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) (101 page)

After very routine chatter and congratulations on the recent accomplishments of each of these artists, Kelly assumed a rather business-like aura. “Tennessee has the most divine proposal. He’s at work on a Broadway play. It’s called
Maggie the Cat
. He’s proposing that I open the play on Broadway, run with it for 85 nights, then turn it over to—say, Kim Stanley. During that time, I’ll sign a contract to appear in the movie. I’m crazy for the idea of the movie, but appearing on Broadway terrifies me.”

“Grace Kelly in a new Tennessee Williams play?” Newman said. “What a dynamite idea. How do I fit in? Will I be the guy who gets Maggie purring?”

“Like a true Hun, you get right to the point,” Tennessee said. “You’d be cast in the male lead, and you don’t get the frustrated Maggie purring at all. You’d be playing her closeted homosexual husband.”

“I’ve got balls enough to do that if I don’t have to wear pink,” Newman said.

“Actually, your role—that of Brick—is very masculine, even sexy,” Kelly said. “Like me, you’d agree to appear in the stage version, followed by the movie.”

“In the play, Maggie has a foul mouth and is very earthy,” Tennessee said. “In other words, Grace would be playing against type. I like that kind of casting.”

“And me?” Newman asked.

“You’d be in silk pajamas throughout most of the play,” Tennessee said. “Often showing that sculpted Davidesque chest of yours, arguably the most beautiful in Hollywood. God created your chest for silken tongues to lap.”

Then he turned back to Kelly. “How I envy Grace here for having sampled the world’s tastiest specimen. As for me, an aging queen can only dream of what a delight that must be.”

Showing a slight embarrassment, Kelly laughed to mask her feelings. “It seems that you’ve gone through your fixation with Brando and turned to more modern stars. Paul is the embodiment of the new breed taking over Hollywood.”

“You’re known for appearing with older stars,” Newman said. “Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Ray Milland, James Stewart. It might be fun for you to work with someone closer to your own age.”

“It’d be more than fun,” she said. “We’d burn up the screen, but only after setting Broadway on fire.”

“There’s also a great role for a character actor,” Tennessee said. “Big Daddy. I have Orson Welles in mind.”

“He’s certainly big enough,” Newman said. “If a deal can be made, I’ll go for it. I don’t have to read the play. Knowing that Tennessee wrote it is good enough for me. I’m sure it’ll be a masterpiece.”

At the end of dinner, a rather handsome young man with a slight growth of beard appeared in the rear of the restaurant to escort a drunken Tennessee back to his car.

The playwright didn’t bother to introduce his hustler/driver. “I was writing all my roles for Brando,” Tennessee said, rising on wobbly legs. “But he’s getting too beefy to play a Tennessee Williams leading man. Today I’m creating characters like Brick who are lean, mean, and astonishingly beautiful. Men who inspire sexual fantasies, regardless of the viewer’s persuasion.”

He looked his driver over skeptically. “Right now I’m studying the world of hustlers. Someday I’ll cast you as the lead in one of my plays where you’ll play a hustler. I envision Tallulah Bankhead playing an aging, has-been actress opposite you.” Then he gently kissed Paul on the lips before heading off into the night with his paid companion.

Without Newman knowing it, that was his first preview of the hustler role of Chance Wayne
[Sweet Bird of Youth]
that he’d eventually play both on Broadway and on the screen.

Months later, Newman told Audrey Wood that, “I left Grace and Paul in a sleazy joint to work things out for themselves. That cockroach palace was pretty poor digs for a glamorous future princess. But back then, Grace in Hollywood liked to take off those white gloves. Or, as Gary Cooper told me, ‘Grace looks like a cold dish with a man until you get her pants down. Then she explodes.’”

After purchasing the film rights for
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer considered George Cukor as its possible director. But from the beginning, MGM knew there would be problems with the script, especially as regards the homosexual issues.

Broadway audiences had been enthralled with its homoerotic subtext. Nonetheless, the studio felt it had to “launder” this Pulitzer Prize-winning drama before it “went out to be viewed by every little homophobic town in America.”

The film’s producer, Lawrence Weingarten, felt that Cukor might know how to adapt the script into something acceptable to mass audiences, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the director’s own homosexuality.

Tennessee knew Cukor and thought he’d be ideal to direct the film version of
Cat
. But he became alarmed when Cukor wanted Vivien Leigh to play the role of Maggie the Cat on the screen. “Whereas she was just the right age to play Blanche DuBois,” Tennessee said, “Scarlett O’Hara is getting a bit long in the tooth to play Maggie the Cat. Nearly two decades have come and gone since Rhett Butler carried her up those antebellum stairs for the fuck of her life.”

“Since Cukor was fired as the director of
Gone With the Wind
back in 1939, perhaps he wants to use
Cat
as his final chance to direct Vivien Leigh,” Weingarten said.

When Tennessee flew into Hollywood, Cukor invited him to his house for a reunion with Vivien, who had performed so brilliantly in
Streetcar
.

Cukor stated that he had asked Montgomery Clift to play Brick, but that Clift had rejected the role because “the character of a closeted homosexual, I guess, was too close to home.”

When Tennessee came face to face with Vivien again, he was shocked by her appearance. She had aged badly, and she even appeared a bit matronly, hardly his image of Maggie the Cat.

She kissed him on the lips. “Thank God, dear heart, you came over to visit with George and me. My enemies claim I’m washed up in Hollywood. Not at all. I’ve been waiting for the right script to lure me back. I’ve always thought of myself as a stage actress, but I’ve done all right in films.”

“All right?” Tennessee exclaimed. “Two Oscars and countless great roles?…That’s a lot more than just ‘okay!’”

“You’re such a darling,” she said. “By the way, Larry
[Laurence Olivier]
sends his love.”

As the director, the playwright, and the actress settled in for a rather drunken evening, Tennessee noticed that Vivien was visibly shaking. She kept reaching for Cukor’s hand for reassurance. “Oh, dear heart,” she said to Tennessee. “I’m terrified of taking on such a challenging role in front of that see-all movie camera. I get exhausted so easily these days. There are spells of depression that descend. I call them ‘ghosties.’ I must warn you gents that when I’m tired and depressed, I’m a mess. As you know, playing Blanche DuBois nearly drove me over the brink. But having been married to Larry all these years, I can certainly play a sexually frustrated wife like Maggie the Cat.”

Tennessee regarded both Cukor and Vivien as old friends. But after four hours of drinking and talking with them, he feared that their ideas of a screen version of
Cat
differed remarkably from his own. Nonetheless, he left Cukor’s home realizing that MGM would never let Vivien play Maggie. He also suspected that Cukor’s mission to defy the Production Code, and to insert homosexuality directly into the context of the movie, would doom him as the director of choice.

Discreetly, Tennessee chose not to mention his fears or reservations that evening.

***

In the weeks that followed, producer Pandro S. Berman was brought into the debate over the film script of
Cat
.

Previously, during his long-ago tenure as chief at RKO, he’d overseen Cukor’s cross-gendered allegory,
Sylvia Scarlett
, starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. It had been a box office disaster, so Berman immediately took a dim view of having Cukor direct the film version of Tennessee Williams’ controversial play.

Berman told Lawrence Weingarten that if he weren’t careful, Cukor would turn
Cat
into “a fag piece.” Berman had become exasperated when Cukor, against his wishes and instructions, had announced to the press that the movie, like the play, would have to deal up front with the issue of homosexuality.

“Who in hell does this queer think he is?” Berman asked Weingarten. “We’re not allowed to even mention the word ‘homosexual’ in a movie. What does Cukor want? A flashback, showing Brick sucking off Skipper in their football heyday. Fire Cukor!”

The battle intensified between Cukor and MGM. Finally, the director withdrew. He told Louella Parsons, still the industry’s reigning gossip maven, that he could not maintain the integrity of Williams’ play because of the censorship being imposed on its film adaptation. “I am not sure the public will like this play or understand it,” Cukor said. “But I just couldn’t do an emasculated version, and I don’t see how the movie itself could be properly presented.”

With Cukor off the picture, so went the casting of Vivien. Weeks later, after it was announced in the papers that Elizabeth Taylor would be starring as Maggie the Cat, Vivien placed a call to Tennessee. “Elizabeth replaced me in
Elephant Walk
, so why not
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
?” she said, bitterly.

“No one could ever replace you,” Tennessee responded, gallantly. “You’re an original.”

Vivien also revealed to him that Paul Newman, who would have been a potential co-star for her if she had been awarded the female lead in
Cat
, had visited her at Cukor’s home and spent the night. “He was such a nice gentleman,” Vivien claimed. “The next day, he sent flowers. So many men I pick up—gardeners, garage mechanics, whomever—just give me a pat on the ass the next morning and say, ‘Thanks for the memory, Scarlett.’”

Newman later discussed the role of Brick with Tennessee, comparing it to his own life: “As a kid, I was split into two different personalities. Dad wanted me to be a tomboy, a great athlete, then a commercial gent. My mother appealed to my sensitive side—the artist, the poet. The character of Brick is perfect for me. All my life, one side of me wanted to live life with a guy like Skipper in
Cat;
the other side was tempted to fuck the living shit out of Maggie the Cat and be the heterosexual my fans wanted me to be.”

—Col. Parker

With both Vivien Leigh and George Cukor out of the picture, Richard Brooks, the film’s director, and Lawrence Weingarten, its producer, came up with new ideas for casting.