Oral History Interview with Edith Wyle, 1993 March 9-September 7
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Oral history interview with Edith Wyle, 1993 March 9-September 7 Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Interview EW: EDITH WYLE SE: SHARON EMANUELLI SE: This is an interview for the Archives of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution. The interview is with Edith R. Wyle, on March 9th, Tuesday, 1993, at Mrs. Wyle's home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles. The interviewer is Sharon K. Emanuelli. This is Tape 1, Side A. Okay, Edith, we're going to start talking about your early family background. EW: Okay. SE: What's your birth date and place of birth? EW: Place of birth, San Francisco. Birth date, are you ready for this? April 21st, 1918-though next to Beatrice [Wood-Ed.] that doesn't seem so old. SE: No, she's having her 100th birthday, isn't she? EW: Right. SE: Tell me about your grandparents. I guess it's your maternal grandparents that are especially interesting? EW: No, they all were. I mean, if you'd call that interesting. They were all anarchists. They came from Russia. SE: Together? All together? EW: No, but they knew each other. There was a group of Russians-Lithuanians and Russians-who were all revolutionaries that came over here from Russia, and they considered themselves intellectuals and they really were self-educated, but they were very learned. Some very famous people came out of that group in terms of artists and playwrights, different kinds of people. Musicians, many musicians. SE: Do you remember any of those names? EW: Well, Arthur Schwartz comes to mind, and he was a motion picture director, producer, wasn't he? SE: I don't really know. EW: Sidney Howard was another one. These are both in the motion picture world. I know they were out of that group. I'm trying to think of the. Oh, dear. I'm having trouble with names lately, so I can't give you the names of some of them. SE: When did they come? EW: Oh, let's see, it must have been in the late 1800s [1880s?]. My mother was born in 1860, so it was before that, because she was born in America, and my two aunts, her sisters, were born over there, and then my father's parents also came around the same time. And they formed these Brodsva groups in New York, and they used to get together and read books, and sing songs for each other, play the piano for each other, violin, all the instruments, and it sounded like they had a marvelous time. And most of them were anarchists and had revolutionary discussions. And there were really two kinds of anarchists. There were the kinds that were the bomb throwers, and the ones who really just advocated changing things and doing away with legalities, but were not the bomb throwers. At least I can say that my half of the family were not the bomb throwers. SE: How did they feel about the United States? They just thought there were too many laws? EW: No, this was mostly a reaction to Russia, of course, but they carried that over to here, and they didn't believe in anything like legalized marriage. They were against that, and so they lived together as common-law husbands and wives, and I must say that they stuck together more than any contemporary people you can think about, except that there were love affairs going on, and I know that my grandmother on the paternal side was very much in love with. Oh, god, what's his name now? Alexander Berkman. But anyhow he was supposed to kill Carnegie. And he missed. He planned to shoot him. Carnegie was gone, but Frick was there, and he wounded him. SE: Was Berkman a Russian also? EW: He was Russian, but he was upper class, and he was not a Jew, which my grandparents all were. However, they were also totally nonreligious. They didn't believe in organized religion, although I know that they started out by having to go to synagogue. I mean they lived in ghettos, so. SE: As children they were raised religiously. EW: Yes, right, they had to. I've heard stories about my grandfather on the maternal side. I heard most of these things from my mother. My father, whose family life I thought was even more interesting, didn't talk much, and I wish I'd gotten more information from him. But I know that one of the most famous anarchists, Johann Most, was on his side of the family. He did throw a bomb, I think. [chuckles] I'm not sure. SE: Here or in Russia? EW: Here, back East, and I remember when I was in high school taking a course in civics we had to write papers on well-known people in America and deliver them. Somebody chose Johann Most for his paper, and when I heard that I sat up with such pride thinking, "Gee, that's my great uncle." He then began describing him as the worst criminal that ever lived. [laughter] So I did not own up to being related in any way, although I was not a blood relative anyhow. [laughs] SE: You don't think you were a blood relative? EW: Well, it's so mixed up when you don't have legal marriages. I might have been; I don't know. I really don't. Anyhow, music was something that meant a great deal to my grandparents. SE: Can you give me their names? EW: My mother's mother was named Edith-after whom I was named-or Yudif, as they call her in Russian. And her husband's name was Nathan Robinovitch, and I was named Edith after my grandmother and Natalie after my grandfather. And the other grandparents were. SE: Do you know their last name? EW: Rubin. Well, it was Robinovich. SE: Both of them? EW: They went by the same name. Sorry. I don't know her maiden name. Robinovitch is all I know. On the paternal side, my grandmother's name was Anna and Minken was her maiden name. And they were called Rovinsky. But when he arrived at Ellis Island he changed it to Robinson to be American. SE: What was his first name? EW: Samuel. And an interesting side of that is that my father, Louis, when he became a musician, changed it back to Rovinsky, because it was a better name for a musician. But when he gave that up and became a dentist he changed it back to Robinson. SE: So your grandparents also were musicians? EW: No, they weren't musicians at all. They just loved music. They loved it. And it was so much a part of their lives that my mother has told me that her father insisted that she and her sister study instruments. My aunt Elena had to study the violin, and she was terrible at it apparently, according to my mother. And my mother, who was the youngest, studied the piano and was exceptional from the start. So my aunt Elena studied violin with the same teacher that my father studied with in New York. And my mother's father used to say, "Why can't you play like Louis does?" That's my father's name. He drove her crazy till he finally let her stop. SE: And that's how they met? EW: Well, they knew each other as small children. SE: Do you remember their teacher? Was he of any consequence? EW: Not that one, no, I don't. I wish I knew a lot more about all that, because I've been wanting to write their memoirs for the rest of our family. I've got all the available papers, but nothing really interesting has come out of it. SE: So your parents were then both musicians? EW: My parents became musicians. My mother. Well, my mother was orphaned by the time she was ten. Both her parents died of pulmonary diseases. My mother was orphaned at ten, and I lost my grandparent on the paternal side by the time I was ten. Okay. I'd better stick with the grandmother on the maternal side to begin with. Mother's parents had started. The father started a dairy, as he called it, which was a shop in New York City, and Mother loved to reminisce about how immaculately clean it always was and how he was. He was a hard taskmaster apparently, but she adored him. He was going blind. She read all the classics to him, all the Russian classics to him every night. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, etc. This at the age of eight years. She was gorgeous. She was exquisite-a very beautiful child, and the pampered baby of the family. She had piano lessons. Nathan had saved enough money, when he knew he was going to die, that was put aside for the three girls, and they made an arrangement with another family that was in this group (which I think was called a Brodsva). The people were the Siebel family, S-i-e-b-e-l. They were close friends, and they planned to take the three children and the trust fund would help to support them, and also help maintain the Siebel family, so the three girls unfortunately had to move in with them.