BETTER TOO MUCH THAN TOO LITTLE

 

AYN RAND EARLY in HOLLYWOOD : WORKING SUBSISTENCE JOBS and A ROMANTIC PHILOSOPHY

Anne C. Heller is the author.

Page 68 excerpt:  From mid-1928 until the summer of 1929 - the last summer of the nation's long, carefree era of prosperity before the Great Depression - the girl with the sign of a crown on her forehead worked as a waitress, a department-store clerk, and a door-to-door saleswoman.  It was an embarrassing and probably a frightening time for her.  At age twenty-two she was without dependable employment in what was still to her a foreign country. She had half-jokingly boasted to family and friends that she would be famous within a year of reaching Hollywood, but for the moment she stood outside the golden circle of that City's opportunities. She had to borrow small sums from her Chicago relatives, and, according to unpunished letters from her parents, for a time on a twenty-five dollar monthly subsidy from them, in order to pay her Studio Club rent. Worst of all, her legal standing in the United States was in jeopardy.  While she had been working for DeMille, the director presumably sponsored visa extensions for her with the immigration service, as was the custom in movie industry.  Without a permanent job or a powerful sponsor, she had reason to fear that her time in the United States was running out.  At one point, things looked so bleak that Anna (her mother) actually urged her to come back to Russia, or at least to return to her relatives in Chicago.  Rand of course, refused.

Pride was not a defect of character in Ayn Rand's universe. She concealed her menial jobs from industry acquaintances by working in the suburbs, and she disguised her dire financial condition from O'Connor, who was making ends meet by working in a restaurant alongside Nick and Joe. (His brothers.) She wanted her suitor to see her at her best - that is, to see the woman in Ayn Rand. She already believed, as she would later write, that romance should never be mixed with suffering or pity.  Echoing her mother's Victorian maxims, she also thought that a woman should avoid cooking or cleaning in the presence of her lover and steer clear of becoming her lover's pal.....

Excerpt Page 71 : Ayn Rand and Frank O'Connor were married in the Los Angeles City Hall of Justice on April 15, 1929, either just before or just after Alice Rosenbaum's via officially expired.  Two weeks later, she and her husband took a borrowed car to Mexicali, Mexico, and re-entered the new name, Mrs. Charles Francis O'Connor, and a new legal status as the wife of an American citizen.  As such, she was entitled to a rapid evaluation to become a permanent resident, and eventually, a citizen. By June, having proved that she wasn't wanted for crimes in Soviet Russia, she received a permanent visa, the equivalent of a green card.  With only one exception, she never left the United States again. 

Missy here:  Comments from Frank's relative that Frank loved Ayn more than he loved any woman, feel telling to me. She had moved from the YMCA accommodations, where virtue of the young women who stayed there, was said to be protected, into a furnished room so she and Frank could become lovers. The author suggests that because of his Catholicism this would have propelled him to marry her anyway. I wish O'Connor's sense of his religion and sexuality were better known as this comes into conflict with the reportage that, after his mother's death, at age fourteen he dropped out of Catholicism and became a strong, life long atheist like Ayn. One of the reasons is that frustration with him sexually could have propelled her into seeking what she could not get out of her marriage elsewhere.

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BAGS OF IT

 

AYN RAND ; LONG MARRIED SUCCESSFUL NOVELIST - KNOWN FOR HER OBJECTIVIST PHILOSOPHY - FRANK O'CONNOR HER HUSBAND - NATHANIEL BRANDON HER MUCH YOUNGER MARRIED PSYCHOLOGIST LOVER

AYN RAND

Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum

1905 (Russia) -  1982 (New York)

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."  - Ayn Rand  (page1)

Ayn Rand was born into a Russian Jewish family, but didn't make much of the religion of her birth, instead promoting a philosophy of how best to live life, with the emphasis on an individual's self-interest. As a child, her family was prosperous enough to vacation travel to London and Paris and she also found herself in a decent grade school that ignored the tiny quota for Jewish students and took more like her. She also graduated Petrograd State University, where she was a member of student writing clubs, in the fall of 1924. The nineteen year old graduate then enrolled in a new school, State Technicum for Screen Arts, meant to train actors and cinematographers. In 1925 she got a passport and applied for a Student Visa to America, with her impoverished family and her mother making personal financial sacrifices to support her ambitions.

Fleeing a hostile existence in which Jews were targeted, Ayn was the one in her family to make it America. She went to Berlin, then Paris, and arrived on a steamship to New York harbor in February 1926. She went first to Chicago and relatives of her mother's and she promised to return to Russia but did not. In 1931 she became a citizen and endeavored to get her family out of Russia but was thwarted. As the years passed, and the Holocaust of World War II occurred, she was unsure if any of her family left behind in Russia had survived in Europe, thus pointing to a disconnect from them. Rand hated Russia and the Marxists and her experiences there would forever influence her thinking. She would become the anti-Communist heroine of Capitalism but not a Christian one. She - and the man who would become her husband, were atheists. Giving herself a new, made-up, name was perhaps her first act of recreating her self, a self that believed in individualism.

However, Ayn was also one of those who wanted "Communists" eradicated from Hollywood in the 1940's, still a controversial move.

She'd begun writing as a child - ten years old - sixteen; a first novel: Perhaps she knew writing to be her strength. She left Chicago for Hollywood and an encounter with Cecile B.DeMille, also of Russian-Jewish heritage, got her a job as a screenwriter circa 1927 which paid her rent at a YMCA owned residence for women unchaperoned. Mythologies have sprung up about their "chance encounter." It's said Ayn likely managed to run into DeMille just as she was said to have stalked the man she wanted to marry. By 1928, none of her scripts moving towards development into movies, she was cut to part time employment. Then when DeMille moved on to form Goldwyn-Mayer, she was left without a job.

Hollywood also was where she met the man she chose as a husband, actor Frank O'Connor, who is described repeatedly, and in so many words, as an accommodating gentleman. (His brother is described as both gay and essential to the relationship and I kept wondering if he also was gay. Especially when I read that it was said that he had never initiated sex with Ayn, but she did with him.) Initially, he was doing better than she. He went from background acting to small speaking roles.  

'He was earning enough to buy his young wife her first portable American typewriter, a radio, and a beautiful made-to-order walnut desk.  He presented her with a brand new copy of Webster's Daily Use Dictionary; inscribed with a love poem he wrote, based on the letters of the alphabet. Together they purchased their first car; A used Nash, bought on time, which Rand would never learn to drive.  He decorated their new apartment, giving his wife another glimpse of his artistic talent. They were happy.' (page 75)

In a rare "role reversal" of sorts for the time, after O'Connor's small parts in films did not suffice, Ayn became the bread-winner, the one whose career was to be followed. In essence her husband became a Kept Man, but married, known only for his relationship with her.

They bought land to ranch and he became a gentleman farmer out in the San Fernando Valley, but when Ayn tired of Hollywood, they moved to New York, with promises to return some day. They never did.  Another couple took care of the property and the farm for many years. There were times during their marriage in which he took small jobs to help out financially, but it was up to him to arrange the flowers and spend time painting. A decision was made and the couple left Los Angeles for the Big Apply in the fall of 1934.  We The Living, a novel by Ayn Rand, was published in 1936.

It was in that city that the couple went from a shared room to owning a decent apartment to live in for years, and where Ayn sweated over writing her novels, as fame and fortune were hers. It was also during these years that a complicated and sophisticated of relationship intrigue went on, perhaps essential to Ayn's emotional and psychological stability.

She was about fifty-two years old and had been at it for thirty years before she became world famous and she had worked very hard at her writing. Rand was devoted to it, considered a genius, and she became extremely concerned that she top the success of her prior two novels as she worked on her third.

When it came to support for her career, Ayn did not only depend on her husband or her friends. Rather a much younger man and his fiancée had come into her life - their lives, starting with their long visit out in California, almost as devotees to her philosophy. The youthful Nathaniel Brandon was engaged and eventually married the same woman, Barbara. Perhaps sex wasn't ever going to work out for this couple, but eventually Ayn and he had an affair beginning in the mid 1950's, reportedly fifteen years long, one that her husband and his wife also accommodated and sex was only part of their relationship. 

Years went by, the young man matured, became a psychologist, met a younger woman who did not come with complications, and sought to divorce his wife. The hesitation - and the conniving - was about how he might sustain all the important roles he played in Ayn's life, other than the romantic or sexual. This new development happened about the time that Ayn had recovered from a years-long serious depression, after her second novel, The Fountainhead, which she'd spent years working on, was met with criticism. (Her novels today are considered classics, still sell very well, and her philosophy still has influence, especially on economic policies.) Ayn was in charge again. She had called off sex with Nathaniel Brandon and now wanted to start it back up but clearly, at least to him, she was no longer attractive to the younger man.

How Ayn and her husband Frank and Brandon and his wife Barbara slowly came to agree to what would be considered today to be an Open Relationship, was of special interest to me and, I think, would also be to the readers of Mistress Manifesto. It could be argued that husband Frank O'Connor had become a Kept Man as a husband but notions of who should dominate a relationship and be the bread-winner back in the day are now considered old fashioned. I would also say that when it came to self-determination and satisfying one's needs Ayn dominated the marriage and was superior in meeting her needs, while not abandoning her husband.  The moral qualms, if there were any, seem to have been those of Brandon.

However, when the truth finally came out, she was extremely angry and indignant. She banished the younger man from her life.

Continue with me this month as we explore these complicated relationships.

Missy

P.S.  Although Rand was an advocate of hard work and earning one's own way in the world, of self-responsibility and a sort of moral righteousness, although she wore a dollar sign pin, she was never wealthy by today's standards and her sense of morality was not that of the typical American citizen.

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The book by Anne C. Heller is the primary reference for this month's posts.

 

ABOUT LEAVING A COMMENT

I read every comment before deciding if I will publish it.  I'm looking for comments that are well spoken and well considered and that are on spot for the post the comment would appear under. I especially like comments that answer the questions I'm asking. I'm open to different opinions but please, think of how you spoke in class discussions at school and consider your audience!  For more information check out the PAGE about comments.

Friends, if there is a Kept Person you think I should do more research or reading about, please suggest books, articles, or leads to that information. 

THANKS!

Missy

QUEEN OF HEARTS : GREGG ALLMAN

BLUE

 

RECENT FINANCIAL SCANDAL IN MONACO? IS PRINCE ALBERT'S FORTUNE HIS TO SPEND AS HE SEES FIT?

Ah, Monaco. One of the tiniest and wealthiest countries in the world, and a cast of characters worthy of any classic Greek play.  Can you really walk across it in a half hour or less?  You can!  It's jammed with wealthy and powerful individuals and Prince Albert II is the Head of State as well as one of the busiest men on earth.

To start, the scandal first began with the possibility that the businessmen involved were profiting personally or taking more money than due them, but extended to criticism about how Albert spends his own fortune.

For this I first reference TOWN AND COUNTRY MAGAZINE : MONACO - ALBERT II - FINANCIAL ADVISORS by Simon Usborne from February 2024

The suggestion of financial scandal began in 2021 and the first reveal was via YouTube! Some of the Prince's long time advisors were involved in the scandal.  Was there anyone left to trust?

Excerpt: In a kind of Wikileaks-sur-mer, the site began posting scanned and lightly redacted documents, including supposed e-mails and bank statements that, "if we are to believe the veracity of these documents" as the newspaper Le Monde cautioned, accused these four men in particular of exploiting their positions and princely patronage to extract enormous wealth from Monaco's superprime real estate market, allegations they were swift to categorically deny.

By June 2023, the once trusting Prince had asked all four men to resign.  

NEW YORK POST : INSIDE DANGEROUS SPENDING : HOW ALBERT SPENDS (HIS PERSONAL FORTUNE IS A BILLION OR MORE)

Reading around this scandal, the Prince's expenditures including an allowance for Princess Charlene and a payment of her overdrafts, allowances for Princess Caroline and Princess Stephanie, as well as generosity to his daughter Jazmin's New York apartment and an allowance for his son, Alexandre. Nicole Coste's once received $850,000 a year but also "decamped" to live in London.  (A man buying his mistress a place to live in for the rest of her life, or which she can sell if in need after the relationship is over is a very good idea.)

So here's my take:  The expenditures for houses, allowances, and so on, for those closest to Albert II are really not all that much considering the cost of things in Monaco and the expenditures related to public appearances that include social events.  Princess Caroline and Princess Stephanie have their own financial resources as well as may some others. I suspect that even with designers possibly giving deals to the beautiful and famous family of Monaco so as to wear their clothing, the need to appear fashionable in keeping with the marketing of Monaco as one of the most expensive destinations on earth means a lot of the money is spent on clothing and jewelry. 

Could YOU afford to live in Monaco? Some websites suggest that about $10,000 a month is average for a single person.

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