Viewing page 1 of 9

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

     In a letter of 1929 written from Los Angeles where Jackson was in Manual Arts [[strikethrough]] training [[/strikethrough]] High School, Jackson told his brother Sandy that people terrified and bored him, that they frightened him and that he could not communicate with them. 
     Jackson faced his problems. You know I have so many myths about him [[strikethrough]] to fight, I feel I must at last speak up [[/strikethrough]]. [[above]] There are so many [[/above]] The drinking was something we faced all the time; wouldn't I be foolish if I didn't talk about it. No one was more conscious about it than [[strikethrough]] I was [[/strikethrough]] he was. Jackson tried everything to stop drinking, all his life --- medical treatments, analysis, chemistry, everything. In the late 1940's he went to a Dr. Heller, a general practitioner who had been successful with alcoholics. He was the first man who was really able to help stop Jackson stop [[strikethrough]] from [[/strikethrough]] drinking. From 1948 to 1950 Jackson did not touch alcohol. I often asked him what Dr. Heller did. when he saw him every week at the Easthampton medical Clinic. Apparently they just talked. Once when I asked him about Dr. Heller, Jackson said to me "He is an honest man, I can believe him." Do you realize what that means? "He is an honest man, I can believe him."
     He never drank while he worked. You know, he worked in cycles. There would be long stretches of work and then times when he did not work. He drank before and after these stretches. Dr. Heller got killed in an automobile accident--just like Jackson-- in 1950, and when Jackson took a drink again later that year there was no Heller to go to. 
     I remember the day I went to his studio for the first time. It was lat "41. I went because we had both been invited by John Graham to show in the McMillen Gallery [[strikethrough]] show [[/strikethrough]] in January "42. I wanted to meet this artist I had never heard about. Actually we had met about 4 years before, we had danced together at an Artist [[under]] Union [[/under]] Guild party. But I had 

Transcription Notes:
I believe the last few words on this page were meant to read Artist Union Guild, but I was a little uncertain about the handwritten letters between Art and Guild.