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Christopher Isherwood was an English writer and actor. His Berlin stories became the basis for the musical Cabaret 1972. His novel A Single Man was adapted into a 2009 film. He acted in the film Rich and Famous 1981 and died of cancer in 1986.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Christopher Isherwood — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Christopher Isherwood by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Christopher Isherwood — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
At Repton School, Christopher Isherwood met poet W.H. Auden, a friendship that shaped his literary career. He was born on 26 August 1904 in Cheshire to Kathleen Bradshaw Isherwood and Francis Edward Bradshaw Isherwood, and grew up with his brother Richard. He attended Repton, St Edmund’s School, King’s College London, and Corpus Christi College.
Isherwood set his early novels in Weimar Berlin. The 1951 play I Am a Camera and the 1972 film Cabaret adapt his Berlin stories. The 2009 film A Single Man, starring Colin Firth, adapts his novel of the same name. He wrote the comic novel Prater Violet after screenwriting the 1934 film Little Friend. He acted in the film Rich and Famous 1981 and appeared on The Dick Cavett Show 1968.
In the 1950s, Isherwood met screenwriter Don Bachardy, who became his long-time companion. They lived together in Santa Monica, California. Isherwood never married. He died of cancer on 4 January 1986 in Santa Monica at age 81.
Cabaret’s lasting success keeps Isherwood’s Berlin stories widely known. The 2009 film adaptation of A Single Man introduced the novel to a new generation. Biographies of Isherwood appear in the Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives and Contemporary Authors. Through his novels, Isherwood introduced gay themes into mainstream literature.
Browse the complete filmography of Christopher Isherwood — every film, TV show, and documentary credit, ranked by popularity.
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Christopher Isherwood's bibliography — every authored, edited, and co-written book, ranked by edition count.
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A wall of memorable lines from Christopher Isherwood — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
It’s No Good Explaining to People Why One Lives in Hollywood. They Either Understand or They Don’t.
I’ll Bet Shakespeare Compromised Himself a Lot; Anybody Who’s in the Entertainment Industry Does to Some Extent.
I’m Horrified to Find, as I Look at These Diaries of Twenty Five Years Ago or More, That I Don’t Remember Who the People Were. Bill and Tony Were Constantly in and Out. We Went to La Jolla. I Haven’t the Bluest Idea Who They Were!
There Is No Security in Your Mansions or Your Fortresses, Your Family Vaults or Your Banks or Your Double Beds. Understand This Fact, and You Will Be Free. Accept It, and You Will Be Happy.
You’ve Got to Think, to Discriminate, to Exercise Your Own Free Will and Judgment. and You Must Do This, I Repeat, Without Tension, Quite Rationally and Calmly. for If You Give Way to Fury Against the Hypnotists, If You Smash the Radio and Tear the Newspapers to Shreds, You Will Only Rush to the Other Extreme and Fossilize into Defiant Eccentricity.
A Minority Has Its Own Kind of Aggression. It Absolutely Dares the Majority to Attack It. It Hates the Majority Not Without a Cause, I Grant You. It Even Hates the Other Minorities Because All Minorities Are in Competition: Each One Proclaims That Its Sufferings Are the Worst and Its Wrongs Are the Blackest. and the More They All Hate, and the More They’re All Persecuted, the Nastier They Become!
Let’s Face It, Minorities Are People Who Probably Look and Act and Think Differently from Us and Have Faults We Don’t Have.
California Is a Tragic Country Like Palestine, Like Every Promised Land. Its Short History Is a Fever Chart of Migrations the Land Rush, the Gold Rush, the Oil Rush, the Movie Rush, the Okie Fruit Picking Rush, the Wartime Rush to the Aircraft Factories Followed, in Each Instance, by Counter Migrations of the Disappointed and Unsuccessful, Moving Sorrowfully Homeward.
I Must Honor Those Who Fight of Their Own Free Will. and I Must Try to Imitate Their Courage by Following My Path as a Pacifist, Wherever It Takes Me.
Do You Think It Makes People Nasty to Be Loved? You Know It Doesn’t! Then Why Should It Make Them Nice to Be Loathed?
Because the Persecuting Majority Is Vile, Says the Liberal, Therefore the Persecuted Minority Must Be Stainlessly Pure. Can’t You See What Nonsense That Is? What’s to Prevent the Bad from Being Persecuted by the Worse? Did All the Christian Victims in the Arena Have to Be Saints?
Never Again Give Way to Embarrassment, Never Deny the Rights of Your Tribe, Never Apologize for Its Existence, Never Think of Sacrificing Himself Masochistically on the Altar of That False God of the Totalitarians, the Greatest Good of the Greatest Number Whose Priests Are Alone Empowered to Decide What Good Is.
Suppose I Have a Nazi Army at My Mercy. I Can Blow It up by Pressing a Button. the Men in That Army Are Notorious for Torturing and Murdering Civilians… All Except for One of Them: Heinz. Will I Press the Button? No. Now Suppose I Know That Heinz Himself, Out of Cowardice or Moral Infection, Has Become as Bad as They Are and Takes Part in All Their Crimes? Will I Press That Button, Even So? of Course Not. Now Suppose That Army Goes into Action and Has Just One Casualty: Heinz Himself. Will I Press the Button Now and Destroy His Fellow Criminals? No. Once I Have Refused to Press That Button Because of Heinz, I Can Never Press It. Because Every Man in That Army Could Be Someone’s Heinz, and I Have No Right to Play Favorites.
I Often Feel That Worse Than the Most Fiendish Nazis Were Those Germans Who Went Along with the Persecution of the Jews Not Because They Really Disliked Them but Because It Was the Thing.
Screenwriting, to Me, Is the Most Absorbing of All Games.
Little-known facts about Christopher Isherwood — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
Screenwriter Don Bachardy was Isherwood’s long-time companion.
At school, he was a classmate of poet W.H. Auden.
A 2018 stage production of Cabaret at Chicago’s Paramount Theatre earned a Joseph Jefferson Award nomination for Large Musical or Revue Production.
A biography of Isherwood appears in Contemporary Authors New Revision Series Volume 133 from Thomson Gale in 2005.
The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives includes a biography of Isherwood in its second volume covering 1986-1990.
Isherwood’s comic novel Prater Violet draws directly from his work as screenwriter on the 1934 film Little Friend, his first film job.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Christopher Isherwood.
Celebrities similar to Christopher Isherwood — same craft, ranked by reach.
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