Jubilee Prosperity

Ayn Rand was born in Russia in 1905, named Alyssa Rosenbaum.

Legend has it that she took her pen name Ayn from a Finnish philosopher, and the name Rand from the brand of her typewriter.

Recently it has been suggested that Ayn Rand may be a derivative from the Cyrillic spelling of her original name.

The similar RAND Institute name was derived from Research And Development, something with which Ayn Rand was quite familiar.

Her father was a pharmacist. She was an eyewitness to the Russian revolutions, and did not like them. She was in her father’s drugstore when the Bolsheviks broke in and confiscated it.

She majored in history and minored in philosophy at the University of Leningrad. She was enamored of America and Hollywood, aspiring to become a screenwriter.

In 1926, using the subterfuge that she was going on a visit, she escaped to Chicago, and lived there with relatives for six months. It is reported that they were not unhappy to see her depart for California.

In storybook fashion, she met Cecil B. DeMille at the studio gate, and got a job as an extra.

She met and married another extra on the set of King of Kings, Frank O’Connor.

He had a very aristocratic appearance, but was nowhere near her equal in intellect. She kept tight control over him, but loved him very deeply – in her own way – and had a dependency on his presence.

She worked as a waitress and junior screenwriter at first, and at one time headed RKO’s wardrobe department, a job she disliked.

The anticommunist views in her writing in the 1930s made her about as popular with publishers, and Hollywood critics and film-makers, as the Hollywood leftists would become, in turn, with the House Un-American Activities Committee, in the 1950s.

Because of this, her first publishing success was in Europe, rather than here.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 8:50 am and is filed under Prosperity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.