Robert Anson Heinlein was born on July 7, 1907, in Butler, Missouri. Like his contemporary Loren Eiseley (1907-1977), he was inspired by the sight of Halley's Comet in the night skies of 1910. Both were only toddlers when they saw the comet. Of the two, only Heinlein lived long enough to see it again. (Did he?)
Heinlein attended Central High School in Kansas City, Missouri, where he was a lieutenant colonel in the ROTC, president of the Officer's Club, president of the Shakespeare Literary Society, and captain of the affirmative debate team. One reason for his joining the debate team: he hoped it would help him overcome his stammer.
Heinlein graduated from Central High School in 1924 and from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1929. He served in the Navy from 1929 until 1934, when he was discharged for ill health. On June 21, 1929, shortly after graduating from the Naval Academy, Heinlein married Elinor Leah Curry (1907-1988) of Kansas City. The place was Platte City, Missouri. The couple were divorced a little more than a year later, on October 15, 1930, in Jackson County, Missouri. (1)
In January 1932, Heinlein was introduced to the woman who would soon become is second wife, this by his Navy friend Cal Laning (later Rear Admiral Caleb B. Laning, USN). She was Laning's girl, but Heinlein took her to bed with him that first night. Her mother announced their engagement at a "smart tea" at the bride-to-be's home on February 28, 1932. (2) She and Heinlein were married a month later, on March 28, 1932. The name of Heinlein's new bride was Leslyn MacDonald. (3)
Born on August 29, 1904, in Boston, Massachusetts, Leslyn MacDonald was a graduate of the University of California, Southern Branch, later known as the University of California, Los Angeles. One of her classmates was Agnes DeMille (1905-1993). (Their pictures are side by side in the university yearbook, and they performed together on stage.) Like Agnes DeMille, Leslyn was an artistic type of person, in her case an actress and a poet. And like DeMille, she would later have connections to L. Ron Hubbard, though in a more direct way, as we'll see--and if you can stomach the thought.
I'm sweeping a lot away by writing that the Heinleins were married for sixteen years. Their divorce came on October 14, 1948, in Los Angeles County, California. Before the year was out, she had married Jules G. Mocabee (1919-1966), another Missourian. (4) I'll sweep more away: Leslyn MacDonald Heinlein Mocabee died on April 13, 1981, in Stanislaus County, California. (5) Her family--father, mother, sister, husband--had all gone before her. I believe that she came to a sad end, but then I think her later life was generally sad in one way or another.
Two days after divorcing Leslyn MacDonald, Robert Heinlein married Virginia "Ginny" Doris Gerstenfeld, on October 21, 1948, in Raton, New Mexico. She was a New Yorker born on April 22, 1916, in Brooklyn. They had met in 1944 at the Naval Air Experimental Station in Philadelphia, where she was a lieutenant in the WAVES. Ginny Gerstenfeld Heinlein had her own career apart from, then together with, her husband's. She was a chemist and an engineer, also an editor of some of Heinlein's works. After his death on May 8, 1988, she established the Heinlein Society, which is still in existence and has its own website.
The saying is that the winners write the history books. Leslyn MacDonald wasn't a winner. Very little seems to remain of her writing, nothing of course of her thoughts and feelings and memories. Most of what we have comes from only one side of all of this. It isn't her side.
It seems like Leslyn doesn't get a lot of sympathy. Actually she seems to catch a lot of grief for being the cause of her husband's failed marriage. Imagine. She is reputed to have been a pretty bad alcoholic, mentally ill, too. The two enjoyed happier times, though. They include what was then or now called Denvention I, the 3rd World Science Fiction Convention held on July 4-6, 1941, in Denver, Colorado. Heinlein was in fact the guest of honor at that event. Leslyn dressed as Queen Niphar, from the work of James Branch Cabell. In his speech, Heinlein said a few words about his wife that we all ought to remember, now and forever:
Mrs. Heinlein and I are in almost complete collaboration on everything. She never signs any of the stories, but I do better if she's there. (6)
Times change.
Heinlein of course was friends with L. Ron Hubbard, another Navy man and another of John W. Campell's stable of writers for Astounding Science Fiction. At around the time that Heinlein first met Ginny Gerstenfeld--that is, in late 1944--Heinlein gave his wife over to Hubbard. Here is Alec Nevala-Lee's very brief account of the affair. I have abbreviated it even more:
Around this time, Hubbard also slept with Leslyn. Heinlein evidently encouraged the affair, as Hubbard later remarked: "He almost forced me to sleep with his wife." [. . .] Heinlein may have pushed her into it out of pity for Hubbard [. . .]. (7)
Hubbard of course is not a very reliable source for just about anything, but if it's true that Heinlein "almost forced" him to have sex with Leslyn, or if he encouraged the affair, then we have to rethink both Heinlein and Leslyn and the possible causes of their failed marriage.
There's no need to rethink Hubbard. He will always be what he always was: an utterly repulsive figure. It doesn't matter what you think of your wife. You don't give her over to a man like L. Ron Hubbard. It's like John Cassavetes' character giving his wife over to Satan in Rosemary's Baby (1968), just so he can advance his acting career. (8) Okay, so maybe there were already difficulties in the Heinleins' marriage. Maybe Heinlein already had one foot out the door. Maybe he was beginning to a see a future open up for him with this new redheaded WAVE from Brooklyn. But you don't give your wife over to Satan. Leslyn MacDonald didn't deserve it. There isn't anything she could have done to deserve it. I don't really want to hear about Leslyn's alcoholism, mental illness, or anything else. She didn't deserve it.
* * *
The 1980s took away three of the principals in all of this, Leslyn in 1981, Hubbard in 1986, and Heinlein in 1988. Heinlein's first wife also died in 1988. (9) Virginia Heinlein was the last to go, on January 18, 2003. She was eighty-six years old.
Notes
(1) Sources for some of this information are in an online family tree.
(2) "Engagement Announced" in the Los Angeles Times, March 6, 1932, page 28.
(3) Like John W. Campbell, Jr., Heinlein used a name from the distaff side of his marriage to formulate one of his pseudonyms, Anson MacDonald. His mother's maiden name was Lyle, thus, perhaps, another, Lyle Munroe.
(4) Early on, Jules Mocabee's Christian name was spelled Jewel. I think that's more likely the correct spelling. People used to give their children names like that. I myself know of two older men named Pearl. Heinlein's own mother was named Bam, but in the Federal census of 1880, when she was still an infant, she was Balm. To a really big part of the country, Balm and Bam--rhymes with Mom--are pronounced the same way. And Balm makes sense as a name.
(5) Also from an online family tree.
(6) Quoted in Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee (2018, 2019), p. 145.
(7) From Astounding, pp. 202-203.
(8) Incidentally, John Cassavetes wrote and directed a movie called Husbands--no wives--released in 1970. It's an interesting movie, a work of ambition and artistry, but ultimately deeply flawed. Long, improvised scenes don't work. Some of them become almost painfully awkward. You'd think that a movie with Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk would work, but this one doesn't very well.
(9) Elinor Curry died on April 25, 1988, thirteen days before her ex-husband.
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| "Transience," a poem by then seventeen-year-old Leslyn MacDonald, originally in the Los Angeles Times, one hundred and one years ago this week, November 13, 1921, page 149. Her age shows in its composition. There would prove to be transience in her life, as there is in every life. I hope that sunset came to her "with all its peace." |
Revised November 16, 2022.
Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley
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