Anne Heller - Ayn Rand and the World She Made

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saw a lot of Jack Bungay:Unpublished letter from Bert Allenberg to Hal Wallis, April 12, 1944 (Hal Wallis Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, box 95).

joined the male trio:Unpublished letter from Albert Mannheimer to IP, April 26, 1947 (Isabel Paterson Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, box 23).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 knew Rand’s American name is evidence that Rand’s parents and their friends also knew it.

Marie von Strachow:Author correspondence with Michael Berliner, June 2, 2005.

fled Russia for Western Europe:Letter to John C. Gall, AR’s attorney, January 29, 1947 (LOAR , p. 360) and author correspondence with Michael Berliner. AR told Gall that Strachow left Russia in 1918, but she must have left later, in the middle or late 1920s.

the elder Rosenbaums’ deaths:Letter to Marie von Strachow, August 8, 1946 (LOAR , p. 301).

perished from cancer:Archive of the Kuibyshev district of Leningrad, card 1696.

Rand later learned: EOWTL , p. 78; 100 Voices , NR, p. 7.

sent … packages of food and clothing: 100 Voices , Lisette Hassani, p. 257.

Rand’s lively and much-beloved youngest sister, Nora:Author correspondence with BB, February 4, 2008 (“Ayn never told us about her parents’ deaths, nor about bringing this woman over, although the woman must have left not long before we met Ayn. I’m thinking of the also odd fact that she never said a word about experiencing anti-Semitism in Russia. And another odd fact: I would never, from what Ayn told me, have expected NR to refuse to speak to me about Ayn’s childhood because ‘we don’t speak ill of the dead’—which suggests childhood problems between the sisters and perhaps more widely than that and which Ayn never so much as hinted at. There’s a mystery here and some sort of deliberate rewriting of history that I can’t figure out”).

working on a difficult and important section:This was the wedding-anniversary party scene in the Reardens’ house in Pennsylvania, where almost all the major characters come together for the first time ( JOAR , pp. 583–85).

to live elsewhere in California:Author interview with June Kurisu, December 31, 2004.

Two of Rand’s Chicago cousins stopped by:Probably in the summer of 1946.

Jack noticed that she had a needle:Author interview with Jack Portnoy, August 17, 2004.

Joe O’Connor, now an itinerant actor:Author interview with MW, June 21, 2004.

The four were talking about a newspaper article: 100 Voices , Rosalie Wilson, pp. 29–36.

On hearing this story:Author correspondence with Barbara Branden, September 17, 2008.

A few years later she would tell a friend:Author interview with Nathaniel Branden, December 11, 2008.

Marna, had quit high school:Letter to Mimi Sutton, April 30, 1946 (LOAR , p. 275).

She and Frank agreed to pay:Letter to Mimi Sutton, March 24, 1946 (LOAR , pp. 265–66).

a strain developed:Author interview with MW, June 21, 2004.

she did not see it as a moral duty:Alvin Toffler, “The Playboy Interview: Ayn Rand,” Playboy , March 1964, p. 40.

the old and the lame, she complained:Letter to Marjorie Williams, June 18, 1936 (LOAR , p. 32).

“I considered it an investment”:Author interview with MW, June 21, 2004.

Similarly, when discussing Thaddeus Ashby’s long residence:BBTBI.

“She had a certain tone of voice”:Interview with Thaddeus Ashby, July 17, 2005.

plot of a story she had read at the studio:I was unable to identify this story.

worked for tiny libertarian magazines:Brian Doherty, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern Libertarian Movement (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs, 2007), pp. 278–79.

sent her a long letter:BBTBI.

Rand had written lovingly:Letter to IP, August 4, 1954 (LOAR , p. 185).

becoming impatient with each other: TPOAR , p. 210.

her way of ceding control: JD , pp. 65–66.

heard him snap: TPOAR , p. 210, based on interview with RBH.

Frank, visibly angry:Interview with Thaddeus Ashby, July 17, 2005.

“Sometimes I think I am the

throne,”: 100 Voices , RBH, p. 126.

Another acquaintance: TPOAR , p. 210.

“To the Readers of The Fountainhead”: LOAR , pp. 669-73.

“or as near to it as anyone I know”:Letter to Gerald James, August 18, 1945 (LOAR , p. 228), on which “To the Readers of The Fountainhead” was partly based.

“The average man”:April 29, 1946 (JOAR , p. 474).

“I had in my mind”:“To the Readers of The Fountainhead” (LOAR , pp. 669-73).

questions concerning her background:Letter to Ross Baker, November 21, 1945 (LOAR , p. 233).

scores of characters:She created almost two hundred characters in her four novels (Mimi Reisel Gladstein, The Ayn Rand Companion [Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984], pp. 41-69).

“I am interested in men only”:“To the Readers of The Fountainhead” (LOAR , pp. 669-73).