Núria Añó - The Salon of Exiled Artists in California: Salka Viertel Took in Actors, Prominent Intellectuals and Anonymous People in Exile Fleeing from Nazism (English Edition)

(Salka Viertel took in actors, prominent intellectuals and anonymous people in exile fleeing from Nazism)

by Nria A

Originally published in Spanish as El saln de los artistas exiliados en California

Copyright 2020 Nria A

www.nuriaanyo.com

Translated by Joannes W. M. Groenewege

www.proz.com/profile/2726758

Frontcover artwork Fie Tanderup

www.fietanderup.com

Cover Design Nria A. Drawings by Gordon Johnson

Photo of the author Michal Jaek

The project for this book was distinguished in March 2017 with an international residency grant at the Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators in Visby (BCWT), Sweden. Previously, this project was part of the work as an award-winning writer at the Shanghai Writing Program (SWP) in China in September and October 2016.

Los Gatos: Smashwords Edition, 2020.

ISBN: 9780463206126

All rights reserved. Reproduction of this work in whole or in part by any means or process, including photocopying and computer processing, is strictly prohibited without written permission from the copyright holder and is punishable by law. If you wish to share this book with others, please purchase additional copies. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

I am so glad I spent that time at Mabery Road, because I would never have quite realized what a marvellous woman you are.

CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD

Illustration : Photo of Salka Viertel. Katharina Prager, (2018). Berthold Viertel: Eine Biografie der Wiener Moderne. Vienna: Bhlau Verlag.

S alka Viertel (Sambir, 1889Klosters, 1978) was a Jewish actress and screenwriter. She married the poet and film and theatre director Berthold Viertel, with whom she had three children. Like other wives of European artists and intellectuals, the husband was offered a Hollywood contract and the Viertel family emigrated to the United States when California was emerging as a cinematic mecca. There, by the Pacific Ocean, Salka set up a renowned salon attended by prominent artists and, with the rise of Hitler, welcomed many Europeans who fled from Nazi Germany into her home. At that time, Salka separated from her husband and was hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a screenwriter for Swedish actress Greta Garbo, who in turn became her most intimate friend. However, with the onset of the Cold War, it was suspected that Salka was a communist, so the studios closed their doors on her, and she was no longer able to work. The indiscriminate witch-hunt against foreigners and the lack of liberties that American politics exercised on those it had offered a future decade earlier, precipitated the end of her American dream and her return to Europe, where she would live a second exile in Switzerland.

Salka Viertel, like other Jewish women of that time, whether writers and poets in the German language such as Vicki Baum, Gina Kaus, Hilde Spiel, Nelly Sachs or Else Lasker-Schler, lived through the genocide in exile or concentration and extermination camps, like the young Ruth Klger in Auschwitz. All of them felt the need to write a memoir, aware that their lives were linked to an era and therefore reflected that of their contemporaries.

In April 1969 Salka Viertel published her memoirs in English. They were titled The Kindness of Strangers because, as indicated, she had always relied on the goodness of strangers. Her words were a wink to the character of Blanche DuBois's A Streetcar Named Desire. A year later, the German edition disassociated itself from the original title and preferred to evoke 'the incorrigible heart', enhancing the name of the street where Salka Viertel lived in Santa Monica and, in turn, a meeting place for European intellectuals in times of exile. The publication, prefaced by her middle son, novelist Peter Viertel, showed how little these memoirs had been publicized.

In them, Salka Viertel lucidly narrates the different events that marked the first half of the twentieth century. Her book is a chronicle of great historical and political value although, in its day, it went entirely unnoticed because a woman had written it. There is another decisive factor, however, and that is that she was not completely honest with her private life. She preferred to keep the confidences and experiences of many of her friends secret and even silenced the names of celebrities who passed by her house to save appearances.

However, over time, some friends who in turn wrote memoirs and referred to her at some point, books that I cite in the bibliographical section, as well as various documents found in archives and international libraries such as the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach, the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, the Margaret Herrick Library and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek and Deutsches Exilarchiv 1933-1945 in Frankfurt am Main, the Library of Congress in Washington, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library in New York, the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin, the Jewish Museum in New York and the Akademie der Knste Archiv in Berlin, all show the life of a woman who was profoundly modern for her time and who must have her place in history.

My thanks to all those people who traced part of this story, providing me with documents for my research process, to those who answered questions or who gave me the necessary permissions for its publication. Thank you for the help received and, of course, for the kindness of Michaela Ullmann (University of Southern California); Kristine Krueger (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Margaret Herrick Library); Dr Marcel Lepper, Thomas Kemme and Drthe Perlenfein (Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach); Michael Schwarz and Sabine Wolf (Akademie der Knste); Regina Elzner (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek); Rosemary Hanes (Library of Congress); William Baehr (Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library); Thomas Kuhnke; Andrew Viertel; Katharina Prager; Don Bachardy; Phyllis Green (The Christopher Isherwood Foundation); Scott Reisfield; Alexandra Tyrolf; Mark A. Vieira; Robert A. Schanke; Nina Bahrendt (Villa Aurora); John (GarboForever); Elizabeth E. Fuller (The Rosenbach Library); Daniela Maurer (Israelitische Kulturgemeinde Wien), Magorzata Budzyska, Alan Schwartz and David Behrman. And, of course, thanks to Lena Pasternak and Patrik Muskos (Baltic Centre) for trusting my work and granting me a residential scholarship to Visby, Sweden, to complete this biography.

S alka Viertel,