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) (24 page)

Tennessee said that he would have liked to see Monty interpret the role of the tormented, gay army major instead of Brando. “Monty’s inner demons included his struggle with his own sexual identity growing up in a less tolerant age. He would have brought an extra personal dimension to the character.”

Film critic David Thomson wrote, “We know now how far Clift was destroyed by drink, drugs, and neurosis; and we recognize the neurosis being intensified by his gay yearning that had to lurk within a heterosexual image. And Clift was beautiful—which is the way movie stars are expected to be. Does his torture bear out the secret permission by which viewers can aspire to same-sex fantasies?”

[It was May 12, 1956 when Elizabeth Taylor, married at the time to British actor, Michael Wilding, decided to throw a dinner party. She would regret that decision for the rest of her life
.

She invited, among others, Rock Hudson, her co-star in
Giant (1956),
but her guest of honor was Montgomery Clift, who was filming
Raintree County
(released in 1957) with her at the time
.

At MGM, Dory Schary, the chief, had told Benny Thau, his assistant, “I don’t want Monty to become another Jimmy Dean style auto casualty, so we’d better get a full-time driver for our druggie star.”

On the evening Elizabeth telephoned Monty, he’d sent his chauffeur home for the night, planning to turn in early. He refused her invitation at first, asserting that he was too tired
.

But she kept calling until he relented, although he claimed that the road to her house was too dangerous to drive at night. He’d also taken sleeping pills, but wasn’t sure of how many
.

To entice Monty, Elizabeth had also invited his best friend, Kevin McCarthy, who at the time was shooting a movie called
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
(1956), that became a cult classic
.

At the party, Monty drank “piss-warm pussy pink rosé,” and grew sleepy as the hours passed. Finally, claiming he was dead tired, he headed out the door. In his own car, McCarthy set out first, leading the way down the “murderous cork-twisted road” that eventually funneled into Sunset Boulevard
.

As he headed down the mountain, Monty drove dangerously and at one point lost control. His car careened off the road, crashing violently downhill
.

Hudson and Elizabeth were the first to reach the scene of the accident, after McCarthy summoned them by pounding on her door
.

Hudson managed to tear away the smashed-in door to the car. Elizabeth crawled inside to rescue Monty, who was bleeding profusely. “A tooth was hanging on his lip by a few shreds of flesh, and he asked me to pull it off because it was cutting his tongue,” she recalled. She reached inside his throat and removed two more teeth. His face had been virtually destroyed and was a bloody mass of pulp, evoking a horror movie
.

In the ambulance, she claimed that his head had swollen until it was almost the size of his shoulders. “That beautiful face of his looked like a giant red soccer ball.”

Monty survived to endure a massive surgical reconstruction of his face
.

As author Ellis Amburn wrote: “When he recovered, he was scarcely recognizable as Montgomery Clift, appearing pinched and withered. The famous gullwing eyebrows were now shaggy thickets; the left side of his face was almost paralyzed; the once heroic jawline was soft and mushy, and his eyes looked dead.”

A few years later, it was this new face, the artificial-looking creation of “the beauty butchers,” as he called them, that confronted the crew on the set of
Suddenly Last Summer (1959),
where he met Gore Vidal, its scriptwriter.]

***

One hot dull afternoon, Gore was struggling to write a historical novel,
Julian
, when an unexpected call came in from producer Sam Spiegel, a man known for quickly getting to the point. “Will you adapt Tennessee Williams’ one-act play,
Suddenly Last Summer
, for the screen?”

The play was originally paired with
Something Un-spon
as part of a 1958 off-Broadway double bill collectively entitled
The Garden District
.

In the wake of
A Streetcar Named Desire
(1951) and
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
(1958),
Suddenly Last Summer
was the third of Tennessee’s plays adapted for the screen that dealt with homosexuality.

“Homosexuality was the love that dare not speak its name on the screen,” Gore said.

After talking for an hour with Spiegel, Gore agreed to take the job, providing that Tennessee would not be allowed to interfere and that Bette Davis would be cast in the lead role of the evil matriarch, Violet Venable.

Within two weeks, Gore was flying to Miami to meet with Spiegel and Tennessee. Once there, he learned that previously, Spiegel had offered Tennessee the job of adapting his own play for the screen, but that Tennessee had rejected the idea.

On the other hand, Gore was intrigued by “the balls on Spiegel. Most producers wouldn’t touch this controversial play. It dramatized both late 1950s cultural repression and the incipient countercurrents that would radically change sexual politics in the 1960s.”

It was in Miami that Gore learned that Spiegel had already cast the film. “Your Miss Bette Davis can’t do it, but we’ve got somebody even better: Katharine Hepburn herself.”

Gore was disappointed but moved ahead anyway. The other female star would be Elizabeth Taylor, the biggest box office draw in America at the time. She was insisting that Montgomery Clift be given the male lead, although no company would insure him. His reputation for alcohol and drugs had more or less ruined his name in Hollywood. “To get Liz, I’m willing to take a risk, although I have two secret weapons,” Siegel said.

“What might those be?” Gore asked.

“Both Peter O’Toole and Laurence Harvey are standing by if Clift fucks up,” Spiegel told him.

Back in Manhattan, Gore called Monty, mainly to see what condition he was in. Spiegel had asked Gore to be a secret spy reporting back to him about Monty.

Norman Mailer had previously adapted his 1955 novel,
The Deer Park
, into a play. He called and asked both Gore and Monty to join him and his wife, Adele, at their apartment on Perry Street in Greenwich Village.

With others, Gore and Monty took over the reading of the script. Halfway through it, Monty, who had been drinking heavily, began to slur his words. Within fifteen minutes, he passed out on the floor. At that point, Gore began to read both his own part and that of Monty too.

The next day, Spiegel called Gore to inquire about the state of Monty’s health. Gore decided to lie. “He’s in wonderful shape. Did a great reading of Mailer’s script.”

Later, Mailer said, “Regrettably, except in sophisticated circles, homosexuality isn’t acceptable in any disguise in most of society. Monty has great guilt over his sexual preference. As an extremely sensitive man, he suffers more than most. But his struggle against his own urges seems to be destroying him. He’s always miserable. He drinks all the time, not wanting to grow up and face life as who he really is. He has my deepest sympathy.”

Half way through the writing of his screenplay of
Suddenly Last Summer
, Gore received an urgent call from Tennessee. “I was awake all night before making this call,” the playwright said. “But I want—actually, I’m demanding—that I be listed as co-author of the film script, although I don’t plan to submit one page of dialogue.”

“Why this sudden change of heart?” Gore asked.

“These are crazy times,” Tennessee said. “In this mixed-up world of emerging sexual liberation, I think, baby, that
Suddenly
might be a shoo-in for an Oscar for Best Script. As you know, I’m not exactly opposed to accepting an occasional literary prize.”

After an hour of argument, Gore caved in, later writing, “The Bird
[his nickname for Tennessee]
was ravenous for prizes.”

After the film opened to scathing reviews, Tennessee expressed regret at being listed as the co-author. When the reviewers attacked the subject matter—sodomy, incest, and cannibalism—Tennessee told reporters, “Blame it on Gore. He’s always had a perverted mind.”

During the shoot, Gore became very protective of Monty. “Between drinks and painkillers, he could work only in the mornings. Even under the influence, he was better than most actors.”

During the first week of shooting, Joseph Mankiewicz, the film’s director, had been respectful of Monty, even inviting him, along with Gore and some members of the cast, to a lavish dinner. Monty showed up drugged. Halfway through the dinner, he started throwing pieces of food at his fellow diners.

Eating with his hands, he made outrageous and provocative remarks. At one point, he said, “Let’s go around the table. I want to know the size of every man’s penis. As for the ladies, I need to know the largest object you’ve ever inserted into your vagina.”

“Joe came to hate Monty,” Gore said. “One day, he made Monty repeat, over and over again, a scene where he must hold a document in a shaking hand. The result, when we heard the tape, sounded like a forest fire.”

For Monty, some of the scenes had to be shot in multiple takes, as he could effectively deliver only one or two lines at a time.

“Since I knew Joe was plotting to fire Monty, I moved in with him,” Gore said. “I was hoping to cut down on his intake of drugs and alcohol. Night after night, I had to undress him. What happened was inevitable. Late one night, I woke up to find him going down on me. I was not that attracted to Monty’s body, but I reciprocated in my way.”

“That love-making—and I hate to use the term—went on night after night. For some reason, Monty found comfort in my arms. He seemed desperate to be loved, and he wasn’t getting his usual support from Elizabeth, who was deeply involved in her own turmoils and romantic problems.”

Tennessee had called with suggestions for the script, although he’d agreed not to. The playwright was adamant that Sebastian Venable, Violet’s gay son, should never show his face on the screen. “There is no actor in Hollywood who could convincingly portray Sebastian,” Tennessee claimed. “Just show a man in a white suit running from the little boys who plan to cannibalize him. Sebastian’s facial absence from the screen will only make his presence more strongly felt.”