Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (106 page)

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Authors: John Lahr

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BOOK: Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
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“I like everything”: LOA1, p. 707.
207
“profound unconscious response”: Ibid., p. 702.
207
Serafina: (
from inside the house
): “Aaaaaahhhhhhhh!”: Ibid., p. 729.
207
“the scene should be played”: Ibid., p. 733.
207
“
Che
bel-la,
che
bel-
la
!”: Ibid., p. 734.
208
“like a great bird”: Ibid.
208
“I don’t know how he got in”: Ibid., p. 736.
208
“abandoning all pretence”: Ibid.
208
“How beautiful”: Ibid., p. 737.
208
“I was very surprised”: Elia Kazan to Williams, undated, WUCA.
208
“The urn is broken”: Williams, “Stornello,” HRC.
208
“quietly and gravely as two children”: Ibid.
208
“It would be a comic Mass”: Elia Kazan to Williams, undated, 1950, WUCA.
209
“might be read as a massive autobiography”:
KAL
, p. 494.
209
“little cave of consciousness”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Aug. 7, 1939,
L1
, p. 193.
209
“forever his”: Gore Vidal, “Tennessee Williams: Someone to Laugh at the Squares With,” in Gore Vidal,
Armageddon? Essays 1983–1987
(London: Andre Deutsch, 1987), p. 59.
209
“A man, when he burns”: Williams, “Stornello,” HRC.
209
“Holding the shirt above her head”: LOA1, p. 738.
209
“Vengo, vengo, amore!”: “I’m coming, I’m coming, my love!”
210
“something that is made to occupy”: Vidal, “Tennessee Williams,” p. 59.
210
“my love-play to the world”:
M
, p. 162.
210
“terribly afraid of critical reactions”: Williams to Cheryl Crawford, July 14, 1950,
L2
, p. 337.
210
“It comes at a point in my life”: Williams to James Laughlin, Oct. 15, 1950, ibid., p. 353.
211
“Critical reactions to the novel”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Nov. 26, 1950, HRC.
211
“at a crucial point”: Williams to Cheryl Crawford, Mar. 3, 1951,
L2
, p. 374.
211
“a gigantic task”: Audrey Wood to Williams, undated, HRC.
211
“He has your aliveness”: Williams to Elia Kazan, undated, WUCA.
211
“ ‘Mood’ is ‘doom’ spelt backwards”: Williams to James Laughlin, Nov. 7, 1950,
L2
, p. 357.
211
“Probably means that I shall have to put”: Ibid.
211
“Would Maureen Stapleton be all right?”: Williams to Cheryl Crawford, Aug. 11, 1950, ibid., p. 342.
211
“Maureen must have been a victim”: Quoted in Maureen Stapleton and Jane Scovell,
A Hell of a Life
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 82.
212
“a World Series of readings”: Ibid., p. 83. “It was I who found Maureen Stapleton for the part,” Williams claimed in his
Memoirs
(p. 160).
212
“Finally, I assisted her”:
M
, p. 162.
212
“They seemed to want more assurance”: Arthur Gelb, “Frank Talk from an Actress,”
New York
Times
, Feb. 18, 1951.
212
“I don’t care if she turns into a deaf mute”: As quoted in Mike Steen,
A Look at Tennessee Williams
(New York: Hawthorn Books, 1969), p. 284.
212
“The girl playing the lead”: Williams to Edwina Williams and Walter Dakin, Dec. 16, 1950,
L2
, p. 362.
212
“the desire of an artist”:
NSE
, p. 63.
212
“the Caesarean delivery”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Nov. 18, 1950, WUCA.
212
“It was the most miraculous opening”: Ibid.
213
“For some time I have suspected”: Ibid.
214
“Four days now”:
N
, Jan. 30, 1951, p. 519.
CHAPTER 4: FUGITIVE MIND
215
“Once Kazan and I”: Williams to Bill Barnes, Dec. 23, 1973, LLC.
215
“Now that the waiting is over”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, Feb. 5, 1951,
L2
, p. 369.
215
“intermittently satisfactory”: Richard Watts Jr., “Mr. Williams among the Sicilians,”
New York Post
, Feb. 5, 1951.
215
“Play Isn’t Worthy of the Fine Acting”: John McClain, “Play Isn’t Worthy of the Fine Acting,”
New York Journal-American
, Feb. 5, 1951.
215
“We believe that the world today”: Robert Coleman, “ ‘Rose Tattoo’ Is Thorny, Much Too Earthy,”
New York
Daily Mirror
, Feb. 5, 1951.
215
“His folk comedy about a Sicilian family”: Brooks Atkinson, “The Rose Tattoo,”
New York
Time
s, Feb. 5, 1951.
215
“Behind the fury and uproar”: Brooks Atkinson, “Tattooing,”
New York Times
, June 3, 1951.
216
“If I keep working on it”: Arthur Gelb, “Frank Talk from an Actress,”
New York
Times
, Feb. 18, 1951.
217
“Paw”: Maureen Stapleton and Jane Scovell,
A Hell of a Life
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 86. In an opening-night note, Williams wrote to Stapleton, “Dearest Maureen, I do not say fuck the drama critics because fucking is too good for them. Love, Paw.” (Ibid., p. 87.)
217
“improvements”: Tennessee Williams to Maureen Stapleton, Feb. 19, 1951, HRC.
217
“You are good at public relations”: Ibid.
217
“happiest experience in the theatre”: Williams to Cheryl Crawford, Mar. 3, 1951,
L2
, pp. 373–74.
217
“the first time I have ever felt at home”: Ibid.
217
“I am a little vexed”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Mar. 14, 1951,
L2
, p. 375. The play closed on October 27, 1951, after 306 performances; two days later, the tour began with Stapleton and Wallach in the leads.
218
“This play
was
a radical departure”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, Feb. 5, 1951,
L2
, p. 369.
218
“Modern creative theatre”: Williams to Theatre Musicians Union, Aug. 3, 1951, ibid., p. 393.
218
“only the barest glimpse”:
NSE
, p. 206.
218
“Consequently many people missed”: Ibid.
218
“If it had been a smash hit”: Williams to Irene Selznick, Feb. 27, 1951,
L2
, p. 370.
219
“The big Chinese Red offensive”:
CS
, “Two on a Party,” p. 287.
219
“lit by lightning”: LOA1, p. 465.
219
“Dakin, my brother’s, number”: Williams to Maureen Stapleton, Feb. 19, 1951, HRC.
219
“game”:
KAL
, p. 454.
219
“It is part of Nixon’s job”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Aug. 23, 1952, WUCA.
220
“the bright idea of property”: J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur,
Letters from an American Farmer
(Carlisle, Mass.: Applewood Books, 2007), p. 27.
220
increase in consumption: David Halberstam,
The Fifties
(New York: Villard, 1993), p. 186.
220
“Radio was abandoned”: Fred Allen,
Treadmill to Oblivion
(Rockville, Md.: Wildside Press, 2009), p. 239.
221
“It was a bad time”: Nora Sayre,
Previous Convictions: A Journey through the 1950s
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995), p. 112.
221
“Do you realize”: Williams to Margo Jones, Dec. 1950,
L2
, p. 363.
221
“A lizardic dormancy”: Arthur Miller, “Many Writers, Few Plays,”
New York Times
, Aug. 10, 1952.
221
“a never-ending contest”:
CS
, “Two on a Party,” p. 292.
221
“calling the pack to follow”:
CP
, “Cried the Fox,” p. 7.
221
“Nothing can kill the beauty”: Williams to Oliver Evans, Mar. 31, 1951,
L2
, p. 378.
221
“One of the very few advantages”: Ibid.
222
“a fermenting new world”: Gore Vidal,
The Golden Age
(New York: Doubleday, 2000), p. 317.
222
“The town has changed much”: Williams to Cheryl Crawford, Nov. 1950,
L2
, p. 359.
222
Strange things were happening: David Aaronovitch,
Voodoo Histories
(New York: Riverhead, 2010), p. 111.
222
“to investigate links”: Sayre,
Previous Convictions
, p. 274.
222
“If you want to be against McCarthy”: Halberstam,
Fifties
, p. 54.
222
“The anti-fag battalions”: Gore Vidal,
The Essential Gore Vidal
, ed. Fred Kaplan (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 964.
222
“limp-wristers”: Michael S. Sherry,
Gay Artists in Modern American Culture: An Imagined Conspiracy
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), p. 29.
222
“time for TV”: Ibid., p. 30.
222
“feminized”: Ibid.
223
“was prudish enough”: Halberstam,
Fifties
, p. 273.
223
Homophobia extended: Michael Paller,
Gentleman Callers: Tennessee Williams, Homosexuality, and Mid-Twentieth-Century Drama
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 62.
223
“Fortunately property values”: Williams to Cheryl Crawford, Nov. 1950,
L2
, p. 359.
223
“You can’t run a Puritan”: Williams to Josephine Healy, Feb. 27, 1951, Columbia.
223
“the unmentionable article”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, June 12, 1951,
L2
, p. 384.
224
“I must tell you that I have lived”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, Apr. 3, 1953, ibid., pp. 469–70.
225
“Insensitivity”: Mervyn Rothstein, “Remembering Tennessee Williams as a Gentle Genius of Empathy,”
New York Times
, May 30, 1990.
225
“Oh Laura, Laura”: LOA1, p. 465.
226
“the foul-minded and utterly stupid tyranny”: Williams to Jack Warner, Jerry Wald, and Charles K. Feldman, May 6, 1950,
L2
, p. 317.
226
“to trace the visionary company of love”: LOA1, p. 467.
226
“correct standards of life”: R. Barton Palmer and William Robert Bray,
Hollywood’s Tennessee: The Williams Films in Postwar America
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009), p. 64.
226
“sordid and morbid”:
KAL
, p. 433.
226
“this story and this script”: Palmer and Bray,
Hollywood’s Tennessee
, p. 87.
226
“The device by which he proves himself”: Ibid., p. 83.
226
“The results were highly unsatisfactory”: Ibid.
227
“I only want to do”: Ibid.
227
“If Mr. Kazan’s solution was one”: Ibid., p. 86.
227
“In effect, Breen was asking Kazan”: Ibid.
227
“The rape of Blanche by Stanley”: Williams to Joseph Ignatius Breen, Oct. 29, 1950,
L2
, pp. 355–56.
228
“The thing that makes this piece”: Palmer and Bray,
Hollywood’s Tennessee
, p. 87.
229
“Stanley would be ‘punished’ ”: Ibid., p. 84.
229
“Now, honey. Now, love”: LOA1, p. 564.
229
“This game is seven-card stud”: Ibid.
229
“Don’t you touch me”: Tennessee Williams,
A Streetcar Named Desire
(screenplay), HRC.
229
“the primacy of moral order”: Palmer and Bray,
Hollywood’s Tennessee
, p. 91.
230
“Joe, a very strange thing”: Ibid.
230

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