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) (119 page)

“Tennessee once told me, ‘Papa (Hemingway) has an unnatural concern about queens,’” St. Just said. “‘Not only that,’ Tennessee said, ‘but he writes uninterestingly about women.’”

“If that is true,” St. Just responded (to Tennessee), “then you are normal, as you can write only interestingly about women.”

***

Tennessee’s friendly relationship with critic Kenneth Tynan did not last through 1959, based to a large degree on that meeting in Havana with Ernest Hemingway.

Their relationship collapsed after Tennessee read what Tynan had written about his latest play,
Sweet Bird of Youth
, in
The New Yorker:

“The writing is operatic and hysterical, as if it had long been out of touch with reality. A dust bowl, one feels, is being savagely, obsessively plowed, in defiance of known facts about soil depletion and the need for irrigation. I recognized nothing but a special, rarefied situation that had been carried to extremes of cruelty with a total disregard for probability, human relevance, and the laws of dramatic structure.”

Hemingway fared better from Tynan’s pen than did Tennessee. “Hemingway has his own ideal of manhood, which he projects onto the American mind—a noble savage, idly smoking, silhouetted against a background of dead illusions.”

In Havana, at the Floradita, after bidding Hemingway goodbye, Tynan informed Tennessee that he had a two o’clock appointment with Fidel Castro at his headquarters. The rebel leader had granted Tynan an interview. He later said, “Tennessee begged me to take him along. He confessed that ‘Fidel is my dream man. If I can’t have him, Che Guevara will do just fine.’”

Consequently, Tynan invited Tennessee to tag along. “His revelation didn’t surprise me at all,” Tynan said, “because I was aware that Tennessee was not attracted to the typical pretty boy actors of Hollywood as much as he was to rugged macho types like Castro.”

When Tynan, with Tennessee, reached Cuba’s government headquarters, they were told that Castro was in a cabinet meeting and that he’d make himself available when it was over.

[During this early stage of Castro’s administration of Cuba, the U.S. had not yet declared a state of emergency or hostility with the flashy young revolutionary leader. Castro had been a guest in Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower’s White House, and the U.S. was pursuing a course of watching, waiting, and evaluating their strategies that affected Cuba and the U.S. presence and investments there. All of that would radically change with the debut of the Cuban missile crisis under JFK’s administration in 1961.]

Tennessee later recalled, “We sat around until five o’clock before we were ushered in, but it was worth it. When I was introduced to Castro, he called me ‘The Cat Man.’ I was flattered that he’d heard of my play,
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

With a trusted aide at hand, Castro granted Tynan his interview, in which he discussed the goals and intentions of the United States in its relationship with Revolutionary Cuba. Tynan was then dismissed, but Tennessee was asked to remain for a private meeting with Castro.

“At long last, I was alone with my idol,
[except for an interpreter, although Tennessee suspected that Castro spoke and understood English]
though I felt he didn’t plan to rape me,”

Castro told him that before he became a revolutionary solder, he’d wanted to be an actor. “I once appeared uncredited in a film shot in Mexico,” Castro revealed. “I had only one line of dialogue. I think I should buy up all the copies.”

After this preliminary chat, Castro got to the point of their secret huddle. “What do you know about the film that producer, Jerry Wald, intends to make about my early life, and the events leading up to the overthrow of the government?”

“I do know something,” Tennessee said. “A screen-writer friend of mine, Meade Roberts, has been hired to write the screenplay. He also has expressed interest in adapting two of my plays for the screen.”

[Tennessee was referring to the upcoming movies
, The Fugitive Kind
(1960), which would star Marlon Brando, and
Summer and Smoke
(1961), in which Geraldine Page and Laurence Harvey took the lead roles.]

“I understand that your friend, Marlon Brando, has been offered the chance to play me on the screen,” Castro said. “I think Brando would be ideal. I saw him play your character in that Desire Streetcar movie.”

“I didn’t know the role of ‘Revolutionary Castro’ had been offered to Marlon,” Tennessee said. “But I think he’d be ideal. Marlon is a revolutionary, too, in his own way.”

“I want you to do me a big favor,” Castro said. “Be a sort of eyes and ears for me in Hollywood. Please call Roberts and Brando when you get back and report to me about what’s going on with the film. Now for the big surprise. I also want you to contact Marilyn Monroe. I’m sure she’s a friend of yours. Several people have told me that she’s spoken out in favor of me and my revolution. Not only that—from what I hear she’s got this big fat infatuation with me.”

“Who hasn’t?” Tennessee asked, signaling his interest, which Castro did not acknowledge.

“Since it’s a Hollywood film, I know some romantic interest will be interjected,” Castro said. “I want Roberts to write a strong role for a character based on my mistress in the mountains, to be played by Marilyn. She can be depicted as a guerilla fighter like me.”

“I want it to be known that I will provide everything a producer will need to shoot this movie in Cuba,” Castro said. “Errol Flynn loved Cuba and was going to launch a film industry here. Maybe Wald’s film will be the beginning of many films to be shot in Cuba. It will certainly help our economy.”

The moment I return to the States, I will contact Meade, Marlon, and Marilyn to convey your desires,” Tennessee promised.

“If you’ll do all this for me, and keep me informed, I guess you’re entitled to something as a reward. I’ve always suspected from what you’ve said to several people—I have my spies—that you, like Marilyn, consider me what you Americans call ‘a dreamboat.’ Is that true?”

“It’s useless for me to hide it,” Tennessee said. “You are my ideal man.”

“I am not a homosexual, but we might work something out,” Castro said. “I’m headed for my private steambath right now, and I’m inviting you to come along. But I must warn you: It’s mainly to give you the voyeur’s pleasure of taking a good look. If anything happens—and I don’t know that it will—it can only be from the waist down. Anything above my waist is strictly off limits.”

“Anything
would be the fulfillment of a dream to me,” Tennessee responded.

Then, Tennessee disappeared with Castro into his private quarters for the next two hours. It’s known that both of them entered the steambath nude and that later, each received massages from two young Cuban women. Whatever else happened is not known.

Tennessee refused to tell Tynan, or even Marion Vaccaro. To her, he said, “I don’t want to be rounded up and castrated, which I’m told is the punishment for homosexuals in Cuba.”

However, after his return to Florida, New York, and then Hollywood, he set about fulfilling Castro’s requests.

Later that evening, after time spent with Castro, Kenneth Tynan arranged for Tennessee to meet Jean-Paul Sartre and his mistress, Simone de Beauvoir, at a café in Havana. Previously, after encountering these French existential writers in Paris, he had invited them to a party. Neither of them had showed up.

Before meeting them, Tennessee fully understood that both of them were spectacularly distinguished figures in the world of French letters. Yet he had never read any of their works. Consequently, Tynan delivered a brief overview of their status and literary/theatrical accomplishments.

[One of the leading figures in post-World War II French philosophy and Marxism, and a key player in the philosophy of existentialism and phenomenology, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, literary critic, novelist, screenwriter, and political activist
.

Although he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964, he refused it, saying that he always declined official honors and that “a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution.” Eventually, he rejected the concept of Literature itself, having concluded that it functioned ultimately as a bourgeois substitute for genuine commitment in the world
.

His work influenced post-colonial political theory, radical politics, sociology, and concepts of the absurd. When French President Charles de Gaulle was asked by his security forces whether Sartre should be arrested because of his involvement in the anarchist/student riots of 1968, De Gaulle answered, “One should not attempt to arrest Voltaire.”

For years, Sartre was closely associated with the prominent feminist theorist Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), with whom he shares a grave in Paris’ Montparnasse Cemetery
.