SOURCE: Blades, Joe. “The Evolution of Cabaret.” Literature/Film Quarterly 1, no. 3 (July 1973): 226-38.

In the following essay, Blades chronicles the adaptation of The Berlin Stories to the stage and cinema.

From 1929 to 1933, I lived almost continuously in Berlin, with only occasional visits to other parts of Germany and to England. Already, during that time, I had made up my mind that I would one day write about the people I'd met and the experiences I was having. So I kept a detailed diary, which in due course provided raw material for all my Berlin stories.¹

—Christopher Isherwood, July 1954

Mr. Isherwood's painstaking efforts as a diarist were not wasted. His original concept was to turn his experiences into a “huge tightly constructed melodramatic novel.”² Instead, his memoirs reached print as a loosely interrelated series of short stories bolstered by incisive character portraits.

In 1935 the author published Mr. Norris Changes...