Wartime and Two Women named Grace

THE JOHN O'HARA SOCIETY

On July 13, 1940, publication of "A New Career." The New Yorker. Pal Joey.

By the business we are doing these nites one wd never be let to suspect that there is a world conflagration going on but nevertheless such is the case . . .
My boss is known by the name Harry Bonbon which is a mob nickname he got from he mobsters not because of him liking chocolate bob-bon candy but his name was Burnbaum and they had a mobster with an impedima in his speech and the closest he could come to the name was bonbon. That is one vertion . . . So these Monday nites he just sits there chewing on the end of his cigar . . . and he counts the empties and then I see him looking around and he will call a headwaiter and point to some lights and say "Save that" and the headwaiter will have to go out and turn off the light. He keeps doing that until the time it gets to be 12 of half past the place is like a black out over in France.
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From a July 13, 1942 letter to actor and close Hollywood friend Gilbert Roland:

It's strange down here now. I've been coming to Quogue for five years. This is my sixth summer. You're not allowed to go on the beach at night; only the parking lights of your car are permitted in the village and along the dune road. Windows on the ocean side of the houses are blacked out, and if you forget about it you are reminded by the soldiers. The beach is patrolled 24 hours a day, as it should be, and field telephone line are strung along the sand at the Beach Club.
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From a July 13, 1955 letter to his friend Pat Outerbridge:

The current dreamland is a possible sale of A Rage to Live with the possibility of Grace Kelly playing . . . Grace! The deal is on the slow burner.

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