Outlaw Marriages (21 page)

Along with his emotional difficulties, Kraft also had a long history of heart problems. In 1976 while vacationing in Maine, he suffered cardiac arrest and died almost immediately, at the age of sixty.
57

When Copland learned that his partner of more than forty years had died, he was deeply saddened. One friend told the composer he was better off without Kraft, but Copland vehemently disagreed, insisting that he entered a state of clinical depression the moment he learned that the love of his life was gone.
58

Copland was the godfather to Kraft's son, and the composer was committed to taking care of Jeremy Aaron Kraft in every way he could. He paid for the boy to attend private school and later helped the young man complete training as an auto mechanic.
59

By the time Victor Kraft died, Aaron Copland was widely acknowledged to be the unofficial “dean” of American classical music. Among the long list of prestigious awards he received were Kennedy Center Honors from President Jimmy Carter in 1979 and a Medal of the Arts from President Ronald Reagan in 1986.
60

Although his stature as an American icon meant that he could have continued having sexual relationships with much younger men, Copland ceased that indulgence after Kraft died. He made this decision, biographers believe, because of his feelings of guilt that his earlier affairs had contributed to the emotional demons that had troubled Kraft during the final decades of his life.
61

Copland outlived Kraft by many years, dying at the age of ninety from respiratory failure. His passing in 1990 was marked by obituaries that appeared on the front pages of the country's leading newspapers. The one in the
New York Times
lauded Copland for having “touched a chord in the American psyche reached by no other classical musician this country has produced.” That high-profile tribute made no mention, however, of Victor Kraft or his role in Copland's life, describing the legendary composer as “a lifelong bachelor.”
62

Lifting American Theater to New Heights

…

The list of theatrical masterpieces that Tennessee Williams wrote during his four decades as a playwright is both long and impressive. Biographers who have looked closely at his life, however, point out that Williams's career almost ended after he completed only two important works. Those scholars say that physical and emotional exhaustion thrust Williams, at the age of thirty-six, into an extended period of drug use and promiscuity that threatened to bring his creative output to a premature end.

Then came Frank Merlo. The rock-solid World War II veteran stabilized the playwright's life so his creative juices could begin flowing again. Indeed, generations of theatergoers owe a deep debt of gratitude to Merlo for helping Williams regain an equilibrium that allowed him to write many of his finest plays—including the Pulitzer Prize–winning
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
. Williams's same-sex partner also contributed more directly to several of the playwright's most important works.

Thomas Lanier Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1911. His father was a traveling shoe salesman, and his mother was a stay-at-home wife who took care of the couple's three children.
1

In 1918, Tom's father was promoted to a management position in a shoe company and moved the family to St. Louis. Tom soon grew distant from his father because the physically frail boy's favorite pastime was reading, rather than sports, which prompted the head of the family to refer to his son by the denigrating nickname “Miss Nancy.”
2

Other forces shaping Tom's early years included his father's addiction to alcohol, his mother's melancholy moods because she missed the South, and his sister's gradual drift into an inner world of darkness and unreality that led to frequent fits of hysteria.
3

When it came time for college, Tom enrolled at the University of Missouri, majoring in journalism. He was only a mediocre student, however, because he spent the lion's share of his time writing for his own pleasure.
4

It was also during this period that Tom changed his name. His mother's parents had paid his college tuition, and he also spent summers at the couple's home in Memphis, Tennessee. And so, partly as a tribute to them, Tom had his first name legally changed to Tennessee.
5

The bigger event in the Williams family during this period involved the young man's sister, Rose. Her mental state had deteriorated to the point that her doctor feared she might harm herself or others, prompting her parents to have a lobotomy performed on her. That is, a nerve in her brain was cut, eliminating the potential for violence but also permanently limiting her emotional and intellectual development to that of a child. Tennessee wasn't told of his sister's operation in advance, and he never forgave his parents for having it done.
6

Williams left college after two years because of poor grades and family financial setbacks. He worked for his father in the shoe business for three years and then returned to the classroom, this time at the University of Iowa. He also became interested in the theater, switching his major to drama and earning his degree in 1938.
7

Frank Philip Merlo was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1922. He came from a poor family—the Merlo home didn't have indoor plumbing—that was defined by a strong work ethic and a commitment to retaining its Sicilian heritage.
8

After graduating from high school, Frank entered the Navy and served as a pharmacist mate during World War II, receiving commendations for being highly dedicated to his work. With his honorable discharge in hand, he returned to New Jersey so he'd be close to his family. He earned his livelihood
as a truck driver and moved into his own apartment.
9

Friends and relatives characterized Merlo, during his twenties, as a highly responsible and mild-mannered young man who was well liked by everyone who knew him. His major leisure activity was going to the theater, traveling into New York City as often as he could to see Broadway's latest offerings.
10

After Tennessee Williams graduated from college, he moved to New Orleans, attracted to the city's reputation for retaining an air of Old South gentility. He threw himself into writing plays, while waiting tables to pay the rent.
11

Another reason why Williams liked the Big Easy was that the city provided him with ample opportunity to act on the same-sex desires he'd been feeling for several years. He invited the first man into his bed in 1939, and plenty more then followed.
12

In that same year, Williams entered a competition sponsored by an organization committed to encouraging new theatrical talent. Williams didn't win the contest, but the judges found his plays strong enough to forward them to a theatrical agent.
13

By 1941, Audrey Wood was representing Williams and had persuaded him to move to New York City so he could see the latest Broadway productions. He lived in a YMCA and worked as an usher in a theater. Everything changed in 1944 when Wood found producers who were willing to finance a Broadway staging of Williams's play titled
The Glass Menagerie
.
14

The drama is narrated by the character Tom, whose overbearing mother pushes her son to invite a coworker home for dinner. The mother hopes the guest will become a suitor for her daughter, who walks with a limp and is incapable of coping with the outside world. But the guest soon flees, claiming he's already engaged. Tom also leaves to make his own way in the world.

Reviewers loved
The Glass Menagerie
. The
Chicago Tribune
reported that everyone who saw the play was “caught in the spell” of the masterful work, and the
Washington Post
was so impressed that it dubbed Williams “the new young hope of the American theater.” A week after
Menagerie
opened, the New York Drama Critics' Circle named it the best new play of the year.
15

Williams was showered with more praise three years later after the Broadway opening of
A Streetcar Named Desire
. This play centers on Blanche DuBois, an aging southern belle who comes to New Orleans to visit her sister and brutish brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Blanche portrays herself as a chaste schoolteacher, but Stanley uncovers her sordid past as a seducer of teenage boys. By the end of the taut drama, Blanche suffers a nervous breakdown and is led away to an asylum.

The
New York Herald Tribune
described the play as one of “heroic dimensions,
” and the
New Yorker
pronounced it nothing short of “brilliant.” Members of the New York Drama Critics' Circle honored
Streetcar
as 1947's best play, and, early the next year, the drama received the most prestigious award possible for a theatrical work, the Pulitzer Prize.
16

A few days after
Streetcar
opened, Williams boarded a ship bound for Europe so he could rest and relax. He traveled alone and told no one how long he'd be gone.
17

Biographers have observed that writing and staging
Streetcar
had taken a huge toll on the playwright, both physically and emotionally. Several of those scholars also have said that Williams believed, at this point in his life, that his writing career had ended. In the words of one of them, “Tennessee Williams brought from himself a play he was convinced was to be his last—that he would never have the energy to write another one.”
18

By the time Williams reached Paris, he was complaining, in letters to friends, about how exhausted he was because of “the accumulated fatigue” of the previous months. He was soon hospitalized, his symptoms indicating—in his words, “signs of a grave illness.” Sure that he was near death, Williams entered what ultimately became the longest period in his adult life that he did no writing whatsoever.
19

This lack of productivity wouldn't have been a problem in and of itself, except that he filled his days in France first with drinking whiskey—he had his first glass as soon as he woke up in the morning—and consuming large quantities of pills. He soon admitted to his agent that these substances were dominating his life.
20

At the same time that Williams sought comfort through alcohol and other drugs, he also looked for it in the arms of strangers. Being robbed by a man he'd brought to his hotel room for sex failed to dissuade him from having more such encounters when he moved on to Italy. He wrote a friend that all a man needed to enjoy European travel was “one suit, two shirts, and a pocket full of prophylactics.”
21

An incident that summer revealed Williams's sorry state.
The Glass Menagerie
was to open in London in July, and a major celebration was planned to mark the premiere. Audrey Wood had come from the United States, as had Williams's mother and brother. Publicity for the soiree promised that Williams would be present for the opening and the lavish reception to follow. On the night of the gala, however, the playwright didn't show up. It was several days later that Williams's mother finally received a telegram saying that her son had fallen unconscious after taking a sedative.
22

The playwright's absence from that celebration served as a wake-up call, as
he left Europe and returned to New York a few days later.
23

Promiscuity wasn't a new experience for Williams when it became part of his downward spiral in 1947 and 1948. Indeed, it was through a one-night stand the summer before he left for Europe that he'd met the man who ultimately became the love of his life.
24

At five feet five inches tall, Frank Merlo was an inch shorter than the playwright. Merlo's muscular body and ruggedly handsome facial features, however, made him much more attractive than Williams. Merlo's face was somewhat elongated, giving him what Williams described as a “horsey look” that led to the playwright's pet name for him, “Little Horse.”
25

Williams and Merlo had sex on the dunes in Provincetown, Massachusetts, one night in July 1947 and then went their separate ways. Their paths crossed again soon after Williams returned to New York, after his European travels, when they were both eating at a delicatessen on Lexington Avenue. They recognized each other from their tryst a year earlier, and Merlo congratulated the playwright on
Streetcar
, saying he'd seen and enjoyed the play.
26