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) (37 page)

“I’ll give Fitzgerald the finger,” Tennessee said. “In fact, I plan to write a long play about Zelda and him. I’m calling it
Clothes for a Summer Hotel.”

In 1970, Gore published an article about Tennessee in
Esquire
.

Tennessee told his friend, Stanley Mills Haggart, “According to the Gospel of Gore Vidal, I’m a bit mad. He also suggests I’m a communist when, in fact, I am merely an old-fashioned anarchist.”

In 1976, Gore reviewed Tennessee’s autobiography, entitled
Memoirs
. Shortly after his review was published, he ran into Tennessee in the lobby of a Broadway theater. Tennessee’s cloudy blue eyes zeroed in on Gore.

“When your review appeared, my
Memoirs
was number five on the non-fiction bestseller list of
The New York Times
. Within two weeks of your review, I’d completely fallen off the list.”

Later, Gore claimed “After that encounter, I never saw the Bird, or at least very much of him, in his final years. The barbiturate Nembutal and vodka are a lethal combination, and they did his brain no good. But the writing was often still marvelous; also, more adventurous than before.”

“Unfortunately, he’d lost interest in people; he doesn’t read a newspaper, doesn’t read a book, doesn’t know what country he’s in. He’s a romantic writer who is essentially working out of his own past, and that kind of writer has just so many cards.”

In Gore’s final summation of Tennessee, delivered after the playwright’s death in 1983, he said: “The best of his plays are as permanent as anything can be in the Age of Kleenex.”

Chapter Ten

In the closely knit circle
of gay authors who thrived in the late 1940s, it seemed inevitable that Tennessee would eventually meet the rising young novelist, Truman Capote.

“When I first met Truman,” Tennessee recalled, “I thought he was rather cute, very slim, with a little boy’s ass—a sodomite’s delight. From the beginning, I knew his impulse, and his personal style, involved being catty. At first, his remarks were relatively harmless, but, as he aged, they became more malicious.”

“Right away, he told me he’d been born in New Orleans, which has a certain kind of glamor attached to it. I soon learned that Truman liked to take liberties with the truth. He was actually born in Huntsville, Alabama, which has no glamour whatsoever.”
[Editors note: Actually, Truman had been born in New Orleans, moving when he was four to Monroeville, Alabama.]

If Tennessee’s memory was correct, he first met Truman at a small dinner party at the home of Andrew Lyndon and his companion, photographer Harold Halma, before they had a serious rift in their relationship and separated.

When Truman went into the kitchen of their small apartment to get a drink, he heard Tennessee tell his host, “Baby, I think your little friend is charming.”

Yet as the decades passed, Tennessee would reverse that opinion on countless occasions.

Carson McCullers, one of Tennessee’s closest friends, had attempted to turn him against Truman even before they actually met.
[In Tennessee’s view, Carson was “spitefully jealous” of Truman for the success of his first novel
, Other Voices, Other Rooms
.]
She accused him of “stealing my style and getting acclaim he does not deserve. He is a derivative artist raiding my literary pantry.”

Tennessee wrote back, “Aren’t you allowing yourself to judge this little boy a bit too astringently?” he asked. “I see him as an opportunist and a careerist and a derivative writer whose tiny feet have attempted to lift the ten league boots of Carson McCullers and succeeded only in tripping him up absurdly. But surely, he is not one of the bad boys. His little face, as photographed by Cecil Beaton against a vast panorama of white roses, has a look of prenatal sorrow, as if he were still in the womb and already suspected how cold the world is beyond the vaginal portals.”

Carson wrote back: “I wonder how Truman missed being the flower girl at the recent wedding of Rita Hayworth to Prince Aly Khan?”

In the vanguard of what later evolved into a major flood of North American visitors to war-ravaged Europe, all three members of the “Pink Triangle”—Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, and Truman Capote—toured Italy, France, and England in late 1948 and ’49. They either hooked up with each other, or, in the case of Truman and Gore, tried to avoid each other whenever possible.

In Paris, during dinner with Tennessee in a Left Bank bistro, Truman said to him, “Now that you’re enjoying the catastrophe of success, I noticed that the press does not discuss your sexuality except for some vague allusions. With me, it’s different. They all but call me ‘Faggot of the Year.’”

“There’s enough bad press out there to guarantee that I won’t be voted Father of the Year at the Elks Club,” Tennessee said.

The following night, Tennessee did something impish by inviting both Truman and Gore to attend a
boîte [nightclub]
with him on Paris’ Left Bank.

Truman had once worked as a professional dancer, or so he said,” Tennessee recalled. “As for Gore, he readily admitted, ‘I’m no Ann Miller.’”

The nightclub had imported a group of black musicians from New Orleans. Truman asked Gore to dance to the sound of “Bongo, Bongo, Bongo, I Don’t Want to Leave the Congo.” Gore rejected his offer, and consequently, Truman monopolized the dance floor by himself.

“The rest of the night was spent with Gore and Truman shooting verbal daggers at each other’s contributions to literature, or lack thereof—mostly the latter,” Tennessee said.

Tennessee was traveling at the time with his new lover, Frank Merlo, a former hustler who, oddly enough, specialized in seducing successful authors. Truman was traveling with Jack Dunphy, who had danced as a chorus boy in the Broadway hit,
Oklahoma!
.

The two writers and their newly acquired lovers agreed to reunite, later, in Rome.

In the aftermath of that night out together in Paris, Tennessee wrote a letter to his literary agent, Audrey Wood, in which he was rather contemptuous of the many American writers passing through Rome, including “Truman and his paramour.” Tennessee collectively referred to these writers as “the spiteful sisterhood.”

After rendezvousing in Rome, the four of them agreed to drive south to Naples where they would take a ferry to the offshore island of Ischia, known for its spa treatments.

At a café table at the departure point for the ferryboat headed to Ischia, Truman related a story he’d heard about the Texas-born producer, Margo Jones, who had labored to bring Tennessee’s latest play,
Summer and Smoke
, to the stage.