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) (76 page)

Tennessee didn’t encourage Magnani in her dream, nor did he want to get involved. In his heart, he knew that the possibility of a romance between Magnani and Lancaster would be doomed from its debut.

Privately, he told Frank, “The bloom is off the rose. Anna is fifty-seven if she’s a day.”

On her first day on the set, Magnani was introduced to Burt. He immediately apologized for his haircut. “The makeup man snipped my hair since I had grown it long for
The Kentuckian
(1955). Maybe he’d had too many drinks. Look at it. I came out badly cropped and all fucked up. Now I’m stuck with it, unless I want to wear a wig. We’re on such a tight schedule, I have to keep this crappy coiffure for the rest of the shoot. I’ve also got to show some flesh in this movie, so I’ve been working out night and day.”

That evening over dinner, Magnani began to have misgivings over Burt. “Do all American actors spend most of their time worrying about their hairdos and their bodies? He didn’t even compliment me on my looks.”

“From what I’ve seen, American actors spend as much time getting camera ready as does Lana Turner,” Tennessee said.

“Do you think Burt has a homosexual streak in him?” she asked.

“No, not Burt,” Tennessee said, an obvious lie, since, from personal experience, he knew differently. “A very private survey conducted in secret in Hollywood found that 79% of Hollywood actors had had some sort of sexual experience with someone of the same gender, many of them when they were young. I discussed this with Dr. Alfred Kinsey, who knows more about the sexual habits of American males than anybody in the country. He speculated that if only actors had been included in the survey, 79% might be a low figure.”

Tennessee wrote to some of his friends that “Anna’s big scenes will be shot not in Key West but in a studio in Hollywood. For the moment, she’s like a hungry tigress with a big hunk of juicy raw meat dangled outside her cage. She can’t wait to dig into the meat.”

He also revealed that Magnani had had her first fight with the director, Daniel Mann, after he suggested that she wear a
brassière
during the scenes she was filming. “What do you think I am?” she shouted at him. “A fucking animal? I’m not! I’m a woman who has tits. So why should I wear a cage?”

Day after day, Magnani flirted with Burt, making plays for him, but he wasn’t responsive. One night, Frank and Tennessee were invited to a local movie hours on Duval Street, which had been rented by the film crew for viewings of the first rushes of film version of
The Rose Tattoo
. Both Burt and Magnani attended, along with most other members of the cast, administration, and film editors.

Based on his interpretation of the first film clips, Burt was skeptical, but Magnani was jubilant. After the screening, she climbed onto his back and rode him, piggy-back, up the aisle of the theater, kissing his neck passionately. That night, he agreed to drive her back to her motel.

The next morning, when Tennessee had coffee with her, she was very sad-faced. “I was terribly let down,” she said. “A total disappointment. The end of my fantasy. I’m sure he’s a homosexual.” Then she held up her little finger in mock derision.

Later that day, Tennessee shared Magnani’s anecdotes with Mann. “Obviously, I have a greater appreciation of the glories of Burt’s penis than she does. If he wants me to sample it again, like I did in Hollywood, all he has to do is call, and I’ll come running.”

From that day on, Magnani and Burt clashed on the set, mainly because he accused her of trying to take over Mann’s job and direct
Tattoo
herself, which was true.

“You’re cutting the balls off Mann,” Burt shouted at her in front of the cast and crew.

She shot back, “At least he has balls.”

Increasingly alienated from Burt, Mann, and her co-workers, she began dining in her motel room on pasta that Frank cooked at home and brought to her. “She took out her frustration against Burt and Daniel at night,” Frank said. “I always brought her two heaping platters of my pasta. One she’d eat and compliment me, telling me I made pasta like a true Sicilian. After dinner, she’d become enraged and toss the other platter of pasta against the wall of her motel room. When she checked out, the owner had to repaint the walls because they were streaked with spaghetti sauce.”

One Sunday evening in Key West, Frank and Tennessee invited Magnani to their home for dinner. After the meal, she ranted and raged, suddenly breaking into Italian.

Tennessee thought she was emulating a bad actress in a silent film—“Think Gloria Swanson”—theatrically raising her hand to her forehead to convey an elaborate sense of anguish and despair.

After a few minutes of this, Tennessee turned to Frank. “What’s the matter with Anna tonight?”

“Oh, she’s just complaining that Burt’s cock wasn’t big enough for her.”

Not surprisingly, Tennessee did not include that story in his memoirs. In fact, he didn’t mention Burt at all.

Near the end of the shoot, Tennessee had to fly to New York to consult with Elia Kazan about casting for his new play,
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
.

“I hope you can keep the peace between our two temperamental stars,” he said to Mann. “After the picture is finished, you can put them in a boxing ring together and let them fight it out. Should one or the other murder each other, I’ll fly back to Key West and rewrite the script as a murder thriller.”

—Anna Magnani, shouting during the premiere of The Rose Tattoo

The premiere party for
The Rose Tattoo
was held at Manhattan’s Astor Hotel on Deccember 2, 1955. Attending were Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando, who were having an affair at the time.

Tennessee escorted Magnani. They were greeted by the film’s producer, Hal B. Wallis, who accurately predicted that Magnani would win the Oscar that year as Best Actress. Tennessee told Wallis that he had dedicated both the play and the film to Frank Merlo, and that he was going to donate ten percent of all future royalties to his lover for introducing him to the glories of Sicily.

Suddenly, Marilyn Monroe made a spectacular entrance into the crowded party. When the paparazzi spotted her, they pushed Magnani, the star of the picture, aside as they rushed to take pictures of the sexy blonde siren.

Magnani was furious at being treated “like a common streetwalker.” As Marilyn paraded by her, Magnani screamed,
“PUTA! PUTA! PUTA
!” Then, perhaps realizing that the crowd didn’t know what
PUTA
meant, she repeated, in translation, the allegation, yelling “WHORE! WHORE! WHORE!”

It required the diplomatic skills of both Tennessee and Frank, among others, to calm her down.

***

After seeing the final version of
The Rose Tattoo
, Tennessee said, “Anna’s role as Serafina will surely be the apogee of her film career.”

He later wrote: “She never exhibited any lack of self-assurance, any timidity in her relations with that society outside of those conventions she quite publicly exhibited. She looked absolutely straight into the eyes of whomever she confronted. During the golden time in which we were dear friends, I never heard a false word come from her mouth.”

Although she’d previously rejected
Tattoo
as a star vehicle for herself on Broadway, Magnani agreed to perform the role on the stage of Dublin’s Pike Theatre on May 12, 1957. Tennessee’s original script called for a condom to fall out of the pocket of the male star. Director Alan Simpson feared that might be a problem for the conservative arbiters of the Irish stage. Therefore, he ordered the actor to mime the dropping of a condom.

Even so, Simpson was arrested by the police and charged with producing “lewd entertainment.” His arrest drew protests from key members of Ireland’s artistic elite, including Sean O’Casey, Brendan Behan, and Samuel Beckett. The police finally gave in to massive pressure and released him.

***

On September 26, 1973, ten years before his own death, Tennessee was at his home in Key West revising
The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore
, thinking it might be a good vehicle for Michael York and Sylvia Miles. Actually, he was in imminent fear of his own death, as he suffered from high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and heart palpitations resulting from his acute anxiety.

A friend in Rome had just heard over the local radio that Anna Magnani, Italy’s greatest actress, had died at the age of 65 in Rome from pancreatic cancer.

After sobbing for an hour, Tennessee wired two dozen red roses in honor of her long-ago appearance in
The Rose Tattoo
.

He later learned that during her funeral, large crowds of Romans had gathered in a final salute, the kind usually reserved for the death of a Pope. When her body was carried out from the church, there was massive applause greater than any she’d ever received after a performance.

With the roses, Tennessee had enclosed a brief message for the dead star:

“My Rose Tattoo, make room for me
.

I’ll soon be joining you in Eternity
.

Love Forevermore, Tenn.”

Chapter Twenty-Two