Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Author, painter, editor, and traveller.
On the island
Eight records
Pictures at an ExhibitionFavourite
Gina Bachauer was someone I greatly, greatly, greatly loved. ... And she chose Mazorski's paintings in an exhibition as a kind of tribute to me, because, as you know, I also paint. And I would want the record because It would bring humor to my island, because I would remember years and years and years of storytelling.
I've chosen because of the great, great love I had for a very special person who died recently, Princess Grace. I felt like a sister to her and I think in fact she thought of me as one. ... And then I looked at Grace and said, And now will you sing for them? And she sang True Love, and neither the nuns nor I will ever forget that.
the reason why I chose the flight of the condor is that it reminded me of a stage in my youth when I was so anxious to fly myself like a bird, like that condor. ... eventually I became a pilot. I do love the air, I do fly, and therefore the image of that beautiful bird flying was very, very moving and telling to me.
Cyril Smith and Phyllis Sellick
when that night I found myself the guest of honor with a concert dedicated to me and my work, Tears fell, and I will never forget it, and I do not want ever to forget it, and so I do indeed have to have the carnival of animals.
Spanish Dance No. 5 (Andaluza)
I'm so fond of my home in Spain, and I'd have to have something that would bring Spain to that remote island. And Segobia is a man who could do it.
I'd like to go back to Brazil for a minute or two because I spent a lot of my life there. ... And to do that, I'm going to suggest a piece of music that almost everyone else on earth must know and love, which is a song written by Jobine. And it's called Iponema.
Montserrat Caballé and Placido Domingo
I'd have to have opera with me on my island because it's a habit of going to the opera with is a part of my life. ... The music would evoke those two, and I would like to keep that memory alive for a very long time.
New York Philharmonic and the Camerata Singers
the thing which makes the event so memorable, apart from the physical attributes of being in the Vatican, in this immense, beautiful place with music resounding, was the fact that the Pope, who was seated in his throne just before the podium when the concert was over, raised his arms to the sky. and said, mister Bernstein, may I thank you for making my church into a United Nations.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:38How well could you endure isolation and loneliness?
There's no way I could possibly survive. No way, because I hate being alone.
Presenter asks
3:41As a youngster, what did you want to be?
A writer.
Presenter asks
4:31How did you start to sell your writing?
Well, I began, as in so many aspects of my life, in a very unorthodox fashion. I wanted so much to be a columnist. ... And I went to the leading newspaper editor in New York City ... Lee Woods ... And brought with him some columns I'd written which I hoped he would believe had run in a paper somewhere. ... I got a friend who had a little printing establishment to do them secretly for me. ... Months later he told me that I never fooled him for a moment, but that he thought that audacity might pay off ... and I became a columnist
Presenter asks
6:02Had you got a lot of nerve? Could you crash in to try and see important people that you had no introduction to?
The keepsakes
The luxury
a box of paints and some board to paint on
the greatest luxury on earth would be a box of paints.
Well, I've never used or thought about the word crash. I found a way to be allowed in Pleasantly, I somehow managed to find somebody who knew the person I wanted. I never crashed.
Presenter asks
14:12What did all these changes [to Look magazine] do to the circulation?
Well, pretty astronomic things. Whilst I was still there, the circulation went from a million to about five. And after I left, showing how little they really needed me by then, it went to seven.
Presenter asks
33:00Could you look after yourself on a desert island? Could you turn the natural resources to your advantage?
In no way. ... I'm just not very adept with my hands. I can paint and I can write and I can do the things which have to do with minute detail. But the largest structure, the business of living protected and well under the stars, I could never do.
“I think I was terribly young when I began to write secretly every day, trying to recall some incident that affected my sight and mind the day before. ... But I wrote them, short, to the point they became part of my memory, and I did that secretly, never telling anyone.”
“When I came to live in England I realized that vanity was pretty stupid. And I lost my vanity and began to paint, realizing that it really didn't matter how.”
“I must not know what I'm going to paint. I must not know. 'Cause there'd be no fun in it. I'd just sit there and begin.”