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) (55 page)

Frank did not meet with approval, of course, from all of Tennessee’s friends. Maria St. Just, a Russo-English actress
[She’s described more fully at the end of this chapter]
was a close friend. She arrived in Rome in the wake of a series of “ugly, violent” fights the two men had had shortly after Frank’s return to Rome from Sicily.

She found Frank “very detached, very run down. He is possessive and destructive of every relationship Tennessee has, which is bad for an artist like Tennessee, who needs some impetus—happiness or unhappiness—not just the nervous reactions of a ‘Horse.’”

Throughout the 1950s, Frank and Tennessee would have a pattern of fighting and making up.

In a letter to Gore Vidal in 1951, Tennessee wrote that “Frank displays all the warmth and charm of a porcupine.” At that point, Frank was telling Tennessee that they needed a vacation from each other.

He soon departed once again for his native Sicily, while Tennessee left for London, where a lot of handsome young British actors, dreaming of a role in one of his plays, sought out his company, especially during August of 1951.

But by September of that year, Frank joined Tennessee for a trip to Copenhagen, although both of them ended up wondering what they were doing there.

When they were together, Tennessee could show a surprising loyalty to Frank. Likewise, Frank could show extreme devotion to Tennessee when it came to protecting him from his enemies and detractors.

Tennessee was sensitive to slights to Frank when they traveled or were invited to parties.

Irene Mayer Selznick was still in Tennessee’s life, in the wake of her having produced
A Streetcar Named Desire
. But when she invited him to one of her elegant dinners at the Hotel Pierre Apartments in Manhattan, she wrote a note. “Oh, by the way, ask Frank to drop in after dinner, if he is so inclined.”

“Tell her to go fuck herself,” Frank told Tennessee.

Their sleeping arrangements at hotels often caused problems, especially when they checked in to find two twin beds after having requested a king-sized one. Most hotel managers quickly agreed to the large bed in view of Tennessee’s increasing fame. However, at the Royal Orleans in New Orleans, the manager refused to let them share a room with only one bed.

In the lobby, Tennessee threw a hissy fit.

“We don’t allow two men to share the same bed,” the manager asserted. “Why would two men want to sleep in bed together?”

“So they can fuck!” Tennessee said. Then he stormed out of the lobby with Frank to check into a more accommodating hotel.

Back in Key West, in February of 1952, Tennessee wrote Oliver Evans, one of his closest friends. A poet and a teacher, Evans, under a different name, would be depicted in Tennessee’s fiction as “a tireless gay cruiser.”

Tennessee wrote that he was bored with Key West, “but Frank is out all night with the ‘After the Lost Generation’ crowd of guys and dolls who live on liquor and bennies, dancing on the fringe of lunacy. Frank dances with the dolls, possibly lays the guys.”

Frank was also aware of Tennessee’s promiscuity. As Tennessee confessed in a journal, he slipped off late one afternoon to a hotel with “these three queens.” When he did return home, “a platter of meatloaf narrowly missed my head, followed by a bowl of succotash. Frank stormed out of the house and drove away. I picked up parts of the meatloaf off the Mexican tiles in the patio and ate it with much gusto. It was delicious.”

The actress, Barbara Baxley, who starred in Tennessee’s play,
Camino Real
, flew into Key West late in 1978 to film
The Last Resort
, based on Darwin Porter’s novel,
Butterflies in Heat
. She told Porter, “From what I observed in 1953, Frank is absolutely essential to Tennessee. He would be lost without Frank. He anticipates his wish before Tennessee even expresses a desire. But he is quick to point out that he is no yes man. If Tennessee drifts into fantasy, Frank brings him back to reality. Both are lucky. Tennessee needs a practical person as a love object, and Frank gets to live with a great poet of the theater.”

But the summer of 1953 found Frank and Tennessee separated again. Frank was in Rome, shacked up with a male prostitute named “Alvaro.”

Tennessee was in Barcelona, patronizing hustlers along the beach, although he claimed he was despairing of them. “I’m tired of begging for crumbs,” he wrote to a friend.

From the Hotel Colón in Barcelona, Tennessee wrote to Carson McCullers, telling her about Frank and himself, claiming, “relations with The Little Horse are strained.”

By Christmas of 1953, Frank and Tennessee had reconciled and were entertaining their friends, such as architect Danny Stirrup, back in Key West for the holidays. In a letter to Oliver Evans, Tennessee wrote, “Frank is on his rare best behavior.”

By that January of 1954, both Tennessee and Frank became aware that they were being spied upon, and not just by J. Edgar Hoover of the F.B.I., who by now already had an extensive file on Tennessee.

Naval Intelligence in Key West had begun to interrogate some twenty sailors who attended gay parties at Tennessee’s home in Key West.

Confessions had been coerced out of at least twelve of them, who admitted to having had sex with either Frank or Tennessee. That had led to dishonorable discharges. Both Frank and Tennessee feared trouble from the government, but no harm came to them. Nor were they brought in for questioning.

By May of 1954, Tennessee did become alarmed at a number of gay murders in Key West. He wrote to friends in New York, “Some queens are getting their throats slit by demented sailors. A lot of them have gone underground here in Key West. Others have fled up the overseas highway to Miami.”

[In January of 1979, Tennessee’s home in Key West was burglarized on the 8 th and again on the 14
^th
, and Frank Fontis, Tennessee’s gay gardener, was murdered
.

Police searched Fontis’ house for clues, finding more than a dozen original manuscripts of Tennessee’s plays, which certainly would have value to a collector
.

“Fontis was a very eccentric but harmless man, I thought, but it now appears he really wasn’t my friend, and it took his murder to reveal that to me,” Tennessee said
.

Over the years, Fontis had stolen much memorabilia, including personal letters (some rather embarrassing), copies of the playwrights journals, and photographs, some taken of Frank in the mid-1950s that were “compromising,” the police reported
.

Near the end of his life, many rowdy young men knew Tennessee’s address and would often drive by, tossing empty beer cans into his yard and yelling “FAGGOT.” As Tennessee said, “These were not punks, but New York critics.” On a few occasions, he was mugged in Key West after leaving the bars along Duval Street.]

By 1955, Frank’s anxiety level seemed to reach a fever pitch. “Tennessee was also riddled with anxiety,” he said. “Now my own nervous system was matching his.” In addition to drinking heavily, Tennessee was smoking four packages of cigarettes daily. He also had developed an addiction to amphetamines.

Frank’s non-sexual bonding with Danny Stirrup, known as “The Queen of the Conchs,” grew stronger. Much time was spent at Stirrup’s home where orgies were staged with sailors from the Key West Naval Base. When Tennessee was gone, the sailors were entertained at Tennessee’s house.

When Tennessee was in residence in Key West, Stirrup was invited almost every night for dinner cooked by Frank. As such, Stirrup had a front-row seat to the deterioration of the relationship between Frank and Tennessee.

Stirrup remembered one quiet evening when Tennessee read a one-act play to both of them. He’d just written it. Usually, Frank was his biggest supporter and fan. But on this night, the scene turned ugly.

“Do you like it, Frankie?” Tennessee asked after his reading.

“I not only don’t like it, I detest it,” Frank angrily snapped.

“But why?” Tennessee asked. “Tell me what’s wrong with it?”

“How in fuck do I know?” Frank asked, jumping up. “I’m not a playwright.” Then he stormed out of the house and drove off into the night. Tennessee expected he’d return at dawn. But he’d driven to Miami Beach, where he picked up a beach hustler and spent a week with him at the Fontainebleau, hitting the bars at night. When he returned to Key West, he freely admitted those indiscretions to Tennessee.

“Not only the night of the play reading, but many nights during the months and even years to come, I witnessed such scenes,” Stirrup said. “One night, I was invited to dinner, and Frankie had roasted a lamb. Before he could carve it, he and Tenn got into a fight, and Frank tossed the leg of lamb into Tenn’s face. I had to drive him to the hospital. Frankie wouldn’t go with us. He headed to Captain Tony’s Saloon off Duval Street instead.”

Back in Rome in the mid-1950s, Tennessee wrote to friends that “Rome has never looked lovelier. We even have a chauffeur to drive us around. He’s very handsome and well built. When he’s not driving us, he’s sleeping with Frank. The driver claims he bedded both Grace Kelly and Ava Gardner when they stopped off in Rome after the making of
Mogambo
with Clark Gable. Perhaps it’s true, perhaps not. At least Clark
knew
both of these fine ladies. That’s a Biblical reference.
Know
as in David
knew
Bathsheba.”

While Frank was riding around with the hunky chauffeur, Tennessee sought other pastimes. Ever since he’d seen the versatile Italian actor, Vittorio Gassman, in the 1948 film,
Riso amaro (Bitter Rice)
, he’d been mesmerized by the magnetic quality of this dashing and very cosmopolitan figure.

Tennessee was friends with the actress Shelley Winters, and was almost jealous of her during the two turbulent years (1952-1954) she was married to Gassman.

Tennessee had been mesmerized when he flew to Italy to watch Gassman star as Stanley Kowalski in
Um tram che si chiama desiderio (A Streetcar Named Desire)
. “You’re so different from Brando, yet so compelling,” Tennessee had told him.

Although hailed as one of the greatest of all Italian actors, he had told Tennessee, “I’m not all that Italian. I was born in Genoa, but my father was German, Heinrich Gassmann. I dropped that extra N in the spelling of my name. My mother was a Pisan Jew.”

[Whereas Tennessee could appreciate Gassman’s performance as Stanley, he was horrified when he learned that Gassman’s ex-wife, Shelley Winters, had been cast as Blanche DuBois in an unrelated English-language, 1955 production of
A Streetcar Named Desire
. The play was presented “in the round” as an experimental production at the Circle Theatre in New York. Tennessee said that Richard Boone, the grizzly, craggy actor whose ambitions included a desire to direct, had cast Winters as Blanche “in a fit of madness.”

“Shelley was a tough broad from Brooklyn,” Tennessee said. “To work on her voice, she told me she listened to southern accents on records as a means of getting rid of her New Yorkese. On stage, she never convinced me that she possessed the fragility of Blanche, but she tried very hard. Dennis Weaver was cast as Stanley. Shelley admitted to me that he didn’t have the special sexual electricity that Brando generated. She was an expert on Brando’s sexual electricity, having previously been ‘electrocuted’ by it.”]

When Gassman learned that Tennessee was in Rome, he called his hotel and invited him for dinner.

“This was the first time I’d ever been alone with him,” Tennessee said. “I found he had a sexual electricity all his own. He seemed very comfortable with me. Knowing I was homosexual, he treated me like he was dating a woman. Very gracious. Very well mannered. In a way, he seemed to be working overtime to overwhelm me with his macho charm, which he possessed in bushels.”