Berowne's 207

 

(Also for Three Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "F" is for "film")

The prompt this week reminded me of a different apartment...

Gertrude Stein’s birthday was this month, so I thought I’d take a brief pause in my quiz-of-the-week contest and reprint one of my old posts about her.

Today I got to thinking of Paris, thinking back to the time, a few decades ago, when I was making films in France.

It was hard, arduous, tough work, traveling first-class (paid for by the films' budgets), eating insatiably almost every day at Michelin 3-star restaurants, staying in the best hotels; I don't know how I lived through it.

One of my documentaries had to do with the American expatriates, that time back in the 1920s when Yankee writers sort of inevitably wound up in Paris.  Since the franc was weak and the dollar was strong, it was the ideal spot for any feral American artist.

One of the places I wanted in the film was Gertrude Stein’s apartment.

Her home had been a place of pilgrimage for so many young writers.  You could make the case – oh, you’d get arguments – but you could make the case that this is where modern American literature began, because Gertrude Stein attracted the greatest writers of that time: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thornton Wilder, Sherwood Anderson, among others.

They had told me that I probably couldn’t get in to the apartment; it wasn’t open to the public.  But I was able to get a few strings pulled at the French Government Tourist Office and I was ultimately allowed entrance into the famous home of Gertrude Stein.

 

As I walked about the place I remembered seeing pictures of it as it had once been when, much earlier, the walls were covered by avant-garde paintings as Stein discussed art with guys most people then had never heard of, young chaps named Picasso, Braque and Matisse.

It was said of Gertrude in the early years: “She knew where art was going.” 

As for the American writers, what attracted them?  Well, she was a sort of literary guru.  As a writer, she was often difficult to understand – some couldn't understand a shred of it - so she certainly wasn’t much as an author of best-sellers, but her gift was for analysis and criticism.  To many her judgment in literature was infallible.

When he met Stein, young Ernest Hemingway realized he had found a guide, even a tutor, and he took what she had to say very seriously.  He thought so much of her he asked her to be the godmother of his child.

Ernest listened and learned; what he learned became the famous Hemingway style that influenced the narrative and dialogue of a couple of generations of novelists.

When Ernest, age 22, came to her apartment he would sit by the fire as Gertrude spoke to him about writing.  He paid her a great compliment: “Writing used to be easy before I met you.”

Years later, when he became Papa Hemingway and very successful, when he became a legend in his own lifetime, he would downplay Stein’s influence on his writing.  But decades earlier he had felt differently: “Ezra (Pound) was right half the time,” he wrote, “and when he was wrong you were never in any doubt of it.  Gertrude was always right.”

When you shot a film in those days, a small crowd would always gather.  Among the people watching while I worked in the courtyard of Stein’s apartment building was an elderly lady who seemed to be very interested in all that was going on.  I spoke to her and was surprised to learn that she had been Gertrude Stein’s concierge, going all the way back to the old days.  This was quite a shock.

I was actually speaking with someone who had known them all as young people – Picasso, Braque, Matisse, as well as the American expats Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald and the rest.  She assured me that they had not only been friends of Miss Stein, but her friends too.

 

[For Writer's Island, ABC Wednesday and Sunday Scribblings]
The famous song is "April in Paris," but when I think of the City of Light I think of the month of May a few decades ago, when I was making a film in France.
It was hard, arduous, tough work, traveling first-class (paid for by the films' budgets), eating almost every day at Michelin 3-star restaurants, staying in the best Paris hotels; I don't know how I lived through it. :-)
The documentary had to do with the American expatriates; it was a famous time back in the 1920s when an entire season -- (a number of seasons, actually) -- was given over to Yankee writers making the trip to Paris. Since the franc was weak and the dollar was strong, it was the ideal spot for any American artist.
One of the places I wanted in the film was Gertrude Stein’s apartment at 27, rue de Fleurus.
Her home had been a place of pilgrimage for so many young writers. You could make the case – oh, you’d get arguments – but you could make the case that this is where modern American literature began, because Gertrude Stein attracted the greatest writers of that time: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thornton Wilder, Sherwood Anderson, Ezra Pound, among others.
They had told me that I probably couldn’t get in to the apartment; it wasn’t open to the public. But I was able to get a few strings pulled at the French Government Tourist Office and I was ultimately allowed entrance into the famous home of Gertrude Stein.

As I walked about the place I remembered seeing pictures of it as it had once been when, much earlier, the walls were covered with avant-garde paintings as Stein discussed art with guys most people then had never heard of, young chaps named Picasso, Braque and Matisse.
It was said of Gertrude in the early years: “She knew where art was going.”
What attracted the American writers? Well, she was a sort of literary guru. As a writer, she was often difficult to understand – she certainly wasn’t much as an author of best-sellers – but her gift was for analysis and criticism; to many her judgment in literature was infallible.
When he met Stein, young Ernest Hemingway realized he had found a guide, even a tutor, and he took what she had to say very seriously. He thought so much of her he asked her to be the godmother of his child.
In “The American Tradition in Literature,” the editors state: “Hemingway created a revolution in language.” I believe the revolution was at least partially created by someone else. Long before she met Ernest H., Gertrude Stein wrote: “I began to get enormously interested in hearing how everybody said the same thing over and over again.” To the young Hemingway, she pointed out this phenomenon, emphasizing as well the importance of writing in a new way, simply and directly, and of developing a forceful prose style with few adverbs or adjectives.
Ernest listened and learned; what he learned became the famous Hemingway style that influenced the narrative and dialogue of a couple of generations of novelists.
When Ernest, age 22, came to that apartment at 27, rue de Fleurus, he would sit by the fire as Gertrude spoke to him about writing. He paid her a great compliment: “Writing used to be easy before I met you.”

Years later, when he became Papa Hemingway and very successful, when he became a
legend in his own lifetime, he would downplay Stein’s influence on his writing. But decades earlier he had felt differently: “Ezra (Pound) was right half the time,” he wrote, “and when he was wrong you were never in any doubt of it. Gertrude was always right.”
When you shot a film in those days, a small crowd would always gather. Among the people watching while I worked in the courtyard of Stein’s apartment building was an elderly lady who seemed to be very interested in all that was going on. I spoke to her and was surprised to learn that she had been Gertrude Stein’s concierge, going all the way back to the old days. This was quite a shock.
I was actually speaking with someone who had known them all as young people – Picasso, Braque, Matisse, as well as the American expats Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald and the rest. She assured me that they had not only been friends of Miss Stein, but her friends too. I believed her.
The documentary that resulted from all this, “One Man’s Paris,” was distributed by Universal-International throughout the country after opening at the Palace on Broadway in Manhattan. Making it was an unforgettable experience for me.

For ABC WEDNESDAY

"X" is for "EXpatriates"
This is a bit of personal history.

Flash back with me to the time when an eager young writer-producer, bright-tailed and bushy-eyed, was on a first assignment for a major production company: I was to write and produce a film on Paris, which would have a sequence devoted to the American expatriates of the 1920s. It was for Universal-International and was to be titled “One Man’s Paris.”
Doing my research on the scene, I was pleased to learn that Sylvia Beach, another famous name from those Parisian roaring twenties, was still around. I phoned her and asked if we could get together. She suggested meeting at the cafe named Le Select. The Select! That rang a bell. There couldn’t have been a better place for such a meeting.
“’Café Select,’ he told the driver, ‘Boulevard Montparnasse.’” (Jake Barnes in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.”)

Cafes then were, and to a degree still are, central to Paris life – writers wrote in them, painters painted them – and the Select (which has only been around for eighty years or so) represented the best traditions of the Parisian café. Sylvia Beach arrived and we had a wonderful conversation. She was then an elderly lady, but was full of youthful energy and vitality and she became very interested in the documentary I was there to make. She knew everything about the era in question, about all those earlier expatriate Americans, where they used to live and the cafes where they used to hang out.
La Coupole was just across the street, and that was just steps away from La Rotonde and Le Dome at the next corner, but Le Select was the jewel of the crown – not just for the Americans but for people who came from all over the world. It was indeed a pleasure, sitting in that famous café, to have pointed out to me just where in the place Henry Miller used to meet Anais Nin for afternoon drinks, where Luis Bunuel sat, and which was young Pablo Picasso’s favorite spot. In our 21st century groups of Japanese tourists continue to show up, asking to see Hemingway’s table.

No question, the Select had its attractions, but it was no more interesting than the lady I was talking with. Living in Paris at the end of World War I, a New Jersey girl named Sylvia Beach had opened an English language bookstore and lending library that thousands came to know as Shakespeare and Company. She started her store just as the franc dropped in value and the exchange rate became very favorable so the shop flourished. It became a hangout for Americans.

As I spoke with her, I remembered that Shakespeare and Company had gained considerable fame after she more or less single-handedly published James Joyce’s “Ulysses” in 1922, as a result of Joyce's inability to get an edition out in English-speaking countries.

She had gone into debt to bankroll the publication. Joyce would later show his gratitude by financially stranding her when he signed with another publisher, leaving Sylvia Beach in debt and suffering severe losses from the publication of that book.
Things went from bad to worse for her because of the depression of the thirties. She managed to stay open because André Gide organized a group of writers into a club called Friends of Shakespeare and Company, which got a lot of publicity and helped the business to improve.

Then came World War II. The shop tried to remain open after the fall of Paris, but by the end of 1941 Sylvia Beach was forced to close. She kept her books hidden in a vacant apartment.

It's now a fable of our time that, as Paris was being liberated, Ernest Hemingway – reckless, flamboyant, heroic – drove up in a jeep to liberate Sylvia and her bookstore.

Paris Portraits

I’ve never actually dipped a madeleine in my tea – primarily because I don’t have any madeleines (and not much tea) – but I had a distinctly Proustian reaction to the “Paris Portraits” exhibition that ran at a local museum some months ago. It took me back to memories of an earlier time as I walked among the pictures of famous Parisians of the past.

Flash back a number of years. An eager young writer-producer, bright-tailed and bushy-eyed, was on a first assignment for a major production company: I was to write and produce a film on Paris, which would have a sequence devoted to the American expatriates of the 1920s. It was for Universal-International and was to be titled “One Man’s Paris.”

Doing my research on the scene, I was pleased to learn that Sylvia Beach, another famous name from those Parisian roaring twenties, was still around. I phoned her and asked if we could get together. She suggested meeting at the cafe named Le Select. The Select! That rang a bell. There couldn’t have been a better place for such a meeting.

“’Café Select,’ he told the driver, ‘Boulevard Montparnasse.’” (Jake Barnes in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.”)

Cafes then were, and to a degree still are, central to Paris life – writers wrote in them, painters painted them – and the Select (which has only been around for eighty years or so) represented the best traditions of the Parisian café. Sylvia Beach arrived and we had a wonderful conversation. She was then an elderly lady, but was full of youthful energy and vitality and she became very interested in the documentary I was there to make. She knew everything about the era in question, about all those earlier expatriate Americans, where they used to live and the cafes where they used to hang out.

La Coupole was just across the street, and that was just steps away from La Rotonde and Le Dome at the next corner, but Le Select was the jewel of the crown – not just for the Americans but for people who came from all over the world. It was indeed a pleasure, sitting in that famous café, to have pointed out to me just where in the place Henry Miller used to meet Anais Nin for afternoon drinks, where Luis Bunuel sat, and which was young Pablo Picasso’s favorite spot. In our 21st century groups of Japanese tourists continue to show up, asking to see Hemingway’s table.

No question, the Select had its attractions, but it was no more interesting than the lady I was talking with. Living in Paris at the end of World War I, a New Jersey girl named Sylvia Beach had opened an English language bookstore and lending library that thousands came to know as Shakespeare and Company. She started her store just as the franc dropped in value and the exchange rate became very favorable so the shop flourished. It became a hangout for Americans.

As I spoke with her, I remembered that Shakespeare and Company had gained considerable fame after she more or less single-handedly published James Joyce’s “Ulysses” in 1922, as a result of Joyce's inability to get an edition out in English-speaking countries. She had gone into debt to bankroll the publication. Joyce would later show his gratitude by financially stranding her when he signed with another publisher, leaving Sylvia Beach in debt and suffering severe losses from the publication of that book.

Things went from bad to worse for her because of the depression of the thirties. She managed to stay open because André Gide organized a group of writers into a club called Friends of Shakespeare and Company, which got a lot of publicity and helped the business to improve.

Then came World War II. The shop tried to remain open after the fall of Paris, but by the end of 1941 Sylvia Beach was forced to close. She kept her books hidden in a vacant apartment. It’s now a fable of our time that, as Paris was being liberated, Ernest Hemingway – reckless, flamboyant, heroic – drove up in a jeep to liberate Sylvia and her bookstore.