Don Bachardy

The love story between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy--in their own words The English novelist and screenwriter Christopher Isherwood was already famous as the author of Goodbye to Berlin when he met Don Bachardy, a California teenager, on the beach in Santa Monica in 1952. Within a year, they began to live together as an openly gay couple, defying convention in the closeted world of Hollywood. Isherwood was forty-eight; Bachardy was eighteen. The Animals is the testimony in letters to their extraordinary partnership, which lasted until Isherwood's death in 1986--despite the thirty year age gap, affairs and jealousy (on both sides), the pressures of increasing celebrity, and the disdain of twentieth-century America for love between two men. The letters reveal the private world of the Animals: Isherwood was "Dobbin," a stubborn old workhorse; Bachardy was the rash, playful "Kitty." Isherwood had a gift for creating a safe and separate domestic milieu, necessary for a gay man in mid-twentieth-century America. He drew Bachardy into his semi-secret realm, nourished Bachardy's talent as a painter, and launched him into the artistic career that was first to threaten and eventually to secure their life together. The letters also tell of public achievements--the critical acclaim for A Single Man, the commercial success of Cabaret--and the bohemian whirl of friendships in Los Angeles, London, and New York with such stars as Truman Capote, Julie Harris, David Hockney, Vanessa Redgrave, Gore Vidal, and Tennessee Williams. Bold, transgressive, and playful, The Animals articulates the devotion, in tenderness and in storms, between two uniquely original spirits.

Hollywood is Don Bachardy's mangum opus, a life's work of portraits that is a vertiable who's who of Hollywood royalty. It is the only work of Bachardy's paintings currently in print. Don Bachardy is famous not only as a lifelong companion to the late English novelist Christopher Isherwood, but also as a fine art painter and portraitist. Having lived in Hollywood all his life, he has had the opportunity to know and paint many of the city's luminaries. Hollywood is Bachardy's magnum opus, a five-decade retrospective of the artist's portrait drawings and paintings. A stunning compendium of Hollywood's influential actors, directors, screenwriters, cinematographers, costumers, choreographers, composers, columnists, producers, and agents. Includes portraits of: Charlotte Rampling, Henry Fonda, Mia Farrow, Jack Nicholson, Angela Lansbury, Katherine Hepburn, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Lemmon, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Matthew Modine, Tim Robbins, Julianne Moore, Andie McDowell, Tom Waits, Madeleine Stowe, Simon Callow, Patrick Swayze, Brooke Shields, Melanie Griffith, Joan Rivers, Stockard Channing, Jon Voight, Jane Fonda, Joan Collins, Fred Astaire, Rita Hayworth, Barbara Streisand, Natalie Wood, Marlene Dietrich, John Gielgud, Gore Vidal, John Huston, Ian McKellen, and many, many more.

Christopher Isherwood was a celebrated English writer when he met the Californian teenager Don Bachardy on a Santa Monica beach in 1952. They spent their first night together on Valentine's Day 1953. Defying the conventions, the two men began living as an openly gay couple in an otherwise closeted Hollywood. This book tells their story.

The love story between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy--in their own words The English novelist and screenwriter Christopher Isherwood was already famous as the author of Goodbye to Berlin when he met Don Bachardy, a California teenager, on the beach in Santa Monica in 1952. Within a year, they began to live together as an openly gay couple, defying convention in the closeted world of Hollywood. Isherwood was forty-eight; Bachardy was eighteen. The Animals is the testimony in letters to their extraordinary partnership, which lasted until Isherwood's death in 1986--despite the thirty year age gap, affairs and jealousy (on both sides), the pressures of increasing celebrity, and the disdain of twentieth-century America for love between two men. The letters reveal the private world of the Animals: Isherwood was "Dobbin," a stubborn old workhorse; Bachardy was the rash, playful "Kitty." Isherwood had a gift for creating a safe and separate domestic milieu, necessary for a gay man in mid-twentieth-century America. He drew Bachardy into his semi-secret realm, nourished Bachardy's talent as a painter, and launched him into the artistic career that was first to threaten and eventually to secure their life together. The letters also tell of public achievements--the critical acclaim for A Single Man, the commercial success of Cabaret--and the bohemian whirl of friendships in Los Angeles, London, and New York with such stars as Truman Capote, Julie Harris, David Hockney, Vanessa Redgrave, Gore Vidal, and Tennessee Williams. Bold, transgressive, and playful, The Animals articulates the devotion, in tenderness and in storms, between two uniquely original spirits.

Stars in My Eyes is a revealing and entertaining collection of celebrity portraits, rendered both in acute drawings and in finely observed prose. In the 1970s and 1980s, internationally known artist Don Bachardy made portraits from life, depicting the actors, writers, artists, composers, directors, and Hollywood elite that he and his partner Christopher Isherwood knew. He then made detailed notes about these portrait sittings in the journal he has kept for more than forty years. The result is a unique document: we enter the mind of the artist as he records the images and behavior of his celebrity subjects - from Ruby Keeler and Barbara Stanwyck to Jack Nicholson and Linda Ronstadt - during their often intense collaboration with him.

This work comprises a collection of celebrity portraits, rendered both in ink drawings and in prose. Internationally known portraitist Don Bachardy made each drawing from life in the course of a few hours, sketching the actors, writers, artists, composers, directors and Hollywood elite he knew and lived among with his partner, Christopher Isherwood. Then, he made notes in his diaries on the experience of making each portrait. Made in the 1970s and 1980s, Bachardy's drawings and prose sketches capture many celebrities near the end of their careers (Ruby Keeler, Vincente Minelli, Laurence Oliver) and others at the height of their stardom (Jack Nicholson, Mia Farrow, Linda Ronstadt). Bette Davis offers to cook him lunch and haplessly overboils the beets, sits for three drawings and renders her judgement: ""Yup, that's the old bag"". Barbara Stanwyck threatens that she might scandalize him with her cussing. Aaron Copeland grouses, ""Well, it makes me look benign"". Ellsworth Kelly admits to being a fan of ""The Road Warrior"". Jerry Brown commissions an official portrait.