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) (79 page)

Walter Kerr of
The New York Herald Tribune
found Tallulah woefully miscast. “As a
persona
and a performer, Bankhead is notoriously indestructible. Blanche DuBois is a girl who deceives herself. There is no self-deceit anywhere in Miss Bankhead.”

Dalrymple gave her own private assessment to Tennessee. “I have seen many actresses play your Blanche DuBois. They were sparrows. Tallulah is an eagle, but by play’s end she was pinioned to the floor like a great bird brought down by her mocking fans.”

On March 4, 1956, Tennessee joined the controversy by writing a letter (which they published) to
The New York Times
. In his letter, he revealed that in Coconut Grove, he and the director, Herbert Machiz, had called on Tallulah at her rented home.

“She asked me meekly if she had played Blanche better than anyone else had played her. I told her, ‘No, your performance was the worst I have seen. The remarkable thing is that she looked at me and nodded in sad acquiescence.”

He and the director gave her notes to improve her performance, and Tennessee said she worked valiantly to get rid of certain mannerisms.

He also commented on her notorious opening night performance as Blanche at City Center. “To me, she brought to mind the return of some great matador to the bullring in Madrid, for the first time after having been almost fatally gored, and facing the most dangerous bull with his finest valor. I am not ashamed to say that I shed tears almost all the way through and that when the play was finished, I rushed up to her backstage and fell to my knees at her feet.”

Even though his letter to
The New York Times
was graciously, some say impeccably, phrased, Tallulah viewed it as condescending and went for years without speaking to him.

On a hot summer night in 1963, a call came in from Mexico. Tallulah’s gay secretary, Ted Hook,
[who later operated famously as the manager of Manhattan’s most celebrity-conscious bar, Backstage, in the theater district]
came to her bedroom, where she was watching TV. “It’s Tennessee Williams. He’s calling from Mexico and claims that it’s urgent that he speak to you.”

“What in hell does he want?” she asked. “Another revival of
Streetcar?
OK, I’ll speak to him against my better judgment.”

Throughout the short remainder of her life, she regretted having taken that call.

—Farley Granger

Tennessee’s play,
The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore
, may be unique in the annals of Broadway. It opened and closed and reopened and closed, all within a year. It opened in January of 1963 with a major star (British actress Hermione Baddeley), and ran for 69 performances at the Morosco Theater in Manhattan, then reopened in January of 1964 with Tallulah Bankhead and ran for five performances, closing after hostile reviews. In 1968, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton would remount it as a film entitled
Boom!
It, too, was a dismal failure, some critics suggesting it should have been retitled as
Doom!

The actual origins of
Milk Train
dated back to a summer a decade before in Italy. Frank Merlo and Tennessee had gone to their favorite country (Italy) for a months-long stay.

Tennessee and his lover, Frank, were introduced to the fabled Italian film director, Luchino Visconti, at a party in Rome. Visconti and Franco Zeffirelli approached the two Americans. Whereas Frank spoke Italian, and Zeffirelli spoke English, Visconti spoke virtually no English at all.

Therefore, in Italian, which had to be translated for Tennessee, Visconti said, “It is an honor for a famous homosexual Italian director to meet a famous homosexual American playwright. I’m Luchino Visconti, and this handsome darling man beside me is my beloved Franco Zeffirelli, who is destined to become one of the greatest of all Italian directors, like myself.”

“I like a man of confidence,” Tennessee said, enigmatically, with Frank translating.

Soon, all four of them agreed that the party was a bore, and Visconti and Zeffirelli took them on a tour of Rome’s underground gay spots.

Before the night was over, Tennessee became mesmerized by the macho charm of Visconti, who had been born into an ancient aristocratic family in Milan, although he’d became a communist during World War II.

All four of these men became friends. The next day over lunch, Visconti revealed a tantalizing secret to Tennessee and Frank. With Zeffirelli translating, he claimed that he wanted a movie script written for a film entitled
Senso
. He falsely claimed that he had already secured the participation of the male and female leads—Marlon Brando and Ingrid Bergman. Bergman was living at the time in Rome after having been more or less banished from her film career in Hollywood based on her abandonment of her husband, Dr. Petter Lindstrom, and her subsequent marriage to the Italian film director, Roberto Rossellini.

“The concept must be fabulous, because Marlon even turns down some of my plays,” Tennessee said.

On the basis of that all-star cast, Tennessee agreed to remain in Italy to work on an English-language filmscript. For lodgings and as a catalyst to his creativity, he rented a villa in the fishing village of Positano, along the Amalfi Drive, south of Naples.

But when he confronted the rough scenario and the historical background themes for
Senso
, Tennessee was less than inspired. It was not his kind of thing. Set in Italy around 1866, when the Italian/Austrian war of unification was coming to an end, it tells the story of an Austrian officer and his aristocratic Italian mistress within a lushly romantic setting.

Tennessee didn’t feel any particular connection to the story. In his desperation, he called Paul Bowles in Tangier to work with him on creating dialogue for the script.

But instead of writing dialogue for
Senso
, which he produced very slowly, Tennessee spent more time on his short story, “Man Bring This Up Road,” than he did on the script for
Senso
. He also spent a lot of time on the local beaches, cruising the handsome youths of Positano within the context of a depressed, impoverished, post-war economy. Many of them were sexually available, sometimes for only a meal.

After a few weeks, Visconti and Zeffirelli showed up for a weekend of script negotiations and sunbathing. “I gave them access to my terrace while I attempted to write dialogue, but my attentions were diverted to their nude bodies out there in the sun,” Tennessee confessed to Maria St. Just. “From the look of things, it was obvious why those two were attracted to each other’s manly charms.”

Over dinner that night, Visconti delivered a bombshell. “Bergman has turned us down,” he said. “Her Pope, her God, Rossellini, nixed it. I think he’s jealous of me. Also, I met with my backers in Rome. Brando has agreed to do it, but those idiots in Rome think that Samuel Goldwyn’s pretty boy, Farley Granger, is an even bigger star and would attract far more box office than Brando, who is not too popular in Italy at the moment.”

Tennessee later said, “I felt I’d lost my hearing. These money people were rejecting Marlon in favor of this Farley boy. He had been acclaimed playing the gay murderer in
Rope
(1948), but I didn’t think he was any good. He was also acclaimed for Hitchcock’s
Strangers on a Train
(1951), but Robert Walker as the gay psychopath walked away with the picture.”

“After the loss of Brando, I had even less enthusiasm for
Senso,”
Tennessee said. “Paul Bowles went back to Tangier after leaving a few pages of dialogue. Also, Visconti was offering me no remuneration for my work, so that took away what little incentive I had.”

Tennessee did drive to the Rome airport to meet Farley at the end of his flight from New York. Visconti and Zeffirelli were there, too.

Farley remembered the event in his memoirs,
Include Me Out
. He had both fond and awful memories of this sprawling epic of two doomed lovers played out against the backdrop of the
Risorgimento [Italy’s struggle for independence and unification, resulting in the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861]
. In his memoir, Farley recalled the plush settings of La Fenice Opera House in Venice and the Villa Palladio in Vicenza, in the verdant north of Italy.

Farley was upset that Visconti spoke no English, but he was physically charmed by him, recalling in his autobiography that he “was a striking presence, darkly handsome, with a leonine head, chiseled features, and piercing dark eyes.” He was introduced to the director’s lover, Zeffirelli, who would be the assistant director on the picture.

Farley regretted having no meaningful dialogue with Tennessee at the time. “I went to my hotel to catch up on my jet lag. When I woke up, everybody had disappeared. I wouldn’t see them again for a month.”

In his memoir, he omitted many of the details about what happened to him in Italy. As one example, he rented a car in Rome and drove to Tennessee’s villa in Positano. Frank Merlo was not in residence at the time, having left for a visit to his relatives in Sicily. Tennessee later told St. Just that he found Farley’s ass “very fuckable, and he was a sweet, a dear, enchanting boy. But he is no Marlon.”

Soon after, Tennessee bowed out of
Senso
. Visconti, plus five other writers, labored over the final script. However, when the film was released in America following its 1954 premiere in Italy, some of the dialogue by Tennessee and Paul Bowles was included in the English language version, which had been retitled as
The Wanton Countess
in anticipation of its American release.

Tennessee must have made some promise to Farley for a future role. Even though he did not find him suitable, he green-lighted his appearance as Tom (Tennessee’s alter ego) in a 1965 revival of
The Glass Menagerie
on Broadway. Jo Van Fleet was cast as a rather tough Amanda, along with Hal Holbrook as The Gentleman Caller.

During the shooting of
Senso
in Italy, both Vis conti and Zeffirelli became enamoured of Farley. The closely knit movie world of Rome buzzed with gossip that the two directors and the “beautiful
Americano
actor” were engrossed in a passionate
ménage à trois
.