Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (103 page)

153

“under the moon of pause”:

, p. 51.

153

“Sometimes the lamp burns very low”: Williams to Carson McCullers, Mar. 1, 1948,

, p. 170.

153

“the trapeze of the flesh”: Hart Crane, “The Bridge” (1930): “the empty trapeze of the flesh.”

153

“You can’t walk a block without being accosted”: Williams to Donald Windham, Feb. 20, 1948,

, p. 207.

153

“In the evenings, very late”: Williams to Jane Lawrence Smith, June 29, 1950,

, p. 328.

153

“The nightingales busted their larynx!”: Williams to Oliver Evans, Jan. 31, 1948, ibid., p. 155.

154

“turned into orgies”: Williams to Donald Windham, Mar. 9, 1948,

, p. 210.

154

“that unhappy young egotist Gore Vidal”: Williams to James Laughlin, May 18, 1948,

, pp. 192–93.

154

“I shall remember all of them”: Ibid.

155

“back under the dining-room table”: John Updike,

(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), pp. 252–53.

155

“Italy has been a real experience”: Williams to James Laughlin, May 18, 1948,

, p. 193.

155

“Being successful and famous”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Dec. 5, 1948, ibid., p. 217.

155

“You know, then, that the public Somebody”: “On a Streetcar Named Success,”

, Nov. 30, 1947, as quoted in

, p. 35. (The essay title was later changed to “The Catastrophe of Success.”)

155

“as nervous as a cat”: Williams to Carson McCullers, June 18, 1948,

, p. 196.

155

“I am quite forlorn here”: Williams to Donald Windham, July 9, 1948,

, p. 222.

155

“To really appreciate Italy fully”: Williams to Donald Windham, June 22, 1948, ibid., p. 220.

156

“I don’t want the beautiful effect”: Sheridan Morley,

(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), p. 199.

156

“He is too English, too stylish”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Apr. 24, 1948,

, p. 185.

156

“frightfully nervous high-handed prima donna”: Williams to Audrey Wood, June 13, 1948, ibid., p. 198.

156

“the Old One”: Sheridan Morley,

(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001), p. 199.

156

“John G. says I should

take a bow”: Williams to Maria Britneva, July 18, 1948,

, p. 3.

156

“I want everybody to see”: Helen Hayes,

(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), p. 168.

156

“She was everything I disliked”: Ibid.

157

“She’s spearing a shrimp”: JLI with Gore Vidal, 2006, JLC.

157

“I do not altogether understand myself”: Williams to Helen Hayes, July 30, 1948,

, p. 205.

157

“compensations”: Williams to Maria Britneva, July 30, 1948,

, p. 5.

157

“She scared people”: John Lahr, “The Lady and Tennessee,”

, Dec. 19, 1994, p. 78.

157

“her spectacular velocity through time”: Ibid.

157

“She was extraordinary”: Ibid., p. 83.

157

“desperate grip”: Kazan, quoted in

, p. ix.

157

“She is full of a good kind of mischief”: Williams to Carson McCullers, June 18, 1949,

, p. 256.

158

“I am quite incapable of learning”: Williams to Audrey Wood, June 13, 1948, ibid., p. 199. Describing sharing the same room with his lover and Jones on a Jeep trip to Capri and Sorrento, Williams wrote about his Italian lover’s bewilderment at Jones’s apparent indifference to the Italian landscape. “ ‘This donna molto strana. This donna like parlare, like mangiare, like drink, pero no like amore, no like poesia!’ However this donna is very useful and obliging in such matters as packing for trips and making arrangements. We have our tickets and reservations straight through to London without my lifting a finger.” (Williams to Donald Windham, June 7, 1948,

, p. 219.)

158

British reviews: “The press is the worst the play has ever been given anywhere in Europe,” Williams wrote Britneva. (July 30, 1948,

, p. 4.)

158

“Somehow I cannot make plans”: Williams to Maria Britneva, July 30, 1948,

, p. 5.

158

“my bosom was too big”: Lahr, “Lady and Tennessee,” p. 78.

159

“shot by the Soviets”: Ibid.

159

revised or fabricated history: Ibid.

159

“I feel sorry for Maria”: Williams to Donald Windham, May 8, 1949,

, p. 241.

159

“I felt I was in a state of grace”: Lahr, “Lady and Tennessee,” p. 80.

159

“When Edith Evans”: Ibid., p. 79.

160

“She wasn’t a good actress”: Ibid.

160

“eighteen or nineteen”: Ibid.

160

“I was invited to this wonderful party”: Ibid.

160

“Maria ate and ate”: Ibid.

160

“five o’clock angel”: Feb. 2, 1952,

, p. 52.

160

“Word has reached here”: Truman Capote to Donald Windham and Sandy Campbell, ca. Mar. 25, 1949, in Truman Capote,

, ed. Gerald Clarke (New York: Random House, 2004), p. 69.

162

“savagely mordant sense of humor”:

, p. xiv.

162

“You seem to say all the things”: Williams to Maria Britneva, Feb. 7, 1949, ibid., p. 13.

162

“Tennessee, with a glint of malice”: Ibid., p. 10.

162

“We were fighting”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, June 1954,

, p. 533.

162

“Total autonomy”:

DVD, directed by A. Dean Bell, Kay Cattarulla, and Rob Trachin (KERA-TV, PBS, 2006).

162

“If you want to (

to) bring up”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Apr. 2, 1948,

, p. 178.

163

“I expressed my doubts to Tennessee”:

, p. 157.

163

“did, as usual, the gentlemanly thing”: Ibid.

163

“She was the con of cons”:

, DVD.

163

“The tragedy is that her performance”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, June 1954,

, p. 533.

163

more removed proscenium: Four years later, José Quintero’s production of

, starring Geraldine Page, at New York’s new Circle in the Square, redeemed the play’s critical reputation. “Nothing more momentous has happened in the theatre in the last few years than the revival of

,” Atkinson wrote in the

163

“began to have depressing premonitions”:

, p. 153.

163

“the work of a dying man”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Mar. 23, 1949,

, p. 239.

163

“I had been ill at the time”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, June 1954, ibid., pp. 533–34.

163

“In my opinion Margo Jones”:

p. 153.

163

“I was onstage playing the scene”:

, DVD.

164

“Margo Jones’s Farewell Address to the Troops”:

, p. 158.

164

“A pretentious and amateurish bore”: Howard Barnes,

, Oct. 7, 1948.

164

“mawkish, murky”: John Coleman,

, Oct. 7, 1948.

164

“mediocre job”: Williams to Donald Windham, Oct. 19, 1948,

, p. 225.

164

“Not inspired, not vital”: Ibid. By the same time the following year, Williams’s disappointment had turned to disgust over Jones’s slapdash Chicago touring production of the play. “Very cross with Margo,” he wrote to Britneva. “Two sticks could not be crosser. Her Chicago company which she praised so highly was a poor travesty of what it should have been.” (Williams to Maria Britneva, Oct. 9, 1949,

, p. 27.)

164

“Something started or something stopped”:

, “Little Horse,” pp. 75–76.

164

“He was enthusiastic about everything”: JLI with Mary Henderson, 2001, JLC. Between 1979 and 1985, she was curator of the theater collection at the Museum of the City of New York. Among her books were

and

165

“fleshed in a god’s perfection”: “A Separate Poem”: “You put on the clothes of a god which was your naked body / and moved from window to window in a room made of windows, drawing, closing the curtains, your back / turned to me showing no sign that you knew that you were / building an island: then came to rest, fleshed, in a god’s perfection beside me . . . ” (

, “A Separate Poem,” pp. 80–81.)

165

swarthy complexion: “Perhaps Frankie will get into the movies,” Capote wrote in 1949, referring to him as “that loathsome Merlo boy.” “I understand all the old Lon Chaney movies are going to be remade, and by hiring him they’d save on makeup.” (Truman Capote to Andrew Lyndon, Aug. 23, 1949, in Capote,

, p. 98.)

165

“change-of-life baby”: JLI with Mary Henderson, 2001, JLC.

165

“He was far better read than Tennessee”: JLI with Gore Vidal, 2006, 2001, JLC.

165

“I damn near got to know”: Frank Merlo to Frank Gionataiso, Nov. 3, 1942, LLC.

165

“I had just witnessed”: Ibid.

165

“The path was very narrow”: Ibid.

166

“It’s a very well set up book”: Frank Merlo to Frank Gionataiso, Feb. 27, 1943, LLC.

166

“high brow”: Frank Merlo to Frank Gionataiso, Feb. 3, 1943, LLC.

166

“Every symphony that has come to San Francisco”: Ibid.

166

“When I do, watch out cousin”: Frank Merlo to Frank Gionataiso, Apr. 8, 1942, LLC.

166

“In regards to travelling after the war”: Frank Merlo to Frank Gionataiso, Feb. 27, 1943, LLC.

166

“I had intentions of marrying Lena”: Frank Merlo to Frank Gionataiso, Feb. 3, 1943, LLC.

167

“who may soon be my future wife”: Frank Merlo to Frank Gionataiso, Feb. 27, 1943, LLC.

167

“Tomorrow I have liberty”: Frank Merlo to Frank Gionataiso, Feb. 27, 1943, JLC.

167

“He got a job in New York”: JLI with Mary Henderson, 2001, JLC.

167

“My tongue, of late”: Frank Merlo to Frank Gionataiso, Feb. 27, 1943, LLC.

167

lover of the Washington columnist Joseph Alsop: Gore Vidal,

(New York: Random House, 1995), pp. 200–201.

169

“Pancho is in town”: Audrey Wood to Irene Selznick, June 2, 1948, HRC.

169

“I thought you knew about Frankie”: Oliver Evans to Marion Vaccaro, Jan. 30, 1950, THNOC. Evans, a poet and professor of English, was known to Williams as “The Clown”; Vaccaro, an heiress and another traveling companion, was dubbed “The Banana Queen.”

169

“Frank was a warm, decent man”: Donald Spoto,

(Boston: Little, Brown, 1985), p. 153.

169

“It is a small world”: Williams to Carson McCullers, July 5, 1948,

, p. 201.

169

“What do you do?”:

, p. 235.

169

“He gave me the connection”: Ibid., p. 340.

169

“He kept his wig on”: Spoto,

, p. 153.

169

“the cleft in the rock”: LOA1, p. 546.

170

“My sexual feeling for the boy”: