Thursday, May 26, 2016

Leslyn MacDonald (1904-1981)

Poet, Songwriter, Actress, Theater Director, Teacher, Science Fiction Fan
Born August 29, 1904, Boston, Massachusetts
Died April 13, 1981, Orange County or Stanislaus County, California

Leslyn M. MacDonald (also spelled, erroneously, McDonald) was born on August 29, 1904, in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father was a Canadian, her mother a Bostonian. Early in life, Leslyn moved to California with her family. That's where she lived and that's where she died. For some reason, as I write this, I sense a pall over her life. That may be just my imagination. But she was once young and beautiful. She had dreams of love and all the other things of which we dream. She wrote poetry, went to the university, acted on stage, and was married to one of the greatest of all science fiction writers. They slept together on the night they met, he proposed to her the next morning, and they remained together for a decade and a half before infidelity, heavy drinking, divorce, and other everyday dramas brought an end to it all. Leslyn remarried. Her second husband, like her father, worked in a hotel. He died in middle age. She survived but has slipped from memory. Maybe we owe her something a little better than that.

Leslyn MacDonald's father, Colin MacDonald, was born in Sidney Mines, Nova Scotia, on October 17, 1873. He came to the United States sometime around the turn of the century and was naturalized as an American citizen on May 13, 1901, in Boston. A little more than a year and a half later, on September 3, 1902, he married Florence Caroline Gleason in Worcester city or county. Born on April 8, 1883, in Westborough, Massachusetts, she was ten years his junior and had just turned eighteen.

The MacDonalds had two daughters, Leslyn, born August 29, 1904, and Keith, born September 9, 1906, both in Massachusetts. (Yes, Keith was a girl.) I don't know how long the family lived in Massachusetts or where else they might have resided, but by the time Colin MacDonald filled out his draft card in 1918 (the day after Keith's twelfth birthday), they were in Riverside, California, and he was working as a clerk at the Glenwood Hotel. Here's a news item with the heading "Laguna Beach News Budget" from the Santa Ana Register, dated June 28, 1917, showing that the MacDonald family were calling California home for at least a year and a half before that:


I had no idea what the "large Cravath cottage" might have been, but I did a search for "Cravath" and "Laguna Beach," and I feel pretty confident in saying that the reference is to professional baseball player Clifford "Gavvy" Cravath (1881-1963), who was a real estate developer in Laguna Beach. The "two children" in the article were of course Leslyn, then aged twelve, and Keith, then aged ten.

So the MacDonalds were not short on means. In 1920, they were in Riverside, where Mr. MacDonald worked as an office manager in a chemical works. That same year, Leslyn had a poem published in the Los Angeles Times and reprinted in other papers:


When "Freedom" was reprinted (in the Concordia Blade-Empire of Concordia, Kansas) on September 20, 1920, Leslyn was barely past fifteen. I'm no critic of verse, but it seems to me a work of sophistication rare for a teenaged poet.

Leslyn matriculated at the University of California, Southern Branch, later known as the University of California, Los Angeles. There she was a member of Delta Tau Mu; Kap and Bells, Dramatics; and the Manuscript Club. One of her classmates and a fellow member of Delta Tau Mu and Kap and Bells was Agnes De Mille (1905-1993). Here is a photograph of the two, side by side as in the original:

Left, Agnes De Mille (1905-1993), and, right, Leslyn MacDonald (1904-1981) in the University of California, Southern Branch, yearbook, 1926.

According to the Wikipedia biography of Agnes De Mille, she was not considered pretty enough to be an actress, so she became a dancer instead. (1) Leslyn MacDonald, on the other hand, did become an actress, if only for a little while. In August 1924, she appeared in A Midsummer Night's Dream under the direction of Madame Margarita Orlova, a play staged at Madame Orlova's beachfront Woodland theater in Laguna Beach. (2) The Santa Ana Register observed that Puck was "very prettily played by Leslyn MacDonald of Laguna Beach" (Aug. 19, 1924, p. 14), while author and screenwriter Elinor Glyn remarked, "I have seen 'The Dream' on several occasions, but I have never seen a  more charming Puck" (Santa Ana Register, Aug. 22, 1924, p. 12). For a season at least, Leslyn was a star. She later acted with the Pasadena Playhouse (1927), directed experimental theater, and worked in the music department at Columbia Pictures. (2a)

Leslyn graduated from the University of California with a degree in philosophy and a minor in drama, presumably in 1926. She took her master's degree from the University of Southern California in 1930. Again, the subject was philosophy. The enumerator of the 1930 census found Leslyn living in Los Angeles with her cousin, engineer Chester S. Beard, and his family. She was then working as a teacher in the public schools. Meanwhile, another star was on a collision course with hers. His name was Robert Anson Heinlein, and in the early 1930s, he was married, soon to be divorced, still in the U.S. Navy, but before the decade was out, ex-Navy and a published writer of science fiction. He and Leslyn were introduced in January 1932 by Heinlein's friend Cal Laning. Despite the fact that she was Laning's girl, Heinlein took her to bed that first night, then married her on March 28, 1932. There is a wedding picture of the couple, with Heinlein in his regalia and a very slight Leslyn at his side, here. Heinlein had his peculiarities: he was a nudist and a wife-swapper. Leslyn cared for neither activity. But she was an inspiration to her husband and devoted to his career and interests. Her poem "Freedom" from 1920 may very well have been a prophecy of their lives together.

Heinlein and his wife were at Denvention, the science fiction convention, in 1941. He was the guest of honor. She wore "semi-oriental dress [representing] Queen Niphar in Cabell's Figures of Earth." (3) She was with him, too, in Philadelphia, where he worked at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard during World War II. She knew Isaac Asimov. I suspect she knew the other writers of the southern California science fiction scene, writers such as Ray Bradbury, Forrest J Ackerman, Henry Kuttner, and possibly L. Ron Hubbard. Anthony Boucher cast her as Mrs. Carter in his 1942 roman à clef, Rocket to the Morgue. John W. Campbell, Jr., and his wife Doña named one of their daughters for her. Later she wrote to Frederik Pohl, "sad, wistful, lonesome letters," he called them, reminding him "over and over of the wonderful times she and Bob [Heinlein] and I and other local science-fiction writers and fans had had sitting around her kitchen table in the old days." Pohl continued:
This worried me. You see, it had never happened. I had never been in her kitchen, nor indeed had I met Leslyn anywhere else, either. The woman clearly was not in close touch with reality. I could think of nothing to do about it other than to reply to her letters as pleasantly and noncommittally--and briefly--as I could. (4)
Those letters would have come, of course, after Heinlein and Leslyn had divorced. That unhappy event occurred in 1947 after fifteen years of marriage. In 1948, Heinlein remarried. Leslyn also remarried. Her second husband was Jules G. (or Jewel G.) Mocabee, born on February 10, 1919, and a U.S. Army veteran of World War II despite weighing only 117 pounds at his enlistment. Like Heinlein, he was a native Missourian (possibly from New Madrid County). Mocabee received only a grade-school education and seems not to have been very gainfully employed. If the abbreviation "pdlr" stands for "peddler," then he was a peddler. He also worked at a place called the Morningside Inn in Stockton, California. He only made it to age forty-seven, dying on October 10, 1966, in San Joaquin County, California. That very likely left Leslyn Mocabee alone, for she seems not to have had any children, and her only sibling, her sister Keith MacDonald Hubbard, had died on August 9, 1949, in Orange County, California. Her father, Colin MacDonald, had also been gone many years, having died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1929. I don't know when her mother, Florence MacDonald--nicknamed "Skipper" by the way, and a Theosophist--died, but I have a feeling it came in the 1940s as Leslyn's marriage to Heinlein was unwinding. Sad, wistful, lonesome. And though her life ended in 1981, a pall of sadness remains, even today.

So my feeling that Leslyn MacDonald lived an unhappy life has been borne out by the research I have done for this article. Described by Heinlein's biographer William H. Patterson, Jr., as "a very slim, intense dark-brunette with medium complexion, lively and attractive, not quite five feet, one inch tall" and as "an unusual woman--astonishingly intelligent [and] widely read," she deserved better. Some sources on the Internet suggest that her drinking and her purported separation from reality contributed to her failed marriage to Robert A. Heinlein. There was a history of drinking in her family to be sure. And her mother, being a Theosophist, subscribed to some pretty kooky beliefs. Leslyn must not have had a very good start. But what kind of husband is a nudist and wants to swap wives? And what effect must those things have on a woman who devoted herself to her husband? No one knows the mysteries of another person's marriage, but let's be kind to Leslyn MacDonald and give her at least some benefit of the doubt. Instead of remembering her as the distaff side and possible cause of Heinlein's second failed marriage, let's remember her as a poet and a woman, as a thinker and a muse, as a lover and a human being, and let's remember the behind-the-scenes contribution she made to science fiction in America.

Leslyn MacDonald's Poem in Weird Tales
"The Ballad of Lalune" (May 1941)

Further Reading
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: Volume 1: Learning Curve 1907-1948 by William H. Patterson, Jr. (Macmillan, 2010), here.

Notes
(1) Agnes De Mille, by the way, was the daughter of William C. De Mille, niece of Cecil B. De Mille, and granddaughter of Henry George, for whom Volney George Mathison was named (in part).
(2) Margarita (also spelled Marguerita) Orlova, was an actress and a self-proclaimed Russian princess. She was more likely just an American pretender to her title, name, and nationality. Madame Orlova later was half-owner of Sherwood Forest, an artist's colony located on the opposite coast, in Oakland, New Jersey.
(2a) Update (Apr. 8, 2021): Beginning in September 1928, Leslyn MacDonald played the half-child, half-fairy character Rautendelein in Gerhart Hauptmann's play The Sunken Bell, put on by the Pasadena Community Players at the Community Playhouse. The Los Angeles Evening Post-Record wrote that she had "created a role long to be remembered," adding: "Delicacy ran through every pattern of her acting." And: "Her art rose to superb poignancy in the tragic fourth act [. . .]." (Sept. 28, 1927, p. 6). Lloyd Nolan (1902-1985) was also in the cast.
(3) From All Our Yesterdays by Harry Warner, Jr., (Chicago: Advent, 1969), p. 103.
(4) From "The Wives (and Drives) of Robert Heinlein: Leslyn" by Frederik Pohl on his blog, The Way the Future Blogs, dated May 19, 2010, here.

Original text copyright 2016, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

27 comments:

  1. Thank you for this balanced and kind short biography of Leslyn MacDonald.

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  2. Thank you for this balanced and kind short biography of Leslyn MacDonald. I wish there were a publication of Leslyn's writings, including her correspondence with Pohl. There had to be more to her choice to write cryptically which to Pohl just seemed "out of touch with reality". She was a complex, tragic case, and insgead of Heinlein seeing her through her own troubles, his own male ego took precedence. I am drawn to such complicated life stories as these.

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  3. You're welcome, Unknown, and thank you.

    By the way, your user name is the same as the fantasy magazine of 1939-1943. Or are you that magazine, both incarnated and reincarnated?

    TH

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  4. Excellent article Patterson's Biography was actually pretty good, IMO, but he glossed over the fact that, after Leslyn had lost her whole family, her husband packed up and left her, too. I wish we knew more about her after the breakup.

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    1. Thank you, Flytrap,

      There are too many people glossed over in biographies: wives, husbands, lovers, family members. No man is an island after all. We all arise from a milieu.

      I wish we knew more about Leslyn after the breakup, too, but it doesn't seem likely at this late date. I'm just glad that I found enough to write what I have written. This is one my favorites and I think one of the best of all of the biographies I have written here.

      Thanks for writing.

      TH

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    2. That comment is probably a little hard on Robert Heinlein. Unless you've had a hopeless alcoholic in your life, you can't imagine the grief it brings to the rest of the family. There is no recovery for an alcoholic except their decision to reform, and they'll destroy everyone around them unless and until they decide to do that. The only real option is to get away. Sadly, I was there with an alcoholic sister who threw away a promising entertainment career and died decades too young. She'd do anything to get money for the next drink Lying and stealing from family was by no means off the list.

      The clues to Leslyn's alcoholism are written all over the story of their marriage, even before her family tragedies. Most likely the problem exploded during their war work in Philadelphia. Those kind of pressures during WWII created countless alcoholics and nervous breakdowns.

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    3. Hi, Brent,

      I understand what you're saying. I have seen it, too, though not near as bad as what you describe. I wish it could have been different for you and your family.

      It seems pretty likely that there was alcoholism in Leslyn MacDonald's family before she married Heinlein. But for a man to be a nudist and a wife-swapper is pretty unconscionable. Things like that could only have made things worse on his wife. I guess the question is this: Did he do these things while he was married to her, or did they only come later (as real weirdness, creepiness, and physical nastiness so often do in people's lives)?

      TH

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    4. What is missed out here is the horrible affect of WW2. Her sister and brother in law were trapped (in the Phillipines? Can't quite remember but Japanese controlled territory). The stress intensified drink and (prescription) drug abuse. And I've gathered there were several attempts at detox. Also missing is that she was a script editor in her own right but when they moved up Philadelphia she lost this role and as RAH stopped writing they lost that connection.

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  5. In 1930 Leslyn collaborated with Chuck Baldra on a song for Columbia Pictures 1934 movie “Fighting Through”. They used the music to “Mademoiselle From Armenteirs” and wrote lyrics together. I think the song was called “When the Round-up is Done and Over”. I have the licensing agreement they both signed with Columbia Pictures which also bears Samuel Bischoff’s signature. Can anyone help me verify the song’s name and get the lyrics? I cannot find the movie to watch it.

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    1. Hi, Brenmar,

      I found the titles of the song and the movie on the Internet. You're right, the song is called "When the Roundup Is Done and Over," and the movie is called "Fighting Through." According to the Internet Movie Database, the song was composed by Jack Kirk and performed by Chuck Baldra, Jack Jones, and Jack Kirk. There is no mention of Leslyn MacDonald. However, a primary source like your copy of the licensing agreement is better, I think, than the final published credits.

      Thanks for the information and good luck with your search.

      TH

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  6. Leslyn and Robert had an open marriage. There is nothing wrong with being a nudist. Both slept with others they felt attracted to. What drove him away were her frequent rages and living in the bottle. Her telling him she attempted suicide was the last straw.. no more manipulation for him

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    1. Hi, Heinlein Fan,

      And thanks for the further information. Unfortunately I don't have a biography of Heinlein and so can't check on any published source for information on his wife. As I suggested, there are two sides to every relationship.

      To me it all sounds like a disaster from the get-go. If all of these things are true, then I'm surprised the Heinleins' marriage lasted as long as it did. What I'm not surprised about is that she would come to her end the way that she did.

      As for your comment that there is nothing wrong with being a nudist, I would say that there is nothing wrong with believing in any weird or wacky thing, but believing in it automatically puts a limit on your relationships. A person can put up with only so much weirdness or wackiness in his or her friends and acquaintances, let alone in a wife or a husband.

      Thanks for writing.

      TH

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    2. I'm late to this party, but I think the point Heinlein Fan was making is that what you see as wacky impositions were things that they were both willing parties to. That is why they had a remarkably good marriage for several years.

      If anything you've understated what a remarkable person she was. She was by all accounts his intellectual equal, got just as deep into California politics as he did, and like him worked to the point of damaging her health supporting the war effort. In his case it was his physical health and he recovered, but reading between the lines in Patterson's biography it seems she tried to self-medicate with alcohol and what had been minor bouts of mental illness before became paranoid madness when she became an alcoholic.

      At any rate, thank you for this remembrance. I've often thought of her as an example of someone whose life could have been a lot different and better had modern understanding and treatments of mental illness existed back then.

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    3. An addendum to my comment above: There is a very long footnote in Patterson's biography, iirc vol. 1, chapter 17, note 28, about Leslyn. I was able to find it online and you may be able to as well.

      It seems that the view that Leslyn was unhappy with the arrangement of their marriage, as you suggest, stems from undocumented conversations Stover had with Cal Laning. Given that he cites it as the source of her alcoholism, which is definitely wrong - it did not emerge until the stress of the war years over a decade later - the whole thing needs to be taken with some large grains of salt. She went into the arrangement willingly, but may or may not have became disenchanted with it over time.

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    4. Hi, Dave,

      I guess I'm going to have to track down William Patterson's biography.

      I looked a little on the Internet. The opinion seems to be that Mr. Patterson's biography is biased in favor of its subject. But then one of the reviews I read also comes from a source with a natural bias against Heinlein, namely The New Republic.

      I guess what we need is Leslyn's point of view, something we'll probably never have, and that's a shame.

      Thanks for writing again.

      Terence Hanley

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    5. I don't know if you've decided to read it, but I will give you my two cents: "Biased" is the wrong word.

      It is well-written and thoroughly researched, but very much an "authorized" biography - specifically, authorized by Ginny Heinlein, who was fiercely protective of her husband's memory. It's strengths and weaknesses are what you would expect from that: As someone who was interested in Heinlein the writer and his books, I thought it illuminating. If you are looking for a biography of Heinlein the man, it's soft.

      Best wishes.

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    6. Hi, Dave (from May 11),

      No, I haven't read the book and so I'm not able to judge whether it might be biased or not. You make a good point, though, about the viewpoint of the "authorized" biography--of Heinlein or anybody else.

      I have recently read Alec Nevala-Lee's book "Astounding" (2018, 2019). It seems evenhanded, and Leslyn MacDonald is treated a little more kindly than what I have sensed in other sources. I plan on writing a little more about that in the coming month or so (May-June 2022).

      Thanks again for writing and for the perspective.

      TH

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  7. "As for your comment that there is nothing wrong with being a nudist, I would say that there is nothing wrong with believing in any weird or wacky thing,"

    Sounds like you are stuck in the mode of "what I believe is what is right and I can't consider that what others believe might have value".

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    1. Hi, Galacticjourney,

      And thank you. I'm glad you liked it.

      TH

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  9. Is it possible that Leslyn had a short relationship with Shakespearean actor director Reginald Pole? Beatrice Woods notes in her book that Reginald had fallen in love (in California) with a 22 year old poet who was working on her college degree. Leslyn's last name isn't mentioned and exact years are not noted (maybe off by a couple of years but ?). Heinlein's Leslyn is the woman I thought of when I read about the episode... location, poet, acting.

    If anyone is inspired to research this as a possible connection...the book is I Shock Myself by Beatrice Woods and the pages involved are 75 to 77.

    And now that I've put this thought out to the universe I can let it go.🙄

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    1. Hi, Kara,

      I guess we can't rule it out. Like you say, the timing, location, and vocation or avocation are all about right. But then there is so little about past lives that we know or can reconstruct at this late date.

      Like you, I often write simply to put things out into the universe so that I can let them go.

      Thanks for the possibility.

      TH

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  10. You say that her second husband worked at a hotel. Jules Mocabee worked at the Morningside Inn, which was a tavern/gas station, and not a hotel. He had alcohol problems of his own, and was arrested several times for drunk driving.

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    1. Hi, Bill,

      Thanks for the additional information. We're putting the puzzle together little by little.

      TH

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  11. Very nice piece, thank you. For me, if we are going to try and assign blame for the breakup of the marriage it seems like a "chicken or the egg" question. Did Heinlein take up with Virginia because Leslyn was hitting the bottle or did Leslyn's drinking increase because she saw that Heinlein was getting serious about having Virginia in his life. If the latter, then the notion that Heinlein was simply forced to leave Leslyn due to her drinking doesn't really tell the story. It could easily have been a vicious circle where Leslyn's drinking increased due to the stress of war work, which made Virginia more delightful by comparison, which increased Leslyn's drinking, etc. But even in this scenario, it's clear that at some point Leslyn's alcoholism took on a life of its own, leading to the tragedy of her life post-Heinlein.

    I talked briefly with Alec Nevala-Lee about his book "Astounding" and he said he was tempted to write another book that would focus on Leslyn and Dona Campbell. I really hope he writes that one. I'd buy it.

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    1. Hi, Anonymous,

      You're welcome and thank you.

      I think you have come up with a really important insight into this problem. We can't assume that the breakup of a marriage is all or mostly the fault of one person or the other. Both are in the relationship and in every relationship there are two personalities and two sides. I might be more sympathetic to Leslyn MacDonald than are some people. I think that for some, there is a kind of hero-worship at work with Robert A. Heinlein. I admire him and his work, but I also think that he was a very flawed person with some real peculiarities. I would not allow my admiration for him to get in the way of how I see the situation with his wife. But then we don't know very much about that situation, partly because Leslyn disappeared and her husband didn't. As the saying goes, the winner of the war gets to write its history.

      Speaking of Mr. Nevala-Lee: he wrote something in his book that I hope would change anybody's view of the Leslyn-Heinlein story. I'm still planning to write about it in this blog.

      Thanks for writing.

      TH

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