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) (47 page)

Mary Martin had almost convinced Irene she could play Blanche. For a while, Irene considered casting Gregory Peck as Stanley opposite Martin.

But finally, after much debate, Tennessee and Kazan got Irene to offer Tandy the role of Blanche DuBois, which she accepted. The search was then on for an actor to play Stanley. Irene suggested Van Heflin, but both of her associates refused. “He’s earnest and dependable—and that’s it,” Kazan said. Then Irene put forth the name of Edmond O’Brien. “A face permanently fixed in a troubled squint and with a voice that sounds as if it brings only bad news,” was Kazan’s assessment.

Then Brando’s name was put forth by Kazan. “He’s too young,” Tennessee objected. “He looks like a boy. I envision Stanley as a thirty-year-old Polack.”

Kazan had just finished making
Gentleman’s Agreement
, starring Gregory Peck and John Garfield.
Gentleman’s Agreement
would win the Best Picture Oscar for 1947. Kazan affectionately called Garfield “Julie,” and he told both Irene Mayer Selznick and Tennessee that the young actor would be ideal for the blue collar role of Stanley Kowalski in
A Streetcar Named Desire
. Kazan and Garfield had worked together in New York as members of the experimental Group Theater, spearheaded by Lee Strasberg, Cheryl Crawford, and Harold Clurman.

Though Tennessee wasn’t certain, Irene approved Kazan’s suggestion. based on the terms of their contracts they had the power to overrule a playwright as regards casting decisions.

[Tough, cynical, sexually appealing, and edgy, both on and off the screen, and well-suited for the execution of rebellious, working-class characters, New York bad boy Garfield (1913-1952), after growing up in abject poverty in New York City during the Depression, had burst into stardom like a meteor, emoting with Lana Turner in
The Postman Always Rings Twice
, and opposite man-eating Joan Crawford in
Humoresque
, both films released in 1946. During the peak of the “Red Scare,” he denied Communist affiliation and refused to implicate his friends and associates, effectively ending his film career. His early death at the age of 39, in part because of stress from his battles with right-wing government watchdogs who included Senator Joseph McCarthy, led to his evaluation as a intensely realistic predecessor of such Method actors as Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, and James Dean.]

Arriving in New York fresh from his hit in the film,
Body and Soul
(1947), in which he had played a dim-witted boxer, Garfield was cocky and demanding.

On an otherwise deserted stage, Garfield did a first read-through of
A Streetcar Named Desire
, with Kazan playing the parts of both Blanche and Stella. In Garfield’s judgment, “The male role is very secondary,” he told both Kazan and Tennessee. “This Stanley character is a mere prop for Blanche’s histrionics.”

He did not reject the part, but instead issued a series of demands that included an ultimatum that Tennessee would rewrite the play, making Stanley’s part the focus of the drama and expanding his role. He also wanted a guarantee that he could leave the play after only four months and that, in the event that the play was adapted into a film, he would have the first right of refusal at the screen version of Stanley.

Tennessee utterly rejected Garfield’s request for a rewrite, and Irene categorically refused Garfield’s other demands.

Although out of the running himself, Brando was eager to learn any news he could about how casting for
Streetcar
was going. Karl Malden himself told Brando that he’d been assigned the role of Mitch, Stanley’s sidekick. Brando had also learned that the relatively unknown actress, Kim Hunter, had been cast as Stanley’s brutalized wife, Stella.

At the Actors Studio, Brando confronted his teacher, Kazan. He had heard that Garfield “all but had the part of Stanley, and informed Kazan, “I think Garfield would be perfect as Stanley.”

Later, Kazan remembered that Marlon was “stunned” when he told him that Garfield was out and Burt Lancaster was flying into New York to read for the part.

“A circus acrobat?” Brando said. “I’m sure that’s the kind of background Tennessee had in mind when writing the character of Stanley.”

Defensively, Kazan read a newspaper clipping he was carrying with him. It was by Sheilah Graham, the popular Hollywood columnist and former mistress of the novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Gushing with praise after seeing Lancaster emote in
The Killers
, a film adapted from a short story by Ernest Hemingway, Graham wrote: “Masculinity was oozing from
[Lancaster’s]
every pore. He was thirty-two but looked twenty-two, and what a physique! I could see the muscles rippling up and down beneath his open shirt. It was a pleasure being with a future star at the beginning. He is always so friendly, so eager to please.”

“Sounds to me like you want to turn
Streetcar
into a male burlesque show,” Brando said.

“Eat your heart out!” Kazan told him.

“I was told that Burt, while in the circus, posed for the meat magazines,” Brando said. “You know, in those homoerotic Greco-Roman stances. And there are a lot of candid frontal nude shots of him in circulation. Maybe you could acquire one of them and run a nude billboard of Burt outside the theater. Surely that would guarantee you business for
Streetcar.”

Kazan remembered losing his patience and actually slapping Brando. “Fortunately, he didn’t hit me back. ‘Don’t let your jealousy overwhelm you,’ I told him.”

“I’ve got a great body too!” Brando protested. “I work out all the time.”

“Your body’s fine for Stanley,” Kazan said. “I’ve told you before, you’re just too young. What I didn’t tell you, and I’ll tell you now that I’m mad at you, you don’t have the role in you. The part of Stanley Kowalski is just too big for your limitations as an actor.”

“You’re a rude, stupid man,” Brando said. “I’m dropping out of your class—you’re a rotten teacher anyway. Someday I’ll be the biggest star on Broadway. You’ll come begging to me. Just you wait and see.”

* * *

What happened next has become part of Broadway legend and lore. Even today, the scenario is a bit hazy, and all the eyewitnesses are dead, leaving only sketchy reports. “No one,” Kazan recalled years later, “was exactly in the loop about that strange and long-ago week that Marlon and Burt Lancaster spent together in New York.”

Lancaster arrived in New York with his agent, Harold Hecht, a former dancer for the Martha Graham Company and the son of a Brooklyn iron contractor. Lancaster, whose career was soaring, was clearly Hecht’s newest meal ticket, and he was ferocious in his attempt to make a big star out of his newly acquired client. The role of Stanley Kowalski in
Streetcar
was only one of several offers Lancaster was considering. Most of the excitement over him was generated for movie roles, not coming from the Broadway stage, except in the case of Kazan and Irene Selznick. Hollywood producers, not just Sheilah Graham, saw his star potential.

Accompanied by Hecht, “guarding him like a box of gold from Fort Knox” in Irene’s words, Burt arrived at her grandly furnished Fifth Avenue apartment. She was impressed with the actor’s good looks, physique, and male charm. But she later told Tennessee and Kazan that she perceived that Lancaster was more interested in securing the movie contract to play Stanley than he was in appearing on Broadway.

During her first meeting with Lancaster and Hecht, she told them of her triumph earlier in the day. She claimed that “I fished out Tennessee’s best line from his wastepaper basket:
‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.’”

“I just wish that Williams had put a line or two that good in the mouth of Kowalski,” Lancaster told her.

Over drinks, Lancaster agreed to appear at the New Amsterdam Roof Theatre
[on 42nd Street at Broadway]
the following morning for a read-through of
Streetcar
. Once again, as he had with Garfield, Kazan assumed the reading roles of both Blanche and Stella. At the rehearsal hall, perhaps to show off his manly physique, Lancaster insisted on removing his shirt.

Just before the reading, Tennessee slipped into the darkened theater and, without announcing himself, took a seat near the back row. He continued to conceal himself during Lancaster’s first “blind read” of the play. It was the only time that Lancaster would appear as Stanley Kowalski in front of anyone.

Tennessee was very impressed with the reading and even more so with Lancaster’s physical presence, the style of which he had envisioned for whatever actor would play the role of Stanley.

But because both Kazan and Irene had asked him not to interfere in casting, he quietly sneaked out of the theater and did not introduce himself to Lancaster, the male star of his future movie,
The Rose Tattoo
, with Anna Magnani.

Within forty-eight hours, Hecht called Kazan to tell him that Burt would not be available for an appearance on Broadway, because he had to return to Hollywood to make a film for producer Hal Wallis. Hecht went on to tell Kazan that he wanted “Burt to be your first choice for Stanley when the film version is made.”

Despondent over not being able to cast the right actor in the role of Stanley, Kazan met with Irene once more to reconsider Brando. In spite of their temporary split, the director finally concluded that Brando “would be a more multi-dimensional Stanley than either Garfield or Lancaster, once he finds himself in the role, which will take weeks, of course.”

Irene and Kazan finally decided to send Brando on a trip to Provincetown where Tennessee was applying his final polishing to
Streetcar
. “If Tennessee approves of Marlon in the role, he’ll be our Stanley,” Kazan said, “but only if our favorite homosexual says yes. One look at Marlon, and I bet Tennessee will get a hard-on.” At the time, Kazan was not aware that his playwright not only knew Brando, but that he had already been sexually intimate with him.