Dali Planet #125:
The streets of Toledo
While in New York in 1942, Dali had denounced his old friend Luis Bunuel as an atheist, a serious charge at the time, and it set in motion a chain of events that ultimately forced Bunuel to quit his post at the Museum of Modern Art, where he was in charge of making and propagating anti-Nazi films, and got him blacklisted from the American movie industry. The photo shows Dali and Bunuel on Cape Creus in the 1920s.
Many years later Bunuel was showing his son Juan Luis around Toledo, where he, Lorca and Dali used to get up to mischief during their student days. “We ended way up on this balcony,” Juan Luis recalled, “gazing at the city below. He was all teary. I asked what was the matter. He said, ‘This was where I used to come with Federico and Salvador. We would come here to vomit’.”
Of Dali’s betrayal, Juan Luis said, “What a man! I mean that in a bad sense. He blew it all! He was a bad friend… He was not a stupid man but, for 50 years, he dropped all of his friends, and went out with cretins.” In the late 1930s, he said, his father was down on his luck and wrote to Dali for a loan of $50. “I am starting work at the Museum Of Modern Art and I’ll pay you in a month.” Dali’s answer: “No, you don’t lend money to friends — and thank goodness that Franco won the war.” Luis Bunuel died in 1983.
