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) (67 page)

“If I ever get married, and I don’t plan to, I will demand from my woman that I go on leading my separate life.”

Driving through the desert with Vivien, Brando arrived at a wayside motel that seemed to evoke that dreary place she’d seen in
The Petrified Forest
with Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and her friend and lover, Leslie Howard, her beloved Ashley Wilkes in
Gone With the Wind
.

They registered as “Petticoat Blossom” and “Durango Canyon.” Inside the motel’s best room, Vivien began to remove her clothing to take a shower. “Do you know,” she said to him in the stifling heat of the desert bedroom, “I am part of the world’s most beautiful, the world’s most talented, the world’s most admired, the world’s most successful, and the world’s most adored couple? If the world only knew the truth. Why don’t you rape me like Stanley Kowalski raped Blanche DuBois?”

“An invitation I can’t resist,” he said, moving toward her.

After sex, he told her over a meal in a roadside diner that he hadn’t liked her at first. “So fucking formal.”

“Her Ladyship is fucking bored with formality,” she said.

He broke into laughter before affectionately leaning over and kissing her on the nose. “I can’t believe I’ve slept with Scarlett O’Hara. Rhett Butler’s woman. You won’t be the first woman that Clark Gable and I have shared.”

“Trust me, Clark Gable never got into my pantaloons.”

Details about Brando’s relationship with Vivien would have gone un-recorded had he not confided in both Charles K. Feldman, the producer of
Streetcar
, and its director, Elia Kazan. The story of Brando and Vivien was just too hot for these two men to keep to themselves. When Tennessee arrived with his then-new lover, Frank Merlo, on the set of
Streetcar
, both Kazan and Feldman shared the news about Brando’s sexual adventure with the two men, who were each anxious to hear (and eventually repeat) the latest gossip.

Meeting privately with Tennessee, Kazan told him, “I think that in casting Marlon with Vivien, Jack Warner has paired a gazelle with a wild boar. Even so, I told Vivien that we’re going to make a great film and that both she and Marlon are going to walk off with Oscars—his first, her second. I also told her that it was time she set Hollywood on its ass again. After all, it’s been a long time since she vowed never to go hungry again in
Gone With the Wind.”

During their time in Hollywood, both Tennessee and Frank visited the set of
Streetcar
every day. Tennessee told Frank that he was mesmerized by the chemistry on screen between Marlon and Vivien. “I always wanted that electricity between Jessica Tandy and Marlon, but didn’t get it.”

One day, after watching Vivien perform, Tennessee told Kazan. “She has brought everything to the role of Miss DuBois that I intended, and much more than I ever dared to dream.”

One day, during lunch with Vivien, she told Tennessee, “It’s all your fault. Your character of Blanche DuBois is tripping me into madness.”

“I can understand that,” he replied. “Blanche has already given me three heart attacks.”

As Tennessee and Kazan continued to battle the censors, filming continued on
Streetcar
during one of the hottest summers in recorded Los Angeles’ history.

Except for Brando, Jack Warner remained deeply dissatisfied with the cast. He still wished he had cast Olivia de Havilland in the role of Blanche, with her estranged sister, Joan Fontaine, playing Stella. When he couldn’t get De Havilland, he asked Jane Wyman, recently divorced from Ronald Reagan, if she’d attempt the role. The answer was no.

Then, at the urging of David O. Selznick, Warner briefly considered David’s wife, Jennifer Jones. The veto on Jones came from Irene Selznick herself, who was still bitter that David had dumped her for the younger and more beautiful star.

One week before shooting began, and even after Vivien had been signed, Kazan still held out for Jessica Tandy. He urged Warner to pay off Vivien, who by then had a signed contract, and hire Tandy to replace her.

“No way!” Warner shouted back at his director. “If I don’t want to fuck Tandy, I have to assume that other men in the audience will feel the same way. Not one man wants a piece of Tandy’s ass. She’s got the sex appeal of Lionel Barrymore. Case closed!”

Even at the last minute, Warner pushed James Cagney for the role of Blanche’s ambivalent boyfriend. But based on Karl Malden’s success in the role on Broadway, Kazan held out for him instead.

Jack Warner and Kazan clashed bitterly over Kim Hunter, the studio honcho claiming that Hunter had a “negative screen personality.” Warner preferred Anne Baxter, Ruth Roman, or Patricia Neal, who was at the time in the throes of an ill-fated affair with Gary Cooper. “Even Donna Reed would be better,” Warner claimed.

“If you cast one of those actresses,” Kazan threatened, “I’m walking off the picture. Kim Hunter will be brilliant playing a girl who likes to get fucked by Stanley—and fucked regularly. She’s the one. I should know. I’ve already auditioned her in that department.”

In only two weeks, Kazan managed to eradicate each of the stage directions Vivien had learned from Olivier during the staging of the play’s production in London. A new and different Blanche DuBois was recorded on film. Not only that, but Brando told Tennessee that he was finding nuances in the role of Stanley Kowalski that he had never realized on Broadway.

“I made Vivien connect role with soul,” Kazan later said. “She and Marlon are perfectly matched. Before my lens are two highly charged actors exploding off each other.”

Privately, Brando said, “That delirium and despair you’re capturing on the screen is Lady Olivier herself. She’s writing a textbook of the madness that lurks within herself. I fear, though, that she’s going over the deep edge with Blanche. She’ll never come back.”

Other cast members took note of Vivien’s tottering on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Karl Malden, though deeply devoted to the skill and talent of Jessica Tandy, came to accept Vivien in the role of Blanche. “After all,” he said, “she had star power. The film was riding on her. She was carrying all of us nobodies, including Marlon Brando himself. But she had a tenuous hold on reality.”

In contrast to his ongoing struggles with Vivien, Kazan had no trouble directing Brando. He told Tennessee and Feldman, “There was nothing you could do with Brando that touched what he could do with himself!” Feldman was surprised by the fact that Brando had initially rejected the movie role of Stanley (“It’d be like marrying the same woman twice.”) The producer was also surprised to learn that Kazan had originally refused the director’s job, even when it was personally pitched to him by Jack Warner. (“I don’t think I could get it up a second time for
Streetcar
.”)

***

When the candidates for the Oscars were announced in 1952, Brando was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Stanley in
A Streetcar Named Desire
. His major competition came from the “sentimental favorite,” Humphrey Bogart, for his starring role in
The African Queen
. Also nominated was Brando’s former lover, Monty Clift, for his role in
A Place in the Sun
. The other contenders included Arthur Kennedy for
Bright Victory
and Fredric March for
Death of a Salesman
.

The same year, Vivien was nominated for best actress, her major competition being Katharine Hepburn for
The African Queen
. Brando’s girlfriend, Shelley Winters, was nominated for
A Place in the Sun
, as were Eleanor Parker for
Detective Story
and Jane Wyman for
The Blue Veil
. Karl Malden and Kim Hunter were both nominated for supporting roles in their performances in
Streetcar
.

On Oscar night, three of the contenders associated with
Streetcar
—Vivien Leigh, Karl Malden, and Kim Hunter—walked away with Oscars. Brando lost to Bogie. Facing reporters, Kazan told the press, “Stick around, boys. Marlon’s day will come.”

In Hollywood, after seeing the final cut of
Streetcar
, Kazan had said, “After sitting through Vivien’s performance as Blanche, I have my doubts. I should have gone with my first instincts and given the role to Geraldine Page or Julie Harris, either of whom could have played it better.”

Later, however, after Vivien won the Academy Award for her interpretation of the role, Kazan claimed, “She deserved her Oscar. She would have crawled over broken glass if she thought it would help her performance.”

Ironically, in his memoirs, Tennessee made no mention of Vivien as Blanche either on the London stage or in Hollywood’s film version.

Chapter Nineteen

The wildly promiscuous
lifestyle of Tennessee Williams invariably led to his affair with Lincoln Kirstein, the scion of a rich Jewish Boston-based family. Kirstein had become a cultural icon, a sort of Renaissance man—writer, impresario, art connoisseur. As the English critic Clement Crisp wrote: “Kirstein was one of those rare talents who touch the entire artistic life of their time—ballet, film, literature, theater, painting, sculpture, photography—all occupied his attention.”

He was instrumental in persuading George Balanchine and his ballet troupe to come to America. Together, the two men founded The Ballet Society, which was renamed as The New York City Ballet in 1948. Kirstein functioned as the company’s general director from 1946 to 1989.

In 1941, Kirstein married Fidelma Cadmus, sister of the artist, Paul Cadmus. Discreetly, and on the side, Kirstein often checked into Manhattan’s 63
^rd
Street YMCA, where he seduced undergraduates from Harvard and Yale, sailors, marines, soldiers, and street boys, and indulged in casual sexual encounters in the showers. It was in the showers that he picked up Tennessee and became his sometimes lover.

Often, Kirstein took his boyfriends, including Tennessee, to live with Fidelma and himself in their house on Manhattan’s East 19
^th
Street.

Tennessee reported that Fidelma “was enormously gracious to this motley parade of young men who came and went from their guest bedroom. When I was there, Lincoln had in residence three studly young men in various colors.”