Speaker 1: All right, friends. In the last episode, we went back
Speaker 1: in time to really understand where Olgavana Lloyd Wright came from,
Speaker 1: the intentional community she and her husband created, and the
Speaker 1: power she now holds over everyone there, including set Lana.
Speaker 1: But our newly wed spet Lana doesn't know what we know.
Speaker 1: She's simply overjoyed to be married once again, to have
Speaker 1: a husband she can't keep her hands off of, and
Speaker 1: a beautiful life ahead of her in the desert. She
Speaker 1: doesn't know that Tally Essen is floundering financially, or that
Speaker 1: her new husband, Wes, who'd inherited a newspaper fortune, was
Speaker 1: often the one to bail them out, but he'd spent
Speaker 1: what he had and then some. She doesn't know that
Speaker 1: when all seventy five fellows kiss her on her wedding day,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just an act of goodwill or super sexy.
Speaker 1: It was because in marrying Wes, she had married into
Speaker 1: this whole extended family. And she doesn't know that Olga
Speaker 1: Vanna's grasp on Wes is more powerful than hers can
Speaker 1: ever be. So given all of this, does West really
Speaker 1: love stet Lana or is he just doing as he's told?
Speaker 1: Could the fellowship be a warm, welcoming new home for
Speaker 1: our Russian defector. Or is this whole thing a Cohn
Speaker 1: cooked up by Olgavana to bring in some publicity and
Speaker 1: some cash. What the hell has fet Lana gotten herself into.
Speaker 1: My name is Dan Catroser, and this is Svetlana stet Lana.
Speaker 1: You wake up in the morning, you live your day,
Speaker 1: and then you do it tomorrow, and over and over
Speaker 1: again and over again and over Act one. Sorry not sorry, Okay,
Speaker 1: dear listeners, It's time for a brief d anecdote. I've
Speaker 1: been keeping something from you. Remember how I went to Scottsdale,
Speaker 1: the Valley of the Sun. Well, it was to solve
Speaker 1: a problem. I'd been digging into archives, conducting interviews, reading
Speaker 1: and rereading spet Lana's memoirs and letters, and it felt
Speaker 1: like speed Lana, the real, complex, multidimensional person was coming
Speaker 1: into focus. But everyone else in her orbit they were
Speaker 1: still feeling like charcatures, dramatic archetypes. I couldn't seem to shake.
Speaker 1: If spent Lana was my hero, didn't that make Olgavana
Speaker 1: my villain West Prince slightly less than charming? Tally Essen
Speaker 1: the Tower my princess was trapped in Of course, I
Speaker 1: knew that wasn't the case, and that if I wanted
Speaker 1: to understand what really happened to spet Lana and why,
Speaker 1: I'd need to get to know tally Esen and the
Speaker 1: people that lived there in a different way. So I
Speaker 1: had planned a trip to Arizona to meet tally es
Speaker 1: and West's present day custodians and some of the older
Speaker 1: residents who still lived there. I wanted a wider view
Speaker 1: of the world they created. But after I had booked
Speaker 1: my plane ticket and some interviews, they found me talking
Speaker 1: about the play in a Q and a online Why
Speaker 1: Slana Aliueva, Well, she was a woman that had great passion,
Speaker 1: and she was a writer and determined to have her
Speaker 1: own voice outside of the shadow of her father, who
Speaker 1: winds up getting sucked into the cult of Frank Lloyd Wright. There,
Speaker 1: that's what they heard me, Danktrosser on the Worldwide Web
Speaker 1: calling the fellowship a cult crap. The interviews were canceled.
Speaker 1: It was time to call Roger Friedland Roger, good morning,
Speaker 1: and Harold Zelman all right, Oh my god, Harold, what
Speaker 1: have you gotten me into? I needed their advice Roger
Speaker 1: and Harold had also ruffled some feathers with the picture
Speaker 1: they'd painted of Tally Essen in their book. What did
Speaker 1: they think about the C word? Well, we discussed this
Speaker 1: question endlessly. There is apple evidence that there are significant
Speaker 1: cult like qualities, but we made a very conscious decision
Speaker 1: never to use that term. Cult is a way of
Speaker 1: making a value judgment. Cult is a total community that
Speaker 1: you don't like, and I think it's not a good
Speaker 1: term to use. There have been so many moments in
Speaker 1: the process of working on this story that have made
Speaker 1: me question what the hell I'm doing. When I write
Speaker 1: a play with made up characters and made up scenarios,
Speaker 1: no one is upset except for the stage manager. Stage
Speaker 1: managers are always upset. But now, in telling this story
Speaker 1: a play as a podcast, it has the power to
Speaker 1: affect real people, real people who I don't know, real
Speaker 1: people who live in Scottsdale, Arizona, and spring Green, Wisconsin
Speaker 1: who are now upset at me. Me Dan Catroser. I
Speaker 1: decided to go to Arizona anyway, even if I couldn't record.
Speaker 1: I wanted to meet the people who I had offended
Speaker 1: and see what was what for myself. The foundation agreed
Speaker 1: to meet with me. So I get here and I
Speaker 1: go to the reception. It's this little plaza gravel by
Speaker 1: the gift shop outside, and I'm just reading while there
Speaker 1: are various tours coming and going. Fifteen minutes ahead of schedule,
Speaker 1: the foundation representative I'm meant to meet arrives. He shakes
Speaker 1: my hand, and he invites me to come and sit
Speaker 1: inside with the William Wesley Peter's conference room. We're sitting
Speaker 1: there in the room that used to be West's private quarters,
Speaker 1: the room he shared with spet Lana. Their king sized
Speaker 1: bed used to swallow up the space. Now it held
Speaker 1: a conference table and chairs. And as I'm looking around,
Speaker 1: taking it in the sandstone walls, the glass panes, the
Speaker 1: intimate space that can either feel cozy or claustrophobic, this
Speaker 1: man is telling me about his concerns and about a
Speaker 1: book that tells salacious stories, stories that overtake the more
Speaker 1: powerful history of what went on at tally Essen, a
Speaker 1: century of architecture, art and communal living. This book is
Speaker 1: called The Fellowship, written by Roger Friedland and Harold Zelman.
Speaker 1: So I'm sitting there in West and spet Lana's room,
Speaker 1: knowing that I have consorted with an enemy, knowing that
Speaker 1: this book is something that has been upsetting to the
Speaker 1: people there, And I panic, and I feel myself start
Speaker 1: to apologize, a Jew apologizing in the desert, just like
Speaker 1: my ancestors had done thousands of years ago. But what
Speaker 1: exactly was I sorry about? I had been hasty with
Speaker 1: the word cult, sure, but let's remove that word for
Speaker 1: the time being. Maybe I'll just tell you what happened
Speaker 1: and let you draw some conclusions for yourself. Let's get
Speaker 1: back to spet April nineteen seventy, the earliest days of
Speaker 1: Wes and Svetlana's whirlwind marriage. Up until the wedding, Spetlana
Speaker 1: had enjoyed three weeks of relative anonymity. She'd been an
Speaker 1: honored guest of the Fellowship, put up in a private
Speaker 1: little cottage, doated on by Wes, showered with love and kindness.
Speaker 1: At her wedding, everyone had initially been sworn to secrecy
Speaker 1: about Stalin's daughter's visit at her request, but Olgavana had
Speaker 1: invited TV news crews to the party. The secret was out.
Speaker 1: Social bulletins were reporting on speed Lana's outings, commenting on
Speaker 1: her appearance the wedding news even makes it back to Russia.
Speaker 1: The Miami Herald runs a story with the headline Stalin's
Speaker 1: daughter speed Lana weds again, and a subheader not very exciting,
Speaker 1: says fed Lana's son. If my wedding was described as
Speaker 1: not very exciting in a Florida newspaper, I would die.
Speaker 1: Add to that the fact that speed Lana has packed
Speaker 1: up her bags and moved from her guest cottage into
Speaker 1: Wes's suite. Like all the dormitories there, it's a small space,
Speaker 1: almost certainly smaller than her Soviet apartment, and it's in
Speaker 1: the center of it all, near all the other fellows,
Speaker 1: near the drafting room where they work, and the dining
Speaker 1: room where they eat. Tourists are also coming in and
Speaker 1: out of tally Es and West trapesing through the hallways.
Speaker 1: Speed Lana had suspected the CIA of wire tapping her
Speaker 1: house back in Princeton. Here the surveillance was open and constant.
Speaker 1: And this communal life, it's not exactly her jam, she writes.
Speaker 1: Being with others and seeing them walking through our rooms
Speaker 1: was a usual thing. What's insisted that I were more
Speaker 1: with people. How is a woman likes bet Lana, a
Speaker 1: self described shy, a silent mouse, supposed to rest and
Speaker 1: recharge or get anything done for that matter. I thought
Speaker 1: I was with people quite enough. People are the worst.
Speaker 1: And then there's Olga Vana, the matriarch of the place,
Speaker 1: the person who had beckons ft Lana there in the
Speaker 1: first place. Olga Vanna's interest in people's lives is vast.
Speaker 1: She likes to know exactly what's going on, and she
Speaker 1: likes to give advice on everything from meals to hairstyles,
Speaker 1: to work schedules to the bedroom. Here's Roger. There was
Speaker 1: very little of your private life that was not subject
Speaker 1: to judgment, if not control. You know, your gestures, how
Speaker 1: you walk, who you have sex with, I mean everything
Speaker 1: was part of this project. It was a total institution
Speaker 1: aestheticization of every aspect of your life. And this now
Speaker 1: applied to Spetlana, who, in marrying Wes, had joined the
Speaker 1: institution by default. Now it's no secret that spet Lana
Speaker 1: and West seem to have a pretty powerful physical connection.
Speaker 1: Years later, she'd tell one journalist that Wes was the
Speaker 1: only man she ever enjoyed having sex with. Olgavana expected
Speaker 1: all the hot goss naturally in case you can't hear
Speaker 1: spet Lana in what sounds like the world's busiest restaurant.
Speaker 1: She's saying that. Olga Vanna immediately asked her, how was
Speaker 1: it and where was it? Meaning the sex? How was
Speaker 1: the sex? Where was the sex? Olgavannah wants to know
Speaker 1: if her former son in law is given a good
Speaker 1: to his new bride, the one she hoped could be
Speaker 1: her daughter. Sped Lana is weirded out and says so,
Speaker 1: but Olga Vanna keeps pressing, wouldn't you talk about it
Speaker 1: to your mother? I said no, I'm not. You know,
Speaker 1: seventeen years old was very much. I don't think I
Speaker 1: need the price when it comes to sex at tally
Speaker 1: Essen and Olga Vanna is placing it. Sped Lana is
Speaker 1: going in blind and not in a fun way like
Speaker 1: in Love is Blind, but in a bad way like
Speaker 1: in Love is Blind. We'll get into all this and
Speaker 1: more after the break act too great sex spectations. It's
Speaker 1: time for the juicy stuff, the sex stuff. Do I
Speaker 1: have your attention? Making an insular, intentional community was hard,
Speaker 1: especially when it was mostly hot, sweaty, shirtless dudes hammering
Speaker 1: nails into wood I'm sorry, where were we? This goes
Speaker 1: back to the thirties. You were expected to give yourself
Speaker 1: entirely to the fellowship, to have no relationships outside of
Speaker 1: the fellowship. Olgavana knew that you had to find some
Speaker 1: method of dealing with sexuality if you're going to pull
Speaker 1: that off, Because it's pretty obvious you've got a bunch
Speaker 1: of guys, very few women, and they're all young and libidinous.
Speaker 1: That's Harold recounting what he and Roger discovered about the
Speaker 1: history of sex at Taliesin while researching their book. Inevitably,
Speaker 1: the fellows start sleeping with locals, and the town spoke
Speaker 1: are not happy about it. So Olgavannah goes into problem
Speaker 1: solving mode. First, she tries to recruit more suitable women
Speaker 1: into the fellowship, but she tries a few other things too.
Speaker 1: She selected a group of men that she had decided
Speaker 1: apparently would be okay with gay relationships. She lined them
Speaker 1: all up and gave them explicit instructions in a homosexuality.
Speaker 1: What Harold saying is that Olgavana allegedly showed certain men
Speaker 1: how to have sex with each other and then paired
Speaker 1: them up to stop the sexual energy from bleeding outside
Speaker 1: the walls of tally Esin There are two things I
Speaker 1: want to hold space for here. One, people were being
Speaker 1: pressured into making sexual choices they may not have made
Speaker 1: on their own. But two, in an overwhelmingly heteronormative world
Speaker 1: like the first half of the twentieth century, the actual
Speaker 1: mechanics of gay sex do need to be taught, And
Speaker 1: to me, this moment at tally Essen is a fascinatingly
Speaker 1: problematic piece of queer history. Olgavannah would have known a
Speaker 1: thing or two about gay sex. She herself had come
Speaker 1: from eccentric artist circles and almost certainly had a lesbian
Speaker 1: lover who was part of Gertrude Stein's Parisian cohort. But
Speaker 1: the gay quote lineup, as one apprentice called it, wasn't
Speaker 1: the end of Olgavannah's meddling. And I wanted to learn
Speaker 1: more about this layer of life at tally Essen from
Speaker 1: someone who'd seen it play out. So I got in
Speaker 1: touch with Celeste Davidson. Oh, Celest, Oh, I love what
Speaker 1: you're wearing. Oh good well, I love plaid. You know.
Speaker 1: When they asked George Clooney what his favorite color was,
Speaker 1: he said plaid. Celeste was born at tally Essen. Her father, Davy,
Speaker 1: was an architect under Frankloyd Wright, and her mother, Kay,
Speaker 1: was Missus Wright's devoted chief assistant for decades. Celeste calls
Speaker 1: her mom by her first name. By the way, so Kay,
Speaker 1: who came first at sixteen years old, really was crazy
Speaker 1: about the rights, and so she adopted and missus Right
Speaker 1: as her mom, and Missus Dry adopted her as her daughter,
Speaker 1: you know, psychologically, and her whole life was spent taking
Speaker 1: care of missus Right. According to Celeste, Olga Vanna contains multitudes.
Speaker 1: So how would you describe missus Right Aside from being
Speaker 1: a bipolar bitch and controlling everybody's lives at tally Essen,
Speaker 1: sometimes she could be quite nice. There's something incredibly beautifully
Speaker 1: succinct about that sentence. Now, Olgavannah really did not want
Speaker 1: children at tally Esen. Remember Ger Jeff had taught her
Speaker 1: that kids were a distraction from the work. She'd sent
Speaker 1: her own daughter away by his command, and decades later
Speaker 1: she allegedly encouraged Celeste mom Kay to do the same.
Speaker 1: She broke up our whole family, She made us all
Speaker 1: go in different directions. At a very young age, five,
Speaker 1: six years old, she separated us, and my mom went
Speaker 1: right along with them. Roger and Harold's book include some
Speaker 1: pretty harrowing details about Celeste mother Kay. They write about
Speaker 1: how Oldgavanna offered her up as sexual fodder to other fellows.
Speaker 1: The way that the Fellowships sort of portrays it is
Speaker 1: that missus Wright really wanted Kay to sleep with everybody. True,
Speaker 1: it's beyond true. She said, I want you to go
Speaker 1: out with Dick or John or whomever and turn them around,
Speaker 1: straighten them out so they're not gay anymore. You heard that, right, folks.
Speaker 1: Old Gavanna, who had orchestrated a whole lot of gay
Speaker 1: sex among the apprentices, also believed that being openly gay
Speaker 1: could hurt Tally Essen's reputation, and so when things got
Speaker 1: too visibly gay, she apparently needed female apprentices like Kay
Speaker 1: to sleep with them and turn them straight again. It's
Speaker 1: all very scientific and not problematic at all. As a result,
Speaker 1: gay men end up married to women, women end up
Speaker 1: being asked to sleep around, and marriages with nonfellows like
Speaker 1: spet Lana must be arranged and approved by Olgavana herself.
Speaker 1: This is all detailed fabulously in Roger and Harold's book,
Speaker 1: but it's also unsurprisingly controversial inside the Frank Lloyd Right universe.
Speaker 1: And yet when I went to the tally Es and
Speaker 1: West gift shop, I was amused to find it front
Speaker 1: and center on display. Here's Harold Bucks a buck and
Speaker 1: this kind of overbearing control in the most intimate parts
Speaker 1: of a person's life. This is what spet Lana is
Speaker 1: now experiencing years later when she walks into a well
Speaker 1: established dynamic designed to sustain an alternative community. To be clear,
Speaker 1: many people willingly signed up for this and stayed for years, decades,
Speaker 1: sometimes the rest of their lives within this insular world.
Speaker 1: They were making art NonStop, living in a tight knit
Speaker 1: community cradled in the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, and
Speaker 1: over the Fellowship's century long history, not everyone was subjected to,
Speaker 1: or even aware of, what Roger and Harold termed the
Speaker 1: sex clubs at tally Essen. Regardless, as Roger and Harold said,
Speaker 1: living at tally Essen demanded total participation. Did spet Lana
Speaker 1: know that when she married Wes she was marrying his
Speaker 1: way of life too? More? After the break Act three,
Speaker 1: The Price of Love, as we know from previous episodes,
Speaker 1: Olga Vana tells fet Lana about Wes's debts, and spat
Speaker 1: happily pays off tens of thousands of dollars as a
Speaker 1: gift to her new husband. But that was a sizeable
Speaker 1: chunk of her resources, not as Olgavana wrongly assumed, just
Speaker 1: to drop in the bucket. I felt that there was
Speaker 1: some mistake because they imagined me wealthier than I was.
Speaker 1: I heard something was my books. It was not in
Speaker 1: the vicinity of what they imagined. There was this terrible
Speaker 1: thing in created by media or state department of the
Speaker 1: nobahom my alleged millions in Swiss banks. A father never
Speaker 1: left any money for me. He was a communist inclination.
Speaker 1: He didn't believe in private wealth. Speed Lana doesn't have
Speaker 1: secrets dollar dollars, and the money she does have, that
Speaker 1: one point five million, give or take, isn't a trust
Speaker 1: overseen by her lawyers in New York, who give her
Speaker 1: modest monthly disbursements. So shortly after the nuptials, sped Lana
Speaker 1: is encouraged to open a joint bank account with Wes
Speaker 1: and when we were married, about second or thirday after wedding,
Speaker 1: his lawyers, which were also Foundation lawyers, approached me and said, oh,
Speaker 1: are we going now to open joint account, which was
Speaker 1: again I said yes, yes, of course, of course, of course,
Speaker 1: will do open Joinica. Sped Lana is also encouraged to
Speaker 1: sell her precious house in Princeton for cash, which she
Speaker 1: does somewhat resentfully, but giving up that house is a
Speaker 1: symbol of her commitment to Wes and she's willing to
Speaker 1: do it. However, while she's in Princeton overseeing the sale,
Speaker 1: sped Lana apparently learns from her lawyers that the Francloyd
Speaker 1: Wright Foundation has requested an annual grant of thirty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year in perpetuity two hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: in today's dollars. Sped Lana is surprised. She's happy to
Speaker 1: pay off her husband's debts, but funding the organization is
Speaker 1: another thing. Entirely the overseers of her charitable trust counter
Speaker 1: at a thousand dollars a year. When it returned, I
Speaker 1: saw entirely different pictures. Nobody smiled with me. Missus Rice
Speaker 1: has no time for me. West was again in competitive
Speaker 1: gray face for the record. Olgavana says that everyone changed
Speaker 1: their tune on speed Lana because she became rude and standoffish,
Speaker 1: not because she wasn't as rich as they thought. And
Speaker 1: maybe that's true. I've gotten a sense from a lot
Speaker 1: of people I've talked to that Speedlana could be mercurial.
Speaker 1: Her long term friendships were marked by periods of warmth
Speaker 1: and hostility. Like Olgavana, she was also a complicated woman.
Speaker 1: But this money stuff, it's super weird and sped Lana
Speaker 1: starts to feel like she might have gotten played played
Speaker 1: by Olgavana, yes, but by Wes, dear darling, dutiful Wes.
Speaker 1: When spent Lana admits her husband that she's resentful of
Speaker 1: Olgavana's financial demands, West responds exactly how you'd expect him to,
Speaker 1: telling her to stay good friends with missus Wright or quote,
Speaker 1: we shall meet a tragedy. But through the power of
Speaker 1: selective hearing, Spelana still sees West as her beloved husband mother.
Speaker 1: Olgavana was the one who was getting in the way.
Speaker 1: Late one night, a few months into their marriage, spent
Speaker 1: Lana and West are in bed in the phone rings.
Speaker 1: Spelana answers the call and finds a heated Olgavana on
Speaker 1: the other side of the line. There's been a problem
Speaker 1: with an apprentice, and Wes is needed immediately spent. Lana
Speaker 1: isn't having it, she bites back. He was already in bed, sleeping.
Speaker 1: Why do you need him? She was a little bit
Speaker 1: on this excited side of yelling, And I said, missus right,
Speaker 1: please don't yell at me. I'm a new person here.
Speaker 1: I don't know your waist, but please don't. I have
Speaker 1: been yelled at enough. Please don't yell at me. And
Speaker 1: she kind of gasps. There, you know, now, this might
Speaker 1: seem like a small, insignificant moment. We've all gotten an
Speaker 1: after hours phone call from work. Maybe we said something
Speaker 1: to our boss, or maybe we didn't, and most likely
Speaker 1: we moved on. But there's a reason why Olgavannah gasped.
Speaker 1: People didn't talk back to mother and first fet Lana
Speaker 1: to not only reject missus Wright's orders, but then to
Speaker 1: tell the matriarch not to yell. Why that's like not
Speaker 1: wearing astless chaps at Folsom Street Fair. It's just not done.
Speaker 1: According to an unpublished chapter of Olgavana's autobiography, which also
Speaker 1: details this late night argument. West encouraged set Lana to
Speaker 1: apologize to missus Wright for her outburst, however innocent her intentions.
Speaker 1: Wes was a man who valued his work above all else,
Speaker 1: and you didn't want his wife to muck things up.
Speaker 1: Olgavana sets the scene set Lana coming into a room
Speaker 1: and sitting down, staring at the floor while saying, I
Speaker 1: apologize if I caused you any inconvenience. Olgavana describes fet
Speaker 1: Lana's apology as cold like ice. She says she even
Speaker 1: saw a disagreeable smile creep onto stet Lana's face, and
Speaker 1: then set Lana shoots up with a frosty stare and says,
Speaker 1: by the way, I want you to know, I am
Speaker 1: a free person. I do as I please. Olgavana writes
Speaker 1: she smiled that snake smile with lips and little waves
Speaker 1: and said, you see, I don't belong to you. By
Speaker 1: her own account, Olgavannah was spawns very quietly, spet Lana, Now,
Speaker 1: in the last statement, your last half of your phrase
Speaker 1: is true, you certainly don't belong to me. But in
Speaker 1: the first part of your phrase, you are wrong. You
Speaker 1: are not free. You are bound from head to foot
Speaker 1: in iron chains they surround you. You are a slave,
Speaker 1: spet Laana, of yourself. You are not a free person.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, you are the most terrifying
Speaker 1: slave I have ever seen yet. Slave of your passions,
Speaker 1: slave of your hatreds, of your likes, of your dislikes,
Speaker 1: of your jealousy, which is reaching a grotesque proportion. You
Speaker 1: are jealous of me and Wess. You are jealous of
Speaker 1: every girl on the place. You are jealous of every man.
Speaker 1: You are a slave. You are not a master, and
Speaker 1: it is the master who is free. No, spet Lana,
Speaker 1: you are a slave. Okay. First off, I love this
Speaker 1: monologue and I want to use it for auditions for
Speaker 1: the rest of my life. And second, by Wes's design,
Speaker 1: this whole exchange was supposed to be a reconciliation between
Speaker 1: these two powerful women. But that's not how this went
Speaker 1: at all. And speed Lana's lackluster apology to Olgavana and
Speaker 1: Olgavannah's mean spirited response. This is the beginning of a
Speaker 1: shitty pattern that is going to repeat again and again
Speaker 1: and again. Like Paisley, but this fight about the late
Speaker 1: night phone call and the weird apology and monologue that
Speaker 1: followed the money, the communal life, the red flag after
Speaker 1: red flag after red flag. None of this deters fet Lana.
Speaker 1: She remains as devoted to Wes as ever, which to
Speaker 1: me is so surprising. She must have really loved him.
Speaker 1: You See, a man could be good friends or good lover,
Speaker 1: or good parents, or good husband. He was good husband.
Speaker 1: I felt that old my god, Finally, finally, I would
Speaker 1: love to stay with this man, you know, until end
Speaker 1: of my days. Because he had a way to introduce
Speaker 1: me and say this is my wife. He would say
Speaker 1: it's this is my wife in such a way that
Speaker 1: I will just swoon, you know, I was just man,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, how wonderful. When West finally takes bet
Speaker 1: Lana on a trip to California that June, away from
Speaker 1: tally Essen without the constant demands of the Fellowship, he
Speaker 1: is attentive to his bride again. She meets his sister
Speaker 1: and his brother in law. They go shopping. West picks
Speaker 1: out over the top glittery dresses for speed Lana that
Speaker 1: she would never pick out on her own. First doles, chiffon, brocade, silk.
Speaker 1: You must look stunning, West tells her, and she accepts
Speaker 1: She's no longer speed Lana, a Lujeva writer. She was
Speaker 1: now sped Lana Peters, the architect's wife. She has to
Speaker 1: dress the part, and this time with West in California
Speaker 1: makes her want to dress the part too. I wanted
Speaker 1: to be a part of the show, a part of
Speaker 1: the business, a part of his life. This is the
Speaker 1: constant struggle with Svetlana. She feels things both good and
Speaker 1: bad in big ways. She's drawn to West, yet repelled
Speaker 1: by the world he belongs to. I too, came to
Speaker 1: tally Esen a skeptic. I really didn't care about the
Speaker 1: organic architecture, and I generally think deserts are stupid. Where's
Speaker 1: your dirt, desert, Where's your dirt? But during my visit
Speaker 1: I had some wonderful background interviews with people that lived
Speaker 1: and worked at tally Esen, charming, artistic, idealistic people who
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed spending time with. They showed me around,
Speaker 1: let me dig through their archives, and told me wonderful stories.
Speaker 1: And there were moments when I was overcome by the
Speaker 1: art and history and community of the place. I have
Speaker 1: to imagine that spet Lana might have been too. So Yes,
Speaker 1: it's true, Olga Vana was overbearing to say the least,
Speaker 1: But there were other people there who were great. Here's
Speaker 1: the last you know. There are people like l Luis
Speaker 1: Christa who did the sculpture. She was an amazing person,
Speaker 1: Jim and Maxine, Fefrid car the Lockhart Tall and Brandoc Peters.
Speaker 1: I mean there were lots of people to get involved with,
Speaker 1: other than the rights. The truth is. Of course, then
Speaker 1: not everything is cut and dry. People places, they contain
Speaker 1: multitudes and sometimes even hypocrisies. Now, every year the Fellowship
Speaker 1: would caravan from tally Essen West in Arizona back to
Speaker 1: the original tally Essen in Wisconsin for the summer, and
Speaker 1: shortly after West and spet Lana returned from their California
Speaker 1: mini moon, they pack up the car and make the drive,
Speaker 1: just the two of them. They make their way through
Speaker 1: the Grand Canyon, the Rockies, and the planes. West, who
Speaker 1: has made this trip twice a year for nearly four decades,
Speaker 1: is poring over with vivid stories, welcoming her into his world.
Speaker 1: Sometimes fet Lana takes the wheel of the Cadillac when
Speaker 1: I date. The driving us would relax thing funny songs,
Speaker 1: recite limericks, or just doze. Then I would find him
Speaker 1: once again as he was before. Outside of the fellowship,
Speaker 1: West is simply the man she fell in love with.
Speaker 1: Away from the mismerizing eyes of his boss former mother
Speaker 1: in law, he would become quite a different personality. And
Speaker 1: when they arrive in the Serene River Valley, he comes alive.
Speaker 1: When he entered the green, lush Wisconsin countryside of us
Speaker 1: became even lyrical. He loved these areas most of all.
Speaker 1: That summers speed Lana and West settle into their new
Speaker 1: life together in Wisconsin. She loves being his wife. She
Speaker 1: loves the queen hills and babbling brooks. She feels herself
Speaker 1: being drawn deeper and deeper. Suddenly everything has become so
Speaker 1: bright and clear. Every blade of grass, every wild flower
Speaker 1: I walked through, the grove's breathed, fragrant errands, felt so young,
Speaker 1: every nerve in harmony with nature around me. But she
Speaker 1: feels well something else too. After I spent two weeks
Speaker 1: in that state of peaceful bliss, the local doctor confirmed it.
Speaker 1: I fuzz pregnant. YEO. Suddenly, in this battle between Olga
Speaker 1: Vana and Spetlana, with West caught in the middle, the
Speaker 1: weirdest throuble of all Time, the steaks are a lot higher,
Speaker 1: and this pregnancy it's not gonna go over well with
Speaker 1: missus Wright on the next episode of set Lana stet Lana.
Speaker 1: St Lana stet Lana is a production of iHeart Podcasts
Speaker 1: and the documentary group I'm Your Host Dan Katrosser. The
Speaker 1: show was written and produced by me Adam Webber, Alison Joy,
Speaker 1: and Katherine Isaac. We also serve as executive producers at
Speaker 1: the documentary group. Our executive producer is Joe Batzilowitz, with
Speaker 1: production oversight by Stacy Kleiger an additional support from Tom
Speaker 1: Yellen and Gabrielle Tenenbaun. Our iHeart team is supervising producer
Speaker 1: Casey Pegram and executive producer Maya Howard. Editing assistants from
Speaker 1: producers Christina Lorenger and Joey pat Original music by Elan Izakov,
Speaker 1: Production counsel by Slas ekhous Dasty Haynes Lockoe, clearance counsel
Speaker 1: by Ballard Sparr, Fact checking assistance by Megan Trout, Research
Speaker 1: assistants by Caleb Martin Rosenthal. Special thanks to my husband
Speaker 1: Jordan Siegel and Roger Friedland and Harold Zelman, author of
Speaker 1: the book The Fellowship, who kindly granted permission to include
Speaker 1: excerpts from their taped interview with Stelana