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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