Tuesday, December 4, 2018
I was very sorry to hear that Alixe Gordin has passed away. Ms. Gordin was an extraordinary woman, and I will miss her. I am a biographer and Professor at the University of Redlands, and in 2016, Alixe allowed me to visit and interview her for my work on a book about Louise Fitzhugh. Over our several hours of conversation I came to know Alixe as a most remarkable, highly accomplished person who helped many other women succeed. One of her friends told me, “If Alixe recognized something in you, you’d never forget her-- because she’d pick up the phone and find you a job.” Alixe was an honest and ethical person, with a large circle of friends (some of whom called her “Boots” because of her Arizona-style footwear). She loved music, she rescued cats (one cat she allowed to sleep in her bed had kittens on her head, according to Louise), and she still had the first poem she wrote to her own Mother—who was also a formidable woman, and whom Alixe loved dearly. Alixe also loved Louise Fitzhugh very much. She supported and encouraged Louise’s genius as a novelist and painter, and later helped to preserve Louise’s legacy in her conversations with scholars and documentarians. Alixe’s own legacy is assured as a casting director in television during its early years, and in the Golden Age movie industry of the 1960’s and 70’s. She was a generous and powerful woman. My condolences to her family and friends.
