7. Out and About

    1. Virginia Heinlein, taped interview with Leon Stover, Tape 3, Side A, p. 10 of transcript in RAH Archive, UC Santa Cruz.

    2. Virginia Heinlein, letter to the author, 11/07/99; Virginia Heinlein, taped interview with Leon Stover, Tape 3, Side A (October 22?, 1988); Virginia Heinlein, taped interview with the author, Tape 9, Side A (March 1?, 2000); RAH Accession Notes (1967) for Starman Jones.

    3. In RAH, letter to Bill Corson, 12/29/52, Heinlein notes that he has the next boys’ book on his professional agenda, with no indication that he has a story at this point; but he began writing, according to the Opus cards that contain his working history for each project, quoted in Marie Guthrie-Ormes’s doctoral dissertation, on February 2, 1953. Given that Heinlein typically began writing as soon as a project was fully clear in his mind, the principal part of the layout of the book must, then, have come together in January 1953.

    4. RAH, letter to Annette and Mick McComas, 08/26/53.

    5. J. Francis McComas, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 03/01/53.

    6. John W. Campbell, Jr., letter to RAH, 02/03/53.

    7. The lawsuit was apparently threatened in a 1952 letter by Leslyn to Lurton Blassingame, which is no longer extant (apparently Heinlein destroyed the file he was collecting, as it never was received by the RAH Archive). He also received and acknowledged a similar letter sent on to him by Doña Smith. RAH, letter to Doña (Campbell) Smith, 02/18/52. On the same day, Heinlein wrote to his lawyer-friend Sam Kamens (who had represented both him and Leslyn in their divorce action—a practice that is still common when the break-up is cooperative and more or less amicable), saying that the current batch of letters was so over the top that he no longer thought even the most hungry lawyer would be persuaded by them to bring an action.

    8. John W. Campbell, Jr., letter to RAH, 03/24/53.

    9. RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 03/28/53.

  10. Lurton Blassingame, letter to RAH, 03/24/53.

  11. RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 03/25/53. Extracts from his letter were published in Grumbles from the Grave at 67.

  12. RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 03/25/53.

  13. RAH, letter to E. J. Carnell, 05/08/53.

  14. “Project Nightmare” was actually purchased by Howard Browne in May 1952 for the fantasy magazine Fantastic, but the magazine folded before the story could be published. The details of how the manuscript was acquired by Fantastic’s Ziff-Davis sister magazine Amazing Stories were not recorded.

  15. Lurton Blassingame, letter to RAH, 05/03/53.

  16. RAH, letter to Robert Moore Williams, 05/21/47.

  17. Virginia Heinlein, taped interview with the author, Tape 4, Side B.

  18. RAH, postscript to George O. Smith, undated but 1953:

V. V. himself is all over his nervous mannerisms and exudes the charm and self-confidence of W. C. Fields about to sell a sucker a gold brick. I liked him much better than I did four years ago, but that left plenty of room to increase liking without wanting to kiss him.

Four years previously would have been 1949, presumably when Heinlein was in Los Angeles working on Destination Moon.

  19. RAH, letter to George O. Smith, undated but around 05/10/53.

  20. RAH, letter to George O. Smith, undated but around 05/10/53.

  21. RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 03/20/53.

  22. Van Ronkel’s letter has not been preserved, but Heinlein’s reply to van Ronkel, 05/17/53, conveys his shock, analyzes the possibilities (as given in the text), and concludes that any payment to Schor can only have been a bribe to conceal from them the difference between 10 percent of the production (which is what they thought they were negotiating for) and 10 percent of the producer’s share (which is how the paperwork was drawn up). As Schor was a lawyer who practiced in entertainment law before becoming an agent, Heinlein concluded Schor “took a dive” and went on to say the matter was so distressing he could hardly stand to think about it.

To Lurton Blassingame (letter of 05/17/53), Heinlein wrote in summary:

Rip and I have a dirty, dark suspicion that he was handed this piece of the picture for working against the interests of his clients in the negotiations. It would explain a hell of a lot of things about his behavior and about some of the very real faults of the contract. I had thought he was just stupid; now I am tentatively of the opinion that he is dishonest.

Of course, he may have some legitimate explanation as to how he got a piece of the picture—but what the hell could it be? And why has he concealed from Rip and myself that he had an interest much greater than his interest in his clients—and concealed it for three years? I just can’t see any explanation other than that he sold us out.

But neither Heinlein nor van Ronkel had access to hard data, and so it remains only a speculation. As Ginny Heinlein remarked, “That was never confirmed, and I don’t know whether it is true or not. Robert considered that a part of the Hollywood treatment and felt that almost everyone on the film had betrayed him…” (Virginia Heinlein, letter to the author, 12/10/99.)

  23. Twain’s late book Christian Science (1907) predicted that Christian Science would have the United States in a theocracy within forty years.

  24. Author’s note of a dinner conversation with Virginia Heinlein in early March 2001.

  25. RAH, letter to Irving Pichel, 05/29/53. Fifteen thousand words into the story is about where Secretary-General Douglas interviews Mike while still in the hospital and tries to get him to sign away his problematical Larkin Rights.

  26. RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 06/10/53.

  27. RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 07/05/53.

  28. Virginia Heinlein, letter to the author, 07/07/99.

  29. Virginia Heinlein, letter to Leon Stover, 04/08/89.

  30. Rex Ivar Heinlein was diagnosed with Involutional Melancholia in, probably, 1938. This matter is treated in Volume 1 of this biography, Learning Curve, 202–4.

  31. RAH, letter to Rex Heinlein (brother), 10/25/53.

  32. Rex Ivar Heinlein (father), letter to RAH, 08/03/53. The note suggests just how difficult and awkward this visit must have been:

Just want to repeat that I appreciate your efforts to make us enjoy our stay with you and Ginny. I especially appreciate the time Ginny spent playing Samba, since it seems she does not like the game.… Might have stayed a few days longer, but you seemed to feel that it wasn’t fair to the rest of you for us to stay longer here than we did at your home. Besides we are beginning to feel that it will be nice to be in our own home once more.

I am sorry that there were a couple of unpleasant episodes, and I hope time will efface some of the recollection of these …

As to belittling Ginny’s service, such was not my intention. I did not know that the service women carried rifles and drilled. It doesn’t make sense. The war in which I had a very small part [the Spanish-American War, 1898–99] was of course a little one but just as big as any other to those who lost their sons. It also led to the United States being lifted up to a first class power in the world and give her a place in the world, good or bad, which she hadn’t enjoyed before …

I am sorry if Ginny considers herself an outsider. We have always tried to feel and make the new members feel that they were truly members of our family. I think it is true with the rest and I hope Ginny will come to feel that way also.

I sincerely hope you and Ginny can come to see us before too long, since it is not possible that we will ever again make such a trip as the one we are soon to complete.

All in all it has been very pleasant and will always be remembered that way.

Love to both of you

  33. Ned Brown, letter to RAH, 07/28/53, forwards a clipping from Variety about distribution being picked up for Project Moonbase.

  34. Quoted in “Destination Moon: Robert A. Heinlein, Filmwriter” by Christopher Schaefer, New Libertarian 187 (undated but 1999): 63.

  35. RAH, Tramp Royale, 2. The Heinleins contemplating building a rental property is not mentioned elsewhere in correspondence. It is always chancy to take as factual such a statement in so mannered a book as Tramp Royale, but in this case it is so plausible an idea that I elected to treat it as factual.

  36. RAH, Tramp Royale, 4. The tenor of Heinlein’s remarks about Ginny in his correspondence and to a certain extent also in Tramp Royale, written the following year, sound insensitive and patronizing to our ears but were considered merely “humorous” at the time and were intended as ironic playing with “little wife” conventions then current—expected possibly because of the age difference between them.

  37. RAH, letter to Dorothy and Clare Heinlein, 09/23/53.

  38. RAH, letter to Mick, Annette, and Tony McComas, 08/26/53.

  39. RAH, letter to Annette and Mick McComas, 08/26/53.

  40. RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 10/24/53. A petition to adopt is not otherwise mentioned in the correspondence. A mention of being too old legally to adopt in Heinlein’s letter to Greg Benford, 11/08/73, may conflate two different incidents some time apart, as he mentions Ginny’s “plumbing problem,” which occurred much later, but says she was then thirty-six, which would place it in 1954—although they are still actively considering adoption in 1955. RAH, letter to Bud Bacchus, 04/15/55, also mentions being too old to adopt by the laws of the State of Colorado.

  41. RAH, Tramp Royale, 29.