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) (143 page)

Shortly after Myra arrives in Hollywood, she imposes a legal claim on the land holdings of Buck Loner, a retired horse opera star. She cites her status as the widow of Buck’s nephew, Myron Breckinridge, even though, in fact, “she” is Myron himself—his glamorous female incarnation in the aftermath of his sex-change operation.

With a sense of self-delusion, she declares that, “No man will ever possess Myra Breckin-ridge,” insisting that it is she who will possess men in her “own good time and in ways convenient to my tyrannous lust.”

She manifests that goal on the sexy, macho, and unwaveringly heterosexual Rusty Godowsky, who has already flaunted his manhood in front of her. After subjecting him to a series of sexual humiliations, she straps him to a table and triumphantly straddles him with a dildo.

“
I am a dish, and don’t you forget it, you motherfuckers
!” Myra proclaims. Then she shares some of her Hollywood sexual fantasies with the readers of her diary, admitting that she maneuvered her way—in her incarnation as a woman—through a lesbian phase of her past, crushed between the heavy breasts of Lana Turner.

Myra goes on to announce that she abandoned that period of her life for the manly charms of James Craig, a dashing actor who, in the 1940s, was widely promoted as “the next Clark Gable.”

“For years,” the lush and beautiful Myra declares to her viewers and fans, “I practiced self-abuse, thinking of Craig’s voice, those broad shoulders, those powerful thighs thrust between my own. No matter what condition James Craig is in today, decrepit or not, Myra Breckinridge is ready to give him a good time for old time’s sake.”

A subplot of
Myra Breckinridge
spins around the character of Letitia Van Allen, an aging but still sexually voracious talent scout who virtually invented the casting couch. As one of its workaday accessories, her office boasts a four-poster bed.

Myra meets Letitia and they become friends. Letitia confides that her studs provide her with “small attentions a girl like me cherishes, like a lighted cigarette stubbed out on my
derrière
, or a complete beating with his great thick heavy leather belt.”

With some reluctance, and alert to the fear that a backlash might be imminent, Little, Brown Company published
Myra Breckinridge
in February of 1968.

Critiques included lavish praise from Christopher Isherwood and harsh attacks from William Buckley, Jr., who denounced Gore as a pornographer.

Critic Dennis Altman wrote: “
Myra Breckinridge
is part of a major cultural assault on the assumed norms of gender and sexuality, which swept the western world in the late 1960s and 1970s. It is tempting to argue that Vidal did more to subvert the dominant rules of sex and gender in
Myra
than is contained in a shelf of queer theory treatises.”

In 1968, shortly before the official publication date for the release of his novel,
Myra Breckinridge
, Gore Vidal sent a copy to director Joseph Losey. Gore felt that the controversial expatriate director would be ideal. A sexually sophisticated movie adaptation of the book seemed inevitable.

Losey had been blacklisted in Hollywood during the 1950s for having joined the Communist Party in 1946. Subsequently, he left the United States and moved to Europe, where he made the remainder of his films, mostly in England. Losey’s previous so-called radical associations didn’t frighten Gore at all, as his own left-wing views had often incited people who disagreed with him to label him as a communist.

In the late 1960s, Losey had formed a working relationship with playwright Harold Pinter, and had directed two films based on that writer’s screenplays, including
The Servant
(1963) and
Accident
(1967). Both films had been lavishly honored, with awards from, among others, the British Academy Film Awards and the Grand Prix Special du Jury Award at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival. These movies examined the politics of sexuality and gender in the 1960s. Collectively, they seemed to make him the ideal candidate as director of an actress in a transgendered role.

Losey’s response to Gore’s proposal was immediate and enthusiastic. He’d not only read the novel twice, but had already developed strong ideas about how to cast it. He wanted Elizabeth Taylor to play Myra Breckinridge, and he thought Anne Bancroft would be ideal cast as Letitia Van Allen. He’d just seen her film,
The Graduate
(1967), and he thought he’d be perfect playing a sex-hungry film talent scout who liked to bed studs far more manly than Dustin Hoffman. After Losey managed to contact Bancroft by telephone, he learned that she, too, had read the novel and would be “delighted to sink my teeth into the role of Le
TIT
ia Van Allen.”

Unable to reach Elizabeth Taylor on the phone, he wrote her a letter, dating it December 26, 1968, and addressing it to her chalet in Gstaad. With Richard Burton, she was staying in that fashionable Swiss resort over the holidays.

“I’ve been re-reading
Myra Breckinridge
by your friend, Gore Vidal, who served you so magnificently with the script he prepared for you for
Suddenly Last Summer
, where you gave a performance that should have won the Oscar. Done properly,
Myra Breckinridge
could make millions and neither of us need ever work again. You could afford not to work again, and I don’t care—or, rather, we should put it the other way ‘round. I could afford it (!) and
you
don’t care.”

When Elizabeth later encountered Gore at a Hollywood party, she said, “Under different circumstances, I might have considered it. But Losey’s letter came at a very bad time for me. Of course, no one would have believed me as a trannie. But, what the hell, it would have been a lark. In that scene where I stand on a table and lower my lace panties to those guys, I would not have worn a sex-hider. With my back to the camera, I would have had great fun showing them the full Monty.”

When she read Losey’s letter, Elizabeth was behind schedule in the shooting of
The Only Game in Town
, a movie in which she was wrongly cast in a story about the romance of a chorus girl and a gambler, as played by Warren Beatty. After shooting in Paris, she would have to fly to Las Vegas for the final location sequences. This was the last film shot by director George Stevens, who had previously directed Montgomery Clift and her in
A Place in the Sun
(1951).

Overweight, especially for an actress playing a chorus girl, Elizabeth was also in constant pain because of her spine, and was taking a lot of painkillers. She was not only on pills, but consuming a lot of liquor. Burton often found her “incoherent and sloshed as a Cossack.”

Burton later said, “I tried to get her to read Vidal’s novel, but she wouldn’t even finish reading the script for
The Only Game in Town
. I thought that if Losey directed it, I might put in a turn as Buck Loner, the part that eventually went to John Huston. I mean there was another problem. The ol’ girl had just had her uterus removed.”

Burton also said that although she didn’t exactly tell Losey to “Fuck off,” she “didn’t give a rat’s fart if she ever made another movie. But he didn’t give up. That spring, he was asking both of us, or either of us, if we wanted to star in Edward Albee’s
A Delicate Balance
. He got a firm NO for that offer as well.”

***

After the release of the movie adaptation of his novel,
Myra Breckinridge
, Gore Vidal denounced the film as “an awful joke.”

Trouble had begun with the casting of Mae West, who had last appeared on a movie screen in the box office disaster
The Heat’s On
, released by Columbia Pictures during the dark days of war-torn 1943.

Although Gore had rejected an offer to write the screenplay of Breckinridge, he did accept an invitation to visit Mae at her residence in the Ravenswood Apartments (on North Rossmore Avenue) in Los Angeles.

The movie’s producer, Robert Fryer, had called Mae to offer her a role in the film for $100,000. She mistakenly thought he was offering her the lead, and she was initially outraged that he wanted her to star in a movie for only $100,000.

She told him that she would agree to a role in the movie only if she was given top billing, a free hand in rewriting her scenes, and $300,000.

At first, 20
^th
Century hesitated, but they eventually agreed to her price. In response, she notified Fox executives that they had waited too long. She now demanded $350,000. Finally, they agreed to that, too, believing that the publicity of including her would be worth it at the box office.

***

The next time Elizabeth saw Gore, she told him that, out of curiosity, she’d gone to visit Mae West after she’d starred in
Myra Breckinridge
. Christopher Lawford, Peter Lawford’s teenage son, had accompanied her.

“Mae wanted to know if Chris and I were having an affair,” Elizabeth said. “She told me, ‘We older gals need young stuff.’”

“The sex goddess of yesterday appeared in a curve-hugging silver gown and was practically held up by two bodybuilders. She did nothing but talk about herself and what a big star she still was. When she excused herself to ‘go powder my muff,’ I told Chris, ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here. Talk about the self-enchanted!’”