Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (102 page)

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Authors: John Lahr

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135
“I don’t think he ever did anything better”: Ibid.
135
“That boy’s having a convulsion!”: Patricia Bosworth,
Marlon Brando
(New York: Viking, 2001), p. 31.
135
“There was nothing you could do”: Young,
Kazan
, p. 81.
136
“He even listened experientially”: Ibid., p. 83. “His performance was full of surprises and exceeded what Williams and I had expected,” Kazan wrote.
136
“There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Apr. 19, 1947,
L2
, p. 95.
136
“epochal”:
New York Times
, July 2, 2004.
136
“Gadg and Irene both said”: Brando with Lindsey,
Brando
, p. 118.
136
“a size too large”: Sam Staggs,
When Blanche Met Brando: The Scandalous Story of “A Streetcar Named Desire”
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005)
,
p. 31.
136
“The line was busy”: Ibid.
136
“a shot in the dark”:
KAL
, p. 342.
136
“That’s all I said”: Ibid., p. 341.
137
“domestic cataclysm”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Aug. 29, 1947,
L2
, p. 119.
137
blackout during the Wingfields’ supper: Ibid.
137
“into everlasting darkness”: Ibid.
137
“It was all too much for Pancho”: Ibid.
137
“He was just about the best-looking”:
M
, p. 131.
137
“You’d think he had spent”:
CWTW
, p. 204.
137
“just as he played it”: Ibid.
137
“I was the antithesis of Stanley Kowalski”: Brando with Lindsey,
Brando
, pp. 121–22.
137
“Get Kazan on the phone!”:
M
, p. 131.
137
“A new value came out”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Aug. 29, 1947,
L2
, pp. 118–19. Brando was signed within four days; on September 3, 1947, his photo and the news of his signing ran for the first time in the
New York Times
.
137
“smiled a little”:
M
, p. 131.
137
“Things were so badly arranged”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Aug. 29, 1947,
L2
, p. 118.
138
“God-sent”: Ibid.
138
“When an actor has as good a play”: Brando with Lindsey,
Brando
, p. 122.
138
peculiar shyness:
M
, p. 132. “Brando was always shy with me for some reason,” Williams wrote.
138
“And so we did—in silence”: Ibid.
138
“I am hoping he will go home”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Aug. 29, 1947,
L2
, p. 119.
138
“It took some doing”:
M
, p. 134.
138
“quite gratefully so”: Ibid.
138
over a hundred line changes: Brenda Murphy,
Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan: A Collaboration in the Theatre
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 22.
138
“There is still something too cut-and-dried”: Williams to Irene Selznick, Sept. 8, 1947,
L2
, p. 123.
139
“dim white against the fading dusk”: Williams, “Poker Night,” HRC.
139
“Now, now, love”: LOA1, p. 564.
139
“fidelity”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Apr. 19, 1947,
L2
, p. 96.
139
“After this experience”:
KAL
, p. 353.
139
“Probably I would want him back”: Williams to Donald Windham, Mar. 26, 1947,
TWLDW
, p. 197.
139
“He needed me as much as I needed him”: LLI with Pancho Rodriguez, 1983, LLC.
139
“I cannot find words”: Williams to Margo Jones, Oct. 1947,
L2
, p. 128.
139
“Today I am particularly aware”:
N
, Oct. 20, 1947, p. 463.
139
“I wish I could write you”: Williams to Pancho Rodriguez, Oct. 1947,
L2
, p. 126.
140
“Reisito, Torito”: Ms. “Memoirs,” p. 61.
140
“Unable to break down the door”:
M
, p. 135.
140
“I am terribly troubled”: Williams to Margo Jones, Oct. 1947,
L2
, p. 129.
140
“He was like a father”: LLI with Pancho Rodriguez, 1983, LLC.
140
“to take a man’s place in the world”: Williams to Pancho Rodriguez, Nov. 1947,
L2
, p. 131.
140
“This play is hardly your dish”: Williams to Edwina Williams, Nov. 1947, ibid., p. 133.
140
“I shall not listen to any moral homilies”: Ibid.
140
“Life is hard”: Williams to Pancho Rodriguez, Nov. 1947,
L2
, p. 130.
141
“had been persuaded”:
M
, p. 135.
141
Pancho moved back in with him: Williams to Margo Jones, Oct. 1947,
L2
, p. 129.
141
last scene mounted for the first time: “Gadg’s method is to stage one new scene each day and to go over all the preceding scenes in sequence,” Williams wrote Jones. “Tomorrow, Monday, he will stage the final, eleventh scene, which I think is the crucial one.” (Williams to Margo Jones, Oct. 1947,
L2
, p. 128.)
141
“My feeling for P. has more or less”:
N
, Oct. 27, 1947, pp. 465–67.
141
“I thought, privately, this character”:
M
, p. 136.
141
“But people are complex, Thorn”: As quoted by Kim Hunter, in Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer, eds.,
It Happened on Broadway: An Oral History of the Great White Way
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1998)
,
p. 7.
141
“a performance miracle in the making”:
KAL
, p. 343.
142
“Because it was out of balance”: Brando with Lindsey,
Brando
, p. 124.
143
“I looked to my authority”:
KAL
, p. 344.
143
“If Tennessee was Blanche”: Ibid., pp. 347, 350.
143
“is attracted to a murderer”: Young,
Kazan
, pp. 83–84.
143
“fearsome commotion”:
KAL
, pp. 346–47.
143
“I left New York two or three weeks”: LLI with Pancho Rodriguez, 1983, LLC.
143
“I used to try and hurt him”: Ibid.
144
“. . . I have never said”: Williams to Pancho Rodriguez, Nov. 1947,
L2
, p. 132.
144
“I knew that he loved me”: LLI with Pancho Rodriguez, 1983, LLC.
144
“as if a ghost sat over the affairs”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Apr. 19, 1947,
L2
, p. 96.
144
“When you see that someone needs peace”: Williams to Pancho Rodriguez, Nov. 1947,
L2
, pp. 130–31. “Right after Frank Merlo’s death, Tennessee came back to New Orleans to ask me to go live with him again,” Rodriguez said. (LLI with Pancho Rodriguez, 1983, LLC.)
145
“Stanley (M.B.) like E.K.”: Bosworth,
Marlon Brando
, p. 46.
145
“the lame duck in the line-up”: Williams to Margo Jones, Oct. 1947,
L2
, p. 128.
145
“What we’ve got here is oysters”: Peter Manso,
Brando: The Biography
(New York: Hyperion, 1994), p. 231.
145
“
RIDE OUT BOY
”: Williams telegram to Marlon Brando, HRC.
145
“Streetcar opened last night”: Williams to James Laughlin, Dec. 4, 1947,
L2
, pp. 133–34.
145
others and so on: Also at the opening night were Cary Grant, Paul Muni, Montgomery Clift, Edward G. Robinson, Olivia de Havilland, Lillian Hellman, Moss Hart, Ruth Gordon, Garson Kanin, and Josh Logan.
146
“the flag of beauty”: Arthur Miller, “Introduction,” in Tennessee Williams,
A
Streetcar Named Desire
(New York: New Directions, 2004), p. xii.
146
“Southern genital-man”: Alan Sinfield,
Out on Stage: Lesbian and Gay Theater in the 20th Century
(Bath, U.K.: Bath Press, 1999), p. 89.
146
“The play might well have been titled”:
Theatre Book of the Year 1947–1948
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), pp. 163–66.
146
“In 1947, when Marlon Brando appeared”: Vidal, “Tennessee Williams,” p. 61.
146
“Stanley Kowalski changed the concept of sex”: JLI with Gore Vidal, 2000, JLC.
146
“He builds a hedonistic life”: Elia Kazan,
An American Odyssey
, ed. Michel Ciment (London: Bloomsbury, 1988), p. 184.
146
“I am the king around here”: LOA1, p. 537.
149
“Tenn, are you really happy?”:
Life
, Dec. 15, 1948.
150
Williams won the Pulitzer Prize: Audrey Wood to Irene Selznick, May 3, 1947, ISC: “Dear Woman of the Year—“It’s all beautiful and like a fairy tale. This is the way we both dreamt it could be and seeing a dream come true is more dramatic than the play itself. We are both so proud and happy you were chosen to be the mid-wife.”
150
rumbled by most of the critics: “I am afraid Margo did a rather mediocre job,” Williams wrote to Donald Windham. “Not inspired. Not vital, as Kazan would have been and as the play so dreadfully needed.” (Oct. 19, 1948,
TWLDW
, p. 225.)
150
“the critics who gave us the two worst notices”: Williams to Donald Windham, Oct. 19, 1948,
TWLDW
, p. 226.
150
“The party was really swell”: Ibid., p. 225.
150
“I enjoyed the ride”: Ibid., p. 226. Jane and Tony Smith, Sandy Campbell, Joanna Albus.
CHAPTER 3: THE EROTICS OF ABSENCE
151
Erotics of Absence: The phrase was coined by Christopher Bollas in
Hysteria
; it is used here with his permission.
151
“The desiring fingers”:
RS
, pp. 70–71.
151
“My writing dealt with you”: Franz Kafka,
Letter to His Father
(London: Oneworld, 2008), p. 56.
151
as an adult, and he was going solo: At seventeen, in 1928, Williams traveled for two months in Europe with his grandfather.
151
“I don’t intend to get seriously involved”: Williams to Oliver Evans, Feb. 11, 1948,
L2
, p. 165.
151
two thousand dollars a week in royalties: Tennessee Williams, “Night Passage” (unpublished), p. 11, LLC.
151
“My nights have been wild”: Williams to Margo Jones, Dec. 31, 1947,
L2
, p. 141.
152
“a packing-bee”: Ibid., p. 140.
152
“Sartre did not show up”: Williams to Donald Windham, July 25, 1948,
TWLDW
, p. 223.
152
“cold, bad food”: Williams to Donald Windham, Jan. 17, 1948, ibid., p. 205.
152
press interviews in his hotel bathtub:
M
, p. 140.
152
“I found nothing very good about Paris”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Jan. 25, 1948, WUCA.
152
“The
sun
—glorious sun”:
N
, Jan. 27, 1948, p. 469.
153
“the capitol of my heart”: Williams to Oliver Evans, Jan. 31, 1948,
L2
, p. 155.
153
“Here in Italy”: Williams to Carson McCullers, Feb. 8, 1948, ibid., p. 160.
153
“soft city”:
RS
, p. 9.
153
“They do not hate Americans”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, Mar. 29, 1948,
L2
, p. 177.
153
“I haven’t the slightest idea”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Jan. 25, 1948, WUCA.

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