WHERE WERE YOU WHEN....

I have recently come across a public radio station, Lumpen Radio, broadcasting out of Chicago, Illinois. (https://lumpenradio.com/schedule-shows/) On Fridays at 11:00 am (Central time USA) which is 5pm in London GMT, there is a program entitled “Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers”. In the early and mid-sixties, I worked for their dad at his book shop called the Book Fair, in Westwood village. The book shop is now a Starbucks, and painted beige, but some 57 years ago it was painted white.

There are certain questions people from all over the world can be asked which begin “Where were you when (name the world-shaking event)?” It does, of course, presuppose that one was alive and aware at the time the world-shaking event occurred.

Olivier Todd

I mention all this because on the 22^nd November 1963, I was at work in the Book Fair, behind the counter and chatting with a young man named Robert (a shop regular) and a visiting French journalist Olivier Todd. We were speaking of Paris and such things when a woman came into the shop rather distraught and told us to turn on a radio “The President’s been shot”. What, who how etc. and the conspiracy theories began.

It was at about 10 minutes to 11 am in Los Angeles. The news was sketchy just then, but from about 11 am all the networks were involved and coverage was nonstop for several days, which I suppose reenforced the memory at the time.

Robert Klonsky 1937 (age 18)

Indeed, I have a great many memories from days at the Book Fair. I met and chatted with a number of rather interesting people, all of whom came, on the whole, to meet with the owner Robert Klonsky, a man I came to know and admire. He was an activist and a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, on the Republican side, with the International Lincoln Brigade. As a result, he faced a great deal of what can only be called persecution in his own country. He was a man of great integrity. There is an entry in Wikipedia.

Apart from learning a bit about books and the book trade, I had wonderful encounters with a number of people from the academic world, film industry, artist and writers. Amongts the regulars, I met with a wonderful character actor John Dierkes, who was so great in The Red Badge of Courage and one of the baddies in Shane; F. Murray Abraham and his wife Kate, a lovely and friendly couple, who I later ran into in London in 1965 (he later won an Oscar);  Hans Gudegast, a young German actor, who changed his name to Eric Braeden, and has now done over 3000 episodes of The Young and the Restless TV series; the writers Albert Maltz, Henry Miller and  Lawrence Lipton, chronicler of the Beat Generation. There were many others.

Miller                       Abraham                          Dierkes

Braeden                           Lipton  

Sadly, the book shop folded, the result of the harassment Klonsky received, but he was instrumental with finding me another job at the Lytton Centre of the Visual Arts, which was the creation of Bart Lytton, a rather flamboyant character, great patron of the arts, with a very left wing chequered career. He was great contributor to the Kennedy election in 1960.  He too has an entry in Wikipedia. 

Herb Kline

Josine Ianco

It was at the Lytton Centre that I came to know Herb Kline, the director of the Centre, writer editor and film maker, who (amongst his other work) had made a short documentary in 1937 of the Spanish Civil War, which is probably how he came to know Robert Klonsky, and why I got the job. Herb’s then wife was Josine Ianco, who was the curator of the Centre. Josy was the daughter of Marcel Ianco, one of the founding members of Dadaism. She was a very great lady. She died two years ago at 92 in Oregon. Again, there were encounters with a myriad of interesting people who worked at and came to the centre, contributed work, or just to visit. It was a pretty great time to be growing up in West Los Angeles. I owe much of it to Robert Klonsky, the Book Fair and the Lytton Centre of the Visual Arts. I left the US in 1965.