Mary McCarthy's Collected Memoirs: Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, How I Grew, and Intellectual Memoirs (71 page)

KENNETH CALLAHAN
(1905-1986): painter born in Spokane. He had his first one-man show at a stationery store in San Francisco. In 1927 he went to sea as a steward, crossing to Asia and Europe. In 1930 he made his first trip to Mexico and Central America. In Mexico he knew Orozco and Tamayo, and their influence was visible in his work, which appeared in regional exhibitions with increasing frequency. In 1933 he took a job as program director for the Seattle Art Museum, a position he held for many years, and became a regular contributor to local and national periodicals. Like many painters of his time, he worked for the mural division of the WPA during the 1930’s. Murals by him were commissioned for post offices in Centralia and Anacortes, Washington, and Rugby, North Dakota and in 1939 he completed one for the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company in Everett, Washington. In 1942 he got a regular summer job as a ranger in a one-man lookout post in the Cascades, which seems to have encouraged the sweeping vision of nature characteristic of his middle years. By the 1940’s his style was largely non-representational. He taught painting and lithography at Washington State University, the University of Southern California, the Skowhegan School in Maine, and Syracuse University. In 1959 he was one of eight American artists whose work was selected for a State Department-sponsored tour of Europe, South America, and Southeast Asia. He was personally invited to accompany the ten-month tour “to explain the position and life of an American artist.”

In 1963 Callahan lost his entire collection in a fire that burned his Granite Falls, Washington, studio to the ground. He established a new studio in Long Beach, Washington, and began to work on several large murals and a series of terra-cotta sculptures. In 1968 he won an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. His work can be seen in dozens of major collections.

EDUARDO CIANNELI
(1887-1969): Italian character actor highly esteemed in Hollywood. Once known as the “thinking man’s gangster,” he played Trock Estrella in the film version of
Winterset
(1936) and Lucky Luciano in
Marked Woman
(1937). His last appearance was in the 1959 television series
Johnny Staccato.

WARWICK DEEPING
(1877-1950): British physician and novelist. When
Love Among the Ruins
became a best seller in 1904, he left medicine for fiction writing, publishing sixty-nine books. Praised for his “gentlemanly goodness and fun, and well-woven plots,” he was incapable of penning an unhappy ending; even his World War I novel
Sorrell and Son
(1925) ended happily.

MAUD EARL
(1848-1943): daughter and student of the nineteenth-century British sporting painter George Earl. She specialized in dramatized portraits of pedigreed and prize-winning dogs. Among her more famous subjects were the dogs of Queen Victoria and of King Edward VII. Her work appeared in several Royal Academy exhibitions between 1884 and 1901; “The Dog of War” and “Dogs of Death” remained two of her best-known pictures. Her work was popularized in England and the United States through engravings, which included twelve dogs engraved for
The Sportsman’s Year
in 1908. In 1917 she went to the United States, and in 1933, at the age of eighty-five, began to execute decorative screens and murals for the American market.

ALBERT PARKER FITCH
(1877-1944): celebrated Protestant clergyman and public speaker in the 1920’s and 1930’s. A graduate of Boston Latin School, Harvard University, and Union Theological Seminary, he became president of Andover Theological Seminary in 1909. In 1917 he was named Professor of the History of Religion at Amherst College and later gave similar courses at Carleton College in Minnesota. In 1927 he was made pastor of the Park Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City, a post he held until 1932, when poor health forced his retirement. A popular commencement speaker and university preacher, he was well known for his unconventional social views. He was the author of three books about religion and society, including
Can the Church Survive in the Changing Order?
(1920), and a novel,
None So Blind
(1924).

FERDINAND FOCH
(1851-1929): French marshal. He planned the strategy that stopped the Germans at the Marne in 1914, directed the battle of the Somme in 1916, was chief of the French general staff in 1917, and became supreme commander of all Allied armies in 1918.

KAY FRANCIS
(1899-1968): From
The Film Encyclopedia:
“Despite a slight lisp she was one of Hollywood’s most glamorous and most highly paid stars during the 1930’s … portraying stylish, worldly brunettes in romantic melodramas … ” She was convent educated. Among her films were
Gentlemen of the Press, Cynara,
and
The White Angel.

WINSOR BROWN FRENCH II
(1905-1973): society figure and travel writer who was a movie critic and travel columnist for the Cleveland
Press
from 1933 until his retirement in 1968. He was briefly married in the 1930’s to the stage actress and director Margaret Perry.

HAROLD COOPER JOHNSRUD
(1903-1939): stage actor, playwright, and occasional director. Son of Iver and Molly (Cooper), he was born in St. Cloud, Minnesota. As an actor, sometimes doubling as assistant stage-manager, he worked for Arthur Hopkins, Jed Harris, Guthrie McClintic, and during several seasons for the radical Theatre Union. He played a blind man in two plays simultaneously, commuting by cab between theatres—in Maxwell Anderson’s
Winterset
and Archibald MacLeish’s
Panic.
He had a part in Max Reinhardt’s
The Eternal Road
(1937), a pageant of Jewish history designed by Norman Bel Geddes, written by Ludwig Lewisohn, scored by Kurt Weill, starring Lotte Lenya and Sidney Lumet (then a child actor), which was described at the time as “one of the costliest failures in Broadway history.” Though an option was held on his comedy
Anticlimax,
no play of his had been produced at the time of his death. Only his adaptation of the Viennese comedy
Jewel Robbery,
with Basil Sydney and Mary Ellis, was done, in 1935.
New York Times
news stories of December 23 and December 24, 1939, relate the circumstances of his death:

ACTOR BADLY BURNED IN FIRE IN HOTEL SUITE;

Harold Johnsrud Hurt Trying to Save Belongings

“In an effort to retrieve personal belongings from a fire in his rooms at the Hotel Brevoort, Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street, Harold Johnsrud, actor, director, and playwright was critically burned early yesterday.

“Although the blaze was confined to Mr. Johnsrud’s two-room suite on the second floor, forty of the 150 guests of the hotel went to the lobby after a telephone warning. There was little excitement but a crowd gathered on Fifth Avenue as smoke and flames poured from the room.

“Mr. Johnsrud, who is 35 years old, discovered the fire at 5:29 A. M. and after notifying the night manager, Lawrence C. Finn, he went to the apartment adjoining, where Mr. and Mrs. Charles Ellis were asleep. The couple are fellow actors of Mr. Johnsrud in the play ‘Key Largo.’

“Instead of following the Ellises to the lobby Mr. Johnsrud returned to his room, where he collapsed. Fire Lieutenant Clarence Cullen of Hook and Ladder 3 found him slumped on the floor of the bedroom and carried him to the hallway. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital suffering from first, second and third degree burns of the face, hands and body.

“The cause of the fire was undetermined.

“Mr. Johnsrud has been active in the theatre since 1927, when he appeared with the Provincetown Players. He has staged plays and recently wrote one, as yet unproduced. His part of ‘d’Alcala’ in the Maxwell Anderson play at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre was played last night by Mr. Ellis.”

BURNS FATAL TO JOHNSRUD, ACTOR

“Harold C. Johnsrud, 35 years old, an actor and member of the cast of ‘Key Largo,’ who was burned Friday morning during a fire in his hotel room at the Hotel Brevoort, died yesterday afternoon in Misericordia Hospital. Mr. Johnsrud had suffered severe burns of the face, hands and body.”

The “belongings” were said to be the manuscript of a play.

ANNA THERESA KITCHEL
(1882-1959): English professor. A graduate of Smith College, she began teaching at West Davison High School in Milwaukee. She received an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin and joined Vassar as an English instructor in 1918. She rose to be full professor. During 1923-24 she held a Markham Fellowship for study at the British Museum. Her
George Lewes and George Eliot
(1933) was the first biography to approach the relationship between the famous novelist and G. H. Lewes from the side of the latter. She also wrote
Quarry for Middlemarch
(1950).

EUGENE MEYER
(1885-1959): publisher of the Washington
Post
and first president of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

LLOYD NOLAN
(1902-1985): stage and screen actor. In 1931-32 he played in Robert E. Sherwood’s
Reunion in Vienna
with the Lunts. The following year he was Biff Grimes in
One Sunday Afternoon,
which closed after an assassination attempt on Franklin Roosevelt and reopened to run for 338 performances. In 1953-54 he gave the first of his highly praised performances as Captain Queeg in
The Caine Mutiny Court Martial,
on Broadway. He received a New York Drama Critics award for Queeg. He appeared in
Hannah and Her Sisters,
released in 1986.

ADELAIDE B. PRESTON
(1871-1965): educator born in Torrington, Connecticut, in 1871. She was graduated from Smith College in 1895 and began teaching at the Morgan School, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1895. She taught mathematics and Latin in various private schools and was principal of Annie Wright Seminary in Tacoma, Washington, from 1913 to 1929. She then founded Miss Preston’s Outdoor School in Phoenix, Arizona.

HAROLD PRESTON
(1858-1938): lawyer and state senator. Born in Rockford, Illinois, he was educated at Iowa College and Cornell University. He studied law in Newton, Iowa, and was admitted to the Iowa bar in 1883. After moving to Seattle that year, he got a job writing abstracts; two years later he opened his own law office. The firm prospered under various partnerships, and Preston’s reputation for intelligence, integrity, fairness, consideration, and a passion for thoroughness and hard work grew. In 1888 he married Augusta Morgenstern; they had two sons and a daughter.

Preston was chairman of a commission that, in 1895, formulated Seattle’s second charter, which is the framework for its government today. From 1897 to 1901 he was a member of the state Senate and then and later played a prominent part in the enactment of progressive laws. Among these was a statute he wrote that established employers’ liability for injured workers, passed in 1911. This first workers’ compensation law was upheld by both state and federal Supreme Courts. In 1903 Preston was a candidate for the U.S. Senate, but was narrowly defeated by a vote in the legislature. He served as president of the Washington State Bar Association in 1898 and of the Seattle Bar Association in 1909-10.

JOANNA ROOS
(1901-1989): actress and minor playwright. She was married to the composer Edward Rickett (Gilbert’s collaborator after Sullivan’s death). In 1928-29 she appeared in
Grand Street Follies,
and in 1930 played Sonia in Jed Harris’s
Uncle Vanya
with Lillian Gish and Osgood Perkins. In 1934 she was seen in the comedy
Tight Britches
and, with Orson Welles, in Archibald MacLeish’s short-lived
Panic.
Leading roles followed in
Abe Lincoln in Illinois
(1938) and
Orpheus Descending
(1941). With Alexander King and Lehman Engle, she wrote a musical,
Mooncalf,
in 1953. She was a founding member of the Association of Producing Artists in 1960 and appeared with this company. Throughout the 1960’s she played Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Chekhov in summer-theatre festivals around the country.

SIEGFRIED RUMANN
(Sig Ruman) (1885-1967): German character actor. He appeared in 130 films, including the Marx Brothers’
A Night at the Opera, Ninotchka,
with Greta Garbo,
The Hitler Gang,
and
Stalag 17.
He played on the American stage with Tallulah Bankhead, Ethel Barrymore, and Katharine Cornell.

HELEN ESTABROOK SANDISON
(1884-1978): Elizabethan scholar and member of the English faculty at Vassar College from 1919 to 1950. She graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1906 and got her Ph.D. in 1911. She taught English and Latin at Brookville (Indiana) High School from 1907 to 1908. In 1913 she became a Reader in English at Bryn Mawr; in 1919 she was appointed Assistant Professor of English at Vassar. She became full professor in 1929, chairman of the English Department in 1931, and was chairman of the Committee on Admissions from 1923 to 1930. From 1931 to 1936 she was a member of the Modern Language Association’s Executive Council. She was also the author of
Chanson d’Aventure in Middle English
(1913) and, with Henry Noble MacCracken (Vassar’s president),
Manual of Good English
(1917). Her lifetime work was her edition of the English poems of Sir Arthur Gorges, Ralegh’s friend and translator of Lucan (1953).

PRESTON B. SCHOYER
(1912[?]-1978): author of four novels—
The Foreigners, The Indefinite River, The Ringing of the Glass,
and
The Typhoon’s Eye
—based on his Second World War experiences in China.

HARRY STERNBERG
(1904-2001): American painter and graphic artist. He studied at the Art Students League and with Harry Wickey. After some travels in Mexico and Canada, in 1933 he joined the faculty of the Art Students League and taught easel painting and printmaking there for thirty-five years. He also taught at the New School for Social Research (1942-45 and 1950-51) and other institutions. During the Depression, he worked for the WPA’s Federal Art Project and produced murals for post offices in Sellersville and Chester, Pennsylvania. In 1960 he directed and produced the film
The Many Worlds of Art.
His work is in a number of collections in the United States and in Europe.