The Bradbury Chronicles (29 page)

 

O
N
S
ATURDAY
, April 17, 1954, Ray arrived by train in Rome and continued on to Sicily. On Easter Sunday, he reunited with his wife and daughters. “It was as if a terrific burden had been lifted off Ray's shoulders,” said Regina Ferguson. “He was a different man when he arrived in Italy.”

Before leaving for Europe, Ray had written Renaissance scholar Bernard Berenson to arrange a meeting. Ray, responding to Berenson's invitation to visit, was thrilled yet apprehensive. After his troubles with John Huston, Ray feared that another renowned man would make a fool of him. A respected intellect and noted author of art history, Berenson held court with world leaders and film stars; Ray was intimidated. Honest about his own limitations, Ray was the first to admit that he was not an intellectual. If anything, Maggie Bradbury, cultured, well read, and fluent in four languages, was the intellectual in the Bradbury household. Despite Ray's insecurities, he decided to meet Berenson, and traveled with Maggie to Berenson's villa, I Tatti, in Florence.

The sixteenth-century home sat on a lush estate, with ornate gardens surrounded by palm and cypress trees. When Ray and Maggie arrived, Berenson's secretary-assistant, Nicky Mariano, welcomed them and asked that they wait in the library. Shortly thereafter, Berenson appeared in the doorway. He was a slight man and, at eighty-eight years old, quite frail. But Berenson was full of energy. He approached Ray and, in his accented English, pointed and said, “Mr. Bradbury, when you answer this next question, we will be friends or we will not be friends.”

Ray once again found himself facing a man he greatly admired, feeling insecure. “Ask the question,” Ray said, nervously.

“When I wrote you last year, you didn't answer me immediately. Is it because you didn't know who Bernard Berenson was, or you found out later, and then you wrote to me?”

Ray hesitated, unsure of how to answer. “Mr. Berenson,” he said at last, “I've never had a letter like yours in my life. It scared the hell out of me. We had no money to travel. At the end of your letter you said, ‘If you're ever in Italy, be in touch.' But we had no money and no prospects for travel. We were very poor, and I didn't know what to say to you. So I delayed writing, and then suddenly John Huston came along and gave me the job writing
Moby Dick,
and when I got to Ireland, I wrote to you because I knew there was a chance I could come down and see you.”

To that, Berenson replied, “Accepted! We shall be friends.”

His relationship with Berenson was of paramount importance to Ray. After Huston and
Moby Dick,
he felt wholly beleaguered, and Berenson's kind offer of friendship appeared at the exact moment he needed it most. Like Christopher Isherwood, Gerald Heard, and Aldous Huxley a few years earlier, Berenson, a revered intellectual, was heaping praise on a writer known primarily for science fiction.

“We were welcomed into his household,” said Maggie, “and we became his children. He always called us his ‘children.'” For the next few days, Ray and Maggie dined with Berenson. Berenson marveled at Ray's prose mastery, but emphasized that Ray need not write with the ornate decorations of science fiction and fantasy. He hoped that one day Ray might write a book with characters outside the realm of the fantastic.

Berenson also recommended Renaissance art stops for Ray and Maggie to make throughout the region. In turn, Ray and Maggie reported back their thoughts and viewpoints. Both neophytes to Renaissance art, Ray and Maggie learned much from Berenson, who reveled in teaching them. “When you go to museums,” he cautioned Ray and Maggie, “only stay for an hour at a time! Don't exhaust the body so as to exhaust the eye and tire the mind.” For Ray and Maggie Bradbury, the days in Florence with Berenson, who had become very dear to them, were some of their happiest.

Ray is known best for his science fiction, but to me his most moving things are his midwestern, rural remembrances of things past. I loved
Dandelion Wine.

—
STUDS TERKEL
,
Pulitzer Prize–winning author

A
FTER THE
Bradburys returned to the United States in May 1954, Ray was inundated with proposals to write screenplays. He was offered
Good Morning, Miss Dove
;
Anatomy of a Murder
;
Les Diaboliques
;
Friendly Persuasion;
and
The Man with the Golden Arm,
but refused them all. “I remember walking down Hollywood Boulevard,” he said, “and three films I had turned down were playing at theaters at the same time.” Ray, fatigued from his overseas sojourn and Huston experience, was not about to embark on another script misadventure. And, he said, “I wanted to spend time with my family.”

While Ray was most certainly a career man, he was faithfully devoted to his family. As a father, he loved nothing more than telling bedtime stories to his daughters. He invented adventures starring himself as Blackstone the Magician's sidekick—tales that took him as a young boy all across the globe. His girls listened, mesmerized, to these fables about their father and the world's greatest illusionist; they believed every word. Naturally, Ray and Maggie emphasized storytelling and books. In an unusual nod to their importance, when the girls were infants, Ray placed books in their cribs—to get them accustomed to the shape, feel, and smell. Books were always of the utmost importance to Ray.

And this is why, even after considering a slew of lucrative screenwriting offers after he returned home from Ireland, Ray refused them. He would rather write novels and short stories. “No one ever remembers screenwriters,” he claimed. “I would have been rich if I had done those scripts, but no one would have remembered me.” Fortune was never a motivating factor behind Ray's singular drive; his ego needed to be fueled and he wanted adoration and recognition for his creations, and he was the first to admit this personality trait.

A few weeks after his return home, Ray attended a special meeting of the Screenwriters Guild, held in the Crystal Room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The McCarthy hearings were gripping Hollywood, and the guild convened for a vote on screenwriters who had invoked the Fifth Amendment. Should they remove these writers' names from screen credits for refusing to testify before a U.S. government body?

“It was ridiculous!” recalled Ray. “You can't play politics that way. You either write a screenplay or you don't. If you wrote it, it's yours. Your name appears on it.”

Nearly eight hundred guild members appeared for the vote, and a secret ballot, to ensure anonymity and safety for the voters, was distributed in the Crystal Room.

“We voted it down,” said Ray. “I was so proud of my fellow guild members.” But, as Ray recalled, not everyone was as pleased. Screenwriter Borden Chase, who was helping to facilitate the vote, decried the decision of the guild that night and warned his fellow members that the newspapers the next morning, particularly the conservative publications, would label them all “Commies” and “pinkos” if they did not reverse their decision.

“He insisted on an open vote,” Ray recalled fifty years later, still filled with outrage. “That was against the law.” At Chase's urging, a new, open vote was cast, and almost everyone in the room reversed his or her original vote. The secret ballot was overturned. “There were eight hundred cowards in that room,” said Ray. Only a dozen or so members stood alongside Ray Bradbury, including author Leon Uris. “My understanding was that there were some finks in the room reporting back to the studio,” Uris opined in a letter to Ray in 2001, “and a cruddy character from the
Reporter
wanting to get the list of names of those who voted against taking the oath.”

With the vote reversed, Ray Bradbury spoke out harshly. “Cowards! McCarthyites!” he cried, his finger raised in the air.

“Throw that man out!” Borden Chase retorted.

Ray was indignant and defiant. “I'm ashamed of all of you!” With those final words, Ray stormed out of the room and skipped guild meetings for the next year. “I was sickened,” he said.

As for Leon Uris, his final words, as he told Ray in his 2001 letter, were, “I'll never attend another Guild meeting again.” Uris kept his pledge.

 

O
N
J
ULY
22, 1955, Maggie gave birth to their third daughter, Bettina Francion Bradbury. Her name reflected the Bradburys' recent world travels and new friendships. Both Ray and Maggie loved the name of Peter Viertel's elegant girlfriend, Paris model Bettina Graziani. Francion was the name of their dear friend Madame Man'Ha Garreau-Dombasle's daughter.

A new daughter, more books published—the period following their return from Europe was a boon for Ray and his family. After six years of being shopped to various publishing houses, Ray's children's book,
Switch on the Night,
sold to Pantheon Books. The story of a child overcoming his fear of the dark,
Switch on the Night
won the Boys Club of America Book Award a year after publication. Ray's second book with Ballantine,
The October Country,
was also released. It was a repackaging of Ray's first book,
Dark Carnival,
which after nearly a decade had finally sold out of its first print run of just over three thousand copies. Because Ray constantly tinkered with his literary past (something he later lamented),
The October Country
featured fifteen of the original tales from
Dark Carnival,
along with four new, unpublished short stories: “The Dwarf,” “The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse,” “Touched with Fire,” and “The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone.” As ever, Ray was particularly critical of his own work, and as a result he rewrote or edited all the
Dark Carnival
stories, with different levels of effort given to each one. Some stories, such as “Homecoming,” were given a minor polish. Other tales, “Jack-in-the-Box” and “The Emissary,” for example, included wholesale rewrites. These tales were among the last Ray had written for
Dark Carnival
prior to its publication in 1947, and unlike many of the stories in Ray's first book, had not appeared in magazines before the book was published. As a result, they did not go through the same level of editing as stories that had appeared previously in magazines.

Editor Stanley Kauffmann, who worked with Ray on
Fahrenheit 451,
suggested that, since this book included new stories and new tellings of old tales, Ray consider giving the book a new title. It was far from simply a second printing of
Dark Carnival
. After ruminating, Ray decided upon
The October Country
. In the opening pages of the book, he described his spectral landscape:

 

OCTOBER COUNTRY

… that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty sound like rain....

 

One last feature would set
The October Country
apart from its early incarnation,
Dark Carnival
. This new book would feature illustrations, including the cover art, by Ray's friend, artist Joe Mugnaini, who had furnished the cover and interior illustrations for
The Golden Apples of the Sun,
as well as the striking cover art for
Fahrenheit 451
.

Even as Ray had taken a self-imposed hiatus “for at least three years” from working on another motion picture, he did continue to sell story rights to dramatic radio. Throughout the early to mid-1950s, Ray's stories were adapted by other writers for shows such as
Dimension X,
ABC Radio Workshop,
and the CBS program
Suspense
. In 1955, Ray began a relationship with the television program
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
. “I'd loved Hitchcock forever,” Ray said, “and I saw his show and realized that we were similar spirits.” Ray wrote his first script for
Alfred Hitchcock Presents,
“Shopping for Death,” which was based on “Touched With Fire,” from
The October Country
. He was paid $2,250 for the script. The episode aired January 29, 1956. “I wrote one or two things a year for them,” said Ray. He worked closely with Norman Lloyd, one of the program's producers and directors, as well as with producer Joan Harrison. “I would go to the studio and tell them my idea or give them a short story, and if they liked it, they'd say, ‘Hey, that's good, go home and write that.' I would write the script and send it over. I would go back to lunch the next week and they'd tell me what was wrong with it or what was right. If I agreed, I'd make changes. If I didn't agree I'd tell them why and I didn't have to make any changes. It was a wonderful relationship.”

Alfred Hitchcock left the day-to-day business of running his television program to Lloyd, Harrison, and the rest of his staff. The producers would send initial plot summaries of each and every episode to the director for his approval, and Hitchcock's word was final. If he liked it, the episode was good to go. If he didn't like it, the concept was stopped dead in its tracks. Alfred Hitchcock liked Ray's ideas. The director, according to Norman Lloyd, felt privileged to have an author of Ray's literary stature contributing to the program. “Ray's strength,” said Norman Lloyd, “above all, was a great sense of story—of plot—which is not given to many.”

On occasion, Ray would meet with Hitchcock, “a very kind, gentle man, with a good sense of humor.” Ray would also visit the set of several Hitchcock film productions. One afternoon, Ray even brought his childhood pal Donald Harkins to the set. Ray had first met Harkins in 1934, outside the walls of a film studio, where they were both collecting autographs. Now they were inside the walls, by invitation, watching one of the masters at work.

Ray had a solid partnership with Alfred Hitchcock. It was a good collaboration, based on professionalism and without the psycho-antics involved in writing the screenplay for John Huston. Between 1955 and 1964, Ray would go on to write seven scripts for Hitchcock. Because of his commitment to Hitchcock's television show, he was forced to take a pass on an enticing film offer. Alfred Hitchcock gave Ray a copy of a story by Daphne Du Maurier, the celebrated author of
Rebecca
. The story was called “The Birds,” and Hitchcock planned on making it into a motion picture. Ray took the story home, read it, and met with Hitchcock again to discuss it. “He asked me if I'd do the screenplay,” recalled Ray. He told Hitchcock that he'd do it. “If you can wait two weeks for me.”

“Why do I have to wait two weeks?” Hitchcock asked.

“Because I'm doing a teleplay right now.”

“For who?”

“For Hitchcock.”

Hitchcock was confused.

“I'm working for you already,” Ray explained. “Doing a teleplay for your television show. If you'll just wait two weeks, I'll write
The Birds
.”

Unfortunately, Hitchcock could not wait the two weeks for Ray to finish a teleplay for his own series. “I should have done it,” Ray said regretfully, years later. “The film is full of holes. It's too long. Still, I often wonder what would have happened if I had written it. The ending of the film as it stands is very unsatisfactory.”

Moby Dick
premiered in Hollywood in June 1956. The gala opening was held at the Pantages Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Once again, Ray had come full circle. As a teenager growing up in Hollywood, he had stood outside the old Uptown Theatre on countless film opening nights, clutching his autograph book and pen to his chest, watching as the parade of stars climbed out of their limousines and strolled into the theater. And tonight he was in the parade.

The opening night of
Moby Dick
was a glitzy Hollywood affair. The cast of the film, including Gregory Peck, was all there. John Huston's limousine rolled up, and Ray saw him for the first time since leaving Ireland two years earlier. They spoke for a few minutes, exchanging pleasantries, despite the flap over screen credit. But Ray couldn't enjoy the film that night. He was too nervous. He was too close to the film to take it all in for its entertainment value. The following night, Ray purchased seventy tickets, and invited all of his family and friends: Leo and Esther Bradbury; Aunt Neva; his uncle Inar; his brother, Skip, and his wife, Sonnie; his pals Sid Stebel and Bill Nolan. Ray even invited his high school writing teacher, Jennet Johnson. It was always important for Ray to show the people who had helped him along the way that he had made it. However, even that night, surrounded by his loving inner circle, Ray did not enjoy himself. He was too worried about what everyone else thought of the picture.