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) (87 page)

In the immediate aftermath of the director’s diatribe, Bailey stormed out of the theater, vowing never to speak to Brook again, and the rest of the cast was filled with seething hostility.

As the show limped toward Broadway, Truman told his friend, Brinnin, “
House of Flowers
has become an extended one-woman vaudeville act for Pearl Bailey.”

But Arlen remained optimistic, telling Brinnin, “I just love Truman Capote. He’s one of the most enchanting souls I’ve ever encountered.”

The songs kept the show going, at least for a while. The audience heard such tunes as Sleepin’ Bee,” “Two Ladies in the Shade of de Banana Tree,” “One Man Ain’t Quite Enough,” and “Don’t Like Goodbyes.”

On December 30, 1954,
House of Flowers
opened to lukewarm reviews on Broadway. Because of all the big names associated with and the music, it ran for 165 performances. Nevertheless, it was still viewed as a failure. Messel’s “wild and wonderful” sets came in for some of the highest praise. Critics also praised Arlen’s music, but attacked Truman’s script.

“It’s one of those shows where everything seems to have gone wrong,” wrote Walter Kerr in the
New York Herald Tribune
.

Truman was also attacked for being “a clumsy lyricist and an even worse librettist.” Other critics found the show “as funny as an ingrown toenail.” Yet another wrote, “There was too much gilding of the lily—too much manner for the matter.”

Many found racist overtones in the show, which some people claimed depicted black people as stupid.

After reading the reviews, a drunken Truman called Saint at around three o’clock in the morning. “The fault is Pearl Bailey. We should replace her with somebody…help me name someone.”

“Eartha Kitt, perhaps,” Saint said. “She looks like she knows her way around a whorehouse.”

“I think we should give it to a white Broadway musical star—take Mary Martin, for example. She could appear in blackface.”

Despite Truman’s drunken (and terrible) idea, Pearl Bailey retained her starring role until the end of the run.

Before departing for Europe, Truman assembled the cast and sang to them.

“
My house is made of flowers,
and fireflies climbed into my dome.”

House of Flowers
, which would later be revived, is remembered today as one of Broadway’s legendary failures, where great talents didn’t manage to create the masterpiece that it could have been.

A 2003 review by critic John Kenrick stated, “It’s high time that musical theater buffs stopped pretending that
House of Flowers
is a theatrical gem. After several disastrous productions, it is pretty clear that this musical stinks—and it always has.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

The most prolific sexual activity
experienced by Howard Austen and Gore Vidal occurred when they moved to Rome in the early 1960s. He was conducting research for his novel
Julian
, published in 1964, the first of what later developed into a series of historical novels
.

The choice spot in those days for picking up hustlers was the Pincio, oneof the so-called “Seven Hills of Rome.” Many of these handsome young hustlers posed their without their shirts. If they were questioned by the police, they claimed that they were auditioning for artists who daily selected a string of models to pose for the colonies of expatriate artists who had settled in the city, following in the traditions of (but without the talent of) Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo
.

All that Gore and Austen needed to do was pull up in their Jaguar convertible [it had previously been owned by Robert Wagner], and the young men made themselves readily available, figuring that both Gore and Austen were rich, American, and willing to pay for their favors. Often, during Austen and Gore’s seduction, they requested that the man pose, with an erection, for frontally nude photographs. Nearly all of them agreed to do that for an extra twenty dollars
.

One summer evening, when the city was overflowing with tourists, many of them gay, Austen estimated that there were more than two hundred men for sale on the hill. “Making a choice was extremely difficult.”

***

It was Labor Day, 1950, at the Everard Baths in Manhattan, and every cubicle was rented. Men of all descriptions and ages roamed the dimly lit corridors, with either a towel wrapped around their waist or else wearing a flimsy little cotton robe.

Howard Auster, a twenty-one year old Jewish man from the Bronx, spied a handsome Gore Vidal standing by himself near a blacked-out window. Gore was older, twenty-five. Auster approached him.

“I definitely came on to him, and he responded,” Auster recalled years later. “He reached inside my robe and fondled my genitals before inviting me back to this seedy little cubicle.”

“The sex wasn’t all that good—in fact, it might be called a disaster—but we found we really dug each other, “Auster said. “That night marked the beginning of a relationship that would stretch across the rest of the century.”

“Gore likes to fuck, and he doesn’t really like to be fucked, or to give blow-jobs,” Auster said. “On my first night with him, I would have ended up with blue balls if I hadn’t masturbated.”

Bronx-born Howard Auster worked at a Walgreen’s Drugstore to pay his way through New York University, hoping for a career in advertising. After he graduated, in spite of top grades, no company would hire him.

Gore, his newly minted friend, told him that anti-Semitism was prevalent in advertising firms in those days. Gore suggested that he change his name, removing the “R” at its end and substituting an “N.” After he did that, “Howard Austen” was hired by an ad agency as an account assistant within the week.

Most weekends after that, from Manhattan, Austen would take the northbound train to the Rhinecliff Station, where Gore would be waiting in his car to pick him up and transport him to Edgewater, his elegant home on the Hudson.

On the Saturday night after his arrival on Friday, after dialogues with Gore, Austen would migrate down to Adolphs, a local tavern that drew patronage from both faculty and students at nearby Bard College. Nearly every weekend, Austen escorted back to Edgewater one or two of the students, or perhaps a professor if he were young and handsome enough.

Gore often invited VIPs to Edgewater, perhaps a member of the literati such as Saul Bellows or a foreign dignitary. Gore once introduced Austen to British MP Sir Henry (Chips) Channon. He told Gore, “I prefer men to women and royalty to either.” Actually, Gore suspected that the MP was in love with the British playwright, Terrence Rattigan.

At first, Gore could not afford to pay Austen much money as his part-time secretary. He started him out on a salary of $20 a week, later raising it to $40. Gore was writing quickie pulp fiction, including a 1953 release of
Thieves Fall Out
under the
nom de plume
of Cameron Kay. He earned his usual fee of $3,000 per novel that eventually sold, retail, for twenty-five cents a copy.

In the early days of their friendship, Gore stayed with Austen when he visited Manhattan during sojourns away from his home at Edgewater. Austen’s walk-up was near 57
^th
Street. Later, Austen resigned his advertising job and went to live permanently with Gore. He also traveled with him, mainly to California and later to Italy. He began to manage Gore’s affairs.

Two weeks into their relationship, Austen revealed his secret desire to be a pop singer. He began by singing “Night and Day” to Gore, and then proceeded to perform a medley of Cole Porter numbers.

He often sang for Gore’s guests. One afternoon, Eleanor Roosevelt dropped in to discuss the possibility of Gore running for Congress one day on the Democratic ticket. “She was accompanied by what Gore described as ‘two of Eleanor’s Amazon Warriors’—in this case, two burly dykes who lived near her at Hyde Park,” Austen said.

“After the first year of visiting almost every weekend, I eventually found my role in Gore’s life,” Austen confided to actress Claire Bloom. “I became not only his live-in companion, but his pimp, rounding up young working class boys, his favorite. I was also his secretary, his business manager, his playmate, his Greek chorus, and most of all, his Jewish mother putting him to bed when he’d had too much to drink and making sure he ate his vegetables.”

“The next day, I got him up, made breakfast for him, and sat him down in front of his typewriter, into which I’d inserted a blank sheet of paper.”

As more royalties came in, Gore moved Austen out of his small, third-floor walkup in Manhattan and into a larger apartment at the corner of 55
^th
Street and First Avenue, the rent for which was $175 a month.

To make extra money at the time, Gore continued to write pulp novels such as
Death in the Fifth Position
under the pseudonym of Edgar Box. “He wrote that one in a week,” Austen said, “for which he was paid his standard fee of $3,000.”

Over the years, when Gore was asked the secret of their long-lasting marriage, he always replied, “No sex.” However, close friends and acquaintances have challenged Gore’s claim.

In Key West, Austen bonded with Frank Merlo, Tennessee’s longtime lover. Both men discussed the perils of being the lover of a celebrated writer. Austen admitted to Merlo that he and Gore had had sex at the beginning of their relationship, but that they were always free to conduct affairs with other men. “We had many a three-way in the early days. I was always picking up a guy that I thought Gore would want to fuck around with.”

He looked at Frank. “Do you pimp for Tennessee?”

“Not at all,” Frank said. “He’s his own talent scout. As America’s hot playwright, he’s got wannabee actors lined up at the door.”

Letters that have surfaced from Austen to Gore during the early years of their relationship suggest that they were most definitely lovers.

Once, while Austen was still employed by the ad agency in Manhattan, Gore had to fly to California.

“Please hurry back,” Austen wrote him. “My precious seed is going to waste in my dirty underwear before I send it to the laundry. I need relief. I need ‘the man.’ Love, Tinker”

[Tinker or Tinkerbell was Gore’s affectionate nickname for Austen.]

In Los Angeles, Gore heard from Austen, with chastised him for not writing. “You must be getting a wonderful suntan out there. I can’t wait for your return so I can check out every golden inch of your beautiful body. You are so handsome. I will check to see if you have a tan line or if you are bronze all over. I will pay special attention to your groin to determine if you wore that revealing bathing suit I bought you as a going away present, or
[if you]
went bareass.”

At dinner parties, Austen did not have Gore’s intellectual prowess, but he chose instead to amuse guests with indiscreet gossip.

He revealed incidents associated with their encounters with famous hosts. One night, he told actor Rod Steiger, “Gore and I were chatting with Johnny Carson before he went on
The Tonight Show
where Gore was to appear as a guest. We were drinking Scotch. Gore was called outside.”