Pink Triangle: The Feuds and Private Lives of Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Famous Members of Their Entourages (Blood Moon's Babylon Series) (103 page)

When MGM finally cast her in the film opposite Paul Newman, she was elated. “When the man with the glacial blue eyes meets the girl with the eyes of spring violet, the great movie romance of the century will surely unfold,” one columnist wrote. “How can two such sex symbols resist the magnetism of each other?” That columnist had obviously not read the “fine print” about how the character of Brick most definitely resists Maggie.

Ben Gazzara was bitterly disappointed when he didn’t get the role of Brick in the movie version. “It went to Newman,” he told his friends. “Tennessee has a crush on him, in spite of the fact he has skinny legs and I have the legs of a Roman centurion.”

Shooting on
Cat
began on March 12, 1958. When Elizabeth met Newman on the set, she said, “You’re more beautiful in person than on the screen, if such a thing is possible,” she said.

“You took the words out of my mouth,” he answered. “Surely, you are the most beautiful woman in the world, maybe in the universe, for all I know.”

Tennessee arrived during the first week to greet Elizabeth and Newman. He had lunch at the MGM commissary with the film’s director, Richard Brooks. Over sandwiches, Tennessee was informed that MGM had rejected the first draft of the script in which Brick confesses to Maggie both his homosexuality and his undying love for his best friend, Skipper, who had committed suicide.

“You’ve got to understand my dilemma,” Brooks pleaded with an irate Tennessee.” The Production Code doesn’t even allow us to mention the word ‘homosexual’ on the screen.”

James Poe, who had worked on the script of Todd’s
Around the World in 80 Days
(1956), showed up to meet Tennessee. The lunch crashed downhill from there after Poe informed the playwright he’d been assigned “to clean up the script.”

Tennessee stormed out of the luncheon, but both Newman and Elizabeth kept him abreast of the revised script, which was relentlessly being watered down.

Near the end of the film’s final version, Maggie lies to Big Daddy, asserting falsely that she is pregnant, and Brick backs her up in her lie. In movie’s final scene, he tosses a pillow into position beside Maggie on their bed. The movie ends with the couple’s “horizontal reconciliation,” with the implication that Brick will penetrate Maggie and make her pregnant. As part of the film’s happy ending, previous wrongdoings and misunderstandings blissfully fade away.

***

Throughout the filming of his play, Tennessee received calls from both Taylor and Newman, each complaining about the other. Newman charged that “Elizabeth is totally lifeless working with me. We have no chemistry at all. She’s holding back.”

During any of several calls that Elizabeth placed to Tennessee, she charged that during rehearsals, “He’s doing everything he can to steal every scene from me, even indulging in male burlesque. He’s been stripping down to his underwear and running around, anything to distract from my best dialogue.”

But when the actual filming began, Newman called Tennessee to say that he’d changed his mind. “When the camera is turned on her, she becomes radiant, a much better actress than I ever imagined.”

He also told Tennessee, “Although a great deal of my motivation has been removed by the censors, I’m struggling to make Brick a creditable character.”

Then Brooks telephoned Tennessee with bad news. “Elizabeth, the one with the ‘Oh! So delicate health,’ has taken sick. Her doctors told me it’s developing into pneumonia. I’m going to try to shoot around her until she recovers. MGM is furious because her contract expires on June 1. After that, they’ll have to more than double her salary, which right now is $125,000. Warner Brothers is charging only $25,000 for Newman’s services. To be on the safe side, we’re negotiating with Carroll Baker to replace Elizabeth if we have to.”

While Elizabeth was sick in bed, Todd boarded
The Lucky Liz
in bad weather for a flight to New York, in anticipation of being fêted at an upcoming Friars Club dinner at the Waldorf Astoria. What happened next generated headlines around the world.

On March 22, 1958, caught in a violent storm over New Mexico, the plane went down over the Zuni Mountains, killing everyone aboard.

As soon as the first radio reports came in, Brooks called Tennessee. Elizabeth had already been notified. “I just heard from her house,” Brooks told Tennessee. “She’s hysterical.”

Later, Tennessee learned that Elizabeth, consumed with grief, had run out into the street. “I was Tennessee Williams’
Baby Doll
, you know, with the little panties?” she said. “I fell onto my knees in the street, shouting, ‘
No, not Mike, Not Mike, dear God, please not Mike
.’ I was almost run over by a car.”

Tennessee later said, “I came to visit Elizabeth only once, and I found her deranged. In the wake of Todd’s death, she was reaching out for love. Paul came over to comfort her, and she insisted he spend the night. He was seduced. Then, for a while, she felt she was in love with Mike Todd, Jr., Then she developed this fixation on Eddie Fisher, her husband’s best friend. I knew she had never liked Eddie. One night at a dinner, she referred to him as ‘the bus boy.’”

“I was there to greet Elizabeth when she returned to work in April of 1958,” Tennessee said. “She was visibly shaken, but a real trouper, determined to finish the movie. We were proud of her, and Paul was wonderful to her.”

When the picture was wrapped, Tennessee was invited for a look at the final cut. He cringed throughout the screening, and Newman, sitting beside him, shifted nervously in his seat. When the lights came on after that tossed pillow scene, Tennessee rose to his feet.

He looked first at Newman. “You were fabulous. One tasty morsel. And Elizabeth, you look so sexy no gay man could ever turn you down.”

Then he turned to Brooks. “You emasculated my play. You bastard!” Then he stormed out of the studio.

***

On September 20, 1958, when
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
opened in theaters across the country, Elizabeth was denounced as “the other woman.” She was accused of breaking up the marriage of America’s so-called sweethearts, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher.

But instead of seguéing “Notorious Liz,” as she was labeled, into box office poison, publicity generated by the illicit romance had movie-goers lining up to gaze upon “this Jezebel.”

When
Cat
opened at theaters in New York City, Tennessee went to the movie house where people were lined up to buy tickets. He shouted at them, “Go home! This movie will set Hollywood back fifty years.”
[At the time, Tennessee was tanked up on amphetamines, liquor, and barbiturates.]

Cat
was eventually nominated for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay (in spite of Tennessee’s ongoing assaults), Best Director (Brooks), Best Actor (Newman), and Best Actress (Elizabeth).

Both Elizabeth and Newman lost, respectively, to Susan Hayward (in
I Want to Live
), and David Niven (in
Separate Tables
).

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
was MGM’s biggest hit of the year, and polls in the autumn named Elizabeth as the number one star in Hollywood. In a call to Tennessee, she said, “Notoriety worked in my favor. Apparently, the public wants to go into a darkened movie house and gaze upon a scarlet woman. Baby, I’m not scarlet…I’m purple.”

In years to come,
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
would go before the cameras again, as it did in 1976 in a television version that received mixed reviews. A husband and wife team, Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner, starred with Laurence Olivier (of all people) playing Big Daddy, and with Maureen Stapleton as Big Mama. It received many negative reviews.

Again, in 1984, another TV version was produced by American Playhouse, starring Jessica Lange and Tommy Lee Jones in the lead roles, supported by such talent as Kim Stanley and Rip Torn. The sexual undercurrent that had been muted in the 1958 MGM film was restored in a more permissive era. In the aftermath, Stanley walked off with an Emmy for her interpretation of Big Mama.

Chapter Thirty

Gore first met Joanne Woodward
at a party in Manhattan in 1952. She was introduced to him by William Gray, who had been her friend at Louisiana State University. Later, she introduced Gore to her “beau,” a handsome young television and theater actor. He was making his first film,
The Silver Chalice, [released in 1954]
with Virginia Mayo. His name was Paul Newman.

For a brief time, Gore and his platonic long-time companion, Howard Austen, lived together at the Château Marmont in Hollywood. So did their newly minted friends, the “married-to-Jackie-Witte-at-the-time” Paul Newman and his mistress, the very talented actress, Joanne Woodward.

The château-inspired hotel, located off the Sunset Strip, was ideal for those who led shady lives in the Eisenhower 1950s.

As
The Los Angeles Times
phrased it, “No wonder people come here to have affairs—it’s got that air of history, where you know a lot of people did things they weren’t supposed to do.” Indeed, if details about the shack-up of Woodward and Newman had been known to the general public at the time, it could have seriously damaged their promising careers.

Newman remembered overhearing Harry Cohn, founder of Columbia Pictures, telling Glenn Ford and William Holden, “If you’re going to get into trouble, do it at the Château Marmont.” Although that advice had not been directly aimed at him, Newman took it seriously.

The film director, Nicholas Ray, had told Newman, “If you’re a novelist or actor from New York, you’ll feel at home in this dark, rambling old French castle. It’s not part of the state of California. If you want to pick up a garage mechanic with dirty fingernails, you can hustle him up on the elevator directly from the garage to your hotel room. Chances are, no one will see your comings and goings. After he’s spurted, slip him a twenty and send him on his way. On the way up in the elevator, you can unzip him and cop a feel to make sure he’s worth the twenty before you actually get him up to the room and undress him.”

It was around the pool at the Marmont that Woodward began to read Gore’s novels, including
The City and the Pillar
.