| | Phil wrote:
"I remember reading somewhere that it was the working class audiences in the 30's? 40's? who responded most enthusiastically to one of Rand' early offerings, either the Fountainhead movie or the Night of January 16th play. If anyone remembers this report or where it is from, please enlighten us... "
It wasn't a story about responses to her writings. The story was about her working for the Willkie campaign and talking to "people on the street." She said that the working class audiences were the ones who most readily grasped what she was saying. I believe the story is recounted in *Who Is Ayn Rand*, if you have that. And it's in *The Passion of AR*, p. 161-2:
(I'm including a longer quote than is strictly necessary to document the answer to Phil's question. There's something in the paragraph after that part which
I thought would be interesting.)
EXCERPT--
"As Ayn watched the campaign collapsing into ruins, she was given a new assignment by the Willkie Clubs--added to her 'intellectual ammunition' work-- which was an enormous source of pelasure to her. She had never enjoyed--and never would enjoy--formal public speaking; the few talks she had given following the publication of *We the Living* were done as a dutiful, nervous chore. But now she began enthusiastically addressing assorted, often vocally hostile, groups on steet corners, in cafes, in parks, wherever she could find people who wanted to listen and question. Once, a heckler demanded: 'Who the hell are you to talk about America? You're a foreigner!' Calmly, she answered: 'That's right. I *chose* to be an American. What did *you* do, besides having been born?' The crowd laughed and applauded--and the heckler was silent.
"The Gloria Swanson Theater on Fourteenth Street, near Union Square, a strongly pro-Roosevelt district, was showing Willkie campaign movies and had requested speakers to answer the audiences' questions. Seven times a day for two weeks, Ayn's shyness vanishing as it always did in the presence of eager, questioning minds, she happily answered questions from the stage of the theater. The experience further confirmed her in her respect for the American public, in her conviction that the so-called 'common man' is singularly *un*common. The most intelligent and rational questions she heard anywhere were asked by the audiences from the working-class area of the theater.
"She was delighted, too, by her newly discovered ability to make complex political issues instantly clear and to establish communication even with antagonistic audiences--and she found that she loved being in the thick of an intellectual battle. A friend from the Willkie Clubs sat in the audience to see the severe, cerebral Ayn Rand sparkling on that Fourteenth Street stage as the power of her words and the power of her personality held her audience entranced. Her ability to make complex issues effortlessly intelligible, to open wide the gates to the realm of ideas for even the most modest of intelligences, was newly discovered by Ayn, but had always been clearly perceived by those who knew her. It was a talent that was an essential part of the spell she was progressively to weave as the years passed, bringing even the most antagonistic audiences to their feet in thunderous applause for a woman--and a philosophy--they had been prepared to dislike. It was a talent that was to reach a towering height--a talent for finding the most devastating arguments for her case, for presenting her arguments with stunning clarity and precision--a charismatic power to convince."
END EXCERPT -
Those of us who heard her speak at the Ford Hall Forum before the days when the audience there was entirely comprised of her admirers (or, as I did, at McCormack Place in Chicago in 1963) would have seen in action what's being described here regarding her ability to end up receiving applause even from those in the audience who started out disposed against her.
Ellen
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