The Magic Christian (12 page)

Terry Southern Sr. with his son in Dallas, around 1930.

Southern’s yearbook photo from his senior year at Sunset High in 1941.

Southern before World War II. He was able to use the GI Bill to spend four years studying in Paris.

Southern’s 1949 student ID card from the Sorbonne. While abroad, he met many of the people with whom he would collaborate, including Henry Green, Richard Seaver, Alex Trocchi, William Burroughs, Ted Kotcheff, George Plimpton, and Mason Hoffenberg, with whom he wrote
Candy
(1958).

The first ever issue of the
Paris Review
(Spring 1953), which included Southern’s short story “The Accident.”

Outside Gaudí’s Sagrada Família Church in Barcelona in 1954. (Photo by Pud Gadiot.)

Terry and Carol Southern in Paris in 1956.

A page from the original draft of
Flash and Filigree
written between 1952 and 1957.

Working on
The Magic Christian
galleys in Geneva in 1958.

Gore Vidal’s rave write-up of
The Magic Christian
(1959), written on the back of a starched shirt backing. Vidal writes, “Terry Southern is the most profoundly witty writer of our generation . . .”

The telegram that changed everything. This communiqué from Stanley Kubrick invited Southern to come to London to work on Kubrick’s new screenplay for the movie
Dr. Strangelove
(1964). Southern was instrumental in transforming the film from a political thriller into a satire.

Southern and his son, Nile, in Central Park in 1967. (Photo by Michael Cooper.)

From left to right: William S. Burroughs, Terry Southern, Allen Ginsberg, and Jean Genet, covering the National Democratic Convention for
Esquire
in Chicago, 1968. (Photo by Michael Cooper.)