Ocean Park

Joseph Giovannini Oral History of Esther McCoy Archives of American Art, 1987

Interview with Esther McCoy [1904-1989]

Conducted by Joseph Giovannini

At her home in Santa Monica, California

June 7-8 and November 14, 1987

Interview

[BEGIN TAPE 1 SIDE 1]

JG: The interviewee is Esther McCoy, in Santa Monica, on June 7th. This is tape 1.

EM: Oh, let's see. Eight of my grandparents [ancestors] came to the United States before the Revolution. They were all intensely political and intensely interested in lumber. My mother was born in Illinois, my father in Ohio. My education started with one child reading aloud to the other, so we read very early and . . .

JG: Were you the oldest?

EM: No-- You're not to ask questions! My sister and I went to a boarding school. She was two years older than I, a little less than two years, and I think I was thirteen and she was fourteen and three-quarters. Or I was twelve, I can't remember. [Laughs] It was a very great experience. In English class, there was a Miss Hamilton and we had half, maybe a month, or a month and a half on one thing. One was Canterbury Tales and we memorized a great deal. I still remember the opening lines of Canterbury Tales, "Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote" et cetera, et cetera. And then we [also read] Shakespeare and others, but it was nice to spend enough time on one thing so you began to know it and like it. But there was a great deal of memorizing, and I think it was many years after I memorized the Milton's "On His Blindness" that I understood that when [it said] "My light was spent" that it meant that he was blind. I took it more literally that his light, his electric light--so . . . I read a great deal, and my sister was a very bright, much brighter than I was. We were so close and we were in the same grade in school, and so it wasn't any use for me to try to keep up with her. I was always the youngest one in my class and not a great deal was expected of me, but my mother urged me just to do the best I could and so I did. But I usually went into things that my sister wasn't interested in because--I can remember once in a psychology examination where the professor said, "You will know this so well that all you'll have to do is just start writing," and I was sitting next to my sister and she started writing and I [laughs] I couldn't. And I've found it happened later too. Once, anytime Schindler--R.M. Schindler--would come up behind me and ask me for some figures on something, I simply couldn't--under pressure--do anything. And so, I'm writing about that right now, something about Schindler and his asking me for an area of . . .

     My sister and I then finally went to different schools. I went to Michigan, Ann Arbor, and she went to Northwestern. I was very eager to go to New York and to Paris. I'd had quite a bit of French, but I did go to New York, then, after school, and I have written about that in Grand Street.

     There isn't very much more to say about it except that when I got off the train I left my bags and trunk at the station, at Pennsylvania Station, and took a taxi to a bookshop. What's the name of that bookshop?--publisher and bookshop?--on 47th street?--Brentano's. Because I'd had an account at Brentano's there while I was in college, and so it seemed a good place to get a job. So I did get a job. It turned out that it was selling Christmas cards.

     I loved New York; I loved it. I wanted to live some place not in a big apartment house but in one of those nice [laughs] Georgian houses. I think most places I go I like to pick out my newspaper early and my cafe in all cities, European cities especially. So I found the World. Also, I was intensely interested in the Sacco and Vanzetti case and so I found that in the World and found they were sympathetic; they were on my side. That was one of the things that endeared me to the World, and also I liked the columnists. So I found a place listed, and I took a taxi and went over and rented it. It was on the Bowery and it was [run by] the wife of a reviewer--a writer, who reviewed books. So, they'd separated. She rented me a room. I didn't have any sense of money, whatever. None. Because I was using up . . . I didn't have too much and I was determined not to depend on my father, so that was using up quite a bit on taxis and the rent. I was getting, I think, something like sixteen dollars a week from Brentano's and paying ten dollars a week on rent.

     I went to the theatre almost every night. I would run from Brentano's to Gray's cut-rate place . . . Is this the kind of thing?

JG: Yes; also some of the items, some of the people you met in the meantime, and some of the ideas that you encountered as well.

EM: I didn't encounter any ideas then, I was just all eyes and ears.

JG: What were you reading?

EM: I wasn't reading anything except the World, and I took lots of books with me to New York, a Victrola, and lots of records, but I really didn't do anything except just learn New York and go to the theatre, the cut-rate . . . After [work I'd] run down to Gray's and get cut-rate tickets and then standing room. I would usually get in late from the theatre. And I had a friend who would stand in line at the Met for me--so I could get standing room at the opera. That would be one night a week anyway.

JG: What years were these?

EM: This was '27, I think, 1927. No, it would be '26.

JG: So you were twenty-two.

EM: I was twenty-one and a half. Then I got a job in . . . As soon as Christmas was over, Brentano's let me go. I got a job in . . . Well, the place I was living, the woman decided to close the house and leave it, so I had to move very hurriedly. Someone at Brentano's, a girl who lived on in the hundred's in New York, in the Bronx, took me home with her to get a room. So I got a room in her house. She was going after work, after Brentano's, to get a job in garment center. And that was a wonderful experience, working in garment center. I got on as a-- You know, showing dresses, and modeling them. I was on a draw and I sold only one.

JG: You were on a draw, that's a percentage?

EM: Yes. I wasn't making any [money]. At the same time I was going to publishers at noon to see if I could get a job. I wanted to get a job doing editorial work, which I finally . . . Dreiser [and I] had met and--

JG : How did you meet him?

EM: He came to Ann Arbor, and so he gave me a job doing a small research job, doing research at the public library in New York on Emma Goldman.

JG: Back to Ann Arbor. Had you been an English major and a French major or . . .

EM: English. So, then Dreiser left. There may have been another little job I did for him, I don't know. He left, and so I was just going to publishers and answering ads and at the same time working at the garment center.

JG: This was the start of your long association with Dreiser as a researcher and as a friend. When you researched for Dreiser what did you do? Did you read and calculate the material, or . . .

EM: Yes, it was on Emma Goldman, because he had wanted to write something about her. He felt that she needed something sympathetic written about her.

Joseph Giovannini Oral History of Esther McCoy Archives of American Art, 1987

[Tape 2, Side 1]

[After living in New York, Paris, Berlin, Florida . . . ]

JG: So you came back to Leroy Street [in New York], and you were . . .

EM: Yeah, and I got pneumonia. I was in the hospital and it was double pneumonia, and so they finally got Dreiser and he got me some good attention at the hospital. A nurse; it was before antibiotics, and so it was more or less a nursing job, to keep the fever down. So then Bonnie, this friend, had been in California and she had set up some friends of hers at a bookshop, and so she wrote them, the Needhams, Ida and Wilbur Needham. She wrote them and asked them if they could put me up for a month and let me do odd selling, spell them on selling. So I did. I came out in '32.

JG: So this was part of the convalescence?

EM: Yes.

JG: And the thought then was that a warm climate would be good for your . . .

EM: Yes. I was just getting out of it for the winter, but I stayed on. I had letters from people saying it was still pretty bad in New York.

     One terrible thing happened. The novel did not sell, but Scribner's had a competition for novelettes (I think they were about 10,000 words). So I cut my novel down. One of the things about it was they felt it was a little short, you know publishers. So I learned to write even shorter, though, you know, in time [laughs] with working hard at it. So [laughing] I cut it down from about . . . Anyway, I cut it. I've forgotten how many words it was in the beginning.

It went in, and I was at my sister's. She was in Denver, she was having a baby. That was on my way to California. And the word came that . . . I think it was four they were going to buy, print three, no, print two. Anyway, it was just out of the running--the last one. I think there were four, and I was fifth. And God, you know, how close, how chance, really. I had a letter from one of the editors saying how sorry she was, that she felt it was very, very nice, and it was a pity. So that made a hell of a difference, you know. God, that would have--to go back to New York with a . . .

JG: Book . . .

EM: And it paid, you know. So that would have . . . It was all I needed. But instead--and California was nothing, absolutely nothing. I'd done so much editorial work and research and there was nothing like that here. So I did get a job rewriting a book for a woman whose English was very poor; she was Russian. God, that was deadly. I got jobs like that, and then a couple of times I worked in a bookshop, you know Christmas rush. What's that big one down, who is it, the end of Olympic?

JG: Downtown?

EM: It was an old, famous bookshop. Well, it doesn't matter. And then I did a lot of reviewing here, because Wilbur Needham reviewed for the Times and for...

JG: The Los Angeles Times?

EM: Yes. He also reviewed for a magazine called Fortnight, I believe the name of it was. He would give me lots of books to review, but I wouldn't get paid for them and I couldn't keep the books, because they needed the books to sell. So I got nothing out of it, but I did get published. I remember one was Buckminster Fuller's Seven to the Moon.[ note: title is Nine Chains to the Moon] What is that book of Fuller's?

JG: I don't know it.

EM: I became very keenly aware of building here, of architecture.

JG: Why was that?

EM: Well, it was wonderful. You could see it in the houses. And I began reading on architecture, all the books.

JG: Who was wonderful at that time?

EM: Neutra, I learned, very soon. And oh--the first thing I saw that I liked were the Monterey houses, you know, of John . . . ?, in Santa Monica.

JG: Parkinson?

EM: No, not Parkinson, John Byers. Over on Georgina Street, in Santa Monica.

JG: These are traditionalized Spanish?

EM: Yes. And then from that, I would stop and look at houses that were under construction if they looked interesting, and I got to see a great many of them. And Neutra I found very early, and liked him. Harris I found very early. First week I was here I met John Entenza. He had nothing to do with architecture then.

JG: He had not bought Art and Architecture yet?

EM: No. That was '32.

JG: That was '32 that he bought it or that you were here?

EM: That we met.

JG: What did you find about the intellectual life here? Was there much of it, or . . . ?

EM: No.

JG: Not much, and you missed the conversations from back East?

EM: Yes, I did.

JG: But what did you like about the city?

EM: I loved . . . It was laughed at so, Los Angeles, in New York. And they thought no one came except the people to make money, and get their money and pick up and run. But when I got off the train in San Bernardino, I said, "What is that, what is that, what is that?" And [they] said "What's what?" "That wonderful smell." "Oh, that's orange blossoms."

     God, you know, that was the beginning, and then I got to Santa Monica and the Needham's shop was half a block from the ocean. So I could go down every day and swim, and God, it was close to one of the inclines down to the ocean; it was on Santa Monica Boulevard.

JG: So, you were better by that time?

EM: I got better here, yes. It was so stimulating, and I've always liked warm climates anyway.

JG: You mean just that physical aspect is stimulating?

EM: Yes. And the mountains, too. To have the mountains and the sea so close together. That was just heaven.

JG: How is it that you came to Santa Monica, rather than, say, Pasadena, or . . . ?

EM: Oh, that's because they had the Needham's bookshop. I was going to stay with them. That was the agreement, with Bonnie. I think she'd put up several hundred dollars which, in Depression days, went . . .

JG: It was a lot of money then. Santa Monica in that time was a vacation town, a beachside . . .

EM: Yes, yes, it was always end of the line.

JG: So did you stay on for longer than you thought?

EM: I stayed there about a month, and that's when I got the job rewriting the book, the Russian woman. Her husband's family had a little shed with living quarters above it. It even had a bathroom in it. That was on Pico. So I lived there. Loved it.

     Then I fell in love. John didn't come out, and John became something of an alcoholic, too. It was such a disappointment to him that his book was not taken. I think I can see now, you know, "the penumbra of your silence," why it may not, but I really couldn't understand it because it just seemed absolutely wonderful to me. He was hurt. I don't know, did I say this before? That when mine would get attention and his didn't, it really hurt him. He was writing when I was working in Newark, at the department store, and I can remember he would read what he'd written aloud to me, and I was exhausted, you know, and would fall asleep. And that would hurt him. So he became very, very sensitive, and then he began getting awfully drunk. He would sort of lurch out into the street.

JG: This was before you got sick with pneumonia?

EM: Yeah.

JG: And then when you came out here, he stayed there?

EM: Yes. And I really didn't want him to come because he was too comfortable in the position of my going out and working and his staying home and writing. Because he did feel that he was the writer in the family.

JG: So you supported the family?

EM: Briefly, briefly.

JG: So out here, then, you were here and then you met somebody?

EM: Yes.

JG: And you stayed on.

Joseph Giovannini Oral History of Esther McCoy Archives of American Art, 1987, 1932, 1930s

EM: Yes, I stayed on. I went back to New York in 1935. During this time, those two or three years, that I was here, I began doing work in the left wing, the radical movement. I did things, articles, for--there were three or four of them-- EPIC [End Poverty In California] News was one of them, and then there was the communist paper in San Francisco, and then there was another one here. I can't remember the name of that other one, but I know that Kathryn Smith found it because I did some housing surveys, slum housing surveys, that I published there. This was something I just set myself to do. If you have lots of time, no money sense, and-- interested in the subject--so that was good. I published a lot of other things then, in the papers. I began publishing in the little magazines in . . . God, I don't even remember the names of them. One, I think was called Blast. Could that have been Jack Conroy, or one of those, that edited it?

JG: I don't know. I saw the word Blast somewhere, in the sketch here.

Ek.

EM: Good God.

JG: Was it at this time that you lived in Malibu?

EM: Oh, yes, after I left the place writing for the Russian woman, Tim and I house-sat a house in Malibu.

JG: What was Tim's last name?

EM: Robert.

JG: And you house-sat in Malibu?

EM: Yes, Zuma it was. I heard from his son not long ago.

[END TAPE 2, SIDE 1]

[BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE 2]

JG: On June 8, in Santa Monica, this is tape 2, side 2, the second day of our sessions. Esther?

EM: Yes. I want to say that I think the chronology impedes progress, and I'd like to depart from that. And then I want to comment further on your categorizing me as a minimalist, and then asking me to say how I became a minimalist, and what my influences were in becoming a minimalist. As I understand the minimalism, I'm not sure that I am a minimalist, and I'm not sure that's it's correct to categorize what I am for researchers. I think they might come to their conclusions. I think that should be treated with some little . . . Well, drop it, since I can't find the word. Now let's close it off for a minute and talk about how we're going to--and whether we should [machine switched off, and on again] So what should we talk about?

JG: At the last session, we ended with you in Malibu.

EM: Yeah. Tim. He'd had some heart trouble. He was in the first World War and there'd been some injury, some slight, I think, gassing or something, and it had begun to affect his heart. He had just stopped everything and had begun to write and to do the things he wanted to. He was French-Canadian. His interests were Montaigne, and Remy de Gourmont and--I can't think of the others. But it made a difference. Oh turn it off! I can't, I don't know-- [Machine is turned off, and on again].

     The Depression was a curious period, where everyone had lots of time, and there was nothing much to do. And in California, where there was no editorial work to do, it was almost impossible to earn livings in the way that I would have in New York. No publishing. So I did do odd jobs for writing, editing manuscripts, people who wanted to write. Then I began, through the Needhams, to get into the radical movement.

. . .writing, but it really helps.

     For a period I wrote at night. I don't know why. Maybe two or three years I wrote at night. Six months of this was on TV writing. A friend who had become an agent, briefly, sold a couple of published stories of mine to television, and I had the assignment to write them. I really enjoyed that. I enjoyed the dialogue, writing the dialogue. It was incredible, the money you made on it, more than I'd ever made. That six months is more than I've ever made in my life in any six months. And the residuals, then. But that was a period I wrote at night. I wrote Five California Architects at night, too. We'd have dinner, and then I'd go to the typewriter, and work till--maybe from eight till four. But there were always the telephone calls, the doorbell, and others that cut into sleep.

     I must have been almost seventy, before I stopped writing, you know, finishing something, writing until it was finished, sometimes mailing something at two or three in the morning. Then suddenly I decided I was going to close the typewriter at five or six, have dinner, and listen to the news, and go to bed. Or see friends. I don't know what brought me to that decision. It wasn't health entirely, because I've had several bouts of sickness, but I could always convince myself that it must be put off, being sick, until I finished something. I don't think I've ever really been unable to finish something because of sickness.

     You spend so much time, in that box, alone, the typewriter room. I sat where I could face a view, through the . . . The typewriter room is elevated, oh, two feet, above the one in front of it, upstairs, and I could see out to the eucalyptus trees, and then on my left hand, I could see onto the upstairs porch. At times I had hanging baskets, and lots of plants, so that was pleasant. And then I always sit and stare, when I'm writing, put my elbows on the typewriter and always turn off the electric typewriter (it always says, "hurry up, hurry up, hurry up") and I can't write that way. I don't know how people write fast, although in television, I could take a script in of a morning, and we'd go over it, and decide on rewrites, and I could take it home and write it that night and have it back the following morning. Or they'd send a Red Arrow out for it. But I was always good on keeping . . . able to meet deadlines. I think you have to, if you're going to depend on writing for a living. There's so few, few people who do that.

     I remember once when I went to the bank to borrow money. I usually had loans going, maybe a thirty-day loan, a six month's loan, and then a long-term loan. So those had to be paid, and I really depended on this quick money. But it was that or try to borrow from friends, and I always felt borrowed, with my tail between my legs, and I just didn't want the pain of having to look at someone in the eye and ask for money. And I never have, if I could avoid it in any way. I suppose that's one thing that kept me busy. I felt that I would have to explain my life to someone that I asked for money from, and I didn't want to do that, because I didn't know what drove me. What does drive one to write? Because it is a losing thing.

     And then I quickly got into this thing. I got into writing about architecture because . . . to support fiction. Because it would take a month to write a story, and then if it didn't sell, it would go to one of the university quarterlies that paid nothing at the time. So you really couldn't do it. It's one of those . . .

     But these were the ones that I eventually made money off of from television. I must say, what television did with them, even though I wrote them they could hoke them up in a way I can't tell you; it was always so unbelievable. I was determined that I was going to do one. I'd even go on the set and watch. And God, just in front of your eyes it could be hoked, and I wouldn't know it, I was too innocent.

     Anyway, I got to the point where I would be making changes, writing in or out a character on TV, after shooting had started. I'd call in to tell them what sets were not needed and any new one that was needed.

     This all stopped at-the end of the season, and I went to Italy. That was for an issue on Italy (for arts and crafts in Italy) for the L.A. Times (that was Home Magazine), and then things on architecture for Arts and Architecture magazine. I did this every summer for five years. The Italians routed me through various cities, and the Timeswould do the story. Actually I made very little off these, but the travel was well worth it. I think I was always in revolt against provincialism. So was my mother, she adored travel.

     But it was good living in Santa Monica, the edge of a city. Santa Monica, the end of the line, that was where you could write, and then stopping and going to Europe. Before Europe it was Mexico. For my first visit to Mexico, I stayed a month. I wrote an issue for Arts and Architecture on domestic architecture. It was 1951. On Luis Barragan, O'Gorman, Max Cetto and all the others, Candela. And the following year an issue on New University City for Arts and Architecture.

     Mexico--the air was very clear then, and the volcanoes beautiful. I loved it; I loved it. And there was this feeling that the strong shadows . . . and on Barragan's architecture, was made for strong shadows. Barragan, he drew much of his inspiration from the small churches of the villages. Chapels. Planes. Those clear, blank planes. And the pine, the wood's poor in Italy [sic], and he emphasized that, in these broad pine boards, the poorness of the wood. It gave it a simplicity, a sort of a purity, that was thrilling.

[END TAPE 3, SIDE 1]

[BEGIN TAPE 3, SIDE 2]

. . .

     Interest in California architecture began in '32 when I saw the Monterey houses, the second floor balcony. That was my first love, and then I saw Neutra and then other houses. I got so I would stop and look at houses under construction. I think I've said that before. I don't want to repeat too many times. So I got interested in how they were done. With Tim, who was a draftsman, we could talk about that, and then my natural interest in how things are put together, how stories are put together, how a television show is put together . . .

JG: You were actually interested in how Ray Eames was interested in how things were put together.

EM: Yes, yes, yes. There were many things that I learned from him, and I learned from him a little and I learned from Schindler a great deal.

JG: I had thought that the war was a turning point in terms of your being explicitly interested in architecture, but I see that it started in the 30's.

EM: Yes.

JG: But so you hadn't started your drafting until Douglas, in '42?

EM: Oh, yes, I started. I would do a little for Tim.

JG: Oh, did you?

EM: Yeah. He tried to get . . . He would try to do a spec house, Tim.

JG: So he was a builder?

EM: Yes.

JG: I knew he was a contractor, but . . .

EM: He wasn't a contractor, no. He had no contractor's license. He would go from one thing to another. What he ended up at was reading.

Joseph Giovannini Oral History of Esther McCoy Archives of American Art, 1987, 1940s

JG: So you entered the program at Douglas after Pearl Harbor at some point?

EM: Yeah. As soon as the program was set up, I heard about it, and I applied, and I got on.

JG: Was that because you knew--was it patriotic for you or you needed the money or . . .

EM: I wanted to, and it was very clear, it seemed very clear to us, that all of us would have to be part of war work in some way. So I actually chose. I said, "I'm going to be a draftsman." You can see my age--I still say "drafts-man." I'll never be able to change that--and "person" is to long.

JG: Unnatural, it's true. You detailed wings of planes?

EM: Yes.

JG: You wrote a little bit about it in that wonderful introduction to the piece in the Whitney show on design, called High Styles, and I recall your having spoken about Shorty the foreman, and how he went off to solve . . . wings . . .

EM: Oh, that, yes. We had a six week's refresher on mathematics in which we learned engineering drawing, the special kinds of things that you did, and engineering drawing, as opposed to other kinds. Then we went to the plant and we had a month there, where we had a week in four different departments. The week that I shall always remember was in experimental, because here was this wonderful character who was out of the past and who really couldn't face all these kids coming in who knew nothing about it. Before that, the planes were built maybe two at a time, [that] would be a big order. Then, suddenly there were all these enormous orders, and he wasn't used to it. could see the old order dying, and I could see how sad it was, and how he--angry . . .

[END TAPE 3 SIDE 2]

[BEGIN TAPE 4, SIDE 1, JUNE 8]

JG: We were talking about drafting at Douglas, one of the weeks of introduction and Esther's memory of the old order--the eclipse of the old order where they used to do two planes at a time and now the orders were for many more planes . . .

EM: Yeah, it was the experimental department. I liked this most of all because I saw someone really working. It was still a handcraft operation with him. Everything else upstairs was mechanized and it was becoming more and more mechanized, and, by the end of the war, everything would be completely mechanized.

     That, by the way, was what gave us the hope that architecture, that building the houses would also become mechanized, but it never did. It should have, and that was what Konrad Wachsmann wanted, and that was what many other people wanted--to have a house, I think, in some cases where you could buy parts of it, as you could in Japan, and put them together. Or at least I was told you could in Japan; I'm not sure you could. Then you could build your house as you wanted, out of these parts. But it didn't go that far, but planes did become mechanized and that was one thing, at least.

     I went, many of the trainees went, to Westwood. I went to engineering in Westwood on La Cienega near Wilshire, the big hangars there. There were several thousand boards there, just one after another after another. I worked in the wing section and I did the detail drawings. The engineers were dull people. There was once, I was with maybe four or five of them, and something came up, and not one of them had ever heard the name Walt Whitman. Not one. I think, what they were up to, the intellectual engineer, was the one who read Time magazine. That's the high point.

. . .

JG: But why was there the architecture here? You were not as interested by it in New York; it was not happening there in the same way, was it?

EM: No. It's because, I think, here, no one was watching. And you could just do it your own way. The person who understood this best, then talking to, was Cesar Pelli, who knew that it was a good place where you could just do what you liked. But that's the history of Los Angeles, always, from the Spanish days, that it always went its own way. Even, you know (who was the writer who wrote about the early Spanish days?), he said that people would not--you know, they had to go some place, and they wouldn't--they never walked, they always rode a horse. It's the same thing today, the way they never walk, they always drive a car. So it was always that way.

JG: What about the difference between architecture on the East Coast, and modernism on the East Coast, and the modernism here? You had said that you enjoyed . . . One of your groups had met in Lescaze's house, and that it was very strictly . . .

EM: But you saw so little of it. There wasn't very much of it. There was the Museum of Modern Art, but it was impossible in New York City to see it. This was one of the few things, that I could see. The two things were the house, Lescaze house, and the Museum of Modern Art.

JG: I've never understood why there was a good deal of good modern architecture in Southern California but there was not very much painting of the same caliber, and modern, or was there?

EM: You're right. I think it's hard to say. I'm not sure, I'm really not sure why.

JG: What about the movie community here, as you experienced Los Angeles? Was the movie community pretty isolated, as it seems to me to be now, or was there more interface with intellectuals and certainly people from . . .

EM: Well, now let's see. There were so many people, Germans, coming over, and I think there was the German group. I didn't know about that until I knew the Davidsons, later, and Ernst Lubitsch. And I think he was a friend of Thomas Mann's, and I think that was how Davidson got the design for the Mann house, through Lubitsch. It is Lubitsch, isn't it, Ernst Lubitsch? It doesn't quite sound right. Anyway, it was separate--it was quite separate.

     And music was separate, too. But architecture did impinge on this. Let's see, Schindler did--all the architects I've known did something for musicians. Schindler did a remodel for Kompinsky, a violinist I believe he was, and Davidson did--they've all had-- Harris did one, it was never . . . It was a project, but it was a house for the composer who was at UCLA. What's his name, you know, the famous one...

JG: Schoenberg?

EM: Schoenberg, yes. He did a house for Schoenberg.

JG: He also did a house, Schindler, for the music critic of the Herald. [note: was music critic for Arts and Architecture.]

EM: Who was that?

JG: [note: 1938-1947 Schindler renovation, homeowner/music critic Peter Yates] Oh, it was the hillside house, I think in Silver Lake. It's the one with that wonderful rail, that kind of a paperclip rail, up to the uphill part of the site [inaudible]. My impression of the art of that time, through Arts and Architecture, was that there was a lot of conversation between people in different fields, but apparently that was really not the case.

EM: That is what a following generation always likes to believe. It sounds as if they must have liked each other, and they must have discussed, talked a lot. And I know that they always felt, in Europe, during that transition period, transition magazine, that everyone liked each other. But I have never found that true. In any case, there were--and I know Neutra was the most jealous of people.

JG: Was there more sort of interdisciplinary conversation in New York than here, or was it that there was more conversation in New York?

EM: More conversation, but I think there was as much backbiting everywhere.

JG: My impression of that is through Arts and Architecture, which seems to be quite remarkable in tracking . . . Such a high caliber publication in which there was literary criticism and music criticism and architecture.

EM: Yes, yes.

JG: I know that period primarily through Arts and Architecture, and that remains my impression.

. . .

JG: So, I think we're jumping the gun here [inaudible]. Was there anything more about the time at Douglas? Anything more that interests you?

EM: It was the time, the time it took. You were really--and you know, you had to be so damned organized to be able to get a house in order and everything, to get food. You had to stand in line for your meat and other food, after working a ten-hour or a nine-and-a- half-hour day, so it was exhaustion.

     There was a woman, the only person about my age (she was slightly older than I was) who was in this program, who had a very wicked sense of humor, and so that helped enormously, that helped enormously. Then, when I chose to go to engineering, she decided to go too, and so we were in different departments there but we could always have great laughs together. I decided I wanted to get into architecture after I left Douglas. I knew we'd all be out when the war was over, and so she decided to do that too. She got a job with Fred Barienbrock, who did the Santa Monica City Hall, you know. It's a pretty poor job. She was loaned to Edla Muir; they loaned people back and forth, Ed and Fred.

JG: You tried to apply to architecture school after the war, didn't you?

EM: Yes, I did; I tried to get in USC. I knew it might be a terrible problem of money, but I did try. I was--oh, this was something! I was completely, you know, discouraged. A woman, and a woman who was over thirty--that was just the laughs for them.

JG: There was no other architecture school that you were interested in?

EM: No. By this time I had, I was so deep in architecture that...

JG: So that was in '44? '45?

EM: Yes, '45. Now here's something I never talk about. It was when we had a week off. We had a week off each year at Douglas, a vacation, and we went both times to Ensenada. We would rent a house there. I wrote during the week fifty to seventy-five pages of a novel, and it was about an architect, and it shows that I was interested, by 1943, enough in architecture to want to do a book on one.

JG: Is that among your papers?

EM: Yeah. Each year Houghton Mifflin gives awards for--you submit manuscripts and they give you awards or something, not awards, but they give you a contract. Mine was sent in, this fifty pages, because at the end of that week I went back to work, and just mailed it off to Houghton Mifflin. Well! Goddamn if I didn't place--there were two of us first. It's funny, that's my luck in a way; it was the same thing on this novel I'd written in Key West, which I'd cut down, which had been . . .

JG: . . . out of four.

EM: Yeah. Just out of the running, just out of the running. Well, this was second. So, I did get a small advance, and I'm sorry to say--I don't talk about it because lots of it was based on, the character was based on Tim, but it was a Tim who was a young architect, which Tim was not, and which he never stood still long enough to . . . And he certainly would not have been a modern, and this man was a modern.

JG: That was a great distinction at the time, to be modern, not to be modern?

EM: Oh, yes indeed, yes. It was like being . . . Sinning and not sinning. [Laughs] I think I got fifteen hundred dollars which was just. . . And this was after two years at Douglas, and it was after V-E day--or was it V-J day, whichever was first--and so the war was winding down, obviously, so I quit. I got this money, I quit, and I went to my typewriter. But I also put a drafting table by the typewriter, because after I'd just tossed off a novel, I wanted to go back into architecture. I wanted to go into architecture.

. . .

JG: We were talking about drafting at Douglas, one of the weeks of introduction and Esther's memory of the old order--the eclipse of the old order where they used to do two planes at a time and now the orders were for many more planes...

EM: Yeah, it was the experimental department. I liked this most of all because I saw someone really working. It was still a handcraft operation with him. Everything else upstairs was mechanized and it was becoming more and more mechanized, and, by the end of the war, everything would be completely mechanized.

     That, by the way, was what gave us the hope that architecture, that building the houses would also become mechanized, but it never did. It should have, and that was what Konrad Wachsmann wanted, and that was what many other people wanted--to have a house, I think, in some cases where you could buy parts of it, as you could in Japan, and put them together. Or at least I was told you could in Japan; I'm not sure you could. Then you could build your house as you wanted, out of these parts. But it didn't go that far, but planes did become mechanized and that was one thing, at least.

. . .

JG: You know how these were the halcyon days. So when did you start writing for Arts and Architecture magazine?

EM: Let's see, I met John in 1932. The first thing I wrote for him was on . . . I think it was the issue, 1951, a whole issue on building, on residential building in Mexico. Now I may have done one or two small stories for him before that. I think I probably did, but they would have been unimportant. This was the one. But I'd been writing during that time, for other magazines, and so I wouldn't have written much for John. John didn't pay.

JG: What was your first article on architecture? You were at the Schindler house, with Schindler, weren't you?

EM: Yeah, I wrote about Schindler in 1945. The first one, though, was a letter to the New York World, on a review, Harry Hansen, a review on Le Corbusier's bookCathedrals Are White. I wrote a letter about his review. It had to do with the silos, and silo architecture, and he published it. So you can imagine my pride, in having a letter in the New York World, in the Harry Hansen column. [Laughs]

JG: This was the newspaper you had first gravitated to when you were in New York?

EM: Yes, oh, it was a great newspaper. [Inaudible]

JG: When did it fail?

EM: Oh, the bastards, the sons and daughters, wouldn't take the losses any more. [Laughs] I think it was in the thirties or forties. It was a Depression death.

. . .

JG: This is Joseph Giovannini, in Santa Monica, with Esther McCoy, Side 2 of Tape 4. This is from the . . .?

EM: This is from manuscript; it's what now is in the typewriter. It's on Schindler. I want to finish it; there's a celebration for his hundredth birthday in October, and I'm writing about my days with Schindler. It's how I set up a typewriter, drafting board next to my typewriter, and [EM reads]

     I did all sorts of cross-sections and then necessary details. The house had an L- plan, like one of Harwell Harris's I knew in Santa Monica Canyon, and many of the details were borrowed from Neutra. The plans could easily have been squeezed into three pages, but with all my cross-sections and details, I stretched them out to six. I did this mainly because I wanted to keep the drawing close to me, hoping that the pencil under my hand would teach me something more than how to set down the condition, when a wall meets a floor or a roof. I was hoping that if I'd listen carefully, I would get a clue to why one building was wonderful and another ordinary. That is, the pencil yielded no secrets. I stuck close to Neutra and Harris.

     That's enough, isn't it? And so that's the transition between . . .Then I gave up on the novel because, after rewriting it, then the great success of Ayn Rand's book put me at a disadvantage. I must say, that her research on the period, Chicago period of Sullivan and Wright, was fascinating.

JG: You gave up because you didn't want to continue, or because you'd finished the second draft and the publisher didn't like it?

EM: The publishers didn't like the second draft, and I could have worked out something, but I didn't think I . . . By this time a year had passed, and I was in other writing, and

JG: It's hard to go back.

EM: Yes. And also, there were many things that I was learning so much more about architecture by this time, working for Schindler, that it became really passé. It was not what I believed, and so this was another reason why I didn't want to rework that again.

JG: So you were working with Schindler at that time?

EM: Yes.

JG: What houses were you working on with him?

EM: Well, let's see. I can't find the Gebhard book on Schindler where I've marked the ones I worked on, but let's see. I think the first . . . I don't remember the first house I worked on. I've gone over the names many times but it was a project . . . But it was extremely painful because I didn't know . . .

     I was to get a couple of elevations ready for the blueprinter when he got back, to be ready. He was off on his jobs. I couldn't find where it indicated in any way what the windows were to be in the living room, and it was a great pain, my first day there, feeling that it was my fault.

     Finally he came in, and I had to admit defeat.

     He said, "Oh, that's OK," and he just took the pencil, a blunt pencil, and drew in something fast and said, "Call the blueprinter." And he said, "I don't know what I want to do with that yet."

     So he just waited, you know, was waiting. They said, always, at City Hall, that they knew that he was on his jobs, and that he'd take care of them. Nothing would get by him.

JG: How did you get the job there? You knew you wanted to work with him, or did you . . .?

EM: No, I was very much interested in the house, and I knew Pauline. Well. It's easier to read it. Can I read it?