I just published an essay on the Los Angeles Review of Books about Ray Bradbury’s tumultuous experience writing the screenplay adaptation of the Herman Melville classic Moby-Dick for film director John Huston in 1953 and ‘54. My editor only wanted 3 to 4 images, but I had many more unused photos and documents. I thought I would include a few of them here as a photo essay.

Photo #1: Ray Bradbury rarely kept a diary or a calendar. Imagine my delight when I discovered a day planner buried in a drawer in a side-bedroom of his home from 1953, the year he wrote Fahrenheit 451 and, as this page from August 19 illustrates, he received an offer from film director John Huston…

Photo #2: A page from Bradbury’s Moby Dick contract. He had earned $40 or $50 a story writing for the pulp fiction magazines less than a decade earlier. He was now earning a King’s ransom.

Photo #3: Bradbury was terrified of air travel. So, arrangements were quickly made to travel by train from Los Angeles to New York, then by ocean liner to Europe where he would write the screenplay in Ireland where John Huston lived. Bradbury was joined by his wife Maggie, his nearly four-year-old daughter Susan, his two year-old daughter Ramona, and their governess, Regina Ferguson. They crossed the Atlantic aboard the SS United States, which had set out on its maiden voyage just a year earlier. The ship broke speed records in 1952, crossing the Atlantic in 3 days, 10 hours, and 40 minutes.

Photo 4: Ray and Maggie Bradbury aboard the SS United States. Not certain what they were celebrating, possibly their anniversary, which was September 27.

Photo 5: When the Bradbury’s arrived in Dublin, Ireland, they checked in to the Royal Hibernian Hotel on Dawson Street. Ray would live and write at the hotel from September 1953 to March, 1954. Pictured here is a suitcase sticker from the hotel.

Photo 6: As I was working on my essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books, I discovered a never-before-seen photograph of famed director, John Huston, taken by none other than Ray Bradbury himself at Huston’s Irish manor, Courtown, on January 30, 1954.

Photo 7: The ship’s log for the Bradbury’s return voyage home aboard the SS United States after the Moby Dick ordeal was behind them.