Bachardy with a portrait of Isherwood, LA Times
May 18th, 1934– 3 films come to mind today as I consider Don Bachardy on his birthday: Cabaret (1972), A Single Man (2009) & the unexpectedly uncommon documentary- Chris & Don: A Love Story (2007).
Christopher Isherwood has been one of my favorite writers since high school when I first learned the Cabaret connection. The Berlin Stories was a revelation to read just as the Gay Liberation movement was just beginning in the early 1970s. There was a sort of parallel with the USA in the 1970s & the era when Isherwood left England & traveled to Berlin at the end of 1920s to meet boys. Isherwood’s enthusiasm for the boy bars & cabarets shows the allure to the bankrupt Germany entertaining itself during Hitler’s rise to power. As a gay man, Isherwood identified with the crushed, the criminal & the cast-off, & he still was forced to hide aspects of his personal life to find love.
By the time Goodbye To Berlin, the basis for the play & screenplay of Cabaret, had been published, Isherwood was already living in the USA. In 1939, Isherwood had already published 4 novels, 3 plays, a memoir & a travel book when he landed in NYC in 1939 in the company if his lifelong friend, poet W. H. Auden. Auden settled in Manhattan & Isherwood went west to LA. Isherwood had been a film fan since childhood & he soon became a well-paid screenwriter.
Isherwood had many friends & lovers in his new country, many of them famous. He met 18 year old Don Bachardy at Will Rogers State Beach in October 1952. Bachardy began visiting the Santa Monica spot in the late 1940s with his older brother, Ted. Bachardy:
“At first Chris was attracted to Ted. But Ted was a manic-depressive schizophrenic. During his 3rd breakdown, I was distressed to realize I could no longer rely on him. Chris felt sorry for me & he was so successful in cheering me up that we formed a special bond.”
Within months the 2 beach bunnies had initiated an intimate relationship that lasted until Isherwood’s death in 1986. They were an actual high profile openly gay couple during the era of McCarthyism, when gay people were being drummed out of the government & the film world.
Isherwood & Bachardy seemed to live an enviably enchanted existence in their hillside Santa Monica home. They entertained the leading players in the worlds of art & literature, plus the movie stars that Bachardy once sought out for autographs. Yet, the documentary- Chris & Don: A Love Story points out that the couple worked hard for years to achieve their shared happiness.
From the very beginning, the couple’s relationship was challenging: Bachardy was 30 years younger than Isherwood & so boyishly attractive that he seemed underage. Majoring in Theatre at UCLA when they met, Bachardy was overwhelmed by Isherwood’s vast array of famous friends. Isherwood encouraged Bachardy’s talent for drawing & eventually Bachardy became an internationally acclaimed visual artist. Bachardy:
“I was 18, Chris was 48. He had to move out of his home because the owners, close friends, were very uncomfortable about the age gap, blatantly accentuated by my callow appearance. Chris had other friends who disapproved too, & he broke with them because of me”
Schooling Bachardy gave Isherwood sizable satisfaction. Bachardy:
“We were intensely close while I went to college & then art school. I decided I wanted to be a painter, & Chris encouraged me right from the beginning.”’
In his diary in 1960, Isherwood wrote:
“Don matters more than any of the others. He imposes himself more, demands more, cares more, about everything he does & encounters. He is so desperately alive.”
Isherwood’s success & his affairs with Igor Stravinsky, Tennessee Williams, Stephen Rutledge, Truman Capote & others, his experience & his demanding nature made their relationship difficult for his young boyfriend. Bachardy:
“I needed to establish my own identity. Some of Chris’s friends were kind, but mostly they treated me as just a bit of fluff.”
To gain his own sense of self-worth, Bachardy moved to London & studied painting. His first shows in London & NYC attracted admirers of all sorts & good reviews, plus he was talented, together, & temptingly hot. Bachardy:
“Chris had always had sex friends outside our relationship, & he had been frank with me about his sexual adventures in the years before he knew me. Since I had very little sex experience before Chris, I began to feel deprived. I told him it was unfair to deny me the freedom he had enjoyed. I was usually discreet about my adventures, but I know he was tormented. We had a couple of really difficult years & in 1963 I considered leaving him. We did split up for a few months.”
Without his young lover & very sad, Isherwood wrote A Single Man. The thin novel’s theme is the barely disguised emotional loss reflecting Isherwood’s fear that Bachardy would leave & that he would die alone. Ironically, Bachardy came up the title A Single Man. He has a cameo in the film version, & is credited as a creative consultant.
Bachardy & Isherwood survived a break-up in 1963 when Bachardy was still in his 20s. Bachardy:
“Chris allowed me the freedom to have sex with other men, & the comparison favored Chris. I saw more clearly what a great treasure I had in him.”
They remained a couple for 33 years. Chris & Don: A Love Story ends with a several scenes of Isherwood, at the end of a battle with cancer, sitting for a series of portraits by his partner. Bachardy:
“Chris was in a lot of pain towards the end. But he had sat for me so often over the years, & I knew this was something we could still do together. Each day, I could be with him intensely for hours on end.”
The last of the series was completed when Isherwood was already dead. Bachardy remained alone with the body, producing some of his most moving drawings & paintings when he himself was newly a single man.
Bachardy still lives in that Santa Monica house. It has been his residence for over 50 years. He continues to paint portraits. Bachardy did, indeed, become an esteemed artist in his own right. He has painted portraits of the most famous folks of the past 50 years including: Fred Astaire, Bette Davis, & Montgomery Clift. He continues to paint the portraits, working every day, for hours at a time. He’s one of the only portrait artists in the world who only paints live. He never uses photographs or even works from memory. Once the model has left the room, he puts down his brush.
One of Bachardy’s most famous works is the official portrait of Governor Jerry Brown which hangs in the California State Capitol. The California State official biography page for Brown features a photograph of the painting.
I think very highly of his work & I have a nice coffee table book of his portraits. Still strikingly handsome, fit & trim at 81 years old, Bachardy has been spotted riding his bicycle around LA. He claims that he is completely Isherwood’s creation, but Isherwood’s writing also was shaped through the openness of their relationship. I rather love him.
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