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) (128 page)

When Tennessee encountered Donahue at that party, he found the failed actor “itching for a fight.”

“I quickly moved on, almost fearing his belligerence,” Tennessee recalled.

Also present at the party was celebrity psychic John Cohan, who for years had been a friend and confidant of such stars as Elizabeth Taylor. His relations with a host of stars were revealed in his candid memoir,
Catch a Falling Star: The Untold Story of Celebrity Secrets
, published in 2008, with revelations about Natalie Wood, Merv Griffin, River Phoenix, John F. Kennedy, Jr., Elvis Presley, Mick Jagger, and Rudolf Nureyev.

Cohan was also a close friend of Nicole Brown Simpson, the murdered wife of O.J. Simpson.

Cohan freely admitted that “the love of my life” was Sandra Dee, who at one time was married to Bobby Darin. Ironically, Donahue had been her most famous co-star.

[Cohan’s revelations have been frequently reported by Cindy Adams, the popular columnist for
The New York Post.
She was the first to report on the story of Elizabeth Taylor bearing a love child in the early 1950s. As widely publicized by Adams, Elizabeth had confessed to Cohan that she’d given birth to a baby girl named Norah, who was eventually adopted by a family in Ireland
.

Taylor also delivered another shocker to Cohan, asserting that her former husband, Richard Burton, had died from some AIDS-related disease.]

At the party, Donahue seemed enraged at Tennessee, falsely accusing him of working to destroy his film career, which was not true at all, although Tennessee had done nothing in particular to promote it either.

“I don’t write roles for Troy Donahue,” Tennessee told Audrey Wood.

“The only role that I ever wrote that he could conceivably play was that of the insecure, closeted gay husband in
Period of Adjustment
, a part that went in the film version to Jim Hutton, who starred opposite Jane Fonda.

At the party, overcome with a sudden rage, Donahue, according to Cohan, darted toward Tennessee, grabbed him around the throat, and began to choke him. The playwright was so startled that he made no attempt to fight him off.

Fearing he would choke Tennessee to death, Cohan rescued him from the assault. He pulled Donahue off from Tennessee, who fell on the floor coughing and sputtering.

Shortly thereafter, Donahue was removed from the building.

“All those future plays, although not as good as the ones from the 40s and 50s, would never have been written if I hadn’t moved quickly,” Cohan said. “Troy was so deranged that he clearly had an intent to kill, that awful night.”

At a private screening in Hollywood, Tennessee had seen Gloria Swanson emote in
Sunset Blvd
. (1950), playing the deranged silent screen vamp Norma Desmond, lost in a vanished world of her own delusions. He would later tell scriptwriter Meade Roberts that, “I was shattered by the film. It is wonderfully awful. Amazingly, the part called for a bad actress, which made it ideal for Swanson, who was never an actress at all, but a creation of her own imagination.”

When Tennessee went to work on the theatrical version of
Sweet Bird of Youth
, the play’s early readers noted the parallels of his new script with
Sunset Blvd
. Tennessee had met and had lunch with Swanson during the mid-1950s, but in his letters to friends, all he reported was that mere fact, and not the essence of what transpired between them.

However, he told Frank Merlo and others that he used the occasion to probe Swanson for any background details on
Sunset Blvd
., one of his most mesmerizing films he had ever seen.

She did reveal that until right before filming began, she had expected to appear opposite Montgomery Clift as her kept man. At the last minute, however, Monty had bowed out, and the role had gone to the more traditionally masculine William Holden. Holden’s involvement virtually assured him of major stardom playing the role of the sullen but attractive gigolo, Joe Gillis.

Holden had once told Tennessee at a Hollywood party that in the 1940s, he had been known “for throwing mercy fucks to antique pussies.” Tennessee was too much of a Mississippi gentleman to ask Swanson if she had ever managed to seduce her handsome co-star.

He was surprised when she revealed to him that originally, the film’s director and screenwriter, Billy Wilder, had offered her role to Mae West, during the early period when
Sunset Blvd
. was still conceived as a black comedy rather than the drama it became. In the first script, Norma Desmond was to have been a has-been burlesque queen. West had flamboyantly rejected the role, claiming that “None of my fans will ever believe me as a has-been.”

In a complete reversal of types, Wilder then offered the role to Mary Pickford, America’s Silent Screen sweetheart from the 1920s, who also rejected it. Swanson had been a last-minute choice, although Pola Negri, her 1920s rival, had also been briefly considered.

Tennessee wanted to know which of the silent screen stars inspired the iconic role of Norma Desmond.

Swanson responded that she had been informed by Wilder and his fellow scriptwriter, Charles Brackett, that it was Mae Murray, the star of Eric von Stroheim’s silent screen hit,
The Merry Widow
, with John Gilbert.

Murray herself went to see
Sunset Blvd
. and later remarked, “None of us floozies was that nuts!”

[Mae Murray, the wistfully pretty dancer and ingénue who had tangoed with Rudolph Valentino during her early days in New York, just faded away, slipping into delusion and poverty. In 1964, a year before she died at the age of seventy-five, she was found wandering the streets of St. Louis, not knowing where she was or even who she was.]

In 1958, Swanson toured the Southern states in her Rolls Royce and paid a sentimental journey to Key West, where—known at the time as an “Army brat,”—she’d lived in 1908 with her father. It was here that she’d made her singing debut at the Odd Fellows Hall.

Immediately settling into Key West, she went on a futile search for staples of what had become her health-conscious diet, fertilized eggs and chemical-free meat.
[Although she found neither of those items, the Spanish limes she discovered at an open-air market brought back long-forgotten childhood memories.]

Swanson had a compelling reason for being in Key West other than as a vacation. She had read the script for Tennessee’s newest play,
Sweet Bird of Youth
, and she considered its female protagonist, Alexandra del Lago, as “the perfect role for me.”

Consequently, she telephoned Tennessee
[also in Key West at the time]
who invited her to his home for dinner. His lover, Frank Merlo, cooked three of his specialties that night, but when Swanson, resembling a fashion plate from 1928, arrived, she handed him a piece of boiled chicken breast. “Make that my dinner,” she commanded, “with a glass of white wine.”

She and Tennessee spent the early part of the evening talking about her fabulous past. She discussed her former lover, Joseph P. Kennedy, and her off-screen romances with suitors who had included Valentino and Aristotle Onassis.

“I’ve been married so many times, but my first marriage
[to Wallace Beery]
should have sworn me off marriage for life. I lost my virginity to him on my wedding night, which I thought would be my ticket to heaven. It turned out to be a fast ride to hell. In pitch blackness, he brutalized me. As he whispered filth into my ear, he ripped my insides apart before falling asleep and deeply snoring. I spent the rest of the night huddled on the bathroom floor, swathed in towels to soak up the bleeding and ease the pain.”

“After a few weeks, I told him I was experiencing stomach cramps. He gave me some medicine to swallow to ease the cramps. I woke up in a hospital where the doctor told me I had suffered a miscarriage. I learned the medicine he’d given me was actually poison.”

She and Tennessee finally settled in for some serious discussion about her candidacy for the role of Alexandra del Lago. She said that she knew he must have been inspired by
Sunset Blvd
., which he did not admit.

“Ever since I played Norma Desmond, I’ve been handed nothing but rip-off scripts from that movie,” she told him. “In every case, I turned them down. I did not want to go through the rest of my life endlessly playing Norma Desmond.”

“But in your
Sweet Bird
, I found an almost poetic interpretation of the role of an aging actress. Not only that, but I liked the idea of your having Alexandra make a comeback. Everybody said
Sunset Blvd
. would be my comeback picture. I want
Sweet Bird
to be my second comeback. It’s almost assured that if I get rave reviews on the road, I’ll be offered the screen role. After all, even though millions of fans from my silent films have died off,
Sunset Blvd
. generated millions of new ones. I want to be your Alexandra del Lago, relentlessly battling the enemy of us all, time itself.”

In response to all this, Tennessee was exceedingly polite and, at the end of the evening, he assured her that he’d do everything he could to get her the role.

But after she’d left, he told Frank, “It will never happen. Even though she might play the role to packed houses, her mere presence would distort the integrity of my play. Everybody in the audience, especially our gay brethren, will be buying tickets to see Norma Desmond in
Sunset Blvd
., not Alexandra del Lago in
Sweet Bird of Youth
. Her personal legend is too overpowering. She’d be Gloria Swanson up there on the stage, and not immerse herself into her new incarnation. I’m going to cast my vote against her.”

“You know, Tenn, that it will break her heart,” Frank said.

“I regret that,” Tennessee said. “Poor Gloria has had her heart broken a thousand times. But I’m sure she’s used to it by now.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight