Questions and Answers

At the beginning of Jill Godmilow’s 1987 film WAITING FOR THE MOON GertrudeandAlice, played by Linda Bassett and Linda Hunt, are sitting in the garden of their country home proofreading a manuscript.  This was probably not an uncommon scene in their lives. What makes the film’s opening shot so unusual is that there is a crying baby in the picture.

When I first saw the movie when it was released, I assumed that the child was Hemingway’s son and that GertrudeandAlice were babysitting. It was not until the DVD version of the film came out a few years ago with a director’s interview as an added feature that I learned  the baby was supposed to be GertrudeandAlice’s child.

Ms. Godmilow says in the interview that since it is impossible to make an historically accurate, biographical film about famous people, a film may include any incidents or characters which tell the story the way the filmmaker wants to present it. In this case GertrudeandAlice  have a baby. (The film was criticized for its historical inaccuracies, but that’s another blog.)

Children and GertrudeandAlice, however, seem to fit.

In addition to Hemingway’s son Jack, nicknamed “Bumby,” to whom GertrudeandAlice were godmothers,  other children play prominent roles in their lives. (Alice attended Jack’s wedding in Paris in 1949 and met Julia Child at the ceremony.)

As a young woman while Gertrude was studying medicine, she delivered babies in the African-American neighborhood of Baltimore. Around the same time, Alice was raising her brother Clarence who was eleven years old when their mother died.

Allan, the son of Gertrude’s brother Michael, spent lots of time with GertrudeandAlice while he and his parents lived in Paris and as a child served as the model for a number of Picasso drawings and paintings. An avid letter writer, Gertrude also kept in touch with numerous nieces, nephews and cousins. I have never been able to determine how much contact Alice had with her only nephew, Teddy.

During their studies at the Gurdjieff school outside of Paris in the 1920s, Fritz and Tom Peters, the two young nephews of Margaret Anderson (the publisher of THE LITTLE REVIEW along with Jane Heap), were invited to rue de Fleurus. Gertrude planned an extensive itinerary to introduce the boys to the highlights of Paris, while Alice introduced them to her culinary skills including an authentic American Thanksgiving dinner. (Fritz Peters recalled these visits in his book BOYHOOD WITH GURDJIEFF and I am completing a children’s picture book about these adventures with illustrations by Tom Hachtman called GERTRUDE AND ALICE AND FRITZ AND TOM.)

In 1939, Stein’s first children’s book THE WORLD IS ROUND was published. The main character Rose is  based on a young girl that GertrudeandAlice knew in the village of Bilignin where they vacationed. The American edition was illustrated by Clement Hurd who would later illustrate the children’s classics GOODNIGHT MOON and THE RUNAWAY BUNNY.  (A British edition contains drawings by Sir Francis Rose.) Stein also wrote plays for the children of the village often performed with costumes designed by Pierre Balmain, before he began his haute couture career.

Another book for children THE GERTRUDE STEIN FIRST READER AND THREE PLAYS was published several years later written in the style of the 19th century primers. According to GertrudeandAlice’s close friend  Carl Van Vechten, who had urged her to write the book,  it was to introduce young readers to Stein’s writing in a way that would make them fans for life!

COPYRIGHT HANS GALLAS ©2009