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Emmy Lou Packard Oral History [[crossed out]] XXXXXX [[/crossed out]] - [[circled]] 2/5/79 [[/circled]] page 1, section 3 preparation for second taping 2/8/79 ------------------------ [[left margin]] graphic material [[/left margin]] Going through my files is terribly time-consuming and confusing. There are several categories in which some relevant political experiences happened, or events of interest. I'm trying to pile things in these periods. But in some of them there is a lot of visual material - color and black and white photographs of paintings or graphics, some writing, letters. [[left margin]] size of portfolio? [[/left margin]] What size portfolio or scrapbook will the visual materials be in? All 8 1/2 x 11? I would like to choose certain things to be included in the visual material, and have them well-reproduced (photographed) if the REOHP doesn't have funds for this, I will do it. [[left margin]] back from Mexico Nov 1941 [[/left margin]] Today, without reference to files, I'll type what I remember of the period when I came back from Mexico in November, 1941. I had just spent a year living with Frida and Diego Rivera while I painted for my first one-woman-show. I finished 38 oils and numerous drawings and watercolors that year. My show opened in Los Angeles the same week that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. I was driving back from a breakfast [[strikethrough]] with [[/strikethrough]] at Mr. and Mrs. Harwell Harris's (architect) when I saw the huge black headlines on the Los Angeles Examiner; after that our US world changed rapidly. [[left margin]] Rivera wrote to me & warned me verbally, also wrote to others - [[/left margin]] Rivera had been warning everyone he talked to when he was in San Francisco and Los Angeles in 1940, that the Japanese would attack us. He also tried to impress people with the large and carefully trained and organized Nazi spy establishment in Mexico, there to plan a German attack on the US when the time came. He spoke to Mrs Kroeber (author of ISHI and wife of well-known paleontoligist; Alfred Kroeber, Theodora Kroeber.) My mother repeats this in a letter to me. Most Americans were stunned at the unexpected attack, and immediate work began on blackouts of cities and defense training courses for civilians. I drove from Los Angeles to San Pedro, Los Angeles' harbor, the first city to be blacked out. I arrived in day-light but as soon as the sun went down I was in utter darkness. went into a movie for a while, won three dollars in a bingo game. But finally I had to get back to my Los Angeles apartment. Everyone drove without lights, and the night was very dark. People were mired in fields they had driven in to when missing curves. Some had "blackout" lights, others flashed their dims occasionally to try to see where they were. I finally got home about 3AM. The actor Oscar Homolka and his photographer wife Florence Meyers were looking out for me while I was in Los Angeles. Oscar had left Germany when the Nazi menace was too much. he had become famous in Germany for his portrayel on the stage of the title role in King Lear. Hollywood offered him a contract and he accepted. (when they met him they were disappointed, since he didn'resemble the bearded mad King in the slightest. He had to show his passport to convince them he was indeed the man they wanted). Florence and Oscar were both political, anti-Nazi. Florence had been to Moscow and was thrilled with the Bolshoi and everything else she had seen there (she herself was studying ballet. Her father, by the way, was then the owner of the Washington Post) (Eugene Meyers). She had tickets to the first performance of the Shostakovich 5th Symphony but I wasn't feeling well and foolishly didn't go. It was an exciting occasion.[[left margin]]pro Russ climate [[/left margin]] Since Hitler's victories and Russia's brave defense the climate in the United States became suddenly very pro-USSR. We were allies. (Rivera, a friend of the Homolkas, had introduced me to them on the way down to Mexico in 1940. [[left margin]] anecdote about John Barrymore [[/left margin]] One night after dinner John Barrymore dropped in and stayed for hours, alcoholic but still able to deliver a monologue for hours at a time [[strikethrough]].[[/strikethrough]] about his exploits with famous people such as Anna Pavlova; he and Rivera and Homolka began discussing a fantasy production of Don Quijote with Barrymore as Quijote and Homolka as Sancho Panza, Rivera as a friar, I believe. And another of the life of Paul Gaugin [[Gauguin]] in which they would include some reality such as the five-year old prostitutes; but it was all only verbal entertainment. I wish tape-recorders had been invented then. Once, in the middle of a monologue Barrymore stopped suddenly and looked at me. "Don't you EVER say ANYTHING?" he asked. I was terrified, and only said "Not unless I have something to say." This wasn't intended as humor, but there was laughter from those who heard Barrymore's monologues too often.)
