Excerpts from Conversations with Bill Barker
Brenan, Hemingway, and Ford
Q: How did you come to write Junior Birdman?
B: I wrote it when I was staying at Gerald Brenan’s house in Spain in Triana. I met Brenan in Spain. . . . There was a couple, I can’t think of her name. It was Ann something, and she had a husband who I think had married her for her money probably, but they got along all right, and they knew everybody. They had Sean Connery there with his Australian wife. That didn’t last very long. She was very good, too, that Australian actress. I’ve forgotten her name. They were guests there. The woman who was the brother of the man who finally discovered, created Marlon Brando, who was a lovely looking woman, Jewish, who had two brothers who were in love with her. It was she who discovered and put him on the map. And she was [...} a good looker, too; she was really good looking, and she would go, “Mr. Barkah.” [...] These people in Triana would have famous people all the time, and at one point Hemingway [who was coming to lunch] wrote a note to Gerald listing the sort of people he didn’t want. There were ten people, ten sorts of people, people who did drugs, gays. He went through this list of ten, so and so, so I shot back a letter, care of Hemingway himself, saying, “As I am about eight of these ten, I am sure I will be unable to meet you at lunch, and I have no regrets,” I said to that fatuous Hemingway. Oh, Hemingway! [...]
So I was above in my room [at Gerald Brenan’s when Hemingway came for lunch]. What helped me . . . There was a huge belladonna growing outside this building, and I feel there’s an influence of belladonna in this work [Junior Birdman].
C: It can also kill you.
B: So, anyway, belladonna is wonderful. It comes out at night. But it was huge, really huge. It covered the whole wall, and I could look down through the belladonna at the table, where sat Hemingway, my friend Hetty. Now Hetty was called Hetty by Gerald because she was his mistress. Hetty was really called Mary or something like that, and her father was Dutch, a Dutch baron, and her mother was a secretary in London, who had worked for this baron, and this child was born, and they called her Mary. And she became a model, at first with Lucien Freud and then with several other people and so on. And then she lost her model figure, but she kept turning up in my life. I had first met her when Diane and I first went to Spain. We met her in Spain. She picked us up in a bar.
And she was at that time living with Gerald, and Gerald was married to the sister of Judge Woolsey [i.e., the judge who permitted Joyce’s Ulysses to evade the censors and be distributed in the United States ...]. She had turned down Bertrand Russell, turned down Barnard Shaw, and married Gerald. And now Gerald Brenan had been in love with [... Dora] Carrington. Gerald was in love with Carrington and almost ran away with her and waited for her on the moors one morning. She never came, and when they made the film Carrington with Emma Thompson, they found someone who looked exactly like Gerald Brenan. It looked just like Gerald young, the eyes, everything. I knew Gerald well. I was his house guest for years.
And so there was Gerald [at the lunch]. There was Gamel Woolsey, and she was a Georgian poet. She wasn’t a bit jealous of Hetty. She was a bit relieved that Gerald had a girlfriend. And that was how I met them all, through Hetty. And then Gerald and I became very fast friends, and he came to see me in Greece, when I was living in Athens. He and Gamel came, and I remember introducing them to Charles Henri Ford, which was not a success. But Charles was so very difficult.
By the way, I had a long correspondence with Charles, and they were all in an old trunk at the little clinic, which I frequented. My doctor Ali Erol always goes there. He was attached to that little clinic and was out at Düzce on the coast [of the Black Sea in Turkey]. He had a girlfriend there. There’s a lot of gossip, a lot of gossip and stuff, and at one point he’d been asked to be the dean at the new school or the new hospital which they built or were building. To be the head of it. And the rumors got around about he and his girlfriend, and the whole thing was shot. And I said, Düzce is too small a place for you, Ali. And he and I became very close friends, and he used to get medicine for me when I had cancer [...].
I have this strange experience of things of mine getting lost, because these letters were in an old battered suitcase. I’d been staying in Düzce with Ali. Convalescence. In his house. And then I came back into town with him. We went to the clinic. We put all my luggage, which were good suitcases, in an attic, in an empty space up there. Something you wouldn’t even notice: a door in the side of a wall, and that was under the eaves. And I put all my suitcases there, including this old battered suitcase that nobody would want, but I had Charles Henri’s letters in there. Now this clinic [...]. I stayed in a hotel in Sultan Ahmet [in Istanbul], and I thought I’ve got to get those suitcases one day.
[The phone rings, and Bill drifts into other topics and never returns to the fate of the battered suitcase with Ford’s letters.]
__________
Hollywood and The Revolt at Fort Apache
I can speak like a Southerner, which was very useful because the only movie I want anyone ever to see me in, except films made in France, is Revolt at Fort Laramie, where we are Southerners, and we know that we’re going to have the War Between the States, but the other people don’t know that yet because this is way out in Utah, I guess, Laramie –
C: Wyoming
B: Excuse me. Wyoming, exactly, Wyoming. We’re at Laramie, and we’re all Southerners, a squadron, and we have learned that we’re about to go to war with the North, or the North is about to go to way with us. Abraham Lincoln is going to . . . So we plot to steal the treasury, the gold, and abscond and take off for the South to join Robert E. Lee. Among the extras who were there, I was the only one who knew the words for Dixie and the only one who could do a Southern accent.
C. Is that because you’d gone to school in Florida?
E. Because I’d gone to school in Florida. So I can talk just like those folks down there, and I could say, “Yo’all.” So I was indispensible, it seems. I didn’t know then that the man who was the producer was also the producer or had something important to do with Casablanca. That I didn’t know at the time. But there was also somebody at the time called Skink. I think he was called Skink, and he was an ass. The director was good, but this other person was the assistant because he was family or something. And he really was an ass; I’ll tell you why. We were on horseback. The horse was led towards me. I could see that the horse was sweating. The horse was not fit to be ridden. And this was the horse that was being presented to me to ride. And I knew this was not a good idea, so I leaned in toward the horse, because my Uncle (Joy?) had horses, and we used to go down to (Sidney?), where he had a ranch, and I learnedto ride without a saddle. So I was ready for The Revolt from Fort Laramie, and I whispered in the horse’s ear to try and calm the horse, and Skink, if that’s not his name, it’s a name like that, said, “Let’s get you onto the horse.” And I felt like saying, “This horse should not be ridden now. He’s lathered.” But the man didn’t know. What did he know? He’s from Hollywood. So I get on the horse, which might have been all right except that this ass hit the horse on his rump, and he took off and flung me to the ground and trampled me. I picked myself up, and I just looked at this man and went back to the barracks. They called me out. I never said a word. I never complained. I never sued, which I could have done.
E: Bill, did you perform under your own name, Bill Barker.
B: No I was sometimes called Liam because my wife called me Liam, which is the Irish for William, so I was sometimes known as Liam Barker, but in Italy I was Bill Barker, and when I was in Greece, everyone called me Vasily (?). But Fort Laramie, I’ve never seen it. In fact, I’ve never seen any film that I’ve made. I never did it on purpose, but I never saw it. And it’s just like telling you I don’t have a copy of my book. I don’t have a copy of my poems. I don’t have my diaries.
__________
Identifying Pictures: Ruspoli, Marais, Zina
(The pictures being discussed here is reproduced in the "Album" section.)
E: Bill, I need some identifications. In this photo, is this Genet?
B: Yes, this is Jean Genet.
E: Then who is this?
B: This is Prince Dado Ruspoli, who was a great friend of mine. He had a mother, who was a great heiress in Brazil. The Ruspolis, they were quite interesting because they owned much of the land where the Etruscan . . .
C: Did you know Princess Ruspoli, who was Brion Gysen's friend?
B: Franesca?
C: Yes, Francesca.
B: I knew her very well.
E. And this?
B: That's Jean Marais.
C: Jean Marais, the actor
B:The boyfriend of Jean Cocteau. He was really quite a good-looking guy. And do you know what his name was? Jean (DeeDa?). He was born (Deedah?)
E: And this is your wife?
B: That's Zina. That is just before her death. . . . She had become an anima, a Buddhist nun, and she had to build her own house, which she did with her own hands, and she had her little daughter with her, Rhea. I had brought Rhea with all the complaints of my mother . . .
E: It's your daughter?
B: We don't know. It's a question. She looked enough like me, but she also looked a good deal like her [Zina's] current boyfriend. He was in Athens, and he introduced Europe to public relations. He was a public relations man, and he certainly had lots of relations, because he became the lover of all the attractive women in Athens who were there, all the married ladies, and so on, and he bore a resemblance to me. And Zina had told me that the only thing she liked about him was when she woke up in the night and could look at him as it it was me. I said I bet you say that to all the guys, and we laughed about it, but she said it was because of the resemblance.
__________
Hollywood, Elvis Presley, Villanova
If someone came on to me, I didn’t want it. It turned me off. I didn’t want to be wanted. I wanted to be appreciated for my mind and for my conversation and for my whatever, but I didn’t like it when someone wanted to go to bed with me. I had to be the initiator, and so, therefore, I turned down a lot of very interesting people. They just had to look at me with those eyes, and ohhhhh, give me a break. There was one in California that used to turn up at parties, and she would stand next to me all evening long. And there were other people I wanted to speak to. Elvis Presley. There were other people I wanted to speak to, but there she was. I went over to speak to Elvis, and he himself was not a very interested person. But I loved Elvis when he performed, and I liked all those wiggles and things. You’ve never seen anything like this. He was quite new, and his origins and all of that: we were both Southerners.
The South is what I know the best. When I went to Villanova, I had a Southern accent. And I had long, long hair, and I wore colors that were not worn in Pennsylvania on a boy. I had a purple shirt with a yellow sleeveless jersey. You know, colors that we wore in the South. And so I was mugged, beaten up. I had my hair cut off from me with big empty spots all over the place. And I didn’t fight back, and there were sexual undertones there, too. The gang beat me up and ruined me. I went back to my room, lying down on my bed, and I hadn’t thought about my door. I thought that I’d be left alone.
And they did it right in front of the priest. I guess he wasn’t there. I guess they had waited until they left the building, but it was in front of his door. That’s where they attacked me, in the hall.
And so I was lying on the bed, trying to get over this thing: what the hell was that all about? And they came and took my pants down. And the one who was the worst in all of this was called Hentini. He was Italian or whatever he was. But he was a brute, total brute, and so it was with great chagrin and disappointment that I wasn’t a girl. It was so strange: if I was a girl, they would have beaten me up. None of it makes sense.
So then I was left alone.
Brenan, Hemingway, and Ford
Q: How did you come to write Junior Birdman?
B: I wrote it when I was staying at Gerald Brenan’s house in Spain in Triana. I met Brenan in Spain. . . . There was a couple, I can’t think of her name. It was Ann something, and she had a husband who I think had married her for her money probably, but they got along all right, and they knew everybody. They had Sean Connery there with his Australian wife. That didn’t last very long. She was very good, too, that Australian actress. I’ve forgotten her name. They were guests there. The woman who was the brother of the man who finally discovered, created Marlon Brando, who was a lovely looking woman, Jewish, who had two brothers who were in love with her. It was she who discovered and put him on the map. And she was [...} a good looker, too; she was really good looking, and she would go, “Mr. Barkah.” [...] These people in Triana would have famous people all the time, and at one point Hemingway [who was coming to lunch] wrote a note to Gerald listing the sort of people he didn’t want. There were ten people, ten sorts of people, people who did drugs, gays. He went through this list of ten, so and so, so I shot back a letter, care of Hemingway himself, saying, “As I am about eight of these ten, I am sure I will be unable to meet you at lunch, and I have no regrets,” I said to that fatuous Hemingway. Oh, Hemingway! [...]
So I was above in my room [at Gerald Brenan’s when Hemingway came for lunch]. What helped me . . . There was a huge belladonna growing outside this building, and I feel there’s an influence of belladonna in this work [Junior Birdman].
C: It can also kill you.
B: So, anyway, belladonna is wonderful. It comes out at night. But it was huge, really huge. It covered the whole wall, and I could look down through the belladonna at the table, where sat Hemingway, my friend Hetty. Now Hetty was called Hetty by Gerald because she was his mistress. Hetty was really called Mary or something like that, and her father was Dutch, a Dutch baron, and her mother was a secretary in London, who had worked for this baron, and this child was born, and they called her Mary. And she became a model, at first with Lucien Freud and then with several other people and so on. And then she lost her model figure, but she kept turning up in my life. I had first met her when Diane and I first went to Spain. We met her in Spain. She picked us up in a bar.
And she was at that time living with Gerald, and Gerald was married to the sister of Judge Woolsey [i.e., the judge who permitted Joyce’s Ulysses to evade the censors and be distributed in the United States ...]. She had turned down Bertrand Russell, turned down Barnard Shaw, and married Gerald. And now Gerald Brenan had been in love with [... Dora] Carrington. Gerald was in love with Carrington and almost ran away with her and waited for her on the moors one morning. She never came, and when they made the film Carrington with Emma Thompson, they found someone who looked exactly like Gerald Brenan. It looked just like Gerald young, the eyes, everything. I knew Gerald well. I was his house guest for years.
And so there was Gerald [at the lunch]. There was Gamel Woolsey, and she was a Georgian poet. She wasn’t a bit jealous of Hetty. She was a bit relieved that Gerald had a girlfriend. And that was how I met them all, through Hetty. And then Gerald and I became very fast friends, and he came to see me in Greece, when I was living in Athens. He and Gamel came, and I remember introducing them to Charles Henri Ford, which was not a success. But Charles was so very difficult.
By the way, I had a long correspondence with Charles, and they were all in an old trunk at the little clinic, which I frequented. My doctor Ali Erol always goes there. He was attached to that little clinic and was out at Düzce on the coast [of the Black Sea in Turkey]. He had a girlfriend there. There’s a lot of gossip, a lot of gossip and stuff, and at one point he’d been asked to be the dean at the new school or the new hospital which they built or were building. To be the head of it. And the rumors got around about he and his girlfriend, and the whole thing was shot. And I said, Düzce is too small a place for you, Ali. And he and I became very close friends, and he used to get medicine for me when I had cancer [...].
I have this strange experience of things of mine getting lost, because these letters were in an old battered suitcase. I’d been staying in Düzce with Ali. Convalescence. In his house. And then I came back into town with him. We went to the clinic. We put all my luggage, which were good suitcases, in an attic, in an empty space up there. Something you wouldn’t even notice: a door in the side of a wall, and that was under the eaves. And I put all my suitcases there, including this old battered suitcase that nobody would want, but I had Charles Henri’s letters in there. Now this clinic [...]. I stayed in a hotel in Sultan Ahmet [in Istanbul], and I thought I’ve got to get those suitcases one day.
[The phone rings, and Bill drifts into other topics and never returns to the fate of the battered suitcase with Ford’s letters.]
__________
Hollywood and The Revolt at Fort Apache
I can speak like a Southerner, which was very useful because the only movie I want anyone ever to see me in, except films made in France, is Revolt at Fort Laramie, where we are Southerners, and we know that we’re going to have the War Between the States, but the other people don’t know that yet because this is way out in Utah, I guess, Laramie –
C: Wyoming
B: Excuse me. Wyoming, exactly, Wyoming. We’re at Laramie, and we’re all Southerners, a squadron, and we have learned that we’re about to go to war with the North, or the North is about to go to way with us. Abraham Lincoln is going to . . . So we plot to steal the treasury, the gold, and abscond and take off for the South to join Robert E. Lee. Among the extras who were there, I was the only one who knew the words for Dixie and the only one who could do a Southern accent.
C. Is that because you’d gone to school in Florida?
E. Because I’d gone to school in Florida. So I can talk just like those folks down there, and I could say, “Yo’all.” So I was indispensible, it seems. I didn’t know then that the man who was the producer was also the producer or had something important to do with Casablanca. That I didn’t know at the time. But there was also somebody at the time called Skink. I think he was called Skink, and he was an ass. The director was good, but this other person was the assistant because he was family or something. And he really was an ass; I’ll tell you why. We were on horseback. The horse was led towards me. I could see that the horse was sweating. The horse was not fit to be ridden. And this was the horse that was being presented to me to ride. And I knew this was not a good idea, so I leaned in toward the horse, because my Uncle (Joy?) had horses, and we used to go down to (Sidney?), where he had a ranch, and I learnedto ride without a saddle. So I was ready for The Revolt from Fort Laramie, and I whispered in the horse’s ear to try and calm the horse, and Skink, if that’s not his name, it’s a name like that, said, “Let’s get you onto the horse.” And I felt like saying, “This horse should not be ridden now. He’s lathered.” But the man didn’t know. What did he know? He’s from Hollywood. So I get on the horse, which might have been all right except that this ass hit the horse on his rump, and he took off and flung me to the ground and trampled me. I picked myself up, and I just looked at this man and went back to the barracks. They called me out. I never said a word. I never complained. I never sued, which I could have done.
E: Bill, did you perform under your own name, Bill Barker.
B: No I was sometimes called Liam because my wife called me Liam, which is the Irish for William, so I was sometimes known as Liam Barker, but in Italy I was Bill Barker, and when I was in Greece, everyone called me Vasily (?). But Fort Laramie, I’ve never seen it. In fact, I’ve never seen any film that I’ve made. I never did it on purpose, but I never saw it. And it’s just like telling you I don’t have a copy of my book. I don’t have a copy of my poems. I don’t have my diaries.
__________
Identifying Pictures: Ruspoli, Marais, Zina
(The pictures being discussed here is reproduced in the "Album" section.)
E: Bill, I need some identifications. In this photo, is this Genet?
B: Yes, this is Jean Genet.
E: Then who is this?
B: This is Prince Dado Ruspoli, who was a great friend of mine. He had a mother, who was a great heiress in Brazil. The Ruspolis, they were quite interesting because they owned much of the land where the Etruscan . . .
C: Did you know Princess Ruspoli, who was Brion Gysen's friend?
B: Franesca?
C: Yes, Francesca.
B: I knew her very well.
E. And this?
B: That's Jean Marais.
C: Jean Marais, the actor
B:The boyfriend of Jean Cocteau. He was really quite a good-looking guy. And do you know what his name was? Jean (DeeDa?). He was born (Deedah?)
E: And this is your wife?
B: That's Zina. That is just before her death. . . . She had become an anima, a Buddhist nun, and she had to build her own house, which she did with her own hands, and she had her little daughter with her, Rhea. I had brought Rhea with all the complaints of my mother . . .
E: It's your daughter?
B: We don't know. It's a question. She looked enough like me, but she also looked a good deal like her [Zina's] current boyfriend. He was in Athens, and he introduced Europe to public relations. He was a public relations man, and he certainly had lots of relations, because he became the lover of all the attractive women in Athens who were there, all the married ladies, and so on, and he bore a resemblance to me. And Zina had told me that the only thing she liked about him was when she woke up in the night and could look at him as it it was me. I said I bet you say that to all the guys, and we laughed about it, but she said it was because of the resemblance.
__________
Hollywood, Elvis Presley, Villanova
If someone came on to me, I didn’t want it. It turned me off. I didn’t want to be wanted. I wanted to be appreciated for my mind and for my conversation and for my whatever, but I didn’t like it when someone wanted to go to bed with me. I had to be the initiator, and so, therefore, I turned down a lot of very interesting people. They just had to look at me with those eyes, and ohhhhh, give me a break. There was one in California that used to turn up at parties, and she would stand next to me all evening long. And there were other people I wanted to speak to. Elvis Presley. There were other people I wanted to speak to, but there she was. I went over to speak to Elvis, and he himself was not a very interested person. But I loved Elvis when he performed, and I liked all those wiggles and things. You’ve never seen anything like this. He was quite new, and his origins and all of that: we were both Southerners.
The South is what I know the best. When I went to Villanova, I had a Southern accent. And I had long, long hair, and I wore colors that were not worn in Pennsylvania on a boy. I had a purple shirt with a yellow sleeveless jersey. You know, colors that we wore in the South. And so I was mugged, beaten up. I had my hair cut off from me with big empty spots all over the place. And I didn’t fight back, and there were sexual undertones there, too. The gang beat me up and ruined me. I went back to my room, lying down on my bed, and I hadn’t thought about my door. I thought that I’d be left alone.
And they did it right in front of the priest. I guess he wasn’t there. I guess they had waited until they left the building, but it was in front of his door. That’s where they attacked me, in the hall.
And so I was lying on the bed, trying to get over this thing: what the hell was that all about? And they came and took my pants down. And the one who was the worst in all of this was called Hentini. He was Italian or whatever he was. But he was a brute, total brute, and so it was with great chagrin and disappointment that I wasn’t a girl. It was so strange: if I was a girl, they would have beaten me up. None of it makes sense.
So then I was left alone.