The Journal Times Online - Racine, Wisconsin

Text (c) Mark Hertzberg

    The latest DVD about Frank Lloyd Wright is an oral history by his grandson, Brandoch Peters. Peters’ parents were architect William Wesley (Wes) Peters and Svetlana Hinzenburg, Wright’s adopted daughter from Olgivanna Lazovich Wright’s previous marriage. The Wrights helped raise Brandoch after Svetlana and his brother, Daniel, were killed in an automobile accident at Taliesin in 1946, when Brandoch was four.   

 

    Brandoch’s recollections are on the 90 minute presentation “Frank Lloyd Wright and his Inner Circle - A Grandson’s View,” produced by Bob Leff of Video Art Productions. Brandoch likens the countless books and films about Wright to “Rashomon,” the Japanese film in which four people give different interpretations of a terrible crime they witnessed. “I was there, and I know what happened. Others write about things they didn’t see happen.”

    The film is filled with a wonderful variety of still photos and movies of the family and of Wright. Brandoch, who is now 67, talks about John Hill, Jack Howe, and Gene Masselink - all key people at Taliesin - as well as about his own family. “The multifarious talents available to my grandfather enabled him to go on, enabled him to make these designs...they came as very young men, and they never left.”  He says that Howe, the best known draftsman at Taliesin, “could do what would take a person three days to do, in about three hours.”

    He tells how his father, a gifted mathematician, who was enrolled at MIT, came to Madison with his family when his sister enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in 1932. Wes took a train to Spring Green, hoping to meet Wright. He walked three miles to Taliesin, and then walked the hills around the house, after being told Wright would see him in three hours. Wes was smitten, and never returned to MIT. He is considered the first apprentice in the Taliesin Fellowship.

    His engineering skills were key to much of Wright’s success. Wes, whose father was a newspaper editor in Evansville, Indiana, wrote the check that saved Taliesin when Wright was about to lose his home to creditors. He headed Taliesin Associated Architects after Wright’s death in April, 1959.

    Brandoch speaks with admiration and love for the Wrights. He infers that common criticisms of his grandparents, including Mr. Wright’s reported propensity to ignore his debts, are urban legends, “He is described as a non-paying man, but those stories are generally not true. If he had done such a stupid thing in Spring Green, they would have come after him with pitchforks.”  Alas, this grandson’s loving memory does not square with the facts that, among countless other debts, Wright never paid back the thousands of dollars he borrowed over many years from Darwin D. Martin, his patron in Buffalo, New York, much less any of the money his own father put up to save Taliesin.

    Brandoch also has loving memories of Olgivanna, his often-maligned grandmother.  People noticed quickly that  “she had two very intense eyes.” She was intelligent, “bright enough to challenge him (Wright) at any level.”  She was, in short, “a most amazing person.”  He strongly disputes the assertions that Olgivanna undermined Wright with her devotion to the mystic Gurdjieff, as some former apprentices insist. “She is painted as a Byzantine person. She was sometimes that way, but she did not just sit back and plot to take over from my grandfather. I don't think she did that. She was very human, she was so charming, and very sincere in that charm.”

    She was influential, not divisive, he asserts. She was “so responsible for the entire running of the Foundation. She developed the running of the kitchen. She developed the system of work at Taliesin.” It was “not a commune, but a sense of doing the work to help the whole place along. People were pulled from the drafting room and put to washing pots and pans. The whole system worked like a well oiled machine” run by a lot of very combustible people.”

    Some former apprentices, including Curtis Besinger and John Geiger would disagree. Both became disillusioned and disappointed as they watched Taliesin split into two camps in the 1950s, one more devoted to Mr. Wright and the study of architecture, and the other, arguably, more devoted to Mrs. Wright and the study of Gurdjieff.

    Wright’s contempt for ideas that were not in accord with his own is legendary. So are stories about the couple’s anger. Still, Brandoch says that both taught him not to hate. “One of the greatest things she told me was never to hate anybody...it takes too much energy.” Wright, says Brandoch, “never lost his cool in tense situations.” He continues, “He never really hated anybody, got angry, got upset, but never really hated anybody.” He admittedly did not take criticism well. “It was hard to tell Wright, you're wrong.”

    Brandoch credits the Nash automobile company for Wright’s iconic color, Cherokee red. Wright had been looking for a certain shade of red that he could imagine, but had never seen. Brandoch says that Wright was walking on Central Avenue in Phoenix with Gene Masselink, an apprentice and his secretary, when he spotted a car that was painted that very shade of red. “There it is! There it is!” Wright exclaimed. He told Masselink to chase the car, to find out the particulars about the color. The car turned into a Nash dealership, where Masselink learned that it was painted a factory color, “Cherokee red.”

    Brandoch refers to the Nash “Rambler” car. This has become a familiar frame of reference for Nash cars, but for the sake of accuracy, it must be noted that the “Rambler” line of cars did not become part of the Nash brand until 1950, years after Wright starting using Cherokee red. Likewise, the color Nash publicity photo used in this segment is from the 1950s. Members of the Nash Car Club of America say that the color may have been a spin-off of Nash’s Cornelian Maroon, which dates to at least 1932.

   Paul Ringstrom has written me about two additional errors which he noticed.  "When talking about Jack Howe's drawings they showed Wasmuth drawings and when talking about Wes Peter's plans for the Princess of Iran they showed the living room of the Marilyn Monroe House."

    Brandoch was interviewed over several days, at different locations. He clearly relishes the opportunity to tell his stories about life at Taliesin. The content of the film is interesting, but technically it is not as polished as many other Wright documentaries. The bright background in the first chapters is distracting, as are some of the zooms, and  the off-center framing of Brandoch when he is interviewed at the Unitarian Meeting House in Shorewood.

    Brandoch admires Wright’s tenacity. “People, I think, don't give him enough credit for plowing ahead [after the tragedies in his life, including the accident which killed Svetlana and Daniel].

    “To understand him, don't read biographies. Read his books and see his buildings... An Autobiography is what I always tell people to read. Go and look at his buildings. Taliesin, and to a lesser extent, Hillside, are really Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, that's where he lived. The living room at Taliesin, if you can't appreciate Frank Lloyd Wright there, you won't appreciate him anywhere.”

    Leff says he became interested in Brandoch’s story after reading Susan Lampert Smith’s profile of Brandoch Peters in the Wisconsin State Journal. “I saw it there on the front page, and wondered if it can be my next film. I’ve always loved Frank Lloyd Wright’s work. This is way I saw about making a movie about him.’

    Leff said he had to “audition” for Brandoch, who still lives at Taliesin. “He invited me to lunch with him and his buddies in Spring Green.” He passed his test, and filmed the interviews in June, 2006. This is his fifth commercial film. All have Wisconsin themes: two are about the history of muskie fishing in northern Wisconsin; one is about Al Capone’s and John Dillinger’s “gangster holidays” in northern Wisconsin; and one is about the Evermor Sculpture Park near Baraboo.

Frank Lloyd Wight and his Inner Circle - A Grandson’s View
91 minutes. $25 + shipping
Video Art Productions, P.O. Box 44, McFarland, WI 53558
vapbob@juno.com

Links:
Susan Lampert Smith’s profile of Brandoch Peters:
http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/2003/12/14/news/zzsmith.txt
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