talk to. He talked a lot about when he would go into Hollywood and the people he would meet. The stars.” Gorman also recalled that when Ray wasn't selling papers, he was almost always on his roller skates. “I felt sorry for him. While a lot of other young kids were driving automobiles, he never learned how to drive,” said Gorman.

The fact that Ray didn't drive hardly bothered him, though. He liked his job and was meeting and talking to all sorts of people (screen stars John Barrymore and Buster Keaton were regulars of his). And he was making a decent wage. Averaging ten dollars a week, Ray earned enough to buy his own clothes and pay for movies, books, and magazines. At the end of his shift, he either walked or roller-skated home, which was less than a mile away. A few nights a week a bakery driver, who stopped at the corner pharmacy for a sandwich and a malt, offered Ray a ride in his delivery truck. “I'd go home in this bakery truck surrounded by the wonderful odor of sourdough bread, and pie, and cake. There was a leftover donut and the driver always gave it to me. These are the memories to me that count most. Simple. Beautiful. Nice people,” said Ray.

Decades later, Ray insisted that he never worked a day in his life, including his job selling newspapers. Even standing on his corner in the pouring rain, he reveled in it. Ray loved the rain. The word “love” was his lifelong four-letter secret: He only did things he loved. And he loved his job selling papers as much as he loved writing.

At the time, a revival of
King Kong
was playing at a local theater. The movie house manager was unable to find any stills or posters for the film, so he contacted a well-known collector, Ray's friend Forry Ackerman. Ackerman agreed to lend his
King Kong
posters for display at the theater.

A young man, Ray Harryhausen, had seen the movie and asked the manager for the posters. “He saw the film and when he came out of the theater,” said Ackerman, “he was all excited to think maybe the manager would let him have the posters.” The manager explained that the posters belonged to Forry Ackerman and gave Harryhausen Ackerman's name and address. Soon after, Harryhausen came calling at Ackerman's house. Both men discovered their shared interest in monsters and movies, so Ackerman invited Harryhausen to Clifton's Cafeteria. It was there that Ray Harryhausen met Ray Bradbury, and the two made an instant connection.

Harryhausen invited Ray to his house in the Leinert Park district of Los Angeles, where he had a workshop in the garage. He built model dinosaurs from scratch and wanted to show Ray his creatures. Painstakingly detailed and painted, they were constructed of metal, with ball-and-socket joints, and covered in rubber and plastic. He used the models for early stop-motion animated short films that he produced in his workshop. Ray Bradbury was thoroughly impressed.

“We had a mutual interest in dinosaurs,” recalled Ray Harryhausen, “and we both loved
King Kong
—and so did Forry—and the three of us would many times jump on the red car and go to Eagle Rock or Pasadena to find a replay of
King Kong
or
The Most Dangerous Game
and all the Merian Cooper pictures.”

Though Ray Harryhausen joined the Science Fiction Society, he did not have the same gusto for the future that other members—and Ray Bradbury—had. “The future to me seemed very cold and indifferent with everyone shooting each other out of the universe,” said Harryhausen. “I preferred the past. It was much more romantic.”

In November 1938, Ray's family moved yet again. Ray's father was tiring of literally living “underfoot” his own mother in the apartment on St. Andrews. “That's just a theory,” said Ray, surmising that it couldn't have been easy for his father suddenly to live so near his mother again. The family moved a few blocks west to an apartment located at 1841 South Manhattan.

These were halcyon days. Ray was free from school, free to sleep in, free to do whatever pleased him. He spent a few hours every day writing. When he wasn't working on his short stories, he roller-skated to the studios—albeit not as frequently as he had been—and he often saw movies with his aunt Neva. And Ray satiated his sweet tooth at the ice-cream fountain regularly. At night, Ray and his mother sat in front of the radio and listened to the Jack Benny program,
Amos and Andy
, and the
Lux Radio Theatre
. Leo Bradbury wasn't much interested in radio shows and Ray's brother, Skip, preferred playing ball outside. But Leo and Skip listened assiduously to the University of Southern California Trojan football games and, on occasion, went with Ray to see the games.

In January 1939, Ray was considering college. His parents didn't pressure him to do so, but many of his friends had gone off to school. Ray certainly wanted to better himself, so he went to Los Angeles City College and took the entrance exam; he passed and was accepted. Then Ray had second thoughts. He never really liked school—the grind of classes and the early mornings were too much to bear. But he could meet girls in college. “I'm going to meet girls,” he thought to himself. “That's it. It's the only reason I want to go to college—and that's not a good enough reason.” And so Ray opted to forgo the traditional route to higher education. Instead, he made a commitment to educate himself at the public library. Once a week he went to Central Library downtown and lost himself in the tall, dark corridors of bookshelves, and twice a week he visited the smaller local branch, the Pio Pico Library.

He soon discovered Thomas Wolfe's novels
Of Time and the River
and
Look Homeward, Angel
. They were tremendous influences on Ray, and he learned quite a lot from his early studies of Wolfe, whom he found exuberant. “He's perfect for people around eighteen, nineteen, twenty, when you don't know anything but you think you do,” said Ray. Later in his career when Ray gave lectures, he shared his approach to writing: “Throw up in the morning and clean it up in the afternoon!” he coached at the top of his lungs. He credited Thomas Wolfe for teaching him this approach. “Wolfe taught me how to throw up. His books were immense upchuckings. Not much plot, but he was wild about life and he tore into it and he jumped up and down and he yelled.” At that time, Ray discovered another book that reinforced this writing philosophy:
Becoming a Writer
by Dorthea Brande. Not only did Brande's book teach Ray to write quickly and passionately, it taught him to trust his subconscious, to not overthink or second-guess his words.

Ray slipped into a comfortable rhythm of writing in the morning, selling newspapers in the afternoons, and educating himself at the library weekly. Two months later, in March 1939, Ray's grandmother fell ill and was sent to the hospital. Her condition worsened, and on March 16 she passed away. Ray didn't find out until he returned home that evening from a Science Fiction Society meeting and his mother broke the news. Ray was devastated that “Grammy,” as he called her, was gone.

Two days later, the family buried Minnie Bradbury, but Ray did not attend the funeral. Filled with sorrow, Ray was walking the streets downtown; he caught a double matinee in the afternoon, the farcical combination of
Hold That Co-Ed
and
The Mysterious Mister Moto
. When he arrived home that night, he had to explain to his displeased father his absence. “I said, ‘Look, Pa, I want to remember Grandma the way she was. I don't want her to be dead,” Ray said. Leo Bradbury may have seemed a steely man, toughened from his years of scaling utility poles, but though he rarely showed it, he was gentle and loving, and he understood that his younger son was extraordinarily sensitive. How could he be angry at Ray because he was unable to cope with the loss? He wasn't.

Ray continued working on his writing. He was still contributing to the Science Fiction Society's fanzine,
Imagination!
When he discovered that others were publishing their own 'zines across the country, Ray decided to launch one, too; he called it
Futuria Fantasia
. Forry Ackerman generously gave him the start-up money, and his friend Hans Bok illustrated the cover. The magazine was twelve pages, typed and mimeographed in green ink. Ray wrote the introductory editorial, as well as a poem, “Thought and Space,” and a short story, “Don't Get Technatal,” under the pseudonym Ron Reynolds (he wanted to give the appearance that there were other writers, though Forry Ackerman and society secretary T. Bruce Yerke contributed). The print run was, as Ray recalled, nearly one hundred copies.

That summer on July second and third, the First World Science Fiction Convention was assembling in New York City. Nothing of its kind had ever been organized, and fans from across the country were planning to make the pilgrimage. Along with the ardent fans, authors, artists, agents, and editors were attending as well. When Ray learned of the convention during a society meeting, he itched to go. Not only was the Science Fiction Convention in New York, but the 1939 World's Fair would be there, too, and after his magical experience with the 1933 Century of Progress in Chicago, he was more than eager to attend this new world's fair. But there was that ever-present dilemma in the Bradbury household—no money, even though Ray was working. Forry Ackerman knew Ray wanted to make the trip to New York, so, without being asked, he lent his friend the money (fifty dollars by Ackerman's recollection; ninety if you asked Ray). At the time, Ackerman was living rent-free with his maternal grandparents and also held a job at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences earning eighty-five cents an hour, and could well afford to lend his friend money. Ray offered to pay Ackerman a dollar a week until the debt was paid. Ray also offered to take his friend Hans Bok's artwork with him to New York, acting as an agent of sorts, since Hans couldn't afford to make the trip himself.

And so, at the end of June 1939, Ray boarded a Greyhound bus bound for New York City. It was a momentous trip—his first without his parents or Skip. Intent on bolstering his vocabulary, he carried with him a dictionary and a book called
Hartrampf's Vocabulary
. Ray's eagerness to show off his lexical arsenal in his writing was, by his own admission, obvious and forced. “I was using big words that I found in
Hartrampf's
that I didn't even understand,” Ray remembered with a laugh.