Vox Populi
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Joan E. Bauer: 165 Maybery Road
Salka Viertel gives up a stage career & theatre company
in Berlin to arrive in Los Angeles. 1928.
Soon she’s almost famous for scripts for Garbo,
but more for her Sunday salon on Maybery,
a haven for intellectuals, anti-fascists, Jews, refugees.
Christopher Isherwood & his boyfriend sleep above
the garage. James Whale finds composer Franx Waxman,
for The Bride of Frankenstein. Salka sunbathes
with Eisenstein before he returns to the USSR.
All the while, Salka raises money, gathers affidavits
to bring Jews from Europe to safety, finds jobs
for the newcomers, drives them to Farmer’s Market
on Fairfax, a reminder of the Old World. On Sundays,
Thomas Mann toasts his brother Heinrich on his birthday,
Salka keeps rivals Schoenberg & Stravinsky in separate rooms
& tolerates ‘self-adoring’ Alma Mahler.
All the while, Salka feels she hasn’t done enough to fight Hitler,
hasn’t done enough to save refugees & Jews.
For her political sins, she’s blacklisted, fired from MGM,
hounded by the FBI, even denied a passport.
In‘54, she sells 165 Maybery to her friend John Houseman,
to live near her son, the writer Peter Viertel, married
to Deborah Kerr in Switzerland, where Salka writes
her panoramic memoir, The Kindness of Strangers.
~~~~~
Joan E. Bauer is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Fig Season (Turning Point, 2023), The Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2021), and The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008). Recent work has appeared in Paterson Literary Review, Slipstream and Chiron Review. She divides her time between Venice, CA and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-curates the Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins.
Copyright 2024 Joan E. Bauer. First published in BlazeVox.
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As the former owner/friend of a pair of simian pets, I apologize for breaking the more serious strain of comments below. But did anyone else notice that in the attached photo of Salka, she appears to be holding, not one, but two squirrel monkeys?!!
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Maybe she liberated them from Hollywood?
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Fascinating! I learned so much in reading this poem–though wish it weren’t so timely.
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It is timely.
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Stunning account of great humanity in action. Are we headed to more grim days— to the commission of such spirits from the “underground” of the human heart to take up acts of justice and mercy? How can we, after all that came before find ourselves so lost again?
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I agree, Sean I find it horrifying that we seem to have learned nothing from the past. We now have a president who is as racist as Andrew Jackson and we’re giving billions of dollars to fund a genocide.
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You said it all.
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Thanks Joan for continuing to introduce us to these people in your wonderful way. And re: Salka, an inspiration to have courage in the face of the unspeakable.
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Thanks, Emily. Spot on.
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