Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life (1996) - full transcript

"If a

life can have a theme song,

"and I believe

every worthwhile one has,

"mine is a religion,

an obsession, or a mania,

"or all of these

expressed in one word...

"individualism.

"l was born

with that obsession,

"and I've never seen and do not

know now a cause more worthy,

"more misunderstood,

more seemingly hopeless,

and more tragically needed."

Ayn Rand,

novelist and philosopher,

wrote these words

in 1936.

"Call it fate or irony,"

she wrote,

"but I was born,

of all countries on earth,

"in the one lease suitable

for a fanatic of individualism,

"Russia

"l decided to be a writer

at the age of nine,

"and everything I have done

was integrated to that purpose.

"l am an American

by choice and conviction.

"l was born in Europe,

but I came to America

"because this was the country

where one could be

fully free to write."

Ayn Rand developed

the theory that everyone has

a subconscious view

of the universe

and of man's place in it.

It is a person's most personal

emotional response to existence,

and what she termed

a "sense of life."

And now to our story.

Down through history,

various political

and philosophical movements

have sprung up,

but most of them died.

Some, however, like democracy

or communism

take hold and affect

the entire world.

Here in the United States,

perhaps the most challenging

and unusual new philosophy

has been forged

by a novelist, Ayn Rand.

IVls. Rand's point of view

is still comparatively unknown

in America, but if

it ever did take hold,

it would revolutionize

ourhves.

And Ayn, to begin with, I wonder

if I can ask you to capsulize

I know this is difficult

can I ask you to capsulize

your philosophy?

What is Randism?

First of all, I do not

call it "Randism,"

and I don't like

that name.

I call it objectivism.

All right.

Meaning a philosophy based

on objective reality.

Let me explain it

as briefly as I can.

First, my philosophy

is based on the concept

that reality exists

as an objective absolute,

that man's mind, reason,

is his means of perceiving it,

and that man needs

a rational morality.

I am primarily the creator

of a new code of morality

which has so far been

believed impossible.

Namely, a morality

not based on "face"

- On faith?

- Not on faith,

not on arbitrary whim,

not on emotion,

not on arbitrary edicts,

mystical or social,

but on reason

a morality which can be proved

by means of logic,

which can be demonstrated

to be true and necessary.

February 2nd, 1905,

St. Petersburg, Russia.

Alisa Rosenbaum

came into world

wrought with revolution

and oppression.

It was a country

on the brink of war

not a war between nations,

but a war

against the individual,

a war that would make way

for a form of collectivism

history was never

to forget.

Even at an early age,

Ayn Rand did not believe in God

or in destiny,

but she did hold

the conviction

that there was a battle

she must fight,

a battle

in the name of a truth

that was as clear to her

as the red flags

and bloodstained streets

of her native St. Petersburg,

a battle to hold

an individual spirit

above the dark, murderous horde

that was enveloping her country.

"l had to get out of Russia,"

she later wrote,

"if I wanted a chance

ever to be alive."

Ayn Rand did

get out of Russia.

She escaped to America

and became

one of the most controversial

thinkers of the 20th century.

Her philosophy gained

a worldwide audience,

and her ideas are now

a part of university textbooks

and curricula.

Her novels, The Fountainhead

and Atlas Shrugged,

sell over 200,000 copies

each year,

and according to a joint survey

by the Library of Congress

and the Book of the Month club

in 1991,

Atlas Shrugged was named

the second most influential book

for Americans,

following the Bible.

Ayn's father was a self-made man

who ran his own pharmacy.

He created a middle class

lifestyle for his wife, for Ayn,

and her two younger sisters,

Natasha and Nora.

Mr. Rosenbaum was conscientious

about his work,

and was proud

of his success.

Ayn saw him as a principled man

of unbending character.

Ayn's mother saw herself

as an intellectual,

attending lectures,

French theater,

and holding salons

in her home.

Prone to fits of anger,

Mrs. Rosenbaum would

often comment to Ayn

that raising children

was a hateful duty.

Ayn, however, didn't take

her mother literally,

since her mother showed

a great deal of concern

for the family's health

and welfare.

Ayn Rand talked very little

about Russia

or her past in Russia.

As I understand,

she felt closer to her father

than to her mother.

She felt that she

and her father

had an intellectual

understanding,

whereas she and her mother

were completely at odds.

She always would preface

any statement against her mother

by her consciousness of how

indebted she was to her mother,

'cause mother was the one

who helped her leave Russia

and insisted that Ayn would die

if she had to stay in Russia.

Natasha, 21/2

years younger than Ayn,

was very feminine

and preoccupied with boys

and clothes.

Nora shared with Ayn

a common interest in books,

movies,

and movie actors.

She wanted to be an artist,

and drew voraciously

on any piece of paper

she could find.

Full of color and glamour,

Nora's imaginative paintings

expressed Ayn's sense

of what the world

outside the dreary

Russian boundaries could be.

But unlike her sisters,

more than anything,

Ayn longed to be

an adult entity.

Not particularly outgoing

in a social setting,

she would become violently

aroused when discussing ideas.

She had no interest

in approval or acceptance

from her parents or others,

consciously aware

that anything she valued

had to come from within herself.

This remarkable independence

was to be the benchmark

of her own distinctive

outlook on life.

In the summers of her youth,

Ayn and her family traveled

beyond the borders of Russia

to resorts

in Switzerland and Finland.

Days were spent

on the beach or in parks,

where military bands

often played.

This was Ayn's

introduction

to what was to become

her favorite music,

which she later referred to

as "tiddlywink music."

Tiddlywink

music was basically

turn-of-the-century

popular music,

of which there's

no equivalent today.

Completely joyful,

but unserious, unheavy,

lighthearted, fast rhythms.

There was an old song she liked

called Get Out and Get Under

to crank

your model T Ford.

That was her top favorite

sense of life music.

It was the shimmering

notes of the tiddlywink music

that transported

the young Ayn Rand

to a world

of light and air,

a world she could now

only imagine, a world abroad.

Noticing that Ayn

didn't enjoy reading

the dark, Russian fairytales

or children's stories

that her sisters liked,

Ayn's mother subscribed

to a French boys' magazine.

The Mysterious Valley was

a Rudyard Kipling-like serial.

It was the story

of English officers in India

who were being attacked

by huge, trained tigers

and carried off

into the jungle.

An illustration

of the hero, Cyrus Paltons,

who does not appear

until well into the story,

mesmerized Ayn.

She told me several times

that that was the book

that she read at nine

The Mysterious Valley

and that Cyrus, the British hero

of that story,

was her first real concept

of a hero,

that she was

in love with him

so far as you could be

at the age of nine,

and that all of her later heroes

for developments from that.

This is why when she got

to We The Living,

and she did not yet feel

ready to write a novel

about man, the hero,

she gave the character

the lead character,

the woman, the name Kira,

which is the female

of "Cyrus" in Russian.

One scene in the story

depicts the English prisoners

being carried

through the streets

in a cage.

They're all on the floor

of the cage, cringing

Only Cyrus stands,

gripping the bars.

Self-confident and defiant,

he swears at the evil Raja

that he will get even

no matter how much torture

he must go through.

"He's not afraid of anything,

and he has a purpose,"

Ayn thought.

"Intelligence, independence,

"courage"

the heroic man

this is what's important

in life."

Cyrus was the projection

of purposefulness and strength

that now became

the masculine qualities

at the core of Ayn's romantic

and literary desires.

She thought of

herself as a woman,

enjoyed being a woman,

but she was the opposite

of a feminist.

Man worship was

very important to her,

and her idea of femininity

was that it was

a woman's admiration

for masculine qualities.

Now that Ayn had discovered

the kind story and hero

she could admire,

she made the conscious decision

to become a writer.

Her mother took her

to see her first movie,

and Ayn quickly developed

a passion

for writing

movie scenarios.

Then, one day, from her house

on the big public square

in St. Petersburg,

she saw red flags

rise up on the streets.

Armed Cossacks appeared,

and one man descended

from a horse.

He walked into the crowd,

raised his sword,

and then brought it down.

The year was 1917.

A revolution had begun.

Called

the Bloodless Revolution,

it was led by Alexander Kerensky

against the czar.

A great orator,

Kerensky inspired

an atmosphere of hope

in the people of Russia.

Amidst an unbridled

exchange of ideas,

he promised freedom

from oppression,

and became the head

of a provisional government.

To the 12-year-old Ayn,

it seemed as if

he was speaking up for her

and for individualism,

but in October

of that same year,

another revolution

took place.

Ayn watched helplessly

as the Bolsheviks marched in

and closed

her father's business.

Placing a red seal

over the door,

the family was now

officially expected to starve.

Spurred on

by the revolution,

Ayn soon formed the conviction

that communism,

the idea that man

should live for the state,

was an abhorrent concept.

She read newspapers

and political pamphlets,

and made many anti-communist

entries in her diary.

She continued

to write stories,

but her manner of thinking

had changed.

Since her interest

in politics

had intensified

during the revolution,

she wanted to create

much more serious plots

and important themes.

Aspiring to the same caliber

of writing as Dostoyevsky,

she was inspired

on an intensely personal level

by the books her mother

would read to her grandmother,

the books of Victor Hugo.

"Hugo gives me the feeling

of entering a cathedral,"

she once wrote.

For Ayn,

discovering such books

as The Man Who Laughs

and Les Misérables

was tantamount

to stepping into Atlantis.

Although she disagreed

with Hugo's explicit philosophy,

she became consciously aware

that she wanted to write

with the same literary grandeur

and heroic scale.

She thought, "This was how

one should view life."

Not willing to accept

any idea on faith,

at the age of 12,

Ayn Rand seriously weighed

the concept of God.

"if God represented

the highest possible to man,"

she reasoned, "then man,

by nature, is inferior to God,

and can never reach

that ideal."

Considering this a degrading

and unfounded claim,

she simply made an entry

in her diary.

"Today, I have decided

to be an atheist."

The Orthodox Russian religion

that permeated the country

was never a serious concern

for her.

She knew that those

around her were not

representative of mankind.

Someday, she would find

her kind of people

rational, purposeful,

happy people,

and that a proper life

would begin beyond the border.

Ayn, in general,

hated Russia,

pre-communist

and post-communist.

She thought it was a mystical,

backward, uncivilized country,

that it was perfectly logical

that the czarist regime

should give rise

to communism,

and that the only thing

to do is get

as far from it

as she could.

It is the ugliest,

and incidentally,

most mystical country

on Earth.

But they're the ones

that decry atheism.

They're singing

yoursong

Oh, no.

I'm sorry, decry Christianity

I'm sorry.

"Decry religion" is

what I meant to say.

They really don't.

They have

a materialistic mysticism

of their own,

because if the mystics,

the religious people,

tell you the mind

it

well, they don't speak

of the mind, but usually

the soul is the only thing

of value about you.

The body is evil,

and the Russians will say,

"No, there isn't such a thing

as a soul or a mind.

There's only your body."

it's materialism.

They believe that

you are not a man,

but a collection of...

atoms.

And give that body

to the state

for the collective effort

of the

That's right,

for the good of the whole,

and sacrifice

to the state,

and whoever says it is

or wants to be the state.

In 1918, Mr. Rosenbaum moved

his family out of St. Petersburg

to escape the communists.

Thinking the Bolsheviks would

not remain in power for long,

he was optimistic

that the family would return

to reclaim his business

and his property.

Almost killed by bandits

near Odessa,

they finally made it

to the Crimean Peninsula,

where he opened

an apothecary.

The country was riddled

with black markets

and food shortages.

It wasn't long before his

new business was nationalized.

In 1921, Ayn graduated

from high school,

while the Red Army

now also occupied the Crimea.

Mr. Rosenbaum,

still hoping to regain

his rightful belongings,

decided to move the family

back to St. Petersburg,

which was now called Petrograd.

It was on this trip

that the 16-year-old Ayn caught

her first sight of Moscow.

She was suddenly struck

by the thought

of how many people

there were in the world.

She felt a door opening,

and the nature of her ambition

took shape

to communicate

through her writing

that life had a profound

and special meaning.

Every argument for

the existence of God

is incomplete, improper,

and has been refuted,

and people go on and on

because they want to believe.

Well, I regard it as evil

to place your emotions,

your desire above the evidence

of what your mind knows.

Okay, and I regard it

as intellectually lazy

to look at the universe

and to suggest,

as you seem to be doing,

that this is all some accident.

I didn't say that.

Well, how in the world did we

get all this order?

Aren't you impressed

with that?

No, because order

is only, in good cases,

in the minds

of your scientists,

who are able to understand

some part of it,

but there isn't an artificial

order in the universe,

and it's not chance.

What would be the alternative?

Nature.

So the universe

and remember, the universe

is everything that exists--

has always been here,

but you cannot discuss

or know anything

about what was here

before anything existed.

That's what you're doing

with the idea of God,

- speaking philosophically.

- True.

You say you need someone

to explain the order,

but what will you then

have to explain God?

At 16, Ayn entered

the University of Leningrad

is history major.

Although teacher after teacher

bored her,

it was the discovery

of great philosophers,

such as Aristotle

and St. Thomas Aquinas,

that intensely

aroused her.

For Ayn, Aristotle's belief

that there is only one reality,

the one the man perceives,

and that his mind is

his only tool of knowledge,

became the core

of her own philosophic thought.

It also conflicted with

the dominant philosophic view,

originated by Plato,

that there is

a supernatural realm

beyond the world we see.

When she was a college student

at the University of Leningrad

at age 19 or 20,

she took a course

in ancient philosophy

from Professor Lossky,

who was a distinguished expert

in the field

of ancient philosophy.

When it came time for her

to take her final exam,

he asked her questions

almost exclusively about Plato,

and none about Aristotle.

Of course she despised Plato

even then.

And he said to her,

"You don't seem to agree

with Plato,"

implying, "Well, what are

your views?"

And her answer was,

"My views are not yet

"part of the history

of philosophy,

but they will be."

So that was another example

both of her objectivity--

that she didn't want

to argue with a Platonist

about the merits

of Plato and Aristotle

being just a student,

her independence--

that it didn't bother her

that he disagreed,

and she wasn't out

to sell him on her views,

and of her ability to counter

the male prejudice that existed

in that Victorian society

against women intellectuals.

Under the communist regime,

life had degenerated

into a new level of hell.

Hunger had engulfed

the nation,

and there were deadly epidemics

of typhus, the disease of dirt.

Very outspoken at first,

Ayn was reckless

in making anti-Soviet remarks

at the university.

She witnessed many purges

that resulted in students

and their families being sent

to Siberia ata moment's notice.

Realizing she was placing

her entire family in danger,

she became more cautious while

expressing her point of view.

But amidst the drudgery,

Ayn found something

to look forward to.

She discovered

the world of operettas.

She walked to school

instead of taking the tram

so she could afford

to buy tickets.

She waited four hours

in the cold to be first in line

to see The Gypsy Princess

by Kélméln,

Lehélr's

Where The Lark Sings,

or Mill6cker's

The Beggar Student.

Here, she saw a world

of top hats and ballrooms.

Sometimes,

the stage would display

lighted streets

of a foreign city,

and she would later think,

"it was the world into which

I had to grow up someday,

the world I had to reach."

But it was the flicker

of projectors

and the images on movie screens

that truly enraptured her.

She and her sister Nora

loved the glamorous,

plot-driven films

of Cecil B. DeMille,

and the expressionistic

Siegfried

by her favorite German director,

Fritz Lang,

became a glowing source

of inspiration to her.

Movies like The Mark of Zorro,

The Oyster Princess,

The Indian Tomb,

and The Isle of Lost Ships

had a sense of adventure

with self-reliant heroes

accomplishing great feats.

After graduating from college

in the fall of 1924,

she entered a school

for Screenwriters,

called

the Cinema Institute.

The first year at the Institute

was focused on acting,

and Ayn diligently studied

the art of performing

for the silent screen.

With an insatiable appetite

for anything abroad,

Ayn would sit through

two shows of a movie

just to catch a glimpse

of the New York skyline

in a scene.

Like a shot in the arm

and a life-saving transfusion,

and it was wiping

Russia as a world

out of her consciousness

and inciting her to write

stories of her own--

stories completely untouched

by the misery

of the life she was

desperate to escape.

The Russian sense of life

was mystical, hopeless,

authoritarian, obedient,

malevolent,

and the American sense of life

was optimistic, can-do,

achievement-oriented,

benevolent.

They were exact opposites.

The Americans wanted

the world to make sense.

They believed in common sense.

The Russians were deep

in this incredible mysticism

of either the communist

dialectic process

or holy mother Russia

from the religious side,

so the two countries were

diametric opposites,

and she had the misfortune

or fortune to be born

a thorough American

in her soul

in the heart of this Russian

religion turning into communism.

So it was antipathy

from day one.

While still attending

the Cinema Institute in 1925,

Ayn also worked

at a meaningless job

as a museum guide guide,

but she went through her days

with only one thought--

to go abroad.

Sympathetic to Ayn's goal,

Mrs. Rosenbaum wrote

to relatives in Chicago

and asked if Ayn could

visit them in America.

In the fall of 1925,

Ayn received a foreign passport

that was valid for six months.

In order to secure

a first-class cabin

on a boat to America,

Mrs. Rosenbaum sold her jewelry.

At a small going-away party,

Ayn could sense

her impending freedom.

But it was

an acquaintance

speaking in a hushed,

hopeless voice that moved her.

He said, "if they ask you

in America,

"tell them that Russia

is a huge cemetery,

and that we are all

slowly dying."

A short time later,

Ayn watched that cemetery recede

past her train window.

She'd promised

to tell them in America,

but now, like a heart

skipping beats in anticipation,

she made her way

across Europe.

Stopping in Berlin,

she visited a relative

and celebrated

her 21st birthday.

Finally,

from the deck of her ship

as it set to sea

from Le Havre,

it struck her

that she would not be back.

This is what she would later

call an overture--

the turning point

that she'd been waiting for.

In February, 1926,

Ayn's boat arrived

in New York Harbor,

where a heavy fog

had settled in.

Immigrants were asked

to wait in a salon on the ship

while officials

checked their papers.

When Ayn finally

reached the deck,

she was crushed to find out that

the boat had already docked.

She had missed

the Statue of Liberty

and the New York skyline.

But then, as she descended

from the boat,

a light snow

began to fall.

She later described

the experience.

"it was dark by then.

"It was kind of early evening,

I think--about 7:00 or so,

"and seeing the first

lighted skyscrapers,

"it was snowing very faintly,

and I think I began to cry,

"because I remember feeling

the snowflakes

and the tears

sort of together."

Staying with relatives,

she spent a few days in New York

and saw Broadway at night

for the first time.

Stunned by the neon signs,

she also saw her first movie

in America.

She then went on

to Chicago,

anxious to start her career

as a screenwriter

and get out on her own.

Not yet able to write

very well in English,

she thought she could at least

write for silent films,

which don't rely

on dialogue.

One of her relatives in Chicago

owned a movie theater,

and Ayn went to the movies

daily.

This helped her master

the English language

enough to write

four movie originals

over a period of six months.

One was called

The Skyscraper,

which was a wild,

exaggerated story

about a noble crook who jumps

from skyscraper to skyscraper

with the aid

of the parachute.

Aware of Ayn's passion

for becoming a screenwriter,

her relatives in Chicago

were able,

through a movie distributor

they knew, to secure

a letter of recommendation

to the DeMille Studios.

Borrowing $100,

Ayn set off by train

for Hollywood in August of 1926.

Upon her arrival,

she found residence

at the Hollywood Studio Club,

a home created

especially for young women

seeking a start

in the movie business.

It housed

other young hopefuls

who later became Ginger Rogers,

Marilyn Monroe, and Kim Novak.

Wanting to adopt

a new professional name,

she chose Ayn.

Using a Finnish,

feminine name,

pronounced, "Ain-a," she dropped

the final A, and got Ayn.

Keeping the R from Rosenbaum,

she chose Rand for her surname.

She also hoped that her new name

would protect her family

from the anti-Soviet remarks

she was bound to make

in America.

The next day, with letter

of recommendation in hand,

she set out

for the DeMille Studios.

Arriving at the gate, she went

to the publicity department,

where she was interviewed for

a junior screenwriting position.

After being told

there were no jobs,

she walked

back to the gate.

Suddenly, she was stunned

to see DeMille himself

sitting in an open roadster.

As he drove past the girl

with the large eyes

staring at him, he stopped

and asked where she was from.

When she explained that she had

just arrived from Russia,

and that he was

her favorite director,

he invited her

to accompany him.

Despite her shock

at riding with DeMille,

she told him that she wanted

to be a screenwriter.

Driving through the back lot

of the studio,

they arrived at the set

of DeMille's current picture,

The King of Kings.

DeMille explained that if Ayn

wanted to work in pictures,

she should learn

by watching.

She spent the day observing

the film company at work.

She breathlessly watched

as they set up shots

and DeMille directed

the actors.

She was invited to join

the cast and crew for lunch,

but politely declined

despite her hunger pangs.

The at the end of the day,

DeMille located her

and gave her

a personally signed pass

to return to set

the next day.

For several days,

DeMille continued to give Ayn

personal passes

to the set.

He would approach her

between shots,

and explain the process

of filmmaking.

He found Ayn's background

exotic,

and he nicknamed her

Caviar.

When he discovered her

precarious financial situation,

he immediately offered her

a job as an extra.

All right, now, you people--

you townspeople,

over beyond the gates there,

come on, now, work

yourselves into--

into the emotion

of such a scene.

Don't be extras.

Be a nation.

She finally wrote to her family

and informed them

of her new name,

and that she was officially

in the movies.

I would say that Ayn Rand's life

was a focal point for their

concern as a family in Russia.

They would receive

a letter from her,

and the whole family

from St. Petersburg

would come over--the aunts,

the uncles, the cousins--

and there would be a reading

of a letter from her.

Her sister, Nora, with whom

Ayn Rand shared

a tremendous interest

in movies,

would draw little pictures

at the bottom of the letters

showing "Ayn Rand"

in lights.

So Ayn Rand getting

into the movies was a goal,

and the most exciting thing

that ever happened.

When she finally told them

about her meeting

with Cecil B. DeMille

in 1926,

it must have been like

an earthquake to her family,

and her father,

who is not very expressive,

wrote that he could not sleep

all night.

As an extra, Ayn

was making $7.50 a day.

For several months,

DeMille would call her

in to work

whenever possible.

She slowly warmed up

to the cast,

which included

H.B. Warner as Christ

and Joseph Schildkraut

as Judas.

Schildkraut even took her

out to lunch, flirted with her,

and then gave her

an autographed picture.

Two days after securing

a job with Del\/lille,

she was riding the Streetcar

to the studio,

and spotted a tall, handsome man

across the aisle from her.

She thought,

"This is my ideal face."

It was a face she later

sketched from memory--

a memory that was actually

love at first sight.

To her surprise,

not only did this man

get off the Streetcar

at the same stop,

he entered the DeMille

studio gate as well.

Frank O'Connor was born

in Lorain, Ohio in 1897,

one of seven children.

After his mother's early death,

he worked his way to New York,

hoping to make it

in the movies.

Helping a driver

change a flat tire

on a Griffith Studios truck,

Frank asked to be taken

to the studio as payment.

A great fan

of D.W_ Griffith,

soon he had his first movie job

in Orphans of the Storm,

starring

Lillian and Dorothy Gish.

Grih'ith's success

with Orphans of the Storm

was to be his last,

and the studio

eventually moved

to California.

At the age of 28,

Frank worked as a steward

on a freighter

through the Panama Canal

to join his brothers

Joe and Nick in Hollywood.

The first job he got

when he arrived

was on The King of Kings.

Now, quietly milling

about the set,

waiting for the next setup,

Frank kept to himself.

At a distance,

Ayn followed him like a camera

and desperately tried to think

of a way to meet him.

A few days later, during a scene

where Christ carries the cross

through the city of Jerusalem,

Ayn watched carefully

as Frank hit his marks

on the first take.

On the second take,

she maneuvered herself

to get in his way.

He stepped on her foot

and apologized.

From that moment on,

they didn't stop talking.

Frank later commented

to his brother Nick,

"Today, I met a very interesting

and funny Russian on the set.

I couldn't understand

a word she said."

Since it was Frank's

last day of work on the film

and they hadn't

exchanged numbers,

Ayn feared she would never

see him again.

Although the casting office

would not give out

Frank's number,

she did not give up hope.

She felt a benevolent

inevitability

that they would

meet again.

Eventually, Ayn gave

her four scenarios

to DeMille to read.

However, the woman in charge

of his scenario department

disliked Ayn on sight

and gave the stories

a very bad report,

calling them improbable,

far-fetched,

and not human enough.

Despite this report,

DeMille hired Ayn

as a junior screenwriter

at $25 a week.

This meant that she would

do treatments

and synopsize

already-purchased properties.

Because DeMille considered

a construction site

an interesting backdrop

for a film,

a novel called The Skyscraper

was the first project

Ayn was assigned to.

Required to do research,

Ayn made an appointment

to visit the construction site

of the Broadway

department store

at the corner

of Hollywood and Vine.

Informed that her appointment

was delayed,

she walked

around the corner

to the library on Ivar Street

to wait.

She entered the building,

and amidst the hush

of turning pages,

she saw Frank O'Connor

reading a book.

Turned out that he too was

waiting for an appointment.

He looked up at her

and smiled in recognition.

They went outside to talk,

and their courtship

officially began.

Ayn was 22

and Frank was 29.

With the Depression

approaching,

DeMille closed his studio

in 1928,

and Ayn could only

find odd jobs.

She was now surviving

on 30 cents a day

and living

on very little food.

Although she had previously been

sending her family money,

they were now sending

some to her.

She continued to write

with fierce persistence

and made notes

to discipline herself.

"From now on," she wrote,

"no thought whatever

"about yourself,

only about your work.

"You don't exist.

You're only a writing engine.

"Don't stop until you

really and honestly know

"that you cannot go on.

Stop admiring yourself.

You are nothing yet."

During this period,

Ayn didn't want Frank to know

she was struggling

or think she needed help.

But he was struggling

as well,

because acting jobs

had become scarce.

Dating for them consisted

of going for walks,

visits to the beach,

and an occasional movie.

After several extensions,

Ayn only had one month left

before her visa was to expire.

Although Frank's brother Nick

joked that he would

marry her to keep her

in America,

there was no need

to discuss the matter.

On April 15th, 1929,

the same month

her visa was to expire,

Ayn and Frank were married

by a judge.

They then drove

through the desert to I\/Iexicali

and spent a sleepless night

in the heat.

The next day, Ayn drove

back into the country

as the wife

of an American.

How does the--

the concept of love--

love for one another--

fit into this philosophy?

You fall in love

with a person

because you regard him or her

as a value,

and because they contribute

to your personal happiness.

Now, you couldn't fall in love

with a person by saying,

"You mean nothing to me.

"I don't care whether you

live or die,

but you need me, and therefore,

I'm in love with you."

If someone offered love

of that kind,

everyone would regard that

as a deadly insult.

That isn't love.

Therefore, romantic love

is a selfish emotion.

It is the choice of a person

as a great value,

and what you fall in love with

is the same values

which you choose

embodied in another person.

She regarded love

as an extremely selfish emotion.

It was a response

to your greatest values

in the personal character

of another person.

So you had to know them well,

and they had to

in all essentials be

exactly what you wanted

from another human being.

If so, it was one

of the greatest of all values,

but it was not

the top value.

She regarded career

as the top value,

because she felt, if you tried

the base a life

exclusively on your relation

to another person,

however wonderful

or however much in love,

it's gonna end up being

a relationship of dependence.

Each person has to have

their own creative goal,

and they must be

like two individuals,

traveling

on the same journey,

but happen to find

that they're going

on the same journey together,

and then love is

a fantastic supplement

to their individual creativity.

With Frank O'Connor by her side,

Ayn continued

her struggle to write

and make ends meet

in Hollywood.

In 1929, she took a job

as a filing clerk

at the RKO wardrobe department

for $20 a week.

Although she hated the job,

it was a financial oasis

in the depression.

In six months,

she earned a raise,

and within a year,

became head of the department.

Soon Ayn and Frank were able

to buy their first car.

Since Frank was

also working,

he presented Ayn

with a made-to-order desk,

a radio, and her first

portable typewriter.

Despite her long hours

in the wardrobe department,

she wrote in every spare moment

she could find.

Even though she officially

made notes for her first novel,

writing for the movies was still

an important goal for her.

She was a tremendous movie fan

in her early years

and kept a diary,

which we found,

of seemingly every movie

she attended

from 1922

until early 1929.

There were 433 entries,

and she kept a detailed record

of every one,

underlining the actors

she liked the best,

and grading the movie.

The actors and actresses

that she liked,

she would give one underline,

that she liked a lot,

she would give

two underlines--

she really loved, she would

give three underlines.

In the back

of the movie diary,

I found a little

piece of paper

in which she had listed

her favorite actors

and actresses.

Many of these actors

and actresses

that she loved in the 1920s

when she was in Russia

were really her window

into civilization,

which is the West

she later met.

One of the interesting things

in this list that she kept

of her favorite movie actors

and actresses,

is to find Gary Cooper

up in number two.

Originally, he hadn't been

on the list at all,

but she saw him in movies,

I think, in probably 1928,

and pushed him

up into number two,

right below Conrad Veidt,

and then she changed the numbers

on everyone below Gary Cooper,

and then, of course,

almost 20 years later,

there's Gary Cooper

playing Howard Roark

in her own movie.

Continuing her

struggle to master English,

she wrote a variety

of short stories and plays.

One such play,

called Ideal,

embraced her passion

for the movies and admiration

for her favorite actress,

Greta Garbo.

The story,

set in Hollywood, 1934,

follows a fictitious movie star,

named Kay Gonda, on her quest

to find one man of integrity

among her fans.

In this scene, we get a glimpse

at an early formulation

of Ayn Rand's ideal man.

I saw a man once,

when I was very young.

He stood on a rock,

high in the mountains.

His arms were spread out,

and his body bent backward,

and I could see him

as an arc against the sky.

He stood still and tense,

like a string trembling

to a note of ecstasy

no man had ever heard.

I've never known

who he was.

I know only that this was

what life should be.

And?

And I came home, and my mother

was sewing supper,

and she was happy because

the roast had a thick gravy,

and she gave a prayer of thanks

to God for it.

Don't listen to me.

Don't look at me like that.

I tried to renounce it.

I thought I must close my eyes

and bear anything,

and learn to live

like the others,

to make me as they were--

to make me forget.

But I can't forget

the man on the rock.

I can't.

While still working at RKO,

Ayn wrote two scenarios

about Russia in her spare time,

Red Pawn and Treason.

In 1932, Red Pawn, a story

about the evil of dictatorship,

was bought by Universal

for the sum of $1,500.

Eventually, Red Pawn was

traded to Paramount

as a vehicle

for Marlene Dietrich,

but not wanting to do

another story set in Russia,

Dietrich's director,

Joseph von Sternberg,

decided against the project,

and the film was never made.

It was her first sale, and

it really established herself

as a professional writer.

Now, some years later,

she sent a copy of Red Pawn

to Cecil B. DeMille,

and she said,

"l have always hoped

"that I would not drop

out of sight entirely,

"that the day would come when

I would be successful enough

"to show you that you had not

wasted the attention

"you have given me

at my start in Hollywood.

"I cannot say that I've

accomplished a great deal yet,

"but at least I am

a writer, and I feel

"that I can now thank you

from the bottom of my heart.

Sincerely, Ayn Rand."

And then, she put

in parentheses,

"Caviar, if you remember."

The sale of Red Pawn enabled Ayn

to quit her job at RKO

and write full-time.

She was finally free to finish

her first novel, We The Living.

While working on the novel,

she happened to see a play

called The Trial of Mary Dugan,

which took place in a courtroom.

She had also read

newspaper articles

on the Swedish match king

Ivar Kreuger

who had committed suicide

and whose financial empire

had fallen.

She was interested in the fact

that he was being denounced,

not for his dishonesty

and fraud,

but for the fact

that he had been successful.

She devised a play

that centered on the trial

of a woman accused of murdering

an infamous industrialist,

titled Penthouse Legend.

She created an unprecedented

dramatic device,

which required members

of the audience

to be selected

for each performance

to serve on the jury.

She conceived the play

with two endings,

one for a verdict of not guilty,

and one for guilty.

She thought that the jury

gimmick would be best

if she had done it

in conjunction

with some hotly controversial

issue, like trial marriages,

or abortion, or whatever,

but she couldn't

write about an issue

of that narrow a scope,

so she had to combine it

with a sense of life concern,

and therefore it's the jury

making their final decision

on balanced evidence, according

to their sense of life.

"if this play's sense

of life were to be verbalized,"

she later wrote,

"it would say, in effect,

"your life, your achievement,

your happiness,

"your person are

of paramount importance.

"Live up to your highest vision

of yourself, no matter what

"the circumstances

you might encounter.

"An exalted view

of self-esteem

is man's most admirable

quality."

Rejected by many producers

who feared the gimmick

would destroy

the theatrical illusion,

E.E. Clive, a character actor

who ran the Hollywood Playhouse,

finally produced

Penthouse Legend.

Opening as Woman on Trial

in the spring of 1934,

it starred Barbara Bedford,

a silent film actress,

as Karen Andre.

Although Clive was

a good director

and the play got

rave reviews,

hearing her words

uttered by actors

who didn't understand

their meaning

was a profound disappointment

to Ayn.

It was only the spectacle

of her name on the marquee

for the first time

that thrilled her.

Her sister Nora's image

of success in America

had now become

a reality for Ayn.

After the run in Hollywood,

producer AI Woods

optioned the play for Broadway

under the title

Night of Januaw 16th.

Meanwhile, Frank had been

acting steadily,

appearing in such films

as Cimarron

and Three On a Match.

But it was a variety

of comedic roles

that were to kill his ambition

to work as an actor.

Romantic roles that suited him

were not to be found.

He began to consider

another career

while Ayn continued

to write.

A year later,

Night of January 16th

when into rehearsals,

and Ayn was thrust

into a torturous process

of constantly protecting

her script from changes.

When the play opened

on Broadway in September, 1935,

she was emotionally spent.

Not able to watch

what the play had become,

she sat in the back row

and yawned.

Despite the mixed reviews,

it was a moderately

successful show

that paid her royalties

of up to $1,200 a week.

The show ran for seven months,

and night after night,

celebrities such as Jack Dempsey

and Helen Keller

sat in the jury box.

The stars, Doris Nolan

and Walter Pidgeon,

fared well

as the lead characters.

Ayn had suggested Pidgeon

for the role

of gangster "Guts" Reagan,

and it ultimately led

to an MGM movie contract

for him.

But in spite of the play's

eventual popularity,

Ayn was never to forget

watching

the integrity of her script

destroyed.

However, she was now

ready to focus

entirely on the work she had

complete control over,

the final chapters

of We The Living.

"We The Living is not a novel

about Soviet Russia.

It is a novel

about man against the state,"

Ayn wrote.

"Its basic theme

is the sanctity of human life.

"it is a story

of a dictatorship--

"any dictatorship,

anywhere, at any time,

"whether it be Soviet Russia,

Nazi Germany,

or a socialist America."

The heroine of the story,

Kira Argounova,

wants to be an engineer.

An aluminum

suspension bridge

is the shimmering spectacle

of achievement she aspires to.

An individualist, caught

in the same revolutionary Russia

that Ayn Rand had survived,

Kira asks, "Don't you know

"that there are things

in the best of us

"which no outside hand

should dare to touch--

"things sacred because--

and only because--

"one can say,

'this is mine"?

"Don't you know that there is

something in us

"which must not be touched

by any state, any collective--

by any number of millions'?"

In a foreword to the novel

in 1958,

Ayn wrote that, "We The Living

is as near to an autobiography

"as I will ever write.

"It is not an autobiography

in the literal,

"but only

in the intellectual sense.

The plot is invented.

The background is not."

Although Ayn was pleased

with her characterizations

in We The Living,

she felt she hadn't yet

fully achieved

her style

in the English language.

She knew that was to come

with practice.

But when the manuscript

was submitted by her agent,

Ann Watkins,

it was the fact

that the story depicted

the reality of Soviet Russia,

a reality American intellectuals

refused to believe,

that resulted

in it being rejected

by one publisher

after another.

By 1936, with the New Deal

in full swing,

We The Living was finally

sold to Macmillan.

IVlacmillan's editors

had been divided

on whether to buy the book

due to its anti-Soviet theme.

When it was published,

the company was not

totally behind it,

placing only two ads.

Reviews claimed the author

simply didn't understand

the great Soviet

experiment.

Despite this, the novel was

slowly building an audience.

"I wrote the book feeling

that I was, in some measure,

"in the only manner

possible to me,

"repaying my adopted country

for the freedom

and the opportunity

it has given me,"

Ayn wrote at the time.

"How much good the book

will accomplish,

"I cannot say,

and it is not up to me,

"but if it can make

a few people pause

"and doubt the glories

of communism,

I shall feel satisfied."

At this time, producer

Jerome Mayer approached Ayn

to adapt We The Living

for the stage.

She did not think We The Living

was suitable to be performed

as a play on Broadway.

There was a tremendous amount

of opposition

from Hollywood stars

who would profess to her--

Bette Davis is

one example--

that they would be honored

to do the part,

they would love

to do Kira,

and suddenly, two weeks

or two months later,

they would say, "I'm sorry.

My agent tells me that it will

destroy my career,"

because it was Hollwvood

in the '30s.

It was the Red Decade,

and to appear on the stage

in an anti-Communist play

in that stage

would--meant to be

boycotted entirely

by the leftists who

owned Hollywood.

Renamed The Unconquered,

the renowned producer/director

George Abbott

eventually

took on the project,

and the play

went into production.

Abbott was mainly

a comedy director,

and tried to mold the characters

into the "folks next door."

He constantly asked Ayn

to change

her austerely romantic dialogue

to naturalistic approximations.

Arguing with Abbott

thoroughly disgusted her,

and by the time

the play opened,

she had lost all interest

in the production.

The reviews were

uniformly bad,

and the play lasted

only five performances.

This was to be Ayn's

last theatrical venture,

and it closed an unfulfilling

but illuminating chapter

in her career.

As a writer,

she had witnessed

what could happen to her words

at the hands of others.

A few years later,

Ayn met the Italian actress

Alida Valli in Hollywood.

Valli told Ayn that she

had been instrumental

in getting the film version

of We The Living

made in Italy in 1942.

Without Ayn's knowledge,

the film had been released

and was very successful,

but it wasn't long

before Mussolini's government

realized the story was

an indictment

of not only communism,

but fascism as well.

The film was pulled

and placed in a vault.

It was finally uncovered

in the 19605,

and restored

with Ayn's approval.

In the Hollywood of the 1940s,

Valli tried to persuade

David O. Selznick

to remake We The Living,

but the Red Decade had a

stronghold on American culture,

and Ayn's plea

to alert the world

about the horrors

of communism went unheard.

She had underestimated

the influence of altruism

on American intellectuals.

You don't like altruists.

I disapprove of them.

I regard them as evil.

Okay, but what's--so what's bad

about the person

who wants to help

other people?

Well, to begin with,

that's the big mistake.

People can want

to help other people

properly and

with very good reasons,

but that isn't altruism.

Altruism doesn't mean

merely helping people.

It means sacrificing

yourself for others,

placing the interests

of others above your own.

It's the self-sacrificing person

who is an altruist.

And what's wrong

with that?

What's wrong with committing

suicide?

What's wrong

with giving up life?

And why is the happiness

of another person

important and good

but not your own?

To sacrifice

for your loved one

is, in many cases then,

a misnomer.

If you love your husband

or wife,

and you have to,

let us say,

select between spending money

for your spouse if he's ill

or going to a nightclub,

it's not a sacrifice

to spend money for your spouse

if he or she

is your value.

That is what

you want to do.

I SSG.

But if you let,

for instance,

your husband die

in order to save

the neighbor's husband

or your wife,

that would be altruism.

I'm still not quite sure

why you're so harsh

on those who would sacrifice

for other people.

They don't hesitate

to sacrifice whole nations.

Look at Russia.

Communism is based

on altruism.

Look at Nazi Germany.

The Nazis were

more explicit

than even the Russians

in preaching

self-sacrifice

and altruism,

and self-sacrifice

for the state,

for the folk--

the people.

Every dictatorship is

based on altruism.

Now, you can't fight it

by merely saying

it's a difference of opinion.

It's a difference

of life and death.

it's the founding

fathers who established

in the United States

of America

the first and only free society

in history,

and the economic system

which was the corollary

of the American

political system,

was capitalism, the system

of total, unregulated,

Iaissez-faire capitalism.

This was the basic principle

of the American way of life

or the American

political system.

However, in practice,

it has never yet been practiced.

A total separation

of government and economics

had not been established

from the first.

It was implied

in principle,

but certain loopholes

or contradictions

were still allowed

into the American setup

and into the American

Constitution,

which permitted

collectivist influences

to undermine the American way

of life, and today,

it is practically

collapsing.

Only, I want to make

something clear.

I'm not a conservative.

I think

that today's conservatives

are worse

than today's liberals.

I think they are--

if anyone destroys

this country,

it will be

the conservatives,

because they do not know

how to preach capitalism,

to explain it

to the people--

because they do nothing

except apologize,

and because

they're all altruists.

They are all based

on religious altruism,

and on that combination

of ideas,

you cannot

save this country.

In spite of

the pro-Soviet sentiment

that surrounded the early

history of We The Living,

Ayn Rand had told America

about the Soviet cemetery.

It was also

against this backdrop

that she had been trying

desperately to get her family

out of Russia.

Beginning

shortly after Ayn Rand

came to the United States

in early 1926,

her family began

making plans

to come to the United States

themselves--to emigrate.

Not just to visit,

but actually to emigrate.

And they first tried to get

Nora, her youngest sister,

to come here, and then

they began making plans

for all of them to come here.

They were learning English.

They said in their letters

that they were speaking

English at home,

trying to get

more used to the language.

Ayn Rand herself began

in the early '30s

the process of bringing

her family here,

after she became a citizen

and was steadily employed,

which was very important.

She began making contact

with U.S. government officials

and the immigration office

and the like.

Unfortunately,

under Stalin,

it became virtually impossible

for people to get out of Russia,

so they were put

in jeopardy

just by corresponding

with people in the West,

so her family stopped writing

to her--they had to,

and simultaneously,

she stopped writing to them.

At that time,

the U.S. government

was putting up notices

in the post offices

telling people they can endanger

their families and friends

just by sending them

letters in Russia.

The way I came across the file

about her parents,

I could tell that it meant

a lot to her,

that she tried

to get them.

She wanted very much to bring

them over and save them,

because they both had

medical problems

that couldn't be taken care of

in Russia.

I think it must've been

very crushing for her

to have lost them

like that.

In 1937, Ayn and Frank

were spending a summer in Connecticut

while Frank appeared in a stock

version of Night of January 16th

at the Stony Creek Theater.

In an intense struggle

to work on her next novel,

The Fountainhead,

Ayn used the solitude

of the Country to write.

Literally tearing her hair out

over the plot,

she took a break to complete

a novelette called Anthem.

Originally a play

she conceived in Russia,

Anthem was a futuristic account

of a world

where individualism

had been obliterated,

and the word "l" had been

replaced with the word "we."

It was her hymn to man's ego,

to man's absolute self,

and an account

of what she believed

were the true implications

of all forms of collectivism.

Written in the form

of a diaw,

the story culminates

with the protagonist

rediscovering the concept

of individualism.

"At first, man was

enslaved by the gods,

"but he broke their chains.

"Then, he was enslaved

by the kings.

"But he broke their chains.

"He was enslaved by his birth,

"by his kin,

"by his race.

"But he broke their chains.

"He declared

to all his brothers

"that a man has rights

which neither God,

"nor king, nor other men

can take away from him,

"no matter what their number,

"for his is

the right of man,

and there is no right

on earth above this right."

Ever since she first saw

the image of an American city

in a Russian movie theater

at age 16,

Ayn Rand wanted

to write a story

that would glorify

the skyscraper

as a symbol of achievement

and of life on earth.

Finally understanding

American life,

and fully an adult, she was

ready to create her ideal man.

Now, a question puzzled her.

She had known

an ambitious secretary at RKO

who was real

Hollywood climber.

She, like Ayn,

took her career very seriously,

but Ayn disliked

everything about her,

and one day asked her

what she wanted to achieve.

The girl told her,

"Here's what I want out of life.

"if nobody had an automobile,

I would not want one.

"if automobiles exist

and some people don't have them,

"l want an automobile.

"If some people

have two automobiles,

I want two automobiles."

It was a shock to Ayn

that a person

would base their goals in life

on other people's standards.

As if in a flash,

two opposing characters

of her next novel were formed,

Howard Roark,

the individualistic architect,

and Peter Keating,

the conventional second-hander

of The Fountainhead

were born.

I could not understand whether

the hero of The Fountainhead

Howard Roark, was an idealist

or was practical.

My father had always

brought me up to believe that

you have two choices in life,

idealism or practicality,

and that you cannot be both,

and I could not classify

Roark as either,

because obviously,

he was an idealist.

He wouldn't compromise.

He was a man

of iron integrity,

and yet, at the same time,

it was shown

by the logic of the events

that he was the one

that would make a practical

success of his career,

whereas his opponent,

like Keating and Toohey,

are doomed to fail.

And I read The Fountainhead,

and it hit me

like a ton of bricks,

because I found out

what it meant to be

an individualist,

and in the character

of Howard Roark,

there he was, not explained

as in a philosophic treatise,

but dramatized,

and concretized,

so that's the--kind of

the glory of Ayn Rand's fiction.

You can see

what the philosophy means.

You can see a character and

that this is what it means

to act on a philosophy.

For the heroine of the novel,

Ayn created Dominique,

the aristocratic woman

who first fights against Roark,

but then stands by him

in the end.

She described Dominique

as herself in a bad mood.

It was an emotional state

that never lasted

for more

than a full day for Ayn,

but one that the character

of Dominique

takes years to overcome.

To research The Fountainhead,

Ayn took a job as a typist

for the architect

Ely Jacques Kahn, in New York.

Through this experience,

she came to admire

the work

of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Although she did not use

Wright as a model

for her hero, Howard Floark,

it was the originality

and daring of Wright's designs

that she wanted to capture.

In 1937, she first

wrote to Frank Lloyd Wright

trying to get a meeting with him

to talk about the book

and explain to him

what she was going to do

and to get an interview

with him,

and she was unsuccessful,

Wright was uninterested.

She tried a couple of times

and got nowhere,

but Wright eventually

read The Fountainhead,

and I think it was about a year

after the book was published,

wrote her a letter

which began,

"Your thesis is

the great one."

Ayn Rand stated that

the theme of The Fountainhead

is the issue of collectivism

versus individualism,

not in politics,

but in man's soul.

Rejected a total

of 12 times

by publishers who claimed

the book would never sell,

she refused to change

one word of her manuscript.

She now faced the same dilemma

as her own hero

in The Fountainhead.

In a key moment

of the novel,

a prospective client

demands

that Howard Roark place

a classic portico

on his brilliantly original

design for a modern bank.

Roark refuses,

explaining

that an honest building,

like an honest man,

has to be of one piece

and one faith,

and that the good, the high,

and the noble on earth

is only that which

keeps its integrity.

It was the integrity

of one man at Bobbs-Merrill,

Archibald Ogden,

that finally got

The Fountainhead published.

Told by the head of the company

to reject the book,

Ogden, a new editor at the time,

wrote them a note.

"if this isn't

the book for you,

then I'm not

the editor for you."

Ayn signed a contract

with Bobbs-Merrill,

and The Fountainhead appeared

in bookstores in 1943.

At first,

to Ayn's dismay,

the ad campaign

never mentioned the issue

of individualism

versus collectivism.

It focused on the love affair

between Dominique and Roark.

Sales of the book started up

very slowly, but by 1945,

it had reached bestseller list

through word-of-mouth,

selling 100,000 copies

in one year.

As The Fountainhead's

sales rose,

Ayn was still back in New York,

reading scripts for Paramount,

while Frank struggled

in the theater.

Across the continent,

Barbara Stanwyck,

who was under contract

to Warner Bros.,

brought The Fountainhead

to the attention

of producer Henry Blanke.

Soon, Warner Bros. had bought

the movie rights for $50,000,

with Stanwyck slated

to play Dominique.

Blanke believed that Ayn should

adapt the book for the screen,

and she was hired

to write the screenplay.

In 1943, Ayn Fland

moved back to Hollywood

to write The Fountainhead

movie script.

She wrote to Archie Ogden,

her much beloved

Fountainhead editor,

"As to the working Conditions

of a Hollywood writer's life,

"they are exactly as

one would imagine

"a Hollywood writer's life,

with all the trimmings.

"I have an office

the size of a living room

"with another office outside

and a secretary in it.

"Nobody can come in

without being announced

"by my secretary,

and she answers the phone.

"The grandeur and the glamour

and the pomp

"and the circumstance

are simply wonderful.

"Of course I love it,

for the moment,

"but I won't exchange it

for the pleasure of writing

as I please.

I haven't gone Hollywood yet."

Arriving in Hollywood,

Ayn and Frank moved

into a furnished apartment

that didn't allow pets.

After their beloved cat

was discovered by the landlady,

they decided to buy

a house.

Although hesitant of living

so far from Hollywood,

they found a boldly modern

designed by Richard Neutra

in Chatsworth, California.

Now, there was plenty of room

for Ayn to write

and for Frank to grow

flowers and vegetables,

which he turned

into a commercial enterprise.

They were also able

to raise peacocks

and house

a few more cats.

World War ll rationing

of building materials

forced The Fountainhead movie

to be put on hold

due to the demands

of the film's sets.

Fortunately, Ayn had met

producer Hal Wallis

on the Warmers lot,

and he hired her

to rewrite the love scenes

in a troubled film

called The Conspirators.

She adapted two other scripts

for Wallis.

One was Love Letters,

which was directed

by William Dieterle,

and earned Jennifer Jones

an Oscar nomination in 1945.

The other was the popular

You Came Along,

starring Bob Cummings

and Lizabeth Scott.

Three years into her contract

with Hal Wallis,

she was asked to write a script

about the making

of the atom bomb,

called Top Secret.

After completing a large portion

of the script,

Hal Wallis sold the project

out from under her to MGM.

For Ayn, it was the end

of her contract with Hal Wallis,

and the beginning of another

battle to combat collectivism.

Ayn had been

consistently disillusioned

with American politics.

In 1940,

while volunteering

on behalf of the Wendell Willkie

presidential campaign,

she saw many conservatives

betray the principles

of individualism

and capitalism.

In an effort

to counteract the New Deal,

she stood on the stage

at the Gloria Swanson Theater

in New York,

through seven shows a day,

answering questions

from the audience

about the evils

of collectivism.

She was also voted

onto the board

of the Motion Picture Alliance

for the Preservation

of American Ideals,

better known as the MPA.

A conservative group

formed at MGM by Louis B. Mayer,

it included

such Hollywood professionals

as Walt Disney, Hedda Hopper,

Gary Cooper, John Wayne,

and Lela Rogers,

Ginger's mother.

Ayn was the only member

to write signed articles

concerning communist propaganda

in the movies.

Not intended as

a government imposed regulation,

her pamphlet, entitled

Screen Guide for Americans,

was a voluntary guide

for filmmakers

to monitor communist propaganda

in their movies.

Displeased with the MPA's fear

that her ideas

in the Screen Guide

were too harsh,

she resigned from the board.

In 1947,

after the House Committee

on Un-American Activities

had read the guide,

she was asked to testify

as a friendly witness.

Along with Robert Taylor,

Adolphe Menjou, and Gary Cooper,

she appeared at the hearings

in Washington to investigate

communist infiltration

in the movies.

Considering the endeavor

a dubious undertaking,

she agreed

upon one condition--

that there would be no

restrictions on her testimony.

Although she was

to analyze two films,

she was ultimately only allowed

to speak on one,

Song of Russia,

an absurdly inaccurate

glamorization of Russia

she felt was not even

worthy of scrutiny.

However, she wanted

to set the record straight

about life

in the Soviet Union.

Don't they do things

at all like Americans?

Don't they walk

across town

to visit their mother-in-law

or somebody?

Look, it's really

hard to explain.

It's almost impossible

to convey to a free people

what it's like to live

in a totalitarian dictatorship.

I could tell you

a lot of details.

I can never completely

convince you,

because you are free,

and it's in a way good

that you don't

can't even conceive

of what it's like.

Certainly, they have friends

and mothers-in-law.

They try to lead

a human life,

but you understand

that it is totally inhuman.

Now, try to imagine

what it's like

if you are in constant terror

from morning to night,

and at night you are waiting

for a doorbell to ring.

If you are afraid

of everything and everybody,

if you live in a country

where human life is nothing--

less than nothing,

and you know it.

You don't know who, when,

is going to do what to you,

because you may have

friends somewhere.

But there is no law,

and no rights of any kind.

Concerned with

the flood of bad press,

the committee was not interested

in the cold, hard facts

about life

under communism.

Although Ayn didn't approve

of the hearings,

calling them futile,

she believed her testimony

could have been an effective way

to make clear

what she saw as propaganda

on the screen.

She tried to do what she had

done in We The Living,

but still,

no one wanted to listen.

Subsequently, however,

her Screen Guide was reprinted

in many newspapers,

including The New York Times

drama section,

and the studios began to order

copies of it for distribution.

Also, The Fountainhead sales

were picking up.

Many were beginning to hear

what Ayn Rand had to say.

Following the war,

in 1948,

Gary Cooper's wife

had read The Fountainhead

and suggested he read it.

Afterwards,

Cooper went to Warner Brothers

and signed

a two-picture-per-year deal

on the condition they

give him The Fountainhead.

During the years

the film was on hold,

the book had been rising

in sales and popularity.

Many stars were now interested

in playing parts in the film.

Clark Gable canceled

his MGM contract

when he discovered

that failed to buy the book

as a vehicle for him.

For the role of Roark,

Humphrey Bogart and Alan Ladd

were considered, as well

as Clifton Webb and Orson Welles

for Roark's nemesis,

Ellsworth Toohey.

King Vidor was signed on

to direct.

Vidor, a maverick

of all early filmmaking,

had done such notable films

as The Big Parade and The Crowd.

Since Ayn had previously met

with Barbara Stanwyck

and wanted her to the part

of Dominique,

she called Stanwyck

and informed her

the film was

starting up again.

Having worked with Stanwyck

on Stella Dallas,

Vidor thought she was

too old

and not the right type

for Dominique.

He didn't think

she could play a lady.

He had wanted Gene Tierney

or Jennifer Jones,

with whom he had just worked

on Duel In The Sun.

Although Ayn had no control

over the casting of the picture,

Joan Crawford hosted a dinner

in Ayn's honor

to garner the role.

Attempting to imitate

Dominique's character,

Crawford wore

a white Adrian evening gown

smothered

with aquamarine jewelry.

Veronica Lake told people that

Ayn had written part for her

because she had

Dominique's hairstyle.

At last, realizing

that Stanwyck was out,

Ayn suggested Greta Garbo.

While initially interested,

Garbo met with Vidor and decided

against taking the role.

Then, suddenly,

Bette Davis,

Warner's top star,

wanted the part.

Davis had gained a reputation

for holding up sets,

changing scripts, and arguing

with her leading men.

Vidor and Blanke

were against hiring her,

and Ayn threatened to walk

off the picture if they did.

However, Patricia Neal was

under contract as a new starlet,

and the studio decided

to give a relative unknown

the coveted role.

The studio had now

officially turned its back

on Barbara Stanwyck.

When Ayn realized that

no one had the courage

to phone Stanwyok,

she phoned her personally

to let her know

the part had been given away.

Stanwyck immediately

fired oft a bitter telegram

to Jack Warner,

and abruptly ended her contract.

Finally, after Ayn had met

Frank Lloyd Wright,

she commissioned him

to design a country home

for her and Frank.

Although the home

was never built,

she was pleased that Blanke

and Vidor wanted Wright

to design Roark's buildings

for The Fountainhead.

When Wright demanded $250,000

and final approval

over the script, casting,

costumes, and sets,

Blanke and Vidor

decided against it.

Ayn then recommended

Kahn and Neutra,

but the studio set designer,

Edward Carrere,

ended up with the job.

Knowing that the art department

was creating

structurally unsound designs

for F{oark's buildings,

Ayn suggested Vidor

never hold too long on them.

She knew architects

would criticize the film

on this count.

Now, with the cast and crew

firmly in place,

the film went

into production.

She wrote to her old editor,

Archie Ogden,

about the beginning

of the shooting,

and she said to him,

"The Fountainhead movie

goes into production on Monday.

"In fact, the company is leaving

today to go on location.

"The first scene shot

will be the quarry.

"They are going to shoot it

in a local quarry, near Fresno.

"I've seen pictures

of the place,

"and it is quite impressive.

"Funny, isn't it?

I remember the time

"when that quarry was nothing

but my imagination,

"and now, it is going to be made

into a physical reality.

"l do feel somewhat

in the position of a god,

"since something which I made

out of spirit

is now going to be translated

into matter."

In working on

the script with Vidor,

Ayn became engaged

in another series of battles

to keep her words intact.

Neither the studio

nor the censors knew

what to make

of The Fountainhead,

and they were ideologically

intimidated by its author.

The love scenes

between Roark and Dominique,

which spilled over

into the personal lives

of Cooper and Neal,

were not as much of a concern

as Roark's climactic

courtroom speech.

The speech was to be

Roark's sole defense

for dynamiting

a housing project

he had designed that was altered

without his consent.

Gary Cooper's lawyer

and the Johnston office censors

were concerned about

the uncompromising principles

of Roark's individualism.

Neither were able

to justify their objections,

and their questions

only prompted Ayn

to lengthen the speech

for clarity.

Increased from 41/2

to 61/2 minutes,

Cooper would now deliver

thelongestspeech

in the history of film.

Although Cooper was serious

and worked very hard,

he had trouble understanding

and delivering the speech.

Vidor asked Ayn

to coach Cooper,

but eventually decided

to shoot a cut version

of the scripted speech

without Ayn's knowledge.

On the day the speech was shot,

Ayn happened to be on the set,

and discovered Vidor

was shooting

a shorter version

of the speech.

Fudous,

she threatened Blanke

that she would disassociate

herself from the picture

if the speech

was not shot as written.

Blanke returned to the set

with an edict from Jack Warner.

There were to be no changes

to the script on the set.

It was truly unprecedented.

The speech and her script

were filmed

without one single word

being changed.

Look at history.

Everything we have,

every great achievement

has come

from the independent work

of some independent mind.

I came here to say

that I do not recognize

anyone's right

to one minute of my life,

nor to any part

of my energy,

nor to any achievement of mine,

no matter who makes the claim.

It had to be said.

The world is perishing

from an orgy

of self-sacrificing.

I came here to be heard

in the name

of every man of independence

still left in the world.

I wanted to state

my terms.

I do not care to work

or live on any others.

My terms are a man's right

to exist for his own sake.

She was proud of the script.

She thought it was

good and honest

within the framework

of their abilities, that they

didn't sabotage the novel,

but it wasn't what she would

consider a work of art.

Ayn was disappointed

that the film lacked

the romanticism

she so loved

in the German films

she had seen in her youth.

But the film was a windfall

as advertising for the book.

By 1961, the hardcover edition

of The Fountainhead

soared

past 500,000 copies.

To this day, The Fountainhead

sells 100,000 copies annually.

For a book that publishers

claimed would never sell,

Ayn Rand's first story,

projecting her ideal man,

was an undeniable success.

Late in 1950,

Ayn Rand received

a fan letter

from a young psychology student,

Nathaniel Branden.

She thought his letter

was so intelligent

and his questions so astute

that she invited him

to call on her in person

to discuss them further.

Both Ayn and Frank were

completely won over by him

after their first meeting,

and Nathaniel began

seeing them more frequently.

By 1953, Ayn and Frank

stood up at Nathaniel's wedding,

and in the years that followed,

the Brandens and the O'Connors

formed an intimate circle.

Nathaniel Branden

meant a great deal to Ayn Rand.

She thought he was a genius

of exceptional intelligence,

that he would be an innovator

in the field of psychology,

that he took ideas

with passion and seriousness,

and she obviously

liked him,

and by all the evidence

that I have,

she had an affair with him,

which she would not do

if she didn't have the highest

possible opinion of him.

This she did, of course,

with the knowledge

of her husband and the consent

of her husband.

I don't have any really inside

information of how Frank coped

with the knowledge

of the affair.

I presume there had to be

some jealousy,

but he was not

characteristically

a jealous person,

and I think he felt--

now, I'm taking

my educated guess here.

I think he felt,

in some way,

that she was

uniquely special,

and that she needed more

from a man that he could offer.

And as I see it

in my own mind,

Frank had the soul

that Ayn Rand needed,

but he didn't have

the intellect.

He didn't have that glowing,

brilliant

intellectual's type of intellect

which Branden seemed to have.

It's true that she had

great needs

because of her personality.

She needed both

a soul mate

and a certain sense of life

in a man,

but she also needed

somebody

she could talk

as an intellectual to.

Nathaniel Branden created

an institute

to teach a lecture series

based on Ayn Rand's

philosophy.

Ayn endorsed his courses

and the articles

he wrote on psychology

that appeared

in magazines and books.

Eventually, however,

she was to discover

that he was involved

in a series

of personal

and professional deoeptions.

In my opinion,

Nathaniel Branden was

the supreme actor,

who communicated that nothing

mattered more to him than ideas,

and he wanted nothing

from the world but the truth,

and the revolution of the truth

is all that counted.

He was an idealist,

and so on,

and that was what he presented

himself as originally.

He was very intelligent.

It wasn't the case of a dolt

who was able to put it over.

He was actually

very intelligent,

but in the course

of his life, his values

obviously came to change

for whatever reason--

because of his pre-existing

psychology or whatever.

He had to act an increasingly

onerous part

to retain Ayn's affection,

namely, to pretend something

that he knew he was not

and no longer wanted to be.

And finally, it just--

it became intolerable,

and one thing or another

precipitated the break.

She bore it,

but she finally did

get over it and go on

with her life of writing

and--with her husband.

As Ayn's writing continued,

Frank O'Connor had been steadily

trying to find his niche.

Glowing with admiration,

he enjoyed watching his wife,

but never tried

to manage her career.

He was an independent entity,

gracefully, quietly searching

for his life's work.

Frank was an amazing man.

First of all, he looked

totally like an Ayn Rand hero.

He stood out in any crowd.

He was, in my view,

the Howard Roark type.

My impression of

Frank from the beginning was

that he was a very fine,

very sensitive artist type.

He was not dominantly

the talker, but you felt

that he was a very strong and

sensitive presence with her,

and then, in later years,

he looked for the career

that would give him

full satisfaction

for many years, and finally,

the logic of his choices

took him into painting,

and that's where

he really found himself and

began to do tremendous work.

What he did always had

the Frank O'Connor touch to it

that she would describe

as, "Like laughter

let loose

in the universe."

Our founding fathers talked

about the right

of the pursuit

of happiness.

Do you think this is

really important?

I don't know what else

could be any more important.

If you attach that meaning

to concepts--

The pursuit of happiness

means

a man's right

to set his own goals,

to choose his values,

and to achieve them.

Happiness means that state

of consciousness

which comes from the achievement

of your values.

Now, what can be more important

than happiness?

But happiness does not mean

simply momentary pleasures

or any kind of mindless

self-indulgence.

Happiness means a profound,

guiltless, rational feeling

of self-esteem and of pride

in one's own achievement.

It means the enjoyment

of life,

which is possible

only to a rational man

on a rational code

of morality.

Because to make a success

of yourself

in any line of rational activity

is a great virtue.

And they--people will

attack you

for exercising your ability,

for hard work,

for consistency,

for ambition,

and they will want to make you

feel guilty of it.

In fact, people who preach that

are the ones who are mawkish

about the evil people,

the affairs,

the liars, the cheats--

everybody who is weak

suddenly acquires

some kind of value.

But anyone who is

a success

has to be attacked

for his success.

And look at how you have

been attacked...

- Oh, I know.

- how you have been criticized.

- There are many--

- You know that?

There are many people

in this country--

forgive me--in this world

who think you're daft.

They don't.

They want you

to think that.

During The

Fountainhead's rise to the top,

Ayn and Frank had been happy

at the Chatsworth Ranch.

But Ayn had grown

weary of the country

and living in California.

She missed New York.

"l hate Hollywood as a place,

just as I did before.

"it's overcrowded,

vulgar, cheap, and sad

"in a hopeless sort of way.

"The people on the streets

are all tense, eager,

"and suspicious,

and look unhappy--

"The has-beens

and the would-bes.

"I'm in love with New York.

"Frank says that what I love

is not the real city

"but the New York

I built myself.

That's true."

New York represented to her

the pinnacle

of human achievement

in physical terms.

Aristotle would be the pinnacle

of achievement intellectually.

But New York,

the skyscrapers,

everything that man

had traversed

from the time of the cave

to the time of this glorious

and industrial

civilization,

that was, to her,

what life was about.

It wasn't just acquiring

philosophy.

It was acquiring ideas,

acquiring science,

and then remaking the earth

accordingly,

and she couldn't think

of a more splendid

and exciting and beautiful place

than that view that you get

of the skyscrapers

where you don't see

the details of each one

but the mass of human ingenuity

and talent soaring

for the sky.

Ayn took a studio

in New York

in a very seedy, old hotel

on 31st Street,

and Ayn came to pose

for me there.

There were no windows

in the studio,

but there was a skylight,

and the only thing one could see

from the skylight

was the top

of the Empire State Building,

and Ayn was particularly

smitten with that.

I subsequently moved

to Greenwich Village,

and she came down there

to pose as well,

and the atmosphere

was a little different.

I think she wasn't quite

as happy in that studio

as she was being able to see

the Empire State Building

while she posed.

In 1951, Ayn and

Frank moved to New York City,

the city she had first seen

as a backdrop of electric lights

in a Russian theater.

Now, as a successful

American writer,

she would live in one

of that city's skyscrapers,

and here, she would complete

her monumental book,

Atlas Shrugged.

When a friend insisted

Ayn write

a nonfiction treatise

on her philosophy

out of a duty to help people

understand her ideas,

she was indignant.

She thought, "Why should I?

What if I went on strike?

What of all the creative minds

of the world went on strike?"

Hence, the story

of men and women of the mind

who go on strike and

abandon the world was formed.

Wider in scope

than The Fountainhead,

Atlas Shrugged

dramatized

the whole

of Ayn Rand's philosophy,

allowing Ayn to express

her total sense of life--

a life she knew could

and should exist.

Likening the new heroes

in the book

to the giant Greek god

who supported the heavens

on his shoulders,

Ayn focused on three

captains of industry,

a copper magnate...

A steel mill owner...

And the head

of a railroad.

They were the creators,

innovators,

and independent thinkers

who moved the world

but decided to shrug.

She told a reporter

at the time

that the story would combine

metaphysics,

morality, politics,

economics, and sex.

And as she had promised

her professor in Russia,

the book would finally

make her ideas

a part of the history

of philosophy.

As the mystery story

of Atlas Shrugged unfolds,

Ayn Rand erects an unprecedented

argument for capitalism.

Presenting a moral defense

for man's right to exist

for his own sake, to pursue

the work of his choice,

and keep the rewards

of his labor,

she argued that

capitalism demands

the best of every man,

his rationality,

and rewards him

accordingly.

"it leaves every man free

to choose the work he likes,

"to specialize in it,

"to trade his product

for the products of others,

"and to go as far

on the road of achievement

"as his ability and ambition

will Carry him.

"Who is John Galt,"

was the burning question

that opened

Atlas Shrugged.

Although Frank posed

in publicity ads for the book,

Galt was a direct descendent

of Cyrus

in The Mysterious Valley.

Like Cyrus,

Galt was a hero

operating behind the scenes

for a good portion of the story.

The heroine,

Dagny Taggart,

the driving force behind Taggart

Transcontinental Railroad,

was Ayn's first depiction

of an ideal woman,

a character she called

"the feminine Roark."

Ayn herself read manuals

on railroad signal switching

and steel furnaces.

She visited the Kaiser

steel mills in California,

as well as other mills

in Chicago and Johnstown.

She researched

all the major railroads

and eventually

interviewed people

from the New York Central.

Bobbs-Merrill, the publisher

of The Fountainhead,

arranged a trip for her

on the 20th Century

to Albany

from New York City.

A particular thrill for her

was when the engineer

allowed her to drive

the train herself.

The demands of writing

the novel

took all of her energy

and focus.

She often worked

many hours at a time,

stopping only to eat

or cook a meal for Frank.

Often, she would lose

all track of time,

and they would end up

having supper

at 10:00 or 11 :00

at night.

When she was stuck

or had what she called

"the squirms,"

she would take a break

to play solitaire

or visit with friends.

Well, there was a group of us,

around 10 or 12,

who were related--either one

was a friend of another

or a relative of another,

and as a joke,

Ayn started to call us

"the Collective."

As a joke, because

we were supposed to be

all arch-individualists.

We came to her place

on a regular basis,

starting originally

on Saturday nights,

to read the manuscript

of Atlas Shrugged,

and then, we would read

whatever was available

or some given chapter,

and then, there would be

an all-around discussion

monitored by her,

and then she would

serve something

around midnight

or 1:00 in the morning.

Sometimes, we would stay till

3:00 or 4:00 in the morning.

And at first,

we got to know her best

through these weekly

Saturday night sessions.

Now her biggest challenge

was writing

Gait's climactic speech,

which he delivers

to a collapsing world

over radio airwaves.

Thinking it would take

roughly three months

to complete Gait's speech,

Ayn ultimately spent two years

perfecting it.

It encompassed

her entire philosophy,

which she later

called objectivism_

When she finished

the speech,

she submitted the book

to publishers.

With little bargaining,

she signed a contract

at Random House

for a $50,000 advance

to finish the book.

It was the fastest contract

she ever signed.

Ever since Atlas Shrugged

had been completed

in March, 1957,

Ayn felt as if she were basking

in the glow of her own sun.

Standing

back on the horizon,

she was happy to simply

contemplate her achievement.

But when her eyes

adjusted to the muted light

of the world around her,

she observed the current state

of the culture...

From the war in Vietnam

and student unrest,

to what she termed

the anti-Industrial Revolution.

She had been so full

of the sense of life

in her novels,

that the world of the 1960s

now seemed like the last days

of the Roman Empire.

Review after review

of Atlas Shrugged

viciously attempted

to discredit her and her work.

But however much the attacks

in the press hurt her,

they only stoked the fire

that would bring her

out into the public.

She did not

like public speaking.

She did not regard herself

as a teacher

by profession

or by interest.

She thought her accent was wrong

as far as public speaking,

and she'd never been able

to do much with her accent,

but she would be damned if she

was gonna let Atlas Shrugged

be commented on exclusively

by the critics who hated it.

She got invitations,

so she made up her mind that

despite all her reservations,

she was gonna speak

at least enough to give it

some publicity,

so she went reluctantly.

She faced, at first,

very antagonistic audiences.

They booed her,

they tried to out-yell her,

but of course,

she was immutable.

She was herself

on the lecture platform,

and I've seen audiences start

booing and end up cheering.

She had the ability

to deal with anything

that could come up

from an audience.

That was very impressive.

I can't tell you

what a contrast it made

to the sense of life

of the period.

We were just coming

out of the '50s.

The Leave It To Beaver,

Father Knows Best era,

when no one would take a stand

on anything,

when making a value judgment

was considered a sin,

but she was there,

making the most dramatic

and passionate statements,

saying everything was simple,

absolute, clear-cut.

She took time to find

out what you had on your mind,

and often time, in lectures

at Ford Hall Forum,

where there were hundreds

of people in the audience,

she would still

take her time.

She'd say, "Would you care

to repeat that?

"Would you care

to rephrase that

so I understand

what you're getting at?"

That's what

impressed me most.

She not only

answered the question,

She told you what errors

you made

that led you

to that question,

why you weren't able

to answer it yourself,

what confusions would arise

in your mind tomorrow

when you thought

over her answers,

and what the answers

to those were, and then,

what to read to consolidate

your thinking even more clearly.

So it was like

an entire course.

It wasn't just

yes or no answer.

Every question was

a springboard

to a total exploration

of the issue

and of the proper methods

of thinking.

When Ayn Rand appeared

annually at the Ford Hall Forum,

it attracted

a very large crowd.

She would go to her room

after she had given her talk.

People would line up--

very crowded, little room.

There weren't all

the books available

on her philosophical thoughts

to us, so needless to say,

we would build up

a huge inventory

of puzzling questions

since the last time

we met her,

and she would just field

questions until dawn,

at which time, she was

thoroughly relaxed

and she had come down

from the excitement of the talk,

and she would say

good-night to us,

and we would walk out

so revved up that,

in one case, I couldn't

go to sleep

for over two days after I had

left her hotel room.

I know many of you

have heard this line.

"Atlas Shrugged

changed my life.

The Fountainhead

changed my life."

Here's a woman who's read

by millions around the world.

She may be our most debated

philosopher.

She identifies

that to which she adheres

as objectivism.

We'll talk about it.

We care very much

about your sharing with us

your feelings about

this most interesting lady,

a warm human being

who has a lot to say

and comes straight

at everything she says.

I am pleased

to present Ayn Rand.

Ms. Rand.

The first show that

Ayn Rand appeared on

for us was

the Mike Wallace interview,

and for all I know,

it was certainly

one of the first shows

that she appeared

on in the '50s,

if not the very first show.

She was not very welcome.

She was a notorious figure

in New York

intellectual circles,

and it's hard now,

in the '90s,

to imagine the hostility

directed at her.

Saul Bellow once said

that New York at that time

was an intellectual annex

of Moscow,

and if it was that

for Saul Bellow,

you can imagine

what it was like for Ayn Rand.

The people I work with

simply wanted me

to do a piece

with Ayn Rand,

and I didn't know

a lot about her.

I had read

Fountainhead.

And I'm not certain--

I don't remember,

'cause I read it later

whether I had yet read

Atlas Shrugged,

and so I didn't meet her

until the night that she came

into the studio.

This is Mike Wallace

with another television portrait

from our gallery

of colorful people.

Throughout the United States,

small pockets of intellectuals

have become involved

in a new and unusual philosophy

which would seem to strike at

the very roots of our society.

The Fountainhead

of this philosophy

is a novelist, Ayn Rand,

whose two major works,

The Fountainhead

and Atlas Shrugged,

have been bestsellers.

We'll try to find out more

about her revolutionary creed

and about Ms. Rand herself

in just a moment.

Dark black, that Dutch cut,

those piercing,

Russian eyes--

strange looking person,

and the accent.

The first thing that struck you

when you met Ayn Rand

for the first time

were those eyes.

Big, black, glowing,

lustrous eyes,

which radiated

a tremendous energy

and penetration and focus

and intensity,

and they never left you,

and it was very unnerving,

at least to me at first.

You got used to it somewhat,

but at first, it was unnerving,

and perhaps even

a little intimidating.

And she would take

any question.

She was perfectly open,

and you could see the mind

at work and the spirit at work,

and she liked the joust

of tough questions

and direct answers.

My morality is based

on man's life

as a standard of value,

and since man's mind is

his basic means of survival,

I hold that if man

wants to live on earth

and to live

as a human being,

he has to hold reason

as an absolute,

by which I mean

that he has to hold reason

as his only guide

to action,

and that he must live

by the independent judgment

of his own mind,

that his highest moral purpose

is the achievement

of his own happiness,

and that he must not

force other people

nor accept their right

to force him,

that each man must live

as an end in himself,

and follow his own

rational self-interest.

She was obviously the most

unusual guest we ever had.

You just didn't get guests

who could speak for a half hour

about philosophy and ideas

clearly, penetratingly,

and excitingly,

and we would get

enormous mail.

I would afterwards get

into big arguments and fights

with my other friends

in the media.

"Why did you put her on?

How could you do such a thing?"

And it's very interesting.

These were documentarians

and writers and newspeople,

all of whom would argue

very vociferously

against Ayn Rand.

None of them had ever

read her works,

and to my knowledge,

none of them ever have,

as if they were afraid

somehow

of being stripped

of their illusions.

They'd rather cling to them.

In an outline for a new novel,

Ayn chose a dancer named Hella

as her heroine.

Hella wants to create

a new form of dance,

one that combines

the rhythmic precision of tap

with the graceful elegance

of ballet.

"The real essence of the story,"

Ayn wrote in notes to herself,

"is to be the universe

of my tiddlywink music,

of my sense of life."

But the state of the culture

made it impossible

for her to complete

another novel.

She was no longer able

to project her type of heroes

into the world

she was now living.

By 1961, she thought

that many Americans had given up

on finding solutions

to their problems.

They were cynical

and scared.

Despite this, she still believed

in their sense of life.

She was also convinced

that the young had not yet

been corrupted by her critics

or the intellectuals.

As Atlas Shrugged rose in sales

and on the best seller lists,

Ayn began to make more and more

television appearances,

from The Merv Griffin Show

to The Tonight Show

with Johnny Carson.

By 1963, Atlas Shrugged had sold

1 .2 million copies.

Do you consider yourself

primarily a novelist

or primarily a philosopher?

I would say I am primarily

both equally,

and for the same reasons.

You see, my main interest

and purpose,

both in literature

and in philosophy,

is to define and present

the image of an ideal man--

the specific, complete image

of what man can be

and ought to be,

and when I started writing,

when I approached

the task of literature

and began to study

philosophy,

I discovered that I was

in profound disagreement

with all the existing

philosophies,

particularly their codes

of morality.

Therefore, I had to do

my own thinking.

I had to define

my own philosophical system

in order to discover

and present

the kind of ideas

and premises

that make an ideal man

possible--

in order to define

what kind of convictions

would result in a character

of an ideal man.

Through conversations

with Leonard Peikoft,

Ayn saw that many

of her philosophic principles

were not self-evident

to those around her.

She realized

a more detailed elaboration

of her philosophy

was needed.

Now that Howard Roark,

John Galt,

and Dagny Taggart existed,

she had accomplished

what she had set out to do

in fiction,

and was ready to begin writing

in the field of philosophy.

She wanted to solve

what philosophers

traditionally called

the problem of universals.

She wanted to demonstrate

that abstract ideas

connect to reality,

that the concepts of freedom,

justice, and truth

were definable and real.

Leonard Peikoff

once put it to me this way,

in regard to the way

that she used ideas.

He said, "You know

the way you or I

"hold the concept, 'chair"?

"Well, that's the way

she holds

"the highest, deepest

philosophical abstraction--

with that same kind of clarity

and concreteness."

I think that's the secret

of her method,

that her ideas were always

derived from reality

for the purpose

of living in reality.

That's why they were

so urgently important to her.

They were not a game.

They were for the purpose

of living her life

and achieving her values.

I asked her once,

when I was much younger,

why she got

so emotionally upset

at the theories of philosophers

like Immanuel Kant,

and she said to me,

"Because when I hear

"a philosopher say

there is no reality

"and your mind is

totally invalid,

"that means all of your values

are nullified.

"Your husband, your love,

your work,

the music you like,

your freedom."

It was truly a life and death

matter to her.

She thought philosophy

moved to the world,

and if anybody has confusion

about a philosophic issue,

that could be a peril

to their soul,

their cognition,

their clarity.

She hears the total destruction

in the abstract statement.

IVlost people hear abstractions

as simply floating abstractions,

but for her, she translated it

into the actual, concrete things

that it meant, and what it

would mean her own life,

and she was able

to react emotionally

to broad abstractions,

which very few people can do.

When did you discover

or think up

or allow objectivism

to become your philosophy?

From the time

that I remember myself,

which is 21/2.

The first incident in my life

I can remember,

I was 21/2.

And from that time

on to the present,

lneverchanged

my convictions.

Only at 21/2, I didn't know

as much as I know now.

But the fundamental approach

was the same.

I've never had to change.

Why has it worked

for you?

Because it's true.

Because it corresponds

to reality.

Because it is

the right philosophy.

By true, I mean it corresponds

to reality, therefore,

it permits me to deal

with reality properly.

Throughout the '60s and '70s,

Ayn continued

to articulate her philosophy

through various interviews

and articles.

Without a border

to get beyond

or an artistic purpose

burning inside of her,

she now had a new reason

to work

and a new forum

to operate in.

Along with publishing books

on epistemology,

ethics,

social philosophy,

and aesthetics,

she also launched various

philosophical magazines.

She wanted to create

what she described

as a readers' digest for the man

of intellect and action,

and to her surprise,

she enjoyed the process.

She once wrote,

"Do you know that

my personal crusade in life,

"in the philosophical sense,

"is not merely

to fight collectivism,

"nor to fight altruism.

"These are only consequences,

effects, not causes.

"l am out after the real cause,

the real root of evil on earth--

the irrational."

In interviews and articles,

Ayn applied the essence

of her philosophy

to a variety of topics.

Upon the death

of Marilyn Monroe,

Ayn wrote that the beloved star

had projected the sense

of a person born and reared

in some radiant utopia,

untouched by suffering,

unable to conceive

ugliness or evil,

facing life

with confidence,

the benevolence,

and the joyous self-flaunting

of a child or a kitten

who is happy to display

its own attractiveness

as the best gift

it can offer the world.

To preserve that kind

of spirit on the screen,

the radiantly benevolent

sense of life

which cannot be faked,

was an almost inconceivable

psychological achievement

that required a heroism

of the highest order.

In her book,

The Virtue of Selfishness,

Ayn wrote that racism

is a doctrine

of, by, and for brutes.

"It is a barnyard or stock farm

version of collectivism,

"appropriate to a mentality

"that differentiates between

various breeds of animals

"but not between animals

and men.

"Like every form

of determinism,

"racism invalidates

the specific attribute

"which distinguishes man

from all other living species--

his rational faculty."

In 1969,

after Ayn and Frank were invited

to attend the launching

of Apollo 11,

she wrote,

"One knew that this spectacle

"was not the product

of an inanimate nature,

"like some aurora borealis,

"nor of chance,

nor of luck--

"that it was

unmistakably human,

with human, for once,

meaning 'grandeur."'

Religion, or the God concept,

or faith,

or worship has people--

has people thinking of life

as a veil of tears

through which you will probably

not get without falling.

- That's right.

- You are essentially

an evil person

who is bent toward--

Well, most religions

do preach just that.

You don't believe it?

God, no.

We are here, and we should

celebrate it,

use it, enjoy it,

be selfish.

There's a virtue

in selfishness...

Right.

Right.

And we got ourselves

in trouble when we started

using government to force us

to be good,

because we have this notion

that we had a--

a sort of bad nature.

Right.

And if we have

a bad nature,

we have no self-esteem.

If we have no self-esteem,

any demagogue can have us.

He can order us about,

because we wouldn't consider

ourselves valuable enough

to be free.

You will be anxious

to follow anyone,

because you don't

trust yourself.

The gulf between

Ayn Rand and the Soviet Union

had made it impossible

for her know

what had happened

to her family.

After permission to bring them

to America had been denied,

she had given up any hope

of ever seeing them again.

In 1973,

Ayn's youngest sister Nora

saw an article in Russia

about the now famous author,

Ayn Rand.

She wrote to Ayn,

and they began

a renewed correspondence.

Through Nora's letters, Ayn

learned that her youngest sister

had become

a professional set designer.

Ayn also learned

that her parents

had since died of illnesses

under Stalin,

and her sister Natasha

had been killed in a park

during an air raid

in World War II.

As difficult as it was

to accept these facts,

Ayn focused on her joy

at finding Nora,

and she immediately began

to make arrangements

to bring her to America.

In a letter to Nora,

she wrote,

"Along time has passed,

"but I was hoping

that you would know or feel

"that I have not forgotten you

and never will.

I have always dreamt

that I would see you someday."

In anticipation

of Nora's arrival,

Ayn rented an apartment

in her building in New York

and decorated it with Nora's

colorful paintings.

After almost 50 years

between them,

Nora finally arrived,

and Ayn was overjoyed.

But soon, she discovered

Nora had become

a very different person.

Although Nora claimed to be

an anti-communist,

she complained

about the futility of life,

and indeed had long

given in to that concept.

The sense of life Ayn had shared

with Nora in their youth

had been suffocated.

After a few days

in New York,

Nora openly declared

that she didn't like America

or Ayn's novels.

Soon, the sisters were not

speaking to one another.

Eventually, even though

Nora's husband was seriously ill

and could not secure

proper medical care in Russia,

they returned

to the Soviet Union.

Ayn watched the one person

to whom she had had

a meaningful bond

in her childhood

walk away from her

and walk willingly

into an old prison.

She herself had fought

so many years to survive.

It was inconceivable

for her to give in

to the tragedy

of Nora's fate.

To Ayn, suffering could never

be considered important.

You love this

country, don't you?

- Passionately.

- Yeah.

Very, very much,

and consciously.

I love it for its ideas.

And I've seen enough

of the other side,

so I can appreciate

this country.

You might even get emotional

about this country, huh?

Oh, yes.

Why, do you want me

to get emotional?

You might even thank God

for it, huh?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

I may not literally

mean a God,

but I like what that

expression means.

"Thank God"

or "God bless you."

It means "the highest possible,"

to me,

and I will certainly thank God

for this country.

By 1978,

Frank had begun to show signs

of arteriosclerosis.

Soon he would have episodes of

memory loss and disorientation.

Earlier, Ayn had had her own

bout with illness,

a surgery to remove

a cancerous lesion

from her lung had forced

her to stop smoking,

yet even while convalescing,

she kept her vigil,

hoping that Frank would recover.

I had the privilege

of attending

her 50th anniversary party,

when her husband

was still pretty much oriented

and functional.

But it was one

of the very last times

that he could appear in public.

It was wonderful

to see them together,

and everybody made speeches

about, you know,

how their love

had endured 50 years.

The relationship between

Ayn and Frank was very noticeable,

because here was this couple,

married 50 years,

always holding hands.

She would always say,

when he came into the room,

"Hello, darling,"

with that Russian accent.

She didn't want to be

away from him for a second,

and he felt the same way.

The affection

was quite noticeable.

A lot of endearments--you know,

she called him Cubbyhole.

His pet name

for her with Kitten Fluff.

But it was quite affectionate.

In November of 1979,

not long after their 50th

wedding anniversary,

Frank's life came to an end

at the age of 82.

She was crushed.

She wouldn't show anything

outwardly.

She told me once

that she was like a lion

that when she was hurt,

she wanted to crawl off

in solitude--

or sick--

crawl off in solitude

and not show her suffering

to anyone else.

But you could see the absence

of fire in her.

I think when she lost Frank,

she basically lost

a will to live.

I thought that she was depressed

after that.

She didn't have much energy.

She didn't really want

to go places.

But she managed to keep going.

Ayn Rand once wrote that

"it is with a person's sense of life

"that one falls in love--

"with that essential sum,

"that fundamental stand or way

of facing existence, which is

the essence of a personality."

Now, that personality was gone.

Does this emotional impact

of this kind of pain

alter, in any way,

your own feelings, philosophies?

No. It only alters my position

in regards to the world.

In other words, which is

that I lost my top value.

I'm not too interested

in anything else.

But I'll survive it,

because I do love the world

in general,

and I do love ideas,

- and I do love man.

- Yes.

- But my personal is lost now.

- I know.

Isn't there a temptation

for you--

and I don't mean this to flip

to suggest that you're

not sincere in your writings

to hope for a reunion

with the person you love,

to look beyond the

I have asked myself just that,

seriously,

and I thought, "if I really

believed that for five minutes,

I would commit suicide

immediately."

And I know that

then I'd be right.

- Oh, to get to him right away.

- To get to him.

Of course.

I'll tell you more.

I asked myself, "How would I

feel if I think he

"is now on trial

before God or St. Peter,

and I'm not with him'?"

To testify

or to help him out?

Exactly.

My first desire in that case

would be to run to help him

and tell how good he was.

"There are two

aspects of man's existence

which are the special province

and expression

of his sense of life,"

she wrote, "love and art."

With Frank no longer beside her,

Ayn's depression intensified,

but as with all tragedy

and Ayn Rand,

it could not completely stifle

her enthusiasm for living.

After several attempts

to being bring Atlas Shrugged

to television and movie screens,

she decided to write

and produce her own film version

of the book.

Recovering somewhat

from the loss of Frank,

she had a renewed sense

of purpose.

In spite of her failing health,

she gave a speech

in New Orleans in 1981,

and announced her plans

to make Atlas Shrugged

into a miniseries.

She gave a lecture

on the natural connection

between the philosopher

and businessman,

and tried to open their eyes

to the fact that--

as she did in Atlas Shrugged,

that they were,

by ignoring philosophy,

financing their own demise.

Well, she agreed to speak

in New Orleans,

because the, uh--Jim Blanchard,

the man who was sponsoring

the conference--

National Conference

on Monetary Reform, I believe--

offered her what she had always

wanted, a private train.

Leonard Peikoff and I

escorted her from her hotel suite

back to the railroad car

because she wanted to

I think they were leaving

early in the morning,

and she wanted to go to sleep on

the car rather than the hotel.

And that was the last time

I saw her.

She was showing us

the railroad car.

She had such a capacity

for the delight

of all of the wonderful things

that man could make.

The fact that she

could travel in a railroad car

in such sumptuous comfort--

and it was just a total delight

for her.

Unfortunately, she took

ill on the train coming back,

and she realistically

never recovered.

Her faculties were still good

at the end.

A night or so before she died,

some new cover copy

for one of her forthcoming books

came from the publisher,

and she went over it with me,

and told them what to change

and so on,

and then, as was expected,

she just slipped away.

I once spent part of

an evening alone with Ayn Rand,

talking.

And somehow,

the subject of death came up,

and I asked her

if she was afraid of dying.

And she said, "No.

"Death is insignificant

and unimportant.

"Eternity is important,

and eternity is now."

I'll never forget that.

I tend to think

of this whole thing as ongoing.

That there is an eternity

and that we are going

to be a part of that eternity,

that we aren't just corpses

in graves when we die.

But we aren't corpses

in graves.

We are not there.

Don't you understand

that when this life is finished,

you are not there to say,

"Oh, how terrible

that I am a corpse."

No.

- Well, this is true.

- it's finished,

and the--

what I've always thought

was a sentence

from some Greek philosopher--

I don't, unfortunately,

remember who it was,

that I read at 16,

and it's affected me

all my life.

"l will not die.

It's the world that will end."

And that's absolutely true.

And you know, for me, now,

it should be a serious question,

because my time

is fairly limited,

and I have the same feeling,

that I will enjoy life

to the last moment,

and when it's the end,

I don't have to worry about it.

I'm not there.

It's too bad

that the world will end,

and I think

that a very wonderful world

will end with me,

but I've had my time.

I can't complain.

Ayn Rand died at

her home from heart failure

on March 6th, 1982.

"l decided to be a writer

"not in order to save the world

nor to serve my fellow man,

"but for the simple,

"personal, selfish,

egotistical happiness

"of creating the kind

of men and events

"l could like, respect,

"and admire.

"You see, I am an atheist,

"and I have only one religion--

the sublime and human nature."

"There is nothing

to approach the sanctity

"of the highest type

of man possible,

"and there is nothing that gives

me the same reverent feeling.

"The feeling when one spirit

wants to kneel, bareheaded.

"Do not call it hero worship,

"because it is more than that.

"It is a kind of strange

and improbable, white heat,

"where admiration

becomes religion,

"and religion

becomes philosophy,

"and philosophy,

the whole of one's life.

"My personal life

is a postscript to my novels.

"it consists of the sentence,

"'And I mean it.'

"I've always lived

by the philosophy

"l present my books,

"and it has worked for me

as it works for my characters.

"The concretes differ.

The abstractions are the same."

Ayn Rand waged a lifelong battle

for reason and individualism.

Like a ferocious angel,

shefoughL

and beside her in the ranks,

glowing from the tattered pages

of books that have been

read over and over again,

are the men and women

she created.

The characters

who will forever fight

for the same principles and the same sense of life.

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