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) (130 page)

Before Corsaro and Tennessee left that house in Westport that day, Bette reminded them that the theater party bookings, which were heavy, were based entirely on one name—“That of Bette Davis.”

“After my last three failures on Broadway, I concede that, indeed, you have a point.” Tennessee responded.

After her boycott, in Manhattan for
Iguana’s
final rehearsals, O’Neal said Bette seemed to have undergone a personality change. “Instead of that bitch, Mildred, in
Of Human Bondage
, she became Margo Channing pursuing Gary Merrill in
All About Eve
. When I came to her dressing room for a drink, she locked the door. Then she really came on to me. Once again, I had to decline. I seriously feared I wouldn’t be able to get it up for her.”

“The next day, the Bitch Goddess was back in all her fury,” O’Neal said. “It was even worse for me, because now I had rejected her for the second and final time.”

Tennessee flew to Rochester for his play’s opening night. He was shocked, after the curtain rose, that the raucous audience was treating
Iguana
like a black comedy instead of as a serious play. Bette brought wild laughter to many of the wrong moments, evoking for Tennessee the gruesome memory of Tallulah Bankhead, as Blanche DuBois, inadvertently but inevitably sabotaging a production of
A Streetcar Named Desire
.

At the end of the opening night performance, however, it was Leighton who received the loudest applause. Unlike Bette’s, her role was taken seriously.

Backstage, Tennessee observed that Bette’s face was filled with fury. When she came out on stage, she was greeted with polite applause, “something that the Queen of England might deliver after a command performance,” Tennessee said.

That night, Bette managed to trip and fall backstage, and was rushed to a hospital in an ambulance. When Corsaro and Tennessee went to see her the next day, they found her in a wheelchair. She informed them that she could not complete the bill in Rochester and that her understudy would have to perform in her place.

When Bowden heard the news, he was immediately tempted to close
Iguana
in Rochester. Corsaro suggested that Bette be replaced with Shelley Winters.
[Ironically, it was Shelley who would take over the Maxine Faulk role on Broadway after Bette’s three-month involvement.]

Two days later, Tennessee visited Bette, and—in a reversal of her earlier position—she assured him that she’d be recovered in time to appear on stage in Detroit, their next stopover.

The Night of the Iguana
, as presented in “Motown,” evolved into an intensely personal disaster for Tennessee, with long-lasting implications for his relationship with his companion, Frank Merlo.

Satan, a gift from Anna Magnani, was a black Belgian shepherd dog that had far greater affection for Frank than for Tennessee. They had opted to bring Satan with them during this stress-permeated trip.

Beset with production problems, and uncomfortably installed in a hotel suite on their first night in Detroit, Tennessee stepped over Satan to get into bed with Frank. The dog suddenly lunged at Tennessee, biting both of his ankles to the bone and going for Tennessee’s throat until Frank pulled him off. Then Frank locked Satan in the bathroom. The following day, he took him to a vet to be put to sleep.

In the meantime, Tennessee had to be rushed to the hospital. Overnight, “my ankles had swollen up to the size of elephant legs,” he said.

When Corsaro came to visit him, he found that Tennessee on antibiotics and pain-killers was completely irrational. When Frank left the room, Tennessee told Corsaro that Frank had commanded Satan to attack him. “He wants me dead so he can steal my money. He didn’t dare kill me himself, so he had Satan attempt to do it. Before I passed out, all I remember was Satan with those large fangs going for my throat.”

[Darwin Porter, who as a favor to Tennessee and Frankie, used to exercise Satan through walks along Duncan Street in Key West, remembers the dog as slobbery and amicable, and wonders whether the dislocation of life on the road during the road show of
Iguana
, coupled with Tennessee’s erratic behavior, didn’t set the dog off.]

Recovered somewhat, Tennessee, with his bandaged feet shuffling along the Detroit sidewalks in large bedroom slippers, took the train with Frank and the cast to Chicago, where more turmoil awaited them.

Very late one night, from a corridor of the hotel in Chicago where she’d been installed in a suite, Bette observed O’Neal leaving Margaret Leighton’s accommodation. Although the actor had rejected her, he had—to Davis’ fury—begun an affair with her rival. At that point, her pent-up rage against both Leighton and O’Neal virtually exploded.

She decided to take it out on Corsaro, who had previously been supportive of her grievances. She confronted Bowden, threatening to fly out of Chicago unless he removed Corsaro from the theater—“never to return.” Later, she upped that demand, insisting that she would not perform unless Corsaro was banished from Chicago altogether. “I can’t even stand to be in the same city with this Actors Studio Method stooge.”

Subsequently, Corsaro was hastily banished from the production, provided with enough incentives to quickly, but with enormous bitterness, get out of town.

By default, Tennessee became the production’s director. Unlike Corsaro, he stood up to Bette, reminding her that she was no longer the Queen of Hollywood, but an aging actress in the twilight of a distinguished film career, not a stage career.

“I will not do the rewrites you want before the opening on Broadway,” he informed her. “I will not ruin my play to appease your monstrous ego.” Then he stormed out of the theater, leaving her reduced to tears.

She ranted. She raged. She called him “a goddamn, cocksucking faggot son of a bitch.”

Throughout the remainder of the run in Chicago, she started to miss performances, evoking a scene from
All About Eve
. Once, when it was announced that Miss Bette Davis would not be appearing, nearly three-quarters of the audience rose from their seats and headed to the box office to demand a refund.

Tennessee, no temple of mental health himself, also had to nurse Leighton through a suicide attempt. He later wrote to his friend, Maria St. Just: “I believe that I am the only one who knows that Maggie is quite starkers!”

The waiters in a Chicago restaurant witnessed a demonstration of how unstable O’Neal was. He dined with Audrey Wood, Charles Bowden, and Tennessee.

After Tennessee left the restaurant, heading back to his hotel, O’Neal got into a fight with Bowden, who refused to fire Bette. “Patrick was drunk and without his shots from Max Jacobson,” Wood said. “He rose to his feet and turned over a table laden with cocktails, coffee, and
canapés
into our laps. Waiters came charging toward our table, shouting, ‘Catch him! Stop that lunatic!’”

O’Neal fled through the restaurant’s front door, nearly knocking down Tennessee, who was standing on the curb in front, waiting for a taxi. The waiters chased after O’Neal, but he eluded them.

Corsaro later said, “By the time the cast from hell left Chicago, Bette had virtually wrecked Patrick’s performance. Even when I was forced out of the theater by Bette, I knew that Patrick had become a mere shadow of himself, thanks to Miss Davis.”

O’Neal later admitted, “I was terrified to open on Broadway with Davis, not knowing what she would do. At this point, both Tennessee and I were plunged into some dark night. At least in New York we could find rejuvenation from those injections from Dr. Feelgood.”

It was the evening of December 28, 1961. In her dressing room, Bette Davis, with the assistance of a gay hairdresser, placed a “catsup-colored wig” over her own hair and checked her makeup in the mirror, as she prepared to face a Broadway audience for her New York debut of
The Night of the Iguana
.

Much of the theatrical world, along with stellar lights from Hollywood, had flown in to see the play. “They’re not coming all this way to see a new degenerate play by Tennessee, but to watch me in this goddamn fright wig make a horse’s ass out of myself.”

She checked her appearance in a full-length mirror. Dressed as a slatternly widow, Maxine Faulk, she was determined to play the role as a “female Stanley Kowalski.” She wore a pair of hip-hugging jeans “with my middle-aged flesh hanging out over my belly.”

According to the script, Maxine’s first appearance follows in the immediate wake of having been seduced by one of her well-hung Mexican beach boys.

One of the actors, Christopher Jones
[who later married Susan Strasberg]
impressed Bette: “From what I saw in those tight pants of his, he had meat for the poor.”

The curtain opened, depicting a decaying ramshackle set, suggesting the Costa Verde Hotel in a Mexican backwater. “I was cast as the nympho bitch who runs the joint,” Bette said.

When Bette walked onto the stage that night, she received what some reported to be the most thunderous ovation in the history of Broadway, the applause lasting for at least ten minutes.

Patrick O’Neal had to wait impatiently in the wings before she called out, “Shannon!,” signaling that he was to come on stage and that the play could begin.

Tennessee was impatiently pacing back and forth in the theater’s lobby, but he rushed in to see what all the thunder was about. Bette later claimed, “This was even better than going on stage to receive an Oscar.”

As Bette’s biographer, Barbara Leaming, wrote: “This short, scrawny, self-proclaimed Yankee dame, with legs spread, wide arms akimbo, her head held high,” was enjoying one of the most glorious moments of her turbulent life.

It was clear to all the critics that although Bette’s role was the more flamboyant, Leighton had delivered the award-winning performance. When admirers rushed backstage to greet Bette, O’Neal stood ten feet away, analyzing the scenario with skepticism. Bette was surrounded with everybody from Lillian Gish to Eleanor Roosevelt, from Judy Garland to Helen Hayes.

Carson McCullers tried to comfort Tennessee, who told her he feared a massive assault from the critics. He angered her, however, when he gave her some good advice, which she did not heed: “Whatever you do, do not publish your latest novel,
Clock Without Hands
. I read the manuscript. It is considerably flawed and it will damage your literary reputation.”

Many months of bitter silence would pass before she agreed to speak to him again.

***

When it came time for awards, Bette was deeply disappointed when Leighton walked off with a Tony for Best Actress in a Drama. Tennessee was honored for writing the Best Play of the Year, an award that would forever elude him in the future. He also received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play.

On April 4, 1962, Bette dropped out, informing Bowden, “I can’t stand the horror of working with this cast, especially Leighton and O’Neal, who offer me no support whatsoever. It has been plain murder for me having to go onto that stage every night with those two bastard assholes.”

As disgusted as she was with
Iguana
, Bette was disappointed when she lost the role of Maxine Faulk in the play’s 1964 film adaptation, the part going to Ava Gardner. Davis had told Hedda Hopper, “I’m praying that I get the role. Everything Tennessee Williams writes is better on screen than on stage.”

It was Shelley Winters who signed on to replace Bette onstage in
Iguana
. “Miss Davis brought in the cash, and Miss Winters, appearing every night tanked on Jack Daniels Tennessee sour mash whiskey, managed to fill the balcony with her fans,” Tennessee said.

In Hollywood, Bette told Olivia de Havilland, “I made the worst mistake of my life appearing in Tennessee’s
Iguana
crap. It was my all time worst performance. But I’ve signed to do another picture. I just know I’m going to win another Oscar. I play a former child star opposite Joan Crawford in a film called
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”

***

In 1976,
The Night of the Iguana
, as directed by Joseph Hardy, was revived at the Circle in the Square Theatre in Lower Manhattan. The stars included gay actor Richard Chamberlain as the Rev. Shannon, with veteran actress Dorothy McGuire as Hannah and Sylvia Miles as Maxine.

For the many actresses who have interpreted the role of Maxine Faulk, from Bette Davis to Ava Gardner, critics have noted that, “It is a coveted role for middle-aged stars who want to wriggle out of the girdle of Hollywood glamour and liberate their inner slobs.”

There have been subsequent revivals as well, including a critically acclaimed London production at the Lyric Theatre, starring Woody Harrelson as the Rev. Shannon, in all his broad sonorousness and whiskey-rotted virility.