1955

January 8-13, trip to the southern US; visits Oxford and Vicksburg, Mississippi; Memphis, Tennessee; Birmingham, Alabama; St. Petersburg and Tampa, Florida.

Vicksburg. Page from a 1955 sketchook. Saul Steinberg Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. — *Vicksburg*. Page from a 1955 sketchook. Saul Steinberg Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

March 2, to Boston for the installation of his exhibition at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Robinson Hall, “Steinberg: De Architectura,” organized by José Luis Sert; first exhibition to focus on architectural themes in Steinberg’s work.

March 15, arrives in Paris; March 23, flies to Rome, then by train to Tortoreto to see the villa in which he was interned as an undesirable in 1941. “What I wanted in Tortoreto was to give myself a proof of maturity or courage… The truth is I ran away as soon as I looked at the [villa].”

For the next two weeks, travels through Italy; visits Ada Ongari, his old girlfriend in Milan, who is not in good health.

By April 7 in Nice to visit parents; back in Paris by April 11; Hedda arrives from New York on May 3.

Moritz and Rosa Steinberg, c. 1955. Collection of Daniela Roman.

Hedda leaves in mid-June for Wellfleet, Massachusetts, to spend the summer; ST returns to New York on July 10, then goes on to Wellfleet.

Returns to New York on September 9.

Panoramic drawing for the opening credits to Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Trouble with Harry. ST tells Aldo Buzzi that “Hitchcock showed up and begged me to make this drawing, which he considered very important: he feared that the public would be repelled by the sight of a corpse (oh, the good old days!). So I made a drawing for the opening sequence, which I’d call morto divertente”—“entertaining corpse,” a play on molto divertente, “very entertaining.”