Don Bachardy, the LA-based portrait artist and lover of Christopher Isherwood
for 33 years, recalls the first time he met Henry Fonda. “It was at a party
in the 1950s,” he says. “Chris was ahead of me and Fonda shook hands with
him but he turned his back on me.” They met again years later. “He sought me
out at a party to compliment me on my work, having snubbed me before. He
agreed for me to do his portrait and sat perfectly. Neither of us spoke
about our first meeting. I wasn’t going to muddy the waters.”
Their encounter is revealing about the attitudes of mid-20th-century Hollywood
to homosexuality. It also demonstrates the artistic and personal debt that
Bachardy owes Isherwood. He was 18 when he met the British author and
screenwriter, 30 years his senior, on a beach in Santa Monica in 1952. The
pair lived together in California until Isherwood’s death from prostate
cancer in 1986. Their tender relationship is profiled in a new documentary Chris
& Don: A Love Story, a surprise hit in the US, which features John
Boorman, Liza Minnelli and Leslie Caron.
Bachardy’s honesty runs through Chris & Don, whether it’s
recounting the homophobia of the actor Joseph Cotten or the unsuitability of
Minnelli as Sally Bowles in Bob Fosse’s 1972 Oscar-winning Cabaret,
inspired by Isherwood’s Berlin Stories.
He describes Isherwood, who moved to the US in 1939, as “a father figure, a
teacher, a guide and an example”. He discloses that the former Gucci
designer Tom Ford will make his directorial debut in November adapting
Isherwood’s 1964 novel A Single Man for the screen with Colin
Firth, Julianne Moore and Jamie Bell.
Even Bachardy’s voice, a well-spoken, measured drawl, more West London than
West Coast, is modelled on the way his lover spoke. “I never wanted it; I’m
an unconscious mimic,” he says.
Bachardy may have been 18 when they first met but he looked years younger.
“When we first went to New York together, a serious rumour went around town
that Christopher had brought a 12-year-old from California.” Bachardy says
that the age difference caused Isherwood to be shunned by his closest
confidants, among them his best female friend, the socialite Peggy
Kiskadden, and deterred many in Hollywood from hiring his services. “It must
have taken great courage for him to appear with this very young looking
boy.”
Yet prejudice was accompanied by illicit thrill. “It was much more exciting to
be queer in the early days because we were like undercover agents,” he says.
“We led our secret lives.”
Without the financial and emotional support provided by Isherwood, Bachardy
acknowledges, he would never have become an artist. “I’d done portraits of
people throughout my early life but I’d never done one from life until, at
his own suggestion, he sat for me,” he says. Isherwood encouraged him to go
to art school and sat hundreds of times for his lover, especially during his
final harrowing days.
“It was a very difficult time and it gave me something to do,” he says. “In
the final months he seldom made any comment about the drawings except for
one day, one of our last together, when I’d done eight or nine. I was on my
way out of the bedroom and had no idea Chris had been watching me. As I
left, he said from his bed: ‘I liked the ones of him dying.’ It gave me a
jolt.”
Immediately after Isherwood’s death, Bachardy painted his lover’s corpse 11
times. “One of the things that spurred me on was my belief that he would
have been cheering me on. He took such pride in whatever success I had. It
took me two hours to muster the courage and then I began and worked through
the day until nearly 8 at night. I waited until the early evening to call
his doctor and I was intending to do one more drawing when she arrived. But
I was grateful because by then the corpse had seemed to have almost no
relation to Chris any more.”
What did Isherwood get from their union? “I gave him exactly what he wanted –
intimate access to my life as a young man. He said that he’d never missed
out on the joys of parenthood because of me.” Isherwood never wanted to
return to live in England, since Bachardy notes: “He loved America,
especially the bad things about it.”
Being the only openly homosexual couple at a Hollywood party and spotting
erstwhile lovers on the arms of women made for “difficult waters to
navigate”. Among those keeping their distance was Rock Hudson, then still
firmly in the closet. “He wasn’t at all encouraging and was rather leery of
us.” Bachardy was introduced by Isherwood to Hollywood royalty such as Bette
Davis, Laurence Olivier and Natalie Wood, who would then become portrait
subjects. “I was dazzled,” he says. “Suddenly I was not only meeting movie
stars I had drawn from photographs as a child, but I was doing sittings with
them.” Recently Bachardy has painted Angelina Jolie during both her
pregnancies.
Chris & Don also documents Bachardy’s infidelity. “It’s a very
difficult operation and one had to be extra sensitive and delicate,” he
answers when I query whether this strained their relationship. “Chris had
the sense to give me my freedom. But the more experience I got with other
people the more I appreciated him. I realised he was unique.” Did he ever
contemplate splitting up with Isherwood for good? “I toyed with the idea
once or twice but never seriously.”
Had Isherwood been alive now, Bachardy says they wouldn’t have married as
“being recognised by the state wouldn’t have meant anything to us”. They
collaborated on several scripts including a 1973 TV movie, Frankenstein:
The True Story, but Bachardy maintains that Hollywood is still a
homophobic place: “It’s still very dangerous for a young actor to be known
to be homosexual in Hollywood because he won’t be given leading romantic
parts with women actresses.”
Given that “I am a camera . . .”, the opening of Goodbye to
Berlin, is perhaps the most famous sentence Isherwood wrote, it is
appropriate that his own domestic life should now be documented on film. “We
were compatible because we were both instinctive recorders,” Bachardy says.
“Chris recorded his experience with words and I did the same with pencil and
paint.”
In his autobiography, John Boorman records that Bachardy wears an item of
Isherwood’s clothing every day to honour his memory. What does he have on
now? “His red socks and an Esprit jumpsuit which still has his unworn
handkerchief in the pocket.”
Despite the age difference, Bachardy found himself unprepared for Isherwood’s
eventual death. Though materially comfortable (“he left me well provided
for, the Cabaret cheques are still coming in”), it took Bachardy
several months “to fully realise the immensity of my loss”. But he
recuperated and had a decade-long relationship with a young architect,
living with him in the Santa Monica house he had shared with Isherwood.
Now he is single, and says he thinks of Isherwood a lot. “He’s with me every
day and I still get great support from him. All of this contemplation of my
time with him and the benefits of my years with him have crystallised and
become clearer to me than ever before. I bless him daily.”
Chris & Don: A Love Story will have its UK premiere at the Raindance
Film Festival, London, Oct 6 and 7 (raindance.co.uk/site)
