Outlaw Marriages (22 page)

Within weeks after that second meeting, Merlo moved into Williams's apartment. The playwright soon spoke, in his personal journal, about his love for the man who quickly took center stage in his life. “I love Frankie—deeply, tenderly, unconditionally. I love him with every bit of my heart,” Williams said in one entry, and in another he wrote, “My heart is full of love for Little Horse and only for Little Horse.”
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After Merlo moved in, he became much more than Williams's lover, as he took on any number of practical tasks that made the playwright's life easier. Merlo cooked his partner's meals, drove him where he needed to go, and wrote letters for him. The younger man also made sure the apartment stayed clean and orderly.
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More important than taking on these chores, though, was Merlo's success at weaning Williams off his dependence on alcohol, pills, and casual sex—both men drank alcohol but in moderation. With these distractions gone, the theatrical genius again concentrated on his writing. In short, Frank Merlo single-handedly stabilized Tennessee Williams's life and career.
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People who cared about the playwright consistently praised Merlo. Paul Bigelow, one of Williams's friends from the theater world, said, “We were all very pleased when Frank moved in with Tenn. Frank was a warm, decent man with a strong native intelligence and a sense of honor. Frank wanted to care for Tenn and bring order to his chaotic life. And with great love, this is what
Frank did.” Writer Christopher Isherwood, who'd known Williams for fifteen years, echoed those same sentiments, saying, “Frank looked after Tenn in a way that was uncanny. And he wasn't just some kind of faithful servitor. He was a lovable man with a strong will.” Cheryl Crawford, who produced several of Williams's plays, added, “Frank was the only one who really understood Tennessee, really knew how to deal with him and help him.”
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At the same time that Merlo took care of the man he loved, he wasn't a saint. He drank a lot of beer, smoked four packs of cigarettes a day, and joined Williams in spending several nights a week in the gay bars that had proliferated in Manhattan by the late 1940s.
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Merlo didn't have any formal training or experience in the theater. Nevertheless, he ultimately had significant impact on several of Williams's most important plays.

The work that most dramatically reflects Merlo's central place in the playwright's life is
The Rose Tattoo
. “It was permeated,” Williams later wrote, “with my happy young love for Frankie.” Several elements of the work can be traced directly to Little Horse. Williams's partner was of Sicilian heritage; the play celebrates the Sicilian lust for life. The play's male lead is a truck driver; Merlo was driving a truck when he and Williams met. The work is Williams's only major one with a resolutely happy ending; he wrote the play while he and Merlo were in the infatuation stage of their outlaw marriage.
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During 1950 when Williams wrote
Tattoo
, he and Merlo made two trips to Sicily so the playwright could get a better sense of the culture. Williams was so taken by the language, in fact, that he seriously considered having his characters speak Sicilian during much of the play—Merlo talked him out of it, arguing that using the foreign language would annoy American audiences.
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The Rose Tattoo
revolves around a high-spirited widow who retreats from the world after her husband dies. Serafina reawakens to life's joys when she meets the happy-go-lucky Alvaro. She initially resists his advances out of respect for her dead husband, but the likeable suitor wins her over when she discovers that he, like her dead husband, has a rose tattoo on his chest.

Critics praised the work when it opened on Broadway in 1951. The
Chicago Tribune
called it “fresh, provocative and stimulating,” and the
New York Times
added the adjectives “original, imaginative and tender,” before going on to gush, “It is the loveliest idyll written for the stage in some time.” At the annual Tony Awards ceremony,
Tattoo
was honored as the best new play of the season.
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Williams acknowledged that Merlo and his life were the inspiration for
the play by dedicating it to him.
35

Merlo's role in his partner's next big hit,
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
, involved the writing process. Williams struggled with the work because its themes were so similar to
Streetcar
's that he was sure the critics would compare the two. And so, he convinced himself, if the new play didn't rise to the exceptional quality of
Streetcar
, the reviewers would instantly pronounce it a failure. Williams's anxiety and emotional instability soared.
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So Little Horse became his partner's comforter and confidence builder, offering sympathy and tenderness when Williams became distraught, which happened almost daily throughout 1954. What's more, Williams became so dependent on Merlo that the playwright turned to his partner for critiques of his work, finishing the draft of a scene and then reading it out loud and asking for instant feedback. José Quintero, who directed several of Williams's plays, said, “Frank was one of the few people that told Tenn the truth without being afraid.”
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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
revolves around a secret that Brick, a former football star, is keeping from his highly sexual wife and domineering father. The wife is frustrated because her husband has grown distant since his best friend, Skipper, committed suicide. It gradually emerges that Brick and Skipper had been lovers, making the play one of the earliest Broadway productions that dealt with homosexuality.

When
Cat
opened in 1955, the critics had nothing but praise, despite Williams's earlier worries. The
Chicago Tribune
called the drama “perceptive,” the
New York Times
crowned it “stunning,” and the
Washington Post
said it was “superior to both A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie.”
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A month after the opening,
Cat
won Williams his third New York Drama Critics' Award, and, soon after that, it gave him his second Pulitzer Prize.
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The theater world knew nothing of Merlo's behind-the-scenes role in
Cat
's creation, but Williams was well aware of how crucial his lover's support had been throughout the painful writing process. Williams showed his gratitude by giving Little Horse, as he'd done with
Tattoo
, 10 percent of the play's profits.
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Merlo again supported Williams when the playwright began work on his next major success,
The Night of the Iguana
. As when he was writing
Cat
, Williams struggled with a crisis in confidence. “He felt that his star was in decline by this time,” said Frank Corsaro, who had directed a one-act version of
Iguana
and then waited for Williams to finish the second and third acts. “Frank was the best part of Tennessee's life. He was a street kid who had
grown up and become a real, literate gentleman.” Merlo put his partner on a strict schedule, demanding that he write for four hours each day. “Frank took no nonsense from Tennessee,” Corsaro said.
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The Night of the Iguana
focuses on an Episcopal priest who brings a group of American tourists to a remote Mexican hotel. During a stormy night, the alcoholic man of the cloth confronts his demons—including frantic sexuality and religious guilt. He also learns important lessons from the earthy hotel proprietor.

When
Iguana
opened in late 1961, the
New York Daily News
called it “a beautiful play,” and the
Washington Post
said “any aficionado of drama will be thrilled” by Williams's latest work. Dwarfing the individual critiques, though, was
Time
magazine's decision to mark the play's triumph as “a box-office sellout” by placing a photo of Williams on its cover. The story inside anointed Williams “America's greatest playwright.”
42

Neither the
Time
article nor other stories that included glimpses into Williams's personal life mentioned his sexuality. This omission wasn't because the playwright denied being gay—he never did—but because news organizations preferred not to talk about the subject.
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A month after
Iguana
premiered, members of the New York Drama Critics' Circle voted it the best new play of the year—the fourth work by Williams to win that honor.
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There's no question that Frank Merlo stabilized Tennessee Williams's life and career after his indolent period in the late 1940s, just as there's no question that the younger partner helped the older one with several of the theatrical projects he created during the 1950s and early 1960s. Neither of these facts, however, should mask the reality that the two men struggled with several issues that continually threatened their outlaw marriage.

The list begins with the fact that Merlo insisted, when they became a couple in 1948, that Williams be sexually faithful to him. The playwright's correspondence and entries in his personal journal, however, show that he sometimes strayed. In a letter Williams wrote to a friend in 1951, for example, he described a solo trip to Europe by saying, “I had my best time and most exciting lay in London.” Likewise, in a 1954 journal entry while he was alone in Spain, Williams wrote, “Sex has been disappointing. My appeal, even to the hustlers, seems to have suffered a decline this summer.”
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A second issue had to do with Merlo's occupation—or, more precisely, his lack of one. When Little Horse moved in with Williams, he voluntarily stopped driving trucks and took on the duties of being the playwright's cook, chauffeur, and secretary. Williams saw this situation as a problem, as he felt
guilty that his needs were keeping his partner from having an independent career. Merlo didn't share this concern and, in fact, made light of his role. In 1949, for instance, Williams and Merlo flew to Hollywood so the playwright could begin working with the head of Warner Brothers studio, Jack Warner, on the film version of
The Glass Menagerie
. Williams forgot to introduce his partner to Warner, and so, after a few minutes, the movie magnate turned to Merlo and asked, “And what do you do, young man?” Without missing a beat, Little Horse smiled and responded, “My job is to sleep with Mr. Williams.”
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A third issue facing the Williams/Merlo partnership was the playwright's return to using alcohol and other drugs. Merlo had weaned his partner off these substances in the late 1940s, but Williams gradually began consuming them again. For several years, he succeeded in keeping his drug use a secret, but that period ended in June 1960 when he told a
Newsweek
reporter that he took barbiturates. When Merlo read the published story, he was livid, telling Williams that he felt betrayed.
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After that confrontation, the relationship became increasingly strained. In the words of one biographer, “Williams spent more time with other men at bars and on the beach. There seemed to be a quiet
diminuendo
to what had once been the lively, tender duet of Tennessee Williams and Frank Merlo.”
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As early as 1960, people around Little Horse began noticing that he had a hacking cough that wouldn't go away. He also lost weight and complained that he became exhausted after even minor physical exertion.
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Williams was vacationing in London in 1962 when he received a telegram from his agent telling him that Merlo had been sitting at an outdoor café when he suddenly leaned forward and a stream of blood poured from his mouth. The playwright left England immediately and was by his partner's side the next afternoon. Soon after that, Merlo was diagnosed as having inoperable lung cancer—an illness connected to his heavy smoking.
50

The playwright paid the medical bills and made Little Horse's life as pleasant as possible, staying with him in Key West, Florida, because Merlo had always loved that city. But not even the wealthiest playwright in the country could stop the gradual deterioration in his partner's health that continued for the next year. Of the last weeks, Williams later said, “Frankie never lost a fraction of his pride in the face of the most awful death a person can have.”
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It was in September 1963 that the final scene in the couple's life together played out. Merlo was in his hospital bed when he removed his oxygen mask and, with a sudden burst of energy, climbed into a chair. The older man urged the younger one to conserve his strength, saying he'd been looking better lately—which they both knew was a lie. The lovers then sat in silence, and
when Williams offered to leave so his partner could sleep, Merlo asked him to stay, saying softly, “I'm used to you.”
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Merlo died later that night, at the age of forty-one.

After Merlo's death, Williams entered a period reminiscent of the difficult time in 1947 and 1948. “As long as Frank was well, I was happy,” the playwright later recalled. “He had a gift for creating a life for us, and, when he ceased to be alive, I couldn't create a life for myself. So I went into a seven-year depression.”
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