. Sight and Sound ’s editor, Penelope Houston, wrote that the section on Night People was “the type of thing I have been trying to get hold of for a long time; it is so much better for these things to be written by an American than by a journalist on our side.” The cofounding editor of The Partisan Review , Philip Rahv, responded enthusiastically to Pauline’s lively critical voice, but he was consistently troubled by the length of her pieces and always urged that they be cut.
1955 was a pivotal year for Pauline. She had become friends by then with Weldon Kees, one denizen of the Bay Area who genuinely deserved to be called a Renaissance man. Kees was a native of Nebraska who had enjoyed early success publishing short fiction in a string of distinguished literary quarterlies. During World War II, he moved to New York City, where he did a fairly good job of taking the town by storm. He published his first book of poems, The Last Man , in 1943 and went on to write for a wide range of newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times . He also became a highly skilled abstract painter and a gifted jazz pianist. In 1950 he left New York for San Francisco, where he became part of the circle that included Pauline and James Broughton; he provided the musical score for Broughton’s film The Adventures of Jimmy. Kees and Pauline had many passions in common, including the movies and New Orleans jazz, which Kees performed locally every chance he got.
Kees was also a fixture on Berkeley’s KPFA-FM, the first listener-supported radio station in the United States, which aimed to provide its audience with a respite from America’s commercially dominated pop culture and to spread liberal ideas beyond the confines of academia—to reach out to the common citizen and bring him into a discussion of art, politics, and ideas. The ultimate, idealistic goal was to create a more enlightened society—a particularly urgent objective in the age of McCarthyism.
One of KPFA’s popular programs was a weekly show featuring Kees called Behind the Movie Camera . Seeing in Pauline a kindred movie-lover, he invited her to be a guest on his program several times, as he enjoyed her scorching directness and her provocative views about what was going on in the movie industry.
Unfortunately, Kees was a deeply troubled man, given to fierce mood swings and prolonged feelings of desolation. One day he asked Pauline sadly, “What keeps you going?” For years, she blamed herself for failing to perceive the depth of his emotional state. On July 19, 1955, his Plymouth Savoy was found just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. No suicide note was found, and his body was never recovered.
In the aftershock of Kees’s disappearance, KPFA asked Pauline to step in as a semiregular film critic. The station manager made it clear that they would not be able to pay her for her broadcasts, but she judged that the exposure and the chance to hold forth for a regular audience would be hugely beneficial. She was broadcasting to a subscription audience of more than four thousand, whose educational background and income level were well above the norm. She was also surrounded by other broadcasters who shared many of her ideas about the regrettable division between classical and contemporary music. Among them was Alan Rich, KPFA’s music director, who joyously combined Mozart and Bach with Schoenberg and David Diamond. She was also delighted to find KPFA such a strong proponent of jazz, notably by way of Phil Elwood’s highly informative regular program.
Pauline was a natural on the radio, firing off her opinions of the latest movies in crisp diction, even occasionally saying “rah-ther” and almost consistently pronouncing “movies” as “myoovies.” She could sound almost cultivated, an occasional affectation that her friend Donald Gutierrez teasingly called her “Mrs. Lamont of the Air” voice. But her radio pieces, almost always carefully written out
1955 was a pivotal year for Pauline. She had become friends by then with Weldon Kees, one denizen of the Bay Area who genuinely deserved to be called a Renaissance man. Kees was a native of Nebraska who had enjoyed early success publishing short fiction in a string of distinguished literary quarterlies. During World War II, he moved to New York City, where he did a fairly good job of taking the town by storm. He published his first book of poems, The Last Man , in 1943 and went on to write for a wide range of newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times . He also became a highly skilled abstract painter and a gifted jazz pianist. In 1950 he left New York for San Francisco, where he became part of the circle that included Pauline and James Broughton; he provided the musical score for Broughton’s film The Adventures of Jimmy. Kees and Pauline had many passions in common, including the movies and New Orleans jazz, which Kees performed locally every chance he got.
Kees was also a fixture on Berkeley’s KPFA-FM, the first listener-supported radio station in the United States, which aimed to provide its audience with a respite from America’s commercially dominated pop culture and to spread liberal ideas beyond the confines of academia—to reach out to the common citizen and bring him into a discussion of art, politics, and ideas. The ultimate, idealistic goal was to create a more enlightened society—a particularly urgent objective in the age of McCarthyism.
One of KPFA’s popular programs was a weekly show featuring Kees called Behind the Movie Camera . Seeing in Pauline a kindred movie-lover, he invited her to be a guest on his program several times, as he enjoyed her scorching directness and her provocative views about what was going on in the movie industry.
Unfortunately, Kees was a deeply troubled man, given to fierce mood swings and prolonged feelings of desolation. One day he asked Pauline sadly, “What keeps you going?” For years, she blamed herself for failing to perceive the depth of his emotional state. On July 19, 1955, his Plymouth Savoy was found just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. No suicide note was found, and his body was never recovered.
In the aftershock of Kees’s disappearance, KPFA asked Pauline to step in as a semiregular film critic. The station manager made it clear that they would not be able to pay her for her broadcasts, but she judged that the exposure and the chance to hold forth for a regular audience would be hugely beneficial. She was broadcasting to a subscription audience of more than four thousand, whose educational background and income level were well above the norm. She was also surrounded by other broadcasters who shared many of her ideas about the regrettable division between classical and contemporary music. Among them was Alan Rich, KPFA’s music director, who joyously combined Mozart and Bach with Schoenberg and David Diamond. She was also delighted to find KPFA such a strong proponent of jazz, notably by way of Phil Elwood’s highly informative regular program.
Pauline was a natural on the radio, firing off her opinions of the latest movies in crisp diction, even occasionally saying “rah-ther” and almost consistently pronouncing “movies” as “myoovies.” She could sound almost cultivated, an occasional affectation that her friend Donald Gutierrez teasingly called her “Mrs. Lamont of the Air” voice. But her radio pieces, almost always carefully written out
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