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) (125 page)

Even though Newman played a heel, there were tears in the eyes of some first-nighters when he delivered his climatic line. “I don’t ask for your pity, but just for your understanding—not even that—no, just for your recognition of me in you, and the enemy, Time, in all of us.”

At one point, critic Kenneth Tynan asserted that Page played Alexandra del Lago with “a knockout flamboyance and dragout authority. She brought the entire audience to its feet, screaming and clapping. She and Newman staged a
coup de théâtre.”

Later that night, Tennessee told Audrey Wood, “I was Alexandra del Lago from start to finish, drinking too much, taking drugs, and purchasing male flesh by the inch. I’ve probably made every speech she made. And I meant them twice as much.”

Newman received his best reviews to date in Tennessee’s play about lost youth. So far, not one review has surfaced in which his acting was compared to that of Marlon Brando. Had he become his own man as an actor at last?

As the play became more deeply entrenched within its run, Newman received many visitors backstage, many of them world-famous stars.

One of Newman’s strangest visitors was an aging former hustler who sent him a note backstage inviting him to have a beer with him after the show. “I was the guy Tennessee based the character of Chance Wayne on,” the note read.

Newman was intrigued enough to instruct the stage manager to show the man backstage. When he opened the door to his dressing room, he encountered a no-longer young man who looked unkempt, a kind of over-the-hill Tab Hunter. Somehow the years of heavy drinking and a wasted life had taken a toll, but, even so, Newman saw the remains of the hustler’s former beauty.

He shook Newman’s hand. “I’m Mitch Parker,” he said. Once, when Frankie and Tenn broke up, I filled in. Back in those days I could get a hundred a night.”

Newman invited him across the street for a beer, and the two men talked until the bar closed down. He believed Mitch’s story, and the former hustler showed Newman several snapshots documenting his association with Tennessee.

“I was actually castrated,” he said. “That’s where Tenn got the idea. It wasn’t on the orders of a political boss. Back then, I let men do me for money, but I screwed gals on the side. I once got caught. That was in a town down on the Panhandle. The husband and some of his friends kidnapped me and took me to an abandoned cornfield where they cut my balls off. I had broken up with Tenn at that time. I wrote him begging for some money, but he never answered. I read in the paper about the play. It sounded familiar. I knew I was Chance Wayne. I never shacked up with a movie star, but I told Tenn about the year I lived with this rich woman in Boca Raton. She had once been a great beauty, but time had passed her by. I just know you’re playing me.”

“And well I might be,” Newman said. It was getting late. He slipped him a one hundred dollar bill and watched him disappear down a rainy street in the Broadway district.

As he watched him go, he speculated on the fate of Chance Wayne at the end of the play. To him, the Chance Waynes of the world just seemed to disappear in the vastness of the American wasteland, perhaps escaping into an early death.

It was Tennessee who brought Ava Gardner to see the play. Perhaps imitating Ernest Hemingway, the playwright had always wanted to see Ava cast in one of his plays. Although somewhat pleased with Geraldine Page’s performance, he felt Ava would bring a “tragic loveliness” to the character of Alexandra Del Lago. He’d not been too happy that Geraldine was playing the role with a harpy’s screech and looked rather blousy. He felt that the film version should present his character as a greater beauty, albeit faded.

At the end of the performance, Ava told Tennessee that the role of Alexandra del Lago “hits me in the belt. Did you base this character on me? I’m called a man-hungry movie star. I’m virtually retired now and certainly a has-been. That pill-popping and heavy drinking comes close to having been inspired by the life of Ava Gardner. The whole world knows that I ripped off Rita Hayworth’s life in
The Barefoot Contessa
. Now it’s time I got roasted.”

Even so, she wanted to meet Paul Newman. “He’s like so many men I’ve loved temporarily, then had to discard and move on to the next one.”

Meeting Newman, she found him enchanting. “When you took off your shirt, I swooned. I always wished Frankie had a better chest. All of his growth went into his cock.”

He’d already been warned that Ava had a “potty mouth,” so he wasn’t at all surprised to hear that line coming from what he viewed as one of the most beautiful creatures on Earth. In some ways, he found her beauty more arresting than that of Elizabeth Taylor herself, or so he would claim later to his friends.

Tennessee invited Ava and Newman to join him at a hidden tavern in the Broadway district. Actors often gathered there after curtains fell.

“So what did you think of our little drama tonight?” Newman asked Ava.

She was not a woman to mince words: “I’m from North Carolina, honey, a real Tarheel. We call a spade a spade. There’s some pretty strong stuff here—a male whore, drug addiction, alcoholism, racism, venereal disease, and castration. That castration thing was a bit over the top. I shuddered to think that America’s reigning male sex symbol might be losing the source of his power.”

“It gives me nightmares just to think about it,” Newman responded. “I find myself touching the family jewels every night just to convince myself that they’re still there.”

“You need a beautiful woman to fondle them and to reassure you that you’re indeed still intact.”

Tennessee later claimed he was rather insulted by Ava’s critique.

She very accurately predicted that the writing would have to be cleaned up for the screen. “Yet, the day will come when Hollywood can present realistic drama. I want to be the first actress to use the word ‘fuck’ in a major motion picture, but Elizabeth Taylor will probably beat me to it, since every third word that comes out of her usually begins with F.”

Tennessee, who knew Hemingway only briefly, quizzed her about working on the film adaptation (1957) of his novel
The Sun Also Rises
.

Ava spoke eloquently of the “last days” of Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power, who had each co-starred with her in that movie. Shortly after their involvement in its filming ended, both stars would meet early deaths, Power in 1958, Flynn in 1959.

Ava told Paul and Tennessee that she’d dated both Power and Flynn back in the Forties. “When they showed up on the set of
The Sun Also Rises
, both of them looked like old men. They had prematurely aged. You know, of course, they used to be lovers.”

“I didn’t know that,” Newman said.

“They must have made a lovely couple,” Tennessee said. “I think they were the most beautiful men I’ve ever seen on the screen.” Then he flashed his famous grin at Paul. “That is, until this divine creature came along.”

“Flattery has already gotten you everywhere,” Newman quipped.

Quick to pick up on the innuendo, Ava said, “Oh, I see. You two fellows already know each other.”

“Don’t worry,” Tennessee said. “The passage will not appear in my memoirs.”

“Half of my lovers, including Howard Hughes and Peter Lawford, were secret cocksuckers,” she said.

Tennessee laughed, but Newman did not. In some way, as he’d later confess, Ava was one of the most outspoken women he’d ever known.

“Flynn especially was a spectacular wreck, not a magnificent wreck,” Ava said. “He was far too gone to be magnificent at anything. I should know. We tried it again one night for old time’s sake. Forget it.”

“You’d be perfect for the role of a lost exile from Hollywood,” Newman said, abruptly changing the subject.

“Oh, darling,” she said, “I fear I am indeed Alexandra del Lago, and don’t really need to prove it by playing her in a movie.”

“Perhaps some time with me would convince you,” Newman responded.

At that point, Tennessee jumped up from the table. “I’ll pay the tab and leave you two love birds alone. He’s good, Ava. Enjoy.” He kissed both Newman and Ava on the lips before wandering into the night like some lost feathered bird.

No one knows for sure what transpired that night, because Newman and Ava, at least in this case, didn’t indulge in Monday morning quarterbacking after Saturday’s game. Tennessee, however, always maintained that they connected, at least for a one-night stand. “It must have been a lovely coupling,” Tennessee said, “the world’s most beautiful woman, a bit past her prime, coming together with the world’s most beautiful man.”

In spite of their night together, Newman never managed to convince Ava to accept the role of Del Lago. He did tell Elia Kazan that Ava Gardner “is one of the world’s most fascinating creatures. She is Venus.” He might have been referring to her 1948 film,
One Touch of Venus
.

—Lana Turner to Paul Newman

Lana Turner made another entrance into Tennessee’s life when she became one of the many actresses flying into New York to evaluate his new play. There weren’t that many great parts for aging actresses, and Lana wanted to see if she felt comfortable with the role before making a play for it back in Hollywood. “After all,” she told Tennessee, “MGM owes me a few favors. I practically saved them from bankruptcy in the 40s.”

Over a drink at Sardi’s before the curtain went up on
Sweet Bird of Youth
that night, Tennessee and Lana laughed about his former days at MGM when he’d been assigned to work on the screenplay of
Marriage Is a Private Affair
in which she had starred.
[Although Tennessee had fretted for days over the project, he ultimately could not relate to the plot, joking to friends that he was working on a “celluloid brassiere for Miss Turner,” as described in an earlier chapter of this book.]

“What happened to you at MGM?” Lana asked Tennessee.

“The studio heads finally decided that I would never be able to produce a screenplay for you,” Tennessee told her. “So they reassigned me to write a scenario about Billy the Kid. That was more Gore Vidal’s fantasy than mine. Then they asked me if I wanted to write a scenario starring Margaret O’Brien. I told them where they could shove Little Miss Margaret. Finally, MGM and I parted ways.”

“Finally, MGM and I parted ways, too,” Lana said. “But I may come back if I get cast in your
Sweet Bird
.”

Throughout the performance of
Sweet Bird of Youth
, Tennessee noted that Lana studied Geraldine’s every movement and expression “like a hawk.”

Lana told Tennessee she’d loved the play but, like her best friend, Ava Gardner, she feared it would have to be “cleaned up” for film audiences.

She was all charm and grace when Tennessee escorted her backstage for a reunion with Newman, whom she’d once known intimately back in Hollywood. Right in front of Tennessee, she kissed him. It was a long and lingering open-mouthed kiss that forced her to repair her makeup in front of his dressing room mirror.

“I’m in New York all alone,” she told Newman.

He wasn’t sure where her other lovers—or could there be a husband?—were. He’d lost track of her many entanglements. “I need someone by my side at all times,” she said. “I’m so dependent on a man. But aren’t most women like me?”

“I can definitely assure you that most women aren’t like Lana Turner,” Newman said.

“I’ve always been alone,” Tennessee said, not revealing his many companions over the years. “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers I meet along the way.”

It was agreed that Tennessee would take both Lana and Newman to dinner at Sardi’s before retiring for the night. Lana wanted to go dancing later, and Newman agreed to be her escort.

At Sardi’s, all heads turned as Lana walked in, escorted with Newman on one side and Tennessee on her other.

After dinner, Lana, with Newman, in a limousine, migrated to a night club uptown. As the stunningly beautiful couple entered, a hush fell over the patrons. She looked gorgeous, sheathed in a clinging white evening gown that was slit high up the side and low down the front. Her blonde hair was cropped short.