I. biography. Ayn Rand was born Alice Rosenbaum on February 2, 1905

I.  BIOGRAPHY

Ayn Rand was born Alice Rosenbaum on February 2, 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russia.3 By her first birthday the revolution had been sup-pressed with Czar Nicholas selling four million acres of land to the peasants. Alice’s father was a chemist who owned his own shop. There were few openings for Jews in the University so when a position for a Jew opened in the chemistry department Rand’s father took it. The family lived in a comfortable apartment with her mother spending a good deal of her time organizing formal banquets. The family was privileged enough to spend summer holidays in the Crimea. The Rosenbaums were Jewish by birth but religion had little meaning or place in their family. With a domineering mother and a soft-spoken father, Alice remembered that love and admiration were purchased by the exhibited qualities of her mind. Alice learned to read before attending school and soon became a voracious reader. While vacationing in London in 1914 at the age of nine, Alice decided that she would become a writer, an ambition from which she never wavered. At a young age she saw problems with Communism, she saw living for the state as wrong. She would be dramatically affected at seeing her father’s chemist shop become nationalized.

Alice remembered a change in the method of her thinking at the age of twelve - she began “thinking in principles.” At this time she discovered the works of Victor Hugo and became fascinated with his sense of life. It was also noted that she was able to break down complex ideas into easily graspable parts. The family had moved to the Crimea to seek safe haven in 1918 and in her last two years of high school there, Alice took classes in American history learning about the Declaration of Independence and the American form of government. Now she realized that the stories she had planned to write in Russian would have to be written in English; America would become her adopted country.

In 1921 Alice entered the University of Petrograd to obtain a degree in history. She did not choose literature because she did not want to read writers who bored her and whom she despised; neither did she 

choose philosophy because she was convinced that it would be “mystical chaos.”4 At the university she was introduced to the philosophy of Nietzsche whom she admired for his reverence of the heroic man, individualism and his contempt of altruism. However, she was bothered by his defense of psychological determinism, his equivocal use of the issue of power, and especially his stated position of anti-reason. Her studies were threatened by a “purge” of the university of any undesirables to the Communist Party, but a visit by British team of scientists protested and her studies were saved. This scenario would later be played out in her novel We the Living.

In 1925 the Rosenbaum family received correspondence from relatives in Chicago. Alice knew that this was her chance to get to America. Shortly before this she had enrolled in a school in Petrograd to study for a career in Russian movies; she also found a teacher of English. In January, 1926 before she embarked for America a family friend whispered to her, “tell them that Russia is a huge cemetery and that we are all dying slowly.”5 Alice wanted a new name as she entered America: disembarking from the ship she chose Ayn (rhymes with “mine”), the name of a Finnish writer whose work she had not read but whose name she liked.6 Later in Chicago she would change her last name to Rand, after the Remington-Rand typewriter she carried with her from Russia.

Ayn Rand’s relatives in Chicago described her as thoughtless, from choosing the movies they would all see to typing all night to running the water endlessly in the bath (a strange habit carried over from Russia, hoping to rid the water of germs she would keep it running. She was also known to use scalding water to wash her dishes later).7 Later in life Rand was always appreciative of what her relatives had done for her, but she found that she had very little in common with them. They were interested in their Judaism and held values that Rand found to be anti-intellectual; she also could not appreciate their sense of “family” because it was a condition in life not chosen by the individual.

In mid 1926, with a letter from her aunt who worked for a Chicago movie director, Rand set off for Hollywood to become a screenwriter. Coincidence placed her on a street corner where she saw Cecile B. DeMille who noticed her intense stare and invited her to view some shootings. He would later offer her a job as an extra.

On the set of “The King of Kings” Rand tripped Frank O’Connor whom she had spotted on a bus and to whom she was attracted because of his face. During their courtship Rand was impressed at this strong silent man who shared her values. When the DeMille Studios closed, 

she was forced to work as a waitress, which she did outside Los Angeles so that O’Connor would not see her.

In 1929, Ayn Rand married Frank O’Connor. Several friends remarked that the marriage was prompted by her expiring visa. O’Connor continued to dabble with acting jobs while Rand got a job working in the wardrobe department at RKO movie studios. While she loathed the work, the money was a godsend. During this time Rand continued work on her writing.

In 1935 Rand went to New York with O’Connor to produce her play Night of January 16th. In 1940, with $700 left to their names she went to work on Wendell Wilkie’s presidential campaign. Rand saw Wilkie as the candidate who embraced her philosophy but she was soon to be disappointed by his political compromises. Although she never enjoyed public speaking, she took the stage at the Gloria Swanson Theatre on 14th Street to answer questions about Wendell Wilkie. Through these political activities she met many prominent conservatives. Isabel “Pat” Paterson, at the time a columnist for the New York Herald Tribune and later the author of The God of the Machine, was to be Rand’s first and last important friendship with a contemporary. In a strange twist it was Paterson the guru and Rand the willing student. Rand did have serious differences with Paterson, who always maintained an element of religion in her writing, to which Rand responded that religion is the first enemy of the ability to think. Several of Rand’s difficult personality traits were becoming quite apparent by this time. Her inflated sense of self-respon-sibility left her astonished at friends’ offers to help. Friends were afraid that help would be viewed by Rand as a pitying insult to her indepen-dent spirit. Later, Rand would claim that she achieved all her successes on her own, obviously forgetting the generosity and breaks extended to her. She also became suspicious of humor and voiced contempt at the suggestion that one should be able to laugh at oneself.8

The Fountainhead was published in 1943. Warner Bros, soon offered an unheard of amount of $50,00 for the movie rights. Rand was also called on to write the screenplay for the adaptation. By December 1943 Rand and O’Connor were on their way back to Hollywood. With part of the proceeds from The Fountainhead they invested in a ranch in the San Fernando Valley with a house of steel and glass, fitting for the author of The Fountainhead. It was at the ranch that O’Connor began raising peacocks and growing acres of citrus and flowers for commercial sale. While completing the script for The Fountainhead, Rand was hired by Hal Wallis to write screenplays. 

In 1946 Rand wrote “Screen Guide for America” for the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, an anti-communist organization.9 A friend, Isabel Paterson told Rand that she had a duty to write more fiction. Rand replied, “What if I went on strike?” O’Connor suggested that the theme of all the world’s great thinkers going on strike would make a great novel. Thus was the conception of Atlas Shrugged.

In 1950 Rand received a letter from a young man who would greatly influence her writing as well as the dissemination of her philosophy. Nathan Blumenthal wrote his favorite author with questions concerning The Fountainhead. Rand was so impressed with the insight of his ques-tions that she invited the young man to her home. This meeting was to be the first of many evenings of intellectual discourse. At their next meeting, Nathan asked to bring a friend, a woman whom he would later marry and who would become one of Rand’s closest associates for the next eighteen years, Barbara Weidman. Many young intellectual admirers were soon to follow. Among the group known as “The Collective,” a name facetiously chosen because of its obvious antithetical nature to Rand’s philosophy, were Leonard Peikoff, Joan Mitchell, Alan Greenspan and other friends and family. Rand affectionately called them “the children” or “the class of ’43” (the year The Fountainhead was published). These disciples would popularize Rand’s Objectivist philosophy. When questioned by one of her young followers why she would give so much of her time to them she replied, “The pleasure of dealing with active minds outweighs any differences in our age or knowledge.”10 One of the privileges “The Collective” enjoyed was reading chapters of Atlas Shrugged as they were written.

Nathaniel Branden (as Blumenthal was now known) studied psy-chology at New York University and brought its influence to Rand’s writing. By 1955 the relationship between Rand and Branden had devel-oped into more than a friendship. Both Nathaniel Branden in his memoirs, Judgment Day and Barbara Branden in her biography of Rand, The Passion of Ayn Rand tell of the passionate and loving relationship that developed between Rand and Branden. This relationship was first realized through a platonic and highly intellectual phase, but soon was consummated sexually. To Rand, Branden was the epitome of her heroic characters in looks, epistemology and ethics. At this time both Nathaniel and Barbara Branden had admitted that their marriage was less than ideal. When Rand and Branden confronted their respective spouses for their consent to the affair, according to Barbara Branden, Rand said, 

You know what / am, you know what Nathan is... By the total logic of who we are - by the total logic of what love and sex mean - we had to love each other... It’s not a threat to you, Frank, or to you, Barbara... It’s something separate, apart from both you and from our normal lives... Nathan has always represented the future to me - but now it’s a future that exists in the present... Whatever the two of you may be feeling, I know your intelligence, I know you recognize the rationality of what we feel for each other, and that you hold no value higher than reason... There’s nothing in our feeling that can hurt or threaten either of you... there’s nothing that alters my love for my husband, or Nathan’s love for his wife....H

The affair began during one of the most crucial periods of the writing of Atlas Shrugged, John Galt’s speech, in which Rand explicates the tenets of her philosophy. Branden assisted her in fleshing out the psy-chological aspects. It was during this time that Rand and Branden would apply the term “social metaphysician” to those who had abandoned the universe of reason and facts and lived in the universe of people. This was the psychological interpretation of the second-handers, such as Peter Keating in The Fountainhead. This verdict was meted out occasionally to members of “The Collective” and frequently to outsiders as if it were the diagnosis of cancer. It was reported that Rand and Branden were most vicious in their condemnations and that these purges were often conducted as a trial with Branden the prosecutor.12

By March 1957 Atlas Shrugged was completed and Rand would dedicate it to Frank O’Connor and Nathaniel Branden. It was after the well-expected savage reviews that Rand slipped into a deep depression. It was not that the reviews affected her so, but moreover that there was no one with a public voice that would repudiate these attacks. It was then she must have felt that her association with young intellectuals did not serve her well.

Rand said several times publicly that Nathaniel Branden was qualified to speak for her at any time, he was uniquely qualified to be her intellectual heir.13 For the young man who idolized the mind of Rand, this was the ultimate compliment, but would also become the ultimate and most repressive responsibility. He now had to see Rand through her depression while furthering the cause of Objectivism. He reports that their sexual relationship was suspended by Rand’s choice during this period of depression. Branden suggested the idea of developing a series of lectures that would explain Objectivism and answer the questions of 

the ever-growing number of Rand’s admirers. Rand endorsed this venture hesitantly, not foreseeing commercial success in disseminating such radical ideas. Within two years this idea, beginning under the guise “Nathaniel Branden Lectures,” would be incorporated into the Nathaniel Branden Institute with audio cassettes of these lectures distributed throughout the world. Ayn Rand organizations began springing up on campuses around the country and Leonard Peikoff would give a course on “Objectivism’s theory of Knowledge” in the graduate college of the University of Denver.

When Branden later refused Rand’s request to resume their sexual relationship, she retaliated. Rand publicly repudiated both Nathaniel and Barbara Branden in the May 1968 issue of The Objectivist. She also removed Branden’s name from the dedication page of all future printings of Atlas Shrugged. The schism pitted friend against friend and divided families. Those who took Rand’s side were made to swear their continued loyalty.14 Leonard Peikoff was named Rand’s intellectual heir and would be the executor of her estate after her death. The Nathaniel Branden Institute was closed shortly after the rift.

In 1981, Rand gave her final public talk at the convention of the National Committee for Monetary Reform in New Orleans. Her topic was, “The Sanction of the Victim.” In March of 1982, she died in New York, never recovering from a respiratory illness contracted on her trip to New Orleans.15 Rand’s wake was open to the public. There was a six-foot high floral arrangement in the symbol of the dollar sign, a gold brooch in the shape of a dollar sign was worn at Rand’s neck, and the “tiddlywink” music that she loved so much was playing on the phono-graph.16