Hollywood, California
The Los Angeles neighborhood that served as the center of the American film industry from the 1910s onward. Mailer's 1949 summer residence; the setting of his and Jean Malaquais's unsuccessful screenplay work for Samuel Goldwyn, the bulk of his Barbary Shore first draft, his first meeting with Lois Mayfield Wilson, and the birth of his first child Susan on 28 August 1949.
1949 — the summer residence
In June 1949 Norman and Bea Mailer move to Hollywood, joined shortly by Jean and Galy Malaquais. Mailer and Malaquais spend the summer on screenplay work for Samuel Goldwyn, who rejects the script but (per ProjectMailer’s Important Dates) offers Mailer $15,000 for “the idea.” Mailer refuses.
In Hollywood Mailer also begins — and eventually drops — a novel about labor unions; continues the first draft of Barbary Shore (he will later say the novel “reflected the impact of Hollywood on me in some subterranean fashion,” per the Steven Marcus interview 64.1, p. 81); and first meets Lois Mayfield Wilson, then a Stanford graduate student.
28 August 1949 — Susan Mailer is born to Bea — Mailer’s first child.
After 1949
The Mailers leave Hollywood for Putney, Vermont in October 1950 (see 1950). Hollywood will recur across Mailer’s career — in connection with the screenplay of The Executioner’s Song (1982), the Tough Guys Don’t Dance film (1987), and others. Stub; to be expanded.
Related pages
- 1949 | Beatrice Silverman | Jean Malaquais | Samuel Goldwyn | Susan Mailer | Lois Mayfield Wilson
- Barbary Shore
- Norman Mailer: The Art of Fiction XXXII (64.1)