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) (123 page)

Under heavy pressure, Tennessee arranged a reading for Diana in front of Elia Kazan. Neither Tennessee nor Kazan were impressed with her delivery.

“She held no surprises in the role,” Tennessee said. “She failed to grasp the nuance of the character of the princess. She so identified with the character that she was simply reading her lines instead of getting into the part.”

At the end of her reading, Tennessee said, “I had to live through one of the most painful moments of my life. I had to tell her, ‘Diana, this is simply not your role.’”

Later that afternoon, Diana threw herself into Gilbert Maxwell’s arms. “Myhatred of Kazan burns black,” she said. “If he had not wanted to play Svengali to Miss Page, I would have been cast in the Broadway production. That woman is
me—
I, too, was
FINISHED
at the age of thirty-six—I AM Alexandra del Lago.”

She later relayed to Gilbert a story about how, one afternoon, she slipped into the theater and watched Page and Newman in a complete dress rehearsal of
Sweet Bird of Youth
. “I was chain smoking and biting my fingernails,” she said. “I was like a hungry dinosaur devouring flesh. Page was playing my role.”

Diana was equally outraged by Paul Newman. As she later told Gilbert: “I have no respect for this boy whore. He’s an actor who has prostituted himself before playwrights and directors in his younger days. Do I have to name them? Tennessee himself, William Inge, Joshua Logan. Newman used that pretty face and great body, plus a minimum of talent, to advance himself as an actor. I have never found myself spread-eagled on anyone’s casting couch, and I never will. I was never as morally callous as Newman is.”

Gilbert said that at no time did Diana ever attack Tennessee. “Her love for him, however, turned out to be just short of traumatic.”

She did vow that day to “move heaven and earth” to play Alexandra del Lago in its London production. But that was not to be, either.

Later, Diana told Tennessee, “I know I’ve lost the role on Broadway, but I want to play the Princess in the London production. Standing before you, in the flesh, is the REAL Alexandra del Lago.”

Tennessee, however, was still unconvinced. Consequently, he offered a consolation prize.

Tennessee arranged with director Herbert Machiz to schedule a reading for Diana during the casting of the pivotal role of Catherine Holly
[the role famously interpreted by Elizabeth Taylor in the film version]
for the Chicago stage production of
Suddenly Last Summer
. “It was a magnificent reading, and she performed brilliantly,” Tennessee said. Consequently, he agreed to fly to Chicago for the premiere of this road show.

He later wrote that, “My foredoomed friend, Diana Barrymore, made a great personal success in Chicago, with Cathleen Nesbitt, John Barrymore’s former friend, cast as Violet Venable.”

After Chicago, he flew to Key West to work on future projects.

It was here, on January 25, 1960, that he received word from Gilbert: “Diana was found dead this morning.”

The official report was that she had died from an overdose of liquor and sleeping capsules.

Suffering both guilt and grief, Tennessee flew north to attend the funeral. At the gravesite, he chatted with Violla Rubber, Diana’s former manager.

“She told me that when they discovered the body, Diana’s bedroom was in absolute shambles,” Tennessee said. “It appeared that an act of violence had occurred in spite of the official explanation of her death. She was found naked, face down, with blood streaming out of her mouth. There was a very heavy marble ashtray shattered against the wall, and other evidence of a violent struggle. I think someone murdered her, accidentally perhaps, but she was definitely killed by some other hand. She had succumbed to the curse of the Barrymores.”

Diana was known for picking up strange men in bars, usually while intoxicated. Because of her famous name, many hustlers assumed she kept a large stash of money in her apartment. There was speculation that she brought home a hustler who went on a search for money that wasn’t there. Perhaps in an altercation, she was killed. Her death was believed to be a random incident, perhaps accidental—not one that was premeditated.

Gilbert later wrote that Diana had been “lonely, disturbed, scared, brave, violent, snobbish, resentful, loving, compassionate, and wildly generous. Tennessee and I knew her for little more than about a year before she died—and a woman must be extraordinary to leave behind her, in the minds of two such hardened veterans of emotion, the conviction that neither of our lives has been the same since that bleak winter of her passing.”

In London, a telephone call came in for Vivien Leigh, informing her that the financing for a play about Eva Perón, the former First Lady of Argentina, had collapsed.

Vivien was on the verge of a mental collapse, as she was in the throes of divorcing Laurence Olivier, who wanted to marry a younger actress. Vivien was forty-eight at the time. Olivier had informed her that Joan Plowright, as a condition of their marriage, was insisting that he break off his long-term homosexual relationship with the American comedian, Danny Kaye.

Two weeks later, she met with Tennessee, who was in London at the time. He told her that he wanted her to star as the lead in
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
, and he presented her with a copy of his novella.

It was the story of a fading actress whose husband had had a fatal heart attack on a plane en route to Rome. As a result, she decided to live in Rome, where her loneliness leads her to a dashingly handsome gigolo.

Tennessee told Vivien that Warren Beatty had been cast as the Italian gigolo. She was unfamiliar with his work. She was shown photographs of Beatty. Later, Vivien told her companion and lover, Jack Merivale, “I think there have been some casting couch sessions between Mr. Beatty and Tennessee, but I can’t be sure, of course. We’ll fly to Rome to make the movie. I hear there’s a strong role for Lotte Lenya playing a pimp countess.”

The German actress and chanteuse, Lotte Lenya, befriended Vivien during the shooting and became her confidante. “At first, she disliked Beatty intensely, really didn’t care for him at all, but he exerted a powerful charm and ended up seducing her.”

It has also been reported that Vivien was involved sexually with her handsome, dashing chauffeur, Bernard Gilman.

Richard Burton, who knew Vivien intimately, later said, “She and Beatty were at it in broom closets, across billiard tables, and in telephone kiosks. There also were all these stories that he fucked Tennessee, too.”

Later, Tennessee reflected on the short, unhappy life of Vivien.

“Vivien Leigh was the most profoundly lovely actress and woman I ever knew,” said Tennessee. “And, she was a warm, generous person. She had no idea she was so ill the last time we met, but I could tell she hadn’t long. I glad she went fast. Her film role as Blanche was all her own and quite genuine. But I liked her work in
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
, which is the only film version of anything I wrote that I truly admire. It just worked.”

After Donald Windham, Tennessee’s longtime friend and fellow author, went to see
Roman Spring
, he said, “This is Tenn’s first fictionalized self-portrait after his success, and it displays a hair-raising degree of self-knowledge. For the rest of his life, Tenn, like Mrs. Stone in the film, will be paying a succession of beautiful young boys for the rent of their bodies for the night.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

On the verge
of buying out his contract with Warner Brothers, Paul Newman agreed to make one final film for the studio that had held him in bondage for such a long time. He later said, “I had to make
The Young Philadelphians
. They had me trapped, but I knew from the start the picture would be a disaster.”

What he really wanted to do, early in 1959, was appear in a drama on Broadway playing Chance Wayne, the hustler in Tennessee Williams’
Sweet Bird of Youth
. Even as Newman was shooting
The Young Philadelphians
, he was secretly meeting with Tennessee to discuss his involvement in the play and possible actresses who might co-star with him.