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) (144 page)

Gore relayed to Elizabeth the litany of his own (disastrous) experiences with Mae during the filming of
Myra Breckinridge
. “The wisest thing you ever did, Elizabeth, was to turn down the role.”

When Gore had visited Mae, he recalled that she was dressed entirely in white, including her furs and diamonds. She blended in with her all-white apartment. “She was so heavily made up and so flamboyantly gowned that I had no idea exactly what was lurking behind all that artificial glamour,” Gore recalled. “I feared a very old lady who had helped Lincoln draft the Emancipation Proclamation.”

“Mae looked like a living refugee from the waxworks,” he said. “No wonder Billy Wilder originally offered her the role of Norma Desmond in
Sunset Blvd.”

“Beneath all that war paint, I sensed a tireless trouper from yesterday, a born entertainer who loved to perform, and a consummate publicity agent promoting only one product—herself, in all her faded glory.”

Although she hadn’t made a movie in twenty-three years, she wanted it clearly understood that she didn’t want Fox to bill this picture as her comeback. “It’s a return, not a comeback,” she told him, parroting a line from
Sunset Blvd
.

“I’m still a star, one of the really big ones, right up there with Charlie Chaplin,” she told him. “He was a little guy, but one with a big prick. I’m also a playwright. Speaking of playwrights, there are only three big ones—Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and me.”

“I can still undulate these old hips of mine, even if they date from the 19
^th
Century,” she told him. “I’m such a big name that I can carry the picture myself. They’ll come to see me. Every birthday, I get so many phone calls from well-wishers that I practically shut down the phone lines with overload.”

Before agreeing to participate in the project, she had definite requirements.

“First, I never play a character older than twenty-six,” she told him. “Not only that, but I write my own lines, each guaranteed to get a laugh.”

“When I went into her all-white bathroom to take a piss, I was shocked to see this large blowup, a frontal nude, of Jack Dempsey,” Gore said. “She had a thing for boxers, especially if they were as black as Gorilla Jones, another one of her lovers.”

[“Gorilla” Jones (aka William Landon Jones (1906-1982), was an African-American, Memphis-born boxer and twice NBA Middleweight Boxing Champion of the World.]

“Earlier, she’d told me that when management had objected to her having black boxers come and go, she bought a large interest in the building and lifted the ban on Negroes.”

Seated opposite her once again, Gore learned that she wanted to perform three or four musical numbers within the context of the upcoming movie. “She even sang a few lines from a song from one of her long-ago road shows. It was called ‘Rub-a-Dub-Dub, Three Fags in a Tub.’ I convinced her that that exact title might not be appropriate.”

“After two of the most fascinating hours of my life, Mae announced that she had to retire for her afternoon beauty sleep so she would be in condition to rock ’n’ roll around the clock till dawn breaks,” Gore said.

“God, these young men of today are so demanding,” Mae said. “They just can’t get enough.”

Gore kissed her diamond-laden hand and wished her luck with the movie.

He remembered her parting words to him: “Fox is sure lucky to get me in the picture. It’ll increase sales of that novel of yours. I tried to read it but couldn’t get through it. With me in the picture, it’ll become a classic.”

Some of her final words were filled with a certain nostalgia. “I never loved another person the way I loved myself, and I have no guilt about it. I’m in a class by myself. I have no regrets.”

“How about you, Vidal?” she asked. “Did you ever love?”

“Only once in my entire life, and he was slaughtered by the Japs on the beaches of Iwo Jima.”

***

Before the film’s final cast was announced by 20
^th
Century Fox, Candy Darling, the emerging superstar from the entourage of Andy Warhol, began to pursue Gore, even though he insisted with her that he had no say over casting. She didn’t really believe him.

She was aggressively lobbying for the role of Myra. “Why get one of those Hollywood whores with a smelly vagina when you can cast a ‘Trans woman’ like me?” she asked. “I
AM
Myra Breckinridge. I understand her to my scarlet-painted toenails.”

When she first came to call, Gore paid her a lot more attention, since he’d written a book (that was about to be adapted into a movie), about a transsexual.

She revealed to him that while she was growing up as James Lawrence Slattery (nicknamed Jimmy) in Queens (New York City), she had identified with Myra Breckinridge. Like the heroine of his novel, she was addicted to old movies.

She confided that she learned the mysteries of sex from a salesman (a child molester) in a local children’s store.

Her mother confronted her one evening with rumors she’d heard that her son was a cross dresser. Jimmy went to his bedroom and emerged an hour later as “Hope Dahl,” a name she later changed to Candy Darling. The name was chosen because of her love of sweets.

“I knew then that I couldn’t stop Jimmy,” her mother, Theresa Phelan, said. “He was too beautiful and talented. His beauty rivaled that of any girl I knew. I also knew that every red-blooded male in America would want my son in bed.”

Gore, in time, heard all of Candy’s stories, including details about some movie stars who had seduced her, including one who was the macho King of Hollywood at the time.

“I’m not going to name him, but movie buffs of the early 70s will know exactly who I mean.”

Finally, Gore grew impatient, having by now heard all of Candy’s revelations. He quit accepting her phone calls. She reacted by appearing on his doorstep several times late at night.

Finally, in exasperation, he threw open his door to confront her. “Fuck, Candy, let me get some sleep. If you want to play Myra, head over to Richard Zanuck’s house and suck him off.” Then he slammed the door in her face.

He never saw her again, but was saddened to learn of her death on March 21, 1974 of lymphoma. “She truly lived up to the motto of young people ‘Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse.’”

***

At long last, the cast was announced by Fox, with Raquel Welch designated as the star who’d interpret the role of Myra. Mae West signed to play Letitia, but insisted that the character’s name be changed to Leticia. “There’s no way I’m going to play a character called Le
TIT
ia. Otherwise, the role was tailor made for me, that of a sexual predator talent scout who auditions only studs.”

Director John Huston signed on for the role of Buck Loner after promising Fox that, “I won’t try to take over as the director. Think of me as a piano player in a whore-house.”

Producers David Giler and Robert Fryer assembled a very talented cast, with Roger Herren cast as Rusty Godowski, who is dildo-raped by Myra. The character of Rusty was described “as the last stronghold of masculinity in this Disneyland of perversion.”

The movie critic, Rex Reed, was cast in a very brief cameo as Myron Breckinridge—that is, Myra “before she had it cut off.”

Farrah Fawcett played Mary Ann Pringle, Rusty’s girlfriend. Some very talented character actors filled out the bill, including Jim Backus as the Doctor; John Carradine as the Surgeon, Andy Devine as Coyote Bill, and Tom Selleck in an early role as “The Stud.”

The surprise from Fox involved the hiring of the relatively unknown director, Michael Sarne, whose contract gave him total control over the expensive project. He did not set out to make “one of the fifty worst films of all time,” but he succeeded in doing just that.

Sarne had previously directed a film,
Joanna
(1968), about a young country girl entangled in the murky morality of swinging London. Fox hired him as
Myra Breckinridge’s
director, hoping to capture a youth market which had never before heard of Mae West.

A reporter asked Mae how she felt about the casting of Raquel Welch as Myra. “Who?” Mae asked. “Never heard of her.” Consistently throughout the course of filming, Mae never called her by her name, but constantly referred to Raquel as “The Little Girl.”

“What’s her face has one or two little scenes in the movie—so I’ve been told,” Mae said.

Mae was also asked if she’d heard rumors that both Gore Vidal and Rex Reed were homosexuals. “Gay lib?” she asked. “The gay boys? Looks like they’re practically taking over. I think they invented the word ‘gay’ back in 1927 when I wrote a homosexual comedy called
Drag
. The gay boys have always adored me, and they’re always imitating me. They know talent when they see it.”

Mae was passionately opposed to the director’s idea of defining the entire film as a fantasy. “It’s like someone tells you a story and gets you all interested. Then they say, ‘I woke up to find it was all a dream.’ You want to smack ‘em in the face!”

It was agreed that Mae would appear only in black-and-white outfits, her gowns designed by Edith Head. When Welch showed up for a photo shoot dressed in black, a feud was launched.

Behind Raquel’s back, Mae was lobbying to have her replaced, even though she was the world’s reigning sex symbol at the time. Mae wanted a homosexual—“maybe like this Candy Darling that Gore Vidal was telling me about—cast as Myra instead of a biological woman. Only a homosexual can play the role.”