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Ayn Rand was a nutter, no question. But she was an interesting nutter, and worth at least a passing glance.

She was a Russian Jew, born Alice Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg in 1905. Her father owned a drugstore and her family suffered the usual petty humiliations incident to being Jews in czarist Russia. Then in 1917 they became refugees for a while, hiding out in the Ukraine and hoping that the Whites would win. The Whites didn't, and the Rosenbaums were forced into a pathetically hand-to-mouth existence, living in a flat without electricity or running water while bribing petty officials to ignore their presence.

Alice got out more or less by a fluke, emigrating to the US in (IIRC) 1927. She was an illegal immigrant (got in by lying on her visa application -- claimed, among other things, that she a fiancee back in Leningrad) who had abandoned her family to oppression and eventual death (at least one biographer claims that her hatred of "sentimentality" arose out of her guilt at leaving her parents and sisters behind), but she had brains and guts and a destination: Hollywood.

Yes, like many Eastern European Jews, Alice was magnetically attracted to the Land Where Dreams Come True. She moved to L.A., changed her name (which is why "Ayn" rhymes with "mine" -- she made it up), got a job as an extra in a Cecil B. DeMille epic, and started writing scripts. After a year or two she completed the illegal-immigrant pattern by marrying a US citizen. She struggled along for a decade or so until _The Fountainhead_ became a surprise word-of-mouth bestseller. After that she codified the silly philosophy of Objectivism, elevated herself to guru status, made a million dollars and never looked back. She lived to a cranky old age, dying in 1982.

Okay, so: WI she'd done something else? I confess I have a bias here: I have a sneaking admiration for Rand, even though I think Objectivism is, well, very very very silly (someone once described it as "a philosophy designed to be irresistible to second-rate minds," or some such). She was weird and she was bitchy and she was utterly selfish, but she was also smart and tough and funny and interesting, and she deserved better than to end up worshipped as a goddess by generations of sexually frustrated college sophomores.

So I'd sort of like to give her a real job.

Some thoughts:

1) Rand the actress. Possible! She actually worked as an extra for a while. She wasn't bad looking (although, to be honest, she wasn't that great looking either). She would have had to lose her thick accent (much stronger than Garbo's), but this is easy enough. She'd never be a star, but it's possible to imagine her carving out a niche role -- the mad scientist's female assistant who gets killed at the end of the second reel, type of thing.

Still, this one isn't too interesting. So how about:

2) Rand the mogul. Hey, there's *plenty* of precedent for poor, eccentric Eastern European Jews making a gajillion bucks in Hollywood.

I doubt that mogul-Rand would have invented Objectivism (too busy making movies) but she would still have been a rabid anti-Communist, anti-Socialist, and anti-New Dealer. Be fun to watch her (the only female mogul) making war films in the '40s, or cooperating with McCarthy and the HUAC in the '50s. And she'd exert real influence... both directly through political contributions, and indirectly through the sorts of films that she made. Arguably she'd have more effect this way than she did OTL. Bet she'd get along great with Hearst.

3) Rand goes to Los Alamos. Okay, this one is a stretch. AFAIK young Alice had no formal training in science. But she was still pretty young when she arrived in the US. IIRC she lived in Chicago for a little while in 1927-8. She might perhaps have taken a job at the University of Chicago (already a center for atomic physics) and gotten drawn in... started taking courses, gotten involved with the physicists... she had the raw brainpower. And, again, there is no shortage of precedent; half the physicists at Los Alamos were Eastern Europeans and/or Jews. I don't think Rand would have been a major player, but she would have attracted attention as a woman in a male-dominated field. And can't you just imagine her sitting next to Edward Teller at the H-Bomb hearings? "When you see a mushroom cloud, young person, you should fall down on your knees..."

4) Mrs. Alice ________. Maybe this is a bit of a copout, but hey, marryiage is one traditional path of upward mobility for a bright, ambitious young immigrant girl. In the relevant period (1927-35), who would be an eligible bachelor to match up with her? Any famous politician, scientist, author, or whatever? Remember that this person must be someone who might, concievably, marry a penniless (though spunky) immigrant Jew. So Edward VIII is right out.

There *is* a young sportscaster from Illinois named "Dutch" who will arrive in Hollywood near the end of this period. He's three or four years younger than Rand, but his later history shows him happily married to a strong-minded woman. And she wouldn't have to change her initials... the subsequent changes to young Dutch's careers, in acting and politics, would be interesting.

Any other suggestions?

(Note to our Objectivist comrades: if you want to respond, it may help if you think of this post as a test of, well, your objectivity. Can you respond with cool logic, as Rand would have wanted you to, or will you be dragged down by sentimentality and unreason...?)


Doug M.
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