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) (26 page)

As he sat drinking with Monty, he gently probed him to learn of his early relationship with Marlon Brando. At one point in the 1940s, they had been hailed as the two greatest actors on Broadway.

Before the night was over, Truman learned that Monty had met Brando backstage near the end of his 1944 run in
I Remember Mama
, a play that marked the debut of the theater-going public’s interest in him.

Because of his baby face and almost poetic beauty and sensitivity, Monty looked even younger that the more masculine and well-built Brando.

Both men hailed from Nebraska, and often, they were up for the same roles, particularly in their future when Monty was offered the star part in
On the Waterfront
(1954) before Brando.

Monty admitted to Truman that he’d had an affair with Brando shortly after they met. “Perhaps it was more of a fling than an affair,” Monty said. “Don’t call it love. I think both of us, as competitors, were mainly checking each other out. How better to do that than having sex with your rival? It was just too intense. Our relationship was destined to burn itself out quickly.”

Director Elia Kazan told Truman, “Both Monty and Marlon are often compared in the press, but their acting styles are quite different. Of course, both can play deeply troubled young men. Monty is more intellectual in his approach to a role. Marlon acts more out of instinct. Monty is soft, even fragile, in his characterization. Marlon is more brutish, as exemplified by his portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in
A Streetcar Named Desire
. Monty is far more uptight than Marlon. He once told me that he felt that Monty walked like he had a Mixmaster up his ass.”

Monty admitted that on his first date with Brando, both of them, in the middle of the night, had pulled off their clothes and had run through the deserted canyons of Lower Manhattan’s Financial District. “We were chased by a military policeman. We never could go back to our clothing. We made it to my apartment wrapped in a newspaper dress.”

“For a few weeks, we were seen everywhere together in New York,” Monty said. “I fell big for Marlon. He was in love with himself. We were both crazy—two real lunatics. We did stupid things, like run out in front of traffic to see if cars could brake fast enough. We’d go to an expensive restaurant, then run out without paying the bill.”

The gay actor, Tom Ewell, who would later star with Marilyn Monroe in
The Seven Year Itch
, remembered seeing Monty Clift and Brando at a gay party in Greenwich Village. He told Truman, “Monty sat in Marlon’s lap, fondling him and kissing him throughout the entire party.”

“What happened to you two?” Truman asked Monty.

“I went to Hollywood before Marlon,” he answered. “We found others. But it was a hell of a lot of fun while it lasted.”

“Ultimately, what was Marlon to you?” Truman asked.

Monty’s answer was enigmatic, “A mother substitute—that’s all!”

Truman rarely saw Monty in Manhattan, but became intimately involved with him when he flew to Rome to work on a movie called
Stazione Termini [(1953), released in America that same year as
Indiscretion of an American Wife.
]

David O. Selznick had cast his wife, Jennifer Jones, as the adulterous American in the lead, with Monty playing her Italian lover. Its director was Vittorio De Sica.

Originally, Selznick had hired the novelist, Carson McCullers, to work on the movie script. McCullers struggled with the dialogue, but a few weeks later, Selznick flew into Rome—“galloping into town and trampling over people like a herd of stampeding animals.” He decided to fire McCullers and rewrite the script himself.

When he ran into trouble, he called Truman and asked him to fly to Rome to work on the script.

His bank account depleted, Truman took the job. Once in Rome, he discovered that filming had already begun. At times, he had to work at a ferocious speed, writing lines as the actors stood on the sound stage, waiting to recite them before the cameras.

In Rome, he became intimate with Monty, and they moved in with each other. Amid the confusion, both men found comfort in each other’s arms. Truman learned that Jennifer Jones had developed a crush on Clift. “When she found out that Monty was gay, she became hysterical,” Truman said. “She ran to her dressing room and stuffed a mink jacket down her portable toilet.”

On January 7, 1953, from an address at 33 Via Margutta in Rome, Truman wrote his friend, Andrew Lyndon, in New York. Lyndon’s companion, Harold Halma, had been the photographer who had snapped the notorious picture of a young Truman lying seductively on a
chaise longue
—the photo used on the jacket of his first novel,
Other Voices, Other Rooms
. According to Truman:

“I got started on a great feud with Monty Clift. For six weeks, we really loathed each other—but then (this is for your eyes alone!), we suddenly started a sort of mild flirtation, which snowballed along until it reached very tropic climates indeed. Nothing too serious, but it has been rather fun, and anyway, he is really awfully sweet and I like him a lot.”

Truman later recalled that “Even though Monty is a terrible mess, I adore him. He is always high on something and at times becomes almost impossible for De Sica to direct.”

Over pillow talk, the voyeur in Truman elicited all sorts of very personal details from Monty about his sex life.

Monty told Truman that he had been taught how to masturbate when he was thirteen years old, in the attic of his family’s home, by his older brother.

He also said that he turned down the role of the gigolo in
Sunset Blvd
. because of its young man/older woman love affair. “I don’t think I could be convincing making love to a woman twice my age.”

[Truman avoided reminding Monty that he was involved at the time in a torrid romance with Libby Holman.]

Truman was startled to learn that Monty had had an affair with playwright Thornton Wilder.

Monty also claimed that he’d gotten involved with Steve McQueen when that then-unknown actor was working in Greenwich Village as a TV repairman.

“Steve—he called himself Steven back then—did more than repair TVs,” Monty said. “He became more or less my boy. One night, he tended bar for me at a party I threw. There, he got to meet his dream girl, Elizabeth Taylor, whom I call Bessie Mae.”

Monty also told Truman that he’d seduced Paul Newman when he was working as a temporary fill-in for Ralph Meeker, who otherwise held the star role in Broadway’s 1953 version of
Picnic
.

“After a few weeks with Paul, he escaped my clutches because at the time, I was going through an S&M period. He told me that I liked it rough, whereas he was more vanilla. He claimed that when I kiss, I don’t do it with love, but to give someone a bloody lip. We were not meant to be. Besides, Paul is too deep into the closet.”

Newman would later tell his closest friend, Gore Vidal, “In a relationship, Monty just didn’t know what the limits were. All relationships, even the closest ones, have limits.”

Truman had only minor regrets when, at the end of filming, Monty had to leave Rome. He wrote to his friend, Lyndon: “Monty’s leaving next week—going to Hawaii to film
From Here to Eternity (1953)
. So I guess everything will cool down. Just as well. It’s all been too nerve-wracking.”

Back in America, and during the years to come, Truman saw Monty less and less. He recalled a final encounter with him in 1964, when they dined together at the Colony Restaurant in Manhattan. “He had only one drink, but he must have popped a lot of pills when he went to the men’s room.”

“He wanted to go Christmas shopping with me, and I took him along,” Truman said. “We stopped in this Italian shop that specialized in exquisite and very expensive sweaters,” Truman said. “From one of the counters, Monty picked up sixteen sweaters and took this huge bundle out onto the street where it was pouring rain. He threw all of them into the gutter.”

The salesman handled it gracefully, asking for Monty’s address so he could send him the bill.

“Then in a taxi on the way to his home, Monty went berserk,” Truman claimed. “He insisted on getting into the front seat with the driver, where he tried to take control of the wheel in busy traffic. He nearly wrecked the car, and the driver tried to throw him out until I promised to give him a hundred dollar bill if he’d take Monty home.”

“Monty was delivered, kicking and screaming, to his home, where his houseman finally took over,” Truman said. “While I called his doctor, Monty’s houseman carried him up the steps to his bedroom.”

“Monty needed constant care, and I didn’t know what to do,” Truman said. “I finally called Elizabeth Taylor, who was staying at The Regency. She agreed to take care of him, so I had him delivered to her. She’d once been in love with him. But a person can become such a mess that he becomes impossible to love.”

“That was the last time I ever saw Monty,” Truman recalled. “He died a few months later. Such a waste of a brilliant theatrical talent. He was Hell bent on self-destruction. I, too, was following the road to self-destruction, but I was taking a different detour.”

Author Donald Windham, the longtime friend of Tennessee Williams, met the playwright in 1940. “He immediately made a pass at me,” Windham claimed. “I was not flattered. I soon learned that he made a pass at nearly every man he met.”

Windham was nineteen; Tennessee twenty-eight, though claiming he was much younger.

A bond was formed. (Windham already had a live-in lover.) “Tenn was a wandering gypsy in those days. but he wrote me from the road, his first letter written from Lake George, New York, on May 15, 1940. He’d gone there ‘to check out the swimming and the beautiful boys.’”

Tennessee’s last letter to Windham was written on February 5, 1965, while Tennessee was residing in New York.

By 1975, Tennessee and Windham had long ago drifted apart. The origin of their rift derived from their co-authorship of the play
You Touched Me!
. Windham had discovered that Tennessee was being listed in several sources as its sole author. Other fights and betrayals contributed to the destruction of their once close bond.

In 1975, Windham wanted to publish the first ever collection of Tennessee’s letters, an anthology eventually managed through Holt, Rinehart, and Winston in New York.

This began a series of misunderstandings, denunciations, and threats of lawsuits.

After long years of separation, Tennessee had been approached by Windham, and he casually granted permission for him to publish the personal letters he’d written to him, mostly when they were poor and struggling.

Later, however, Tennessee had a change of heart and began a public campaign to discredit Windham. He telephoned columnist Liz Smith of the
New York Daily News
and pretended outrage, claiming that Windham “is trying to ruin me.” Then he threatened legal action to prevent publication.

At one point, Tennessee accused Windham of “stealing my copyright.”

As for their previous agreement, Tennessee maintained that Windham had gotten him drunk and tricked him into signing.

Tennessee really didn’t have a case, and his threatened action eventually faded. Soon, however, other implications bubbled to the surface.

When Gore Vidal met with Windham in California, Gore said, “What Tennessee said about me in those letters is actionable. At least they show he used to be able to write. But they also show that he had a murderous streak in him as far back as the Forties.”

In November of 1977, Robert Brustein, after reading the published correspondence, delivered a devastating denunciation of Tennessee in
The New York Times Book Review
. Windham himself called the critique “a nightmare come true.”

Subsequently, Tennessee denounced Brustein as “ruthless. I’m too old to be afraid of him. He is despicable beneath contempt.”