- photo from ”The Life and Destiny of Isak Dinesen.”
It must have been quite an afternoon that chilly day in January, 1959 - Baroness Karen Dinesen von Blixen-Finecke (who wrote under the pen-name “Isak Dinesen”) the Danish author famous for “Out of Africa” and “Babette’s Feast” was touring the USA – that’s her with the kerchief – and stopped to have lunch on Broadway in South Nyack with her friend, Carson McCullers at McCullers’ home where they were joined by award-winning American Playwright Arthur Miller and his lovely wife, Norma Jean.
Now this was no normal coffeeklatch - our Nyack transplant McCullers as you’ll recall wrote the classic American novels “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” and “Member of the Wedding” along with the short story collection “The Ballad of Sad Cafe” some of the finest work being done in literature mid-century. Arthur Miller was quite possibly America’s finest playwright to date having penned “The Crucible”, “Death of a Salesman”, “All My Sons” and “A View From a Bridge”. In Denmark, Dinesen is considered to be the second most important Danish citizen of the 20th Century (after scientist Nils Bohrs) and appears on both their stamps and money. Despite an impressive array of novels, essays and short stories, sadly in the literary field she is considered the Susan Lucci of the Nobel Prize for Literature – many years later the Nobel committee would admit not awarding her was “a mistake”. And then there’s Norma Jean, or Marilyn Monroe to me and you – who was famous for, well, being Marilyn Monroe.
So there they were – three of the great word-sculptors of the 20th Century, sitting around having lunch in Nyack with the Hollywood Heart-throb (and knocking back a few martinis if the glasses are any indication…) what I would have given to have heard those conversations! And yet, with some of the most famous and groundbreaking movie scripts, plays, novels and story collections of the twentieth century having been conceived by those three great minds in that room, just who is it that we remember and care about 50 years later?
Why, Mama Baker’s little girl Norma Jean… Miss Marilyn Monroe.
The Carson McCullers House is located at 131 South Broadway in South Nyack and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. After McCuller’s death in 1967, her friend Tennessee Williams paid to have the home broken up into 5 apartments that would always be available to those in the Arts and Literature to help make struggling artists’ careers a bit easier. Stroll by and read the Historical Marker…
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[...] Hopper painted); go south and see the house where Carson McCullers lived for nearly half a century (here she is the day Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller, and Isak Dinesen came to lunch); and, farther south on [...]