I have also now read the Hampton Tales of Hollywood script, thank you selenak! It's very funny and very heartbreaking, and then I had to go back and watch all the Heinrich Mann bits on Youtube again. I'm going to have to try to find this so I can watch it all the way through -- I have some leads.
I'll try to write it up for DW soon, but in the meantime, I had a question. The part about Nelly Mann, how when she committed suicide Heinrich Mann took her to three different hospitals because the first two wouldn't take them and the third pronounced her dead -- did it really happen like that? (It doesn't, indeed, seem like the sort of thing Hampton would make up.) I missed just how awful it was when I was watching, I think I got distracted by the visuals a bit somehow, but reading the stark words meant there was no distraction from exactly how terrible it was. (I suppose also, in the Youtube video excerpt, Horvath's monologue about Heinrich and Thomas gets cut off.)
This version of Nelly's death actually comes from Marta Feuchtwanger, who recounted it this way when interviewed in old age. Heinrich Mann in his heartbroken letters after her death doesn't go into details, he just says she died en route to the hospital, and the rest of the Mann family reacted with undisguised relief. (They really were horrible snubs about poor Nelly, not just Thomas. One of the very few things they admitted to be good about her was that she was an excellent cook. So when Heinrich and Nelly had invited Thomas and Katia for dinner, what Katia wrote to her son Golo about it afterwards was that the beef had been excellent and that probably means Nelly was fucking a butcher. Which is fairly typical re: the attitude shown to her by her husband's family.)
What Heinrich wrote to a friend of his his re: Nelly's death was: It was her fifth attempt. (...) The last but one attempt had already nearly succeeded. (...) This last year was misery and horror. (...)I've never been near to a more guiltless sufferer. (...) Persons who don't know anything keep hinting at me that it is better this way. No.. To return to places where I was with her and not to bring her along? I hardly leave my apartment, for it has been hers.
If you find a complete version, you're luckier than Christopher Hampton himself. I have a video tape recording (who knows whether that still works? I'm afraid to try), but it's from a dubbed into German broadcast. In late 2021 I met the writer and playwright Daniel Kehlmann who is friends with Hampton and collaborated with him on a couple of things, and we talked about Hampton's work, and I said that the fame of Dangerous Liasons not withstanding, this was my favourite. Kehlmann said it was his favourite, too, and he'd been trying for ages to track down a recording of the tv version to present to Hampton because Hampton doesn't have one!
I also saw it on stage, twice. Btw, thing which I don't think the bits on YouTube show is the clever way the tv version goes about using the running gag about Brecht's appearances. In the play and on stage, you'll recall Brecht always uses the so called "Verfremdungseffekt", i.e. he brings banners and signs etc. breaking the fourth wall, which is of course what real life Brecht became famous for in (some) of his plays. The tv version doesn't reproduce this, because it's tv; instead, every time Brecht enters a scene, the camera pulls back to reveal we're in a tv studio, or he rattles the sets or something like that.
It adds another book to your long list, but a good and readable book about the exiles in English in which Nelly and Heinrich Mann play a prominent role is Evelyn Juers' "House of Exile". Heartbreaking detail from it, bear in mind Nelly died on December 17th:
From Dr Aron Schwartz, a bill for $150 for Nelly’s dental treatment, dated 21 December. For Heinrich Mann this would be the loneliest Christmas. He found a card Nelly must have purchased but never signed. Merry Christmas to My Husband, with Husband spelled out in checked, striped, spotted and plush ties, and inside A loving Merry Christmas / To that man I’m wild about–/ That swell guy that I’m married to / And couldn’t do without!
Klaus Mann, who was the only one who'd written a condolence letter to Heinrich which wasn't a barely disguised "be grateful she's dead" (I read those letters, because Heinrich's papers from his time in US exile are with Lion Feuchtwantger's at the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library) but one with compassion and renembering a good time when visiting Nelly and Heinrich in Nice, still showed he, too, wasn't above trash talking her in his letter to his mother Katia (who of course he knew had hated Nelly):
What a shame! What an embarrassing, superfluous, ugly tragedy! It must be an awful blow to poor old Heini – who is likely to follow her soon. Couldn’t she wait a few years? What deplorable, objectionable lack of consideration and self-control! Yet I feel sorry for her. She should have stayed in Germany with people of her own kind. He has ruined her life by transplanting and uprooting her. But then, that’s what she wanted. I suppose it was completely on her own account when she followed him to Bandol, or wherever he was at the time. Stupid thing she was! But back in Nice she used to cook really delicious suppers for us. It’s all very sad. (I’ll try to write a few lines to the Uncle. But there is nothing to say, really…).
Of course, Klaus Mann would commit suicide himself only three years later. Also, re: Nelly staying in Germany with "her own kind" (thus speaks the grandson of a Lübeck Senator): Nelly, as revealed late in the play, was half Jewish - illegitimately so, and it might not have come out, but the Nazis being the Nazis, who knows. Also, she was a committed socialist (one of her best friends and pre Heinrich lovers was a Communist resistance fighter who ended up on a concentration camp), but the idea that Nelly the proletarian bar lady whom Heinrich had picked up in a bar should have political opinions influencing her decision to join Heinrich in exile, heavens beware.
what Katia wrote to her son Golo about it afterwards was that the beef had been excellent and that probably means Nelly was fucking a butcher.
Oh noooooo :(
It was her fifth attempt. (...) The last but one attempt had already nearly succeeded. (...) This last year was misery and horror. (...)I've never been near to a more guiltless sufferer. (...) Persons who don't know anything keep hinting at me that it is better this way. No.. To return to places where I was with her and not to bring her along? I hardly leave my apartment, for it has been hers.
:(((((((
Btw, thing which I don't think the bits on YouTube show is the clever way the tv version goes about using the running gag about Brecht's appearances.
Omg, no, it doesn't at all! I think it was just the parts with Heinrich Mann; Brecht never shows up in those clips, I think. That's awesome.
Ah, thank you for the book rec, that sounds awesome! <3 (I do get books off the list, you can see! Just, somehow really slowly these days -- my brain seems to be wanting a diet of froth.)
still showed he, too, wasn't above trash talking her in his letter to his mother Katia (who of course he knew had hated Nelly)
:(( Of course he's probably talking it up to his mother, but -- :(( All of this is just so sad.
My original review of House of Exile is here. And while I'm handing out links, have some to Christopher Hampton interviews: About Tales from Hollywood, about Dangerous Liasons (though it's this one which contains the confession that of all his characters, Horvath in Tales from Hollywood is the closest to how he sees himself), and writing in general.
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Tales of Hollywood - Heinrich Mann
I'll try to write it up for DW soon, but in the meantime, I had a question. The part about Nelly Mann, how when she committed suicide Heinrich Mann took her to three different hospitals because the first two wouldn't take them and the third pronounced her dead -- did it really happen like that? (It doesn't, indeed, seem like the sort of thing Hampton would make up.) I missed just how awful it was when I was watching, I think I got distracted by the visuals a bit somehow, but reading the stark words meant there was no distraction from exactly how terrible it was. (I suppose also, in the Youtube video excerpt, Horvath's monologue about Heinrich and Thomas gets cut off.)
Re: Tales of Hollywood - Heinrich Mann
What Heinrich wrote to a friend of his his re: Nelly's death was: It was her fifth attempt. (...) The last but one attempt had already nearly succeeded. (...) This last year was misery and horror. (...)I've never been near to a more guiltless sufferer. (...) Persons who don't know anything keep hinting at me that it is better this way. No.. To return to places where I was with her and not to bring her along? I hardly leave my apartment, for it has been hers.
If you find a complete version, you're luckier than Christopher Hampton himself. I have a video tape recording (who knows whether that still works? I'm afraid to try), but it's from a dubbed into German broadcast. In late 2021 I met the writer and playwright Daniel Kehlmann who is friends with Hampton and collaborated with him on a couple of things, and we talked about Hampton's work, and I said that the fame of Dangerous Liasons not withstanding, this was my favourite. Kehlmann said it was his favourite, too, and he'd been trying for ages to track down a recording of the tv version to present to Hampton because Hampton doesn't have one!
I also saw it on stage, twice. Btw, thing which I don't think the bits on YouTube show is the clever way the tv version goes about using the running gag about Brecht's appearances. In the play and on stage, you'll recall Brecht always uses the so called "Verfremdungseffekt", i.e. he brings banners and signs etc. breaking the fourth wall, which is of course what real life Brecht became famous for in (some) of his plays. The tv version doesn't reproduce this, because it's tv; instead, every time Brecht enters a scene, the camera pulls back to reveal we're in a tv studio, or he rattles the sets or something like that.
It adds another book to your long list, but a good and readable book about the exiles in English in which Nelly and Heinrich Mann play a prominent role is Evelyn Juers' "House of Exile". Heartbreaking detail from it, bear in mind Nelly died on December 17th:
From Dr Aron Schwartz, a bill for $150 for Nelly’s dental treatment, dated 21 December. For Heinrich Mann this would be the loneliest Christmas. He found a card Nelly must have purchased but never signed. Merry Christmas to My Husband, with Husband spelled out in checked, striped, spotted and plush ties, and inside A loving Merry Christmas / To that man I’m wild about–/ That swell guy that I’m married to / And couldn’t do without!
Klaus Mann, who was the only one who'd written a condolence letter to Heinrich which wasn't a barely disguised "be grateful she's dead" (I read those letters, because Heinrich's papers from his time in US exile are with Lion Feuchtwantger's at the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library) but one with compassion and renembering a good time when visiting Nelly and Heinrich in Nice, still showed he, too, wasn't above trash talking her in his letter to his mother Katia (who of course he knew had hated Nelly):
What a shame! What an embarrassing, superfluous, ugly tragedy! It must be an awful blow to poor old Heini – who is likely to follow her soon. Couldn’t she wait a few years? What deplorable, objectionable lack of consideration and self-control! Yet I feel sorry for her. She should have stayed in Germany with people of her own kind. He has ruined her life by transplanting and uprooting her. But then, that’s what she wanted. I suppose it was completely on her own account when she followed him to Bandol, or wherever he was at the time. Stupid thing she was! But back in Nice she used to cook really delicious suppers for us. It’s all very sad. (I’ll try to write a few lines to the Uncle. But there is nothing to say, really…).
Of course, Klaus Mann would commit suicide himself only three years later. Also, re: Nelly staying in Germany with "her own kind" (thus speaks the grandson of a Lübeck Senator): Nelly, as revealed late in the play, was half Jewish - illegitimately so, and it might not have come out, but the Nazis being the Nazis, who knows. Also, she was a committed socialist (one of her best friends and pre Heinrich lovers was a Communist resistance fighter who ended up on a concentration camp), but the idea that Nelly the proletarian bar lady whom Heinrich had picked up in a bar should have political opinions influencing her decision to join Heinrich in exile, heavens beware.
Re: Tales of Hollywood - Heinrich Mann
Oh noooooo :(
It was her fifth attempt. (...) The last but one attempt had already nearly succeeded. (...) This last year was misery and horror. (...)I've never been near to a more guiltless sufferer. (...) Persons who don't know anything keep hinting at me that it is better this way. No.. To return to places where I was with her and not to bring her along? I hardly leave my apartment, for it has been hers.
:(((((((
Btw, thing which I don't think the bits on YouTube show is the clever way the tv version goes about using the running gag about Brecht's appearances.
Omg, no, it doesn't at all! I think it was just the parts with Heinrich Mann; Brecht never shows up in those clips, I think. That's awesome.
Ah, thank you for the book rec, that sounds awesome! <3 (I do get books off the list, you can see! Just, somehow really slowly these days -- my brain seems to be wanting a diet of froth.)
still showed he, too, wasn't above trash talking her in his letter to his mother Katia (who of course he knew had hated Nelly)
:(( Of course he's probably talking it up to his mother, but -- :(( All of this is just so sad.
Re: Tales of Hollywood - Heinrich Mann