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Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Eleanor Josephine Danner Bilimoria 
April 26, 1985 
Cassette 3, Side 1 
 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  00:12 
My name is Elizabeth Leslie Gallery-Fox. Today is April 26, 1985. I'm back with Eleanor 
Danner Bilimoria in the second interview covering the period of her life from age 25 to 50. 
Eleanor would like to speak first on a few significant things to her that she would like to add 
before we get started on this second interview. I also have a few questions I'd like to ask her, 
before we start on the second segment, from our last interview that I'd like some more 
explanation on. So Eleanor is ready to get started on a few of her ideas, and we can go from here.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  01:03 
When I was very young, when we lived at Rainier Beach, my father had a motored launch, which 
he called the Mosquito, and we used to go on picnics in it to Mercer Island. There probably were 
one or two families living on Mercer Island at that time, but it was mostly woods. Another thing 
about Seattle at that time were the cable cars. Queen Anne Avenue had a cable car, as did 
Madison Avenue and some of the other steep ones, which would run on a counterbalance and go 
at the marvelous speed of eight miles per hour. But the fun thing was to be with my niece, Irene, 
who was five years younger than I, and we traveled mostly during the day when there were not 
many people aboard. So we could sit at the top, and as the cable car went down the hill, we 
would slide to the bottom and that was great fun. I learned to swim in the [?PI?] classes, which 
were driven at Green Lake, when I was about 11 or 12 years old. And we did have a mayor of 
Seattle who was a woman back in the '20s. I don't know her term, but Bertha Landes was mayor 
of Seattle in 1926. During the Depression, we had shanty towns in Seattle, several of them, 
mostly occupied by laborers out of work, and at Hooverville, which was down on the waterfront, 
there were 1000 men living there, and that was from 1932-35. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  02:54 
Somewhere along 7th to 10th grades, when I belong to Camp Fire Girls, we used to hike from 
Roosevelt Way out to Lake Washington, beyond Sand Point, where we would camp on the beach 
and cook out and swim in the lake. And the whole way, probably from 20th Avenue Northeast to 
the lake, was forest. So that where I'm living now would have been completely forest at that 
time. And you had some questions, Liz. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  03:29 
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Yes, you spoke about your father last time, and you mentioned that one thing, that he was a very 
stern man, very strict. And then you spoke about your mother, and said that she worked very 
hard. And what I would like you just to mention briefly in a way that you would like to about 
what their character was like and how you related to them when you were growing up and what 
their personalities were like and how you felt about it and how you feel about it now. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  04:02 
Well, I was thinking this week, in comparison to women whose stories I hear now, my parents 
were wonderful. They were strict. They weren't stern, they were strict, and there was no 
argument about things. I didn't go from Mother to Father to ask things. If Father said, "No," that 
was it. And mother probably said, "Ask your father." [Laughs] And that was the end of it. But I 
am hearing from other women stories of very tragic childhood and not being able to get along 
with their parents at this age. They were probably in their 30s, most of them. And I really was 
very fortunate.  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  05:01 
Okay, my second question is, when you were with the International School of Art, your 
scholarship, you went over to Europe and traveled in different countries and did different kinds 
of art, and at that time, that was the pre-World War II years. And you mentioned last time about 
the soldiers and the feeling in the air, and could you just express a little bit of what that was like 
for you? It was quite unique, maybe even painful, experience to to be in Europe at that time. I'm 
sure it was a different feeling than America. And what was that like? 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  05:43 
There was a feeling of fear, but it didn't penetrate me particularly. I came across it much more 
after war really broke out. While we were in Germany, of course, in '34, the storm troopers, the 
Nazis, were marching all of the time, and everywhere you went, there were soldiers. There was 
considerable concern in Czechoslovakia, and the feeling in Hungary I can bring up when we get 
to that. That was '36. I don't remember too much about it. I was having too good a time [they 
laugh] to be very much concerned. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  06:50 
Well, you can't look back and feel bad about that. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  06:54 
I remember as we crossed borders and always had to show our passports, and sometimes they'd 
be taken away from us on trains, particularly, and we'd worry about getting them back safely. 
And then when, one time, I think, going from Poland to Czechoslovakia, I can check on this, we 
had to get out of the train, and it was after dark, and carry our bags and stuff, cross the railroad 
tracks, cross the border, go into the next country and get on their train. And I came back the very 
first year feeling that we should have a world citizenship, that this was nonsense, and I've never 
been a nationalist since then. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  07:50 
Okay, well, you look prepared here with your cards. 
 
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Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  07:54 
Well, I was just trying to get things in order, and I didn't get very far. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  08:02 
So we can just go ahead, starting from where we left off last time, which was pretty much 
coming home on the boat from your travels on your scholarship. And also we ended on a note of 
your red leather button up shoes with tassels. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  08:22 
[Laughs] Well, that was a way, way back. Well, in 1935 I was teaching on Bainbridge Island and 
living with a group of young women in the cottage that Mr. Hayes had built for his daughter on 
the Hayes property, and that was a very nice place to stay. In the summer, I went to Spain after 
having two weeks in England. In fact, I'd gone over to attend the commemoration ball at Oxford, 
and that was an all night affair and my first all-- well, really, all night party from dinner to 
breakfast. We went from England to Gibraltar and traveled around Spain. We took in all the 
Prado and went to Toledo to see the steel making of swords and whatnot, El Greco country. 
Going over in the boat, there had been a Spanish instructor from one of the women's colleges in 
the East who had the deck chair next to mine, and he wanted to know if I was going to see the 
bullfights. And I said, "No." I thought they were terrible things. And then he started talking about 
the bullfights and showing how you-- the skill the matador had to have to twirl his cape. And 
then he'd throw off his blanket and jump out of his chair and demonstrate, you know [they 
laugh]. And by the time I got to England, I was sold on going to see the bullfights. So we saw 
bullfights all the way through Spain. Some of them were very exciting, and we saw some of the 
big name bullfighters of that period. And while I was in S-- we had entered and came out 
through Gibraltar, and there I got a contract from the Seattle Public Schools with a $500 raise. So 
I came back that fall to teach at John Marshall Junior High. Oh, and I'd been taking ballet lessons 
from Novikoff.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  11:05 
And about this time, I saw the first example of television. My brother who had had the radio 
shack on Vashon Island and had been the first one to have a radio was the first one to show me 
television, and it was someone downtown cutting out a silhouette, and all we could see in our 
home with this mechanism that he had were the scissors and the black paper and the form that 
developed against a white background, so that when I went out to India, television was still not a 
part of life. And also, at that time, we had refrigerators. Well, they were ice boxes in those days, 
and we put up the sign in the window twice a week, "25 pounds on one side and 50 pounds on 
the other." And the ice man would come and fill the ice box, and it had to be out on the back 
porch so he could get to it. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  12:14 
'36, when I went to the International School of Art in Poland and in Hungary, I think we covered 
last time, didn't we? 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  12:24 
Mm-hmm. 
 
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Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  12:30 
Before I went, our dancing class put on a recital at the Moore Theatre. And by that time, we were 
into toe dancing, and I had a part in Sleeping Beauty. That was one of the big moments of my 
life. When I came back in the fall, my father had been building out at Sand Point Way. We'd had 
this property for years and used to go out there on Sundays and picnic and go out in the 
summertime and camp. And so then he built this home on Sand Point Way, and we moved out in 
the fall. Was September, probably, as soon as I got back. And then he died on the 7th of 
November. So he didn't get to enjoy it very long. The summer of '37... I think I spoke also of 
studying with Archipenko at the University of Washington, doing sculpture with him.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  13:33 
In '38, I spent the summer in Mexico. Going down on the train, we met a couple from Mexico 
City, and on the Mexican train, there was a club car behind us and then our car was sort of a half 
a club car. And these-- one of the-- well, these two Mexican people had a guitar, and they both 
sang, and so we would all gather in the club car and sing with these people. And when we got to 
Mexico City, they had us all out for dinner in their home, and I was trying to find a Mexican 
family to live with so that I could learn Spanish. I'd had Spanish in high school, but it was pretty 
weak. Oh, that's a whole story in itself. So finally they said, "Eleanor, why don't you come and 
live with us?" They-- in their compound, the husband had his office on the ground floor, and then 
the house was upstairs, the family quarters. And then out in the back, in this lovely little garden, 
was a guest house with a very nicely furnished bedroom and a private bath and a little hallway 
parlor with a piano in it, and outside were carnations growing in window boxes, and that became 
my home for the summer. And they had a young boy, and he used to [laughs]... I can remember 
one time at the table, I had my hands in the lap, and he said, "Eleanor, get your hands on the 
table. It isn't polite to have your hands in the lap." Then I learned that that was because of some 
of the revolutions that Mexico had gone through. It was much safer to see a party's hands on the 
table than out of sight.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  16:03 
We traveled around Mexico, and I took motion pictures and still shots, pottery and silversmiths 
and the glass works, and we went down to Oaxaca. I loved the orchids there, [?14?]. And then 
when I left Mexico, I traveled up to Texas and Missouri and St. Louis to New York and 
International House. And to stay in International House, you had to be a student, so I took night 
classes at the New School for Social Research. And Harold Laski from London taught one of the 
classes. And Eliot Elisofon, who was a Life photographer, taught the other one that I took. 
Laski's with something on democracy. I can look that up, too. So that qualified me. During the 
day, I was trying to get a job in motion picture production. At International House, Burl Ives was 
one of the students there at that time and would play his guitar and sing, and he'd sit on the big 
staircase, and we'd all gather around and sing all of the songs that he loved so much.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  17:28 
Halloween, we were having a big celebration, and I don't remember it, but Soli told me 
afterwards that I was making signs because I had volunteered or been coerced, I don't remember, 
to be a gypsy and tell fortunes. So I was making a sign, and Soli came along and saw it and he 
was very impressed with my steady hand, and so he came in to have his fortune told that night. 
But I don't remember anything about that. I probably told him he's going to meet a beautiful 
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blonde [they laugh]. Then came Thanksgiving, and they asked various Americans to be hosts and 
hostesses at the tables. So I was given a table, and I was sure that I wouldn't get it filled, so I was 
after all of my friends, the two Dorothys and Helen, to bring their beaus and come sit at my table. 
And Dorothy's mother-- no, Helen's mother came from Colorado to visit, and so she brought me 
place cards. And I filled out all the place cards, and we went down and put them around. And I 
put this American boys on my left and right, so I could get acquainted with somebody. And Soli 
and Dorothy's boyfriend, who was Turkish, went down just before dinner and changed the place 
cards. And so he put his next to mine. I was a bit annoyed, but we had a good time. And then we 
met in the social hall one night after that, and I was telling him about Ferdinand, because 
Ferdinand, the Walt Disney movie, was playing at the Radio City Music Hall. So I got him 
enough interested in this bull who wouldn't fight but would smell the flowers that he took me to 
see Ferdinand. So that was the beginning.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  19:34 
And at the International House, we had Sunday night suppers and then dancing afterwards, 
usually. And one of the speakers that I remember at one of the Sunday night suppers was one of 
the men who had had the idea for the founding of International House, and he told how he had 
taken the plans to Rockefeller to get-- try and sell him on the idea of funding International 
House. And Rockefeller said, "Well, how many rooms are you going to have?" And he said 
whatever it was, 50, 100, I don't remember. And Rockefeller said, "Well, that won't pay for 
itself. You make it" -- and I don't remember the number here, either 250 or 500 or something -- 
"I'll fund it." So they did. And I always was impressed with that idea that it's better to do a thing 
big. We had a gang there at International House, and went-- had a supper club that went to 
different ethnic restaurants once a week. And so they would take me dinner dancing. We went to 
the Rainbow Room and the Hawaiian Room, and the first night of Abraham Lincoln the stage 
play, and to the Metropolitan Opera. First time I'd ever been to an opera. Heard Lauritz Melchior, 
Kirsten Flagstad. And then he bought a car, and on Sundays, we'd drive around the countryside 
and have dinner out on Long Island or someplace. I went up to West Point one weekend, and 
Thelma's brother was there and showed me all around.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  21:41 
And then I started work at the Harmon Foundation, Division of Visual Experiment, but not as a 
paid worker, as an apprentice, because I knew how to do the camera work, but I didn't know how 
to write the scenarios and do the editing, particularly. And Maria Werten, the woman I had 
studied with in Poland in the cut paper design, had decided it was a good time to get out of 
Europe and had been te-- she came to New Jersey and was teaching in Montclair. So I went up to 
see Maria and [?filmed up the?] 16 millimeter, which I called "Teaching Creative Design." And 
we edited my films of Spain and Hungary. And in 1972 or 1973, when I was in the library and 
we got a copy of the Harmon Foundation catalog, my films were still being sold. And I went up 
to Bennington where a professor had a film [inaudible]-- or had the motion-- had the pictures on 
stained glass windows. So I took that and edited it and wrote the titles. Then I got put on $20 a 
week at the Harmon Foundation, and they wanted us to do the Quaker work camps. Quakers had 
five camps where they took people in to work. So I trained a photographer, a young man who 
later turned up in who's who of America. We went up to Pennsylvania to learn about the big 
Quaker work camps, what they were about, and then I wrote the scripts and he did went back and 
did the photography. 
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Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  23:43 
In the spring, Soli and I went down to Washington to see the cherry blossoms and all the sites in 
Washington, D.C. In June, Soli made a tour of the US, and he came out to Washington and 
stayed overnight with my mother and met some of the family, and then all of my friends were 
graduating in June. And, oh, I forgot to say that Dorothy and Helen and I had moved out of 
International House into an apartment, that is into two rooms, two bedrooms, or one we used as a 
living room also, and then we shared the kitchen and bath, and one of the other tenants was Burl 
Ives. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  24:36 
So I moved into an apartment, but it wasn't nearly as nice, and I was very lonesome, and I wrote 
to Worth McClure, was a superintendent of the Seattle Public Schools, and he sent me back this 
long, five-page telegram, saying, "Come on back." And gave me a job as a cinematographer for 
the Seattle Public Schools. I wanted to do it full time, but he said half time and art half time. 
Then the war was breaking in Europe, Soli was due to go home in September, and war broke out 
just before that, so he got a cable from his family, "Don't cross the Atlantic, take the Pacific." So 
we drove across the continent. His cousin [?Pilu?] started out with us, but he didn't like the 
rumble seat [laughs], so I think it was Chicago where he left us. So we were back in Seattle, and 
Soli met a lot of my friends. In the Seattle schools, Worth McClure had produced a book called 
Successful Living, and he wanted that made into a film, so I did, and he was so pleased with it, 
he took it in the spring to London to the International Association of School Superintendents, and 
they showed it there. And the film on life in the kindergarten, a day in the kindergarten, which I 
made under the supervision of the director of kindergartens, Helen Reynolds, they took back to 
the Association for Child Education, their national conference, and showed it, and they bought a 
copy for the national association. And I worked with the different experts in the Seattle schools 
in different fields. They would tell me what they wanted, and I'd write the scenario, and they'd 
okay it, and I'd go into the school with my camera, and I'd tell the children, "Now you don't look 
at the camera, because that spoils the illusion. And if you look at the camera, I will cut it out, and 
then you won't be in the picture." So they were very good. Just a few minutes, they paid no 
attention to me at all. And so we had done the day in the kindergarten, and I did one for the-- 
some special P.E. program and teaching math from first grade through calculus, vocational 
education math. I did one on the Coppélia ballet.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  27:28 
Then I got engaged to that man way off in India. Nancy Ann Miller was a Seattle girl, or at least 
her family was living in Seattle, and she must have married the Maharaja of Indore 12 or 13 
years before, but she must have been back in Seattle to visit two or three years before this, 
because there was intense interest in publicity at that time, and I reaped all of this. So when it got 
out that I was having-- going to India to be married, it was in the papers. And I had many parties 
and showers. And for my engagement announcement party, I wore the sari which Soli's mother 
had sent him to give to me with the-- and she had said, "Now, no foreign entanglements." And 
when I went to the travel agent to say, "I want to go to India the first of the year," she said, 
"Well, you'd never believe this, but there is another Seattle girl going to India to be married at 
the same time." Martha Daniels, whose father was a professor at the university, was going out to 
marry an officer in the English-- in the British Army, but he was an Englishman. So we sailed 
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from San Francisco, and we made six trips to the boat because it was a Dutch ship, and they 
didn't want to give out the sailing time, plus the fact they didn't know, or they did know, what 
ships were off the coast. Anyhow, we got-- would go out to the boat and get sent back. And on 
the fifth trip, they said, "Leave your luggage. We have to go through it." And then we went back 
the next day, and finally sailed. And as we were going under the San Francisco bridge, here were 
all of the missionaries, and most of our tourist class were missionaries, gathered out on the poop 
deck and started singing hymns. [They laugh] I didn't particularly find that comforting. And I 
wanted to stay on deck to see the pilot take off in his little boat. And as we got out of the harbor, 
it got rougher and rougher and rougher, and by the time he was to return to the pilot ship, it was 
going up and down so badly that he had a difficult time getting ashore. Well, I went down to first 
class because I knew they'd have better tea than we would get and had tea and went down to the 
state room feeling very queasy, and Martha was already in bed, fully clothed. Well, I tried to 
help her a little bit, and then I got sicker, and finally I fell into bed. And you know, it was two 
days before we got up and put on our pajamas. And we were in bed for a week. It was just awful. 
She'd had a corsage and put it in a glass of water on the stand above the basin, and it fell off, and 
for days that glass rolled [they laugh] and rolled and rolled. Oh, it made a horrible noise. Well, 
we finally got up on deck, and the man next to me was a surgeon, and he said to me, "You look 
like a three-day--" 
 