1 Hollywood: Center of the American film industry north of Los Angeles. First studio established there in 1911.

2 newspaper king: William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951), publisher of the San Francisco Examiner, built the palatial mansion San Simeon on a vast estate near U.S. Highway 1 along the California coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

3 Coca-Cola girls: The popular cola drink was often advertised on posters featuring fresh-faced women in provocative poses drawn by such artists as Leonetto Cappiello (1875-1942).

4 the big Greyhound busses: The Greyhound Bus Company was founded in 1914 and adopted its running dog logo in 1926. It was prominently featured in the movie It Happened One Night (1934), which won all five major Academy Awards (best picture, best actor, best actress, best director, best screenplay) the year of its release.

5 Clark Gable: (1901-1960) a popular actor voted the so-called King of Hollywood in 1938. He had recently returned from military service in Europe with the Eighth Air Force. He also starred in It Happened One Night. See note 4 above.

6 the race of Amudkins, who preceded the Atomites: Steinbeck coins names for two races—Amudkins or “kin to mud,” a term that evokes the Genesis creation myth of Adam and Eve, and Atomites, or the race of people who live in an atomic age.

7 the Sinatras, the Van Johnsons, the Sonny Tufts: Handsome matinee idols Frank Sinatra (1915-1998); Van Johnson (1916- ); and Sonny Tufts (1911-1970), the latter best known (if at all) for spanking Betty Hutton in the movie Cross My Heart (1946).

8 National Dollar Stores: A chain of dry goods stores mostly located in the western United States and the target of a strike by San Francisco garment workers in 1938.

9 Aztec calendar stone: Also known as the sun stone, the most important archaeological artifact discovered in Mexico. The original stone, with a diameter of about twelve feet and etched with hieroglyphics, was discovered in 1790 buried in the main square of Mexico City.

1 penates: The Roman gods of the home.

2 Virgin of Guadalupe: According to tradition, the Virgin Mary appeared to a Mexican peasant named Juan Diego on December 9 and again on December 12, 1531. The Miracle of Guadalupe was formally recognized by the Vatican in 1709, and Juan Diego was canonized in 2002. Annual celebrations of “the Queen of Mexico,” the protector of the poor and weak, are still held throughout the country on December 12.

3 out had gone St. Patrick and St. Bridget: St. Patrick (387-493), the patron saint of Ireland; and St. Bridget or Brigid or Bride (451?-525), the patroness of Ireland.

4 Guadalupana: The Virgin of Guadalupe. See note 2 above.

5 “Take Ford”: Henry Ford (1863-1947) American automaker.

6 Kit Carson: (1809-1868) Western scout and frontiersman.

1 He looked like Truman: Harry S Truman (1884-1972) thirty-third President of the United States (1945-1953).

2 little blue enamel bar with white stars on it: The Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award for valor in combat against an enemy that may be given to an individual in the U.S. military.

3 Eugene Debs: Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) American socialist leader and candidate for president in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920.

4 The Spanish war: The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) pitted the Republicans, assisted by leftists from around the world, against the Nationalists led by Francisco Franco (1892-1975) and supported by the Fascist regimes in Germany and Italy.

5 stolen private property: All private oil companies in Mexico, including foreign-owned ones, were ordered in March 1938 to sell their assets to the Mexican government, effectively nationalizing the petroleum industry.

6 Baby Ruth: A candy bar introduced in 1920 by the Curtiss Candy Company and ostensibly named after Baby Ruth Cleveland (d. 1904), the infant daughter of President Grover Cleveland (1837-1908). The baseball star Babe Ruth (1895-1948) was later prevented from using his own name on a candy bar on the grounds of copyright infringement.

1 James Stewart: (1908-1991), American star of such films as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), directed by Frank Capra. As a bomber pilot in World War II he was awarded the Air Medal and Distinguished Flying Cross.

2 Melrose Grotto: Located in the 5500 block of Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles adjacent to several sound studios.

3 RKO: Abbreviation for Radio-Keith-Orpheum Corporation, a major Hollywood studio and theater chain established in 1929.

4 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer: A major Hollywood studio headed by Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974) and Louis B. Mayer (1885-1957). The studio had produced the film version of Tortilla Flat in 1942.

5 Santa Ana: Seat of Orange County in southern California, incorporated in 1886.

6 Rhett Butler: Clark Gable’s most famous role as a scalawag in the film adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind (1939).

7 “Bette Davis and Ingrid Bergman and Joan Fontaine”: Bette Davis (1908- 1989), Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982), and Joan Fontaine (1917- ) were Hollywood leading ladies.

1 jabots: Decorative ruffles on the front of a dress.

2 “. . . I even figured out a little bag to carry them in.”: The idea for this invention originated with Steinbeck. As he reminisced in 1954,“Some years ago I invented silk slip covers for the lapels of a dark suit to make it a dinner jacket. . . . It was for salesmen and for people who fly a lot and can’t take much luggage. A lovely idea.” See Steinbeck: A Life in Letters, ed. Elaine Steinbeck and Robert Wallsten (New York: Viking Press, 1975), p. 493.

3 Puebla, Cuernavaca, Tasco, Acapulco: Popular tourist destinations in Mexico.

4 volcano: Paricutin volcano, 220 miles west of Mexico City, first erupted in a level cornfield and remained in continuous eruption from 1943 until 1952.

1 Lions Club: A fraternal business organization founded in 1917.

2 Bob Hope, or, better, Bing Crosby: In the four “Road” musical comedies released prior to publication of Steinbeck’s novel (Road to Singapore [1940], Road to Zanzibar [1941], Road to Morocco [1942], and Road to Utopia [1946]) Bob Hope (1903-2003) and Bing Crosby (1904-1977) play a pair of scheming partners, with Crosby’s character in the end always winning the love of the female lead. Crosby was the top Hollywood box-office draw five consecutive years (1944-1948); Hope was fifth in 1946 and sixth in 1947. In one of his wartime dispatches to the New York Herald Tribune ( July 26, 1943), Steinbeck insisted that “When the time for recognition of service to the nation in wartime comes to be considered, Bob Hope should be high on the list” (American and Americans and Selected Nonfiction, ed. Susan Shillinglaw and Jackson J. Benson [New York: Viking, 2002], pp. 293-95).

3 Time and Newsweek: Among the most important news developments at the time the novel appeared concerned the Chinese Civil War, waged between Communist forces loyal to Mao Tse-tung and the Nationalists loyal to Chiang Kai-shek, and the negotiations between the Hindu-dominated Congress Party and Moslem League to establish self-government in India. The same month Steinbeck’s novel appeared, in fact, the government of Great Britain announced it would withdraw its colonial representatives in June 1948, eventually permitting partition into India and Pakistan.

4 stags: Male-only parties.

5 new treatment: Alexander Fleming (1881-1955), Howard W. Florey (1898-1968), and Ernst B. Chain (1906-1979) shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 for developing penicillin as an antibiotic.

6 Captain Hornblower: None of the five books by C. S. Forester (1899- 1966) featuring the intrepid Captain Horatio Hornblower published between 1937 and 1946 was entitled Captain Hornblower, though the most recent volumes in the series were entitled Commodore Hornblower (1945) and Lord Hornblower (1946).

7 and a Life of Beethoven: Probably Life of Beethoven, the first modern biography of the composer, by Alexander Wheelock Thayer (1817- 1897), a well-known music historian, most recently reprinted in 1921 by the Beethoven Association.

8 the short stories of Saroyan: William Saroyan (1908-1981) was an American writer and, like Steinbeck, a native of California. Ironically, he wrote an unused screen treatment of The Wayward Bus a decade later.

1 Bellodgia: A perfume with a floral scent, named after the Italian town of Bellagio on Lake Como.

2 a Camel advertisement: Cigarette brand first marketed by R. J. Reynolds Company in 1913.

3 “Oakes murder trial”: The British aristocrat Sir Harry Oakes (b. 1874) was murdered under mysterious circumstances in Nassau on July 8, 1943. His son-in-law Freddie de Marigny was charged with the crime but found not guilty at trial the following November. The murder has never been solved.

4 The Two Fifty-Three Thousand Clubs: A fictional fraternal organization. As Steinbeck wrote in America and Americans (p. 360), “Americans have developed scores of orders, lodges and encampments, courts. . . . All were and perhaps still are aristocratic and most secret and therefore exclusive. They seemed to fulfill a need for grandeur against a background of commonness, for aristocracy in the midst of democracy.”

1 “Wee Kirk i’ the Heather”: The chapel at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, burial sites of such writers as Theodore Dreiser and L. Frank Baum and such movie stars as W. C. Fields and Jean Harlow. Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman were married there in 1940.

2 “radar”: An acronym for “radio detection and ranging,” patented in England in 1935.

3 “Nances”: Nancies, or sissies.

4 “Hart, Schaffner and Marx”: A men’s clothing company founded in 1887.

5 “Beverly Wilshire”: A fashionable “hotel to the stars” in Beverly Hills opened in 1928.

6 “a missionary like Spencer Tracy”: As usual, Pimples is confused. He apparently refers to Keys of the Kingdom (1944), starring Gregory Peck (1916-2003), not Spencer Tracy (1900-1967); the movie was set during the Chinese Civil War, not the Japanese occupation. Tracy had earlier starred in the movie adaptation of Steinbeck’s novel Tortilla Flat (1942).

1 Red Arrow Line: The Arrow Transfer Company, headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, had been in operation since 1918.

1 “Pepsi-Cola”: A competitor in the “cola wars” trademarked in 1903 and, in 1940, the first product to be advertised on the radio with a jingle.

2 “Torreón”: A modern, industrial city in the state of Chihuahua founded in 1893; it was attacked by Pancho Villa in 1914 in the bloodiest battle of the Mexican Revolution. See next note.

3 “Pancho Villa”: (1878-1923) Mexican revolutionary leader.

4 hotel . . . built over a hot spring of Epsom salts: Steinbeck almost certainly alludes to the Paso Robles Hot Springs Hotel in San Luis Obispo County near Salinas, originally built in 1864, rebuilt and reopened in February 1942, on Highway 101, famous in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s for attracting such movie stars as Bob Hope, Boris Karloff, Clark Gable, Judy Garland, and Red Skelton.

1 “Manila line”: The standard line or rope of issue because of its flexibility and strength.

2 “Super Chief ”: A showcase train of the Santa Fe railroad, famous for transporting movie stars, that ran from Chicago to Los Angeles from 1936 to 1971.

3 OPA price-ceiling chart: The federal Office of Price Administration enforced domestic price controls between 1942 and 1947.

1 “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”: The words of John the Baptist in Matthew 3:2.

2 “Wherefore shall it profit a man . . .”: “. . . if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul.” Christ’s words in Matthew 16:26 and Mark 8:36.

3 zaguán door: A vestibule or hallway.

4 Tijuana: Mexican border town across from San Diego.

5 Santo Tomás . . . San Quintin, past Ballenas Bay . . . La Paz . . . Guaymas or Mazatlán maybe even to Acapulco: Common tourist destinations on Baja California and along the west coast of Mexico.

6 rebozos: Mufflers, wraps, shawls.

7 “Bank of America”: The foreclosure policy of this bank, headquartered in San Francisco, during the Great Depression prompted a successful proxy fight by its founder, A. P. Giannini (1870-1949), to resume control. This comment is reminiscent of Steinbeck’s fusillade against banks in chapter 5 of The Grapes of Wrath (1939).

8 Lake at Chapala: The largest lake in Mexico, in Jalisco, a resort near Guadalajara.

9 “Foxy Grandpa,” and “Little Nemo,” and “Happy Hooligan,” and “Buster Brown”: Syndicated newspaper comic strips popular in the 1920s; all were defunct by 1932.

1 “the City of San Francisco”: An upscale train that inaugurated service between Chicago and San Francisco in 1936.

2 Harper’s Bazaar: A women’s fashion magazine established in 1867.

1 He would call the FBI: The Federal Bureau of Investigation under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) had earned a reputation for crime fighting in the 1920s and 1930s and shifted its attention to addressing supposed threats of domestic subversion in the late 1940s.

2 bearded communists: President Truman was often accused by his political enemies of being “soft on Communism.” Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), assassinated in Mexico on Stalin’s orders, was perhaps the best known “bearded communist” in the world when the novel appeared.

1 “maybe at Romanoff ’s”: A famous restaurant on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills established in 1940 and frequented by movie stars.

2 “could you cut it up and cook it?”: As Steinbeck later asserted in America and Americans (p. 331),“There isn’t a man among us in ten thousand who knows how to butcher a cow or a pig and cut it up for eating.”

3 “Teapot Dome”: A major scandal during the administration of Warren G. Harding (1865-1923), twenty-ninth president of the United States (1921-1923). The Department of the Interior had secretly leased naval oil fields in Wyoming to private companies beginning in 1921.

4 “Nineteen-thirty”: The start of the Great Depression after the stock market crash in October 1929.

5 “Secretary of State”: George C. Marshall (1880-1959) was charged with mediating a settlement between the Chinese Nationalists and Communists immediately after World War II. He was confirmed as Secretary of State in January 1947, only five weeks before Steinbeck’s novel was released. In June 1947, speaking at Harvard commencement, he would announce the principles of the Marshall Plan.

6 like Coolidge or like Hoover: Republican presidents of the United States Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) and Herbert Hoover (1874-1964), the thirtieth and thirty-first presidents (1923-1933).

7 strikes would stop: Five million Americans went on strike in 1946, including many steel, mine, auto, and rail workers.

8 Bob Taft: Robert Taft (1889-1953), son of former president and Supreme Court Chief Justice William Howard Taft (1857-1930), U.S. senator from Ohio (1939-1953), and an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 1944, 1948, and 1952.

9 “like Cary Grant done in that movie”: Probably Notorious (1946), starring Grant (1904-1986) and Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982) and directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), in which Grant’s character enlists Bergman’s character as a spy and persuades her to marry a German agent as a subterfuge.

10 “Octagon International or The Birds of the World or The Two Fifty-Three Thousand Club”: See note 4 to Chapter 8 above.

1 Blue Lodge . . ., Chairs . . ., Worshipful Master . . ., Royal Arch . . ., Scottish Rite . . ., third degree: Ranks and rituals in the Masonic Lodge.

2 those people in Europe: Nazi leaders Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) and Hermann Göring (1893-1946) both committed suicide by ingesting cyanide.

1 “Hollywood Plaza”: A fashionable hotel built in 1924 on North Vine Street near Sunset Boulevard.

2 “Musso-Franck’s”: The Musso & Frank Grill, a celebrity hangout at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Cherokee Avenue, was established in 1919 by John Musso and Frank Toulet.

1 the evening star: The planet Venus, named for the Latin goddess of spring and gardens, later the Roman goddess of love identified with the Greek goddess Aphrodite.