Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (117 page)

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Authors: John Lahr

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BOOK: Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
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439
“the earth’s obscene, corrupting love”: Ibid., p. 424.
439
“beings of a golden kind”: Ibid., p. 425.
439
“in a loud exalted voice”: Ibid., p. 426.
439
“my . . . brain’s going out now”: Ibid., p. 423. “I am convinced the mind wears out more rapidly than the body.” (Williams to Oliver Evans, 1962, LLC.)
439
“The play may seem meaningless”: Harold Clurman, “Theatre,”
Nation
, Jan. 27, 1962.
439
“writing at the top of his form”: Howard Taubman, “ ‘Night of the Iguana’ Opens,”
New York Times
, Dec. 29, 1961.
439
“at his poetic, moving best”: John Chapman, “Williams Is at His Poetic, Moving Best with ‘Night of the Iguana,’ ”
New York Daily News
, Dec. 29, 1961.
439
“perhaps the wisest play he has written”: Kalem, “Angel of the Odd.”
439
“one of [his] saddest, darkest”: Richard Watts Jr., “Reveries of Tennessee Williams,”
New York
Post
, Dec. 29, 1961.
440
“I can make it down the hill”: LOA2, p. 427.
440
“half leading half supporting him”: Ibid.
440
“chuckles happily”: Ibid.
440
“a dream of immobility”: Walter Kerr, “Iguana: True Tone,”
New York
Herald Tribune
, Jan. 7, 1962.
440
“Shannon has given up”: Leaming,
Bette Davis
, p. 235.
440
“Oh, God, can’t we stop now?”: LOA2, p. 427.
440
“I’m sorry you’re not feeling well”: Elia Kazan to Williams, 1962, Columbia.
440
“I think my kind of literary”:
CWTW
, p. 99.
441
“I want to tell you tonight”: “An Evening with Nichols and May” ran for 306 performances from Oct. 8, 1960, to July 1, 1961, at the John Golden Theatre. A record of the show,
An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May
(directed by Arthur Penn, for Mercury Records, 1960), won the Grammy for Best Comedy performance in 1961.
441
“I didn’t and don’t blame him”: Mike Nichols to John Lahr, Aug. 23, 2011, JLC.
441
“I’m so tired”: Williams to Herbert Machiz, Oct. 1962, Columbia. Albee’s play opened on October 13, 1962.
441
“one of those works”: Ibid.
441
“astringency”: Williams to Joseph Losey, Mar. 5, 1967, HRC.
441
“crazy with jealousy”:
CWTW
, p. 98.
442
“While I’m in the theatre”: Ibid.
442
“my answer to the school of Ionesco”: Williams to James Laughlin, Sept. 24, 1962, JLC.
442
“They’re not just funny”: Ibid.
442
“dying monster”: LOA2, p. 512.
442
“a poem of death”: Williams to Herbert Machiz, Oct. 1962, Columbia.
442
“Ahhhhhhhh, meeeeeeeeee!”: LOA2, p. 496.
442
“Which brings us to Mr. Williams’ own predicament”: Walter Kerr, “Williams’ Reworked ‘Milk Train’ Is Back,”
New York Herald Tribune
, Jan. 2, 1964.
442
“Courageous title, by the way”: John Hancock to John Lahr, Nov. 11, 2011, JLC. When Jules Irving and Herbert Blau left the San Francisco Actor’s Workshop to run the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center in New York, Hancock became then the youngest-ever American director of a repertory theater.
443
“ ‘the daid Mistuh William’ ”: Williams to John Hancock, undated, 1965, Harvard.
443
most difficult of his plays to write: Henry Hewes,
Best Plays of 1964–1965
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1965).
443
“a golden griffin”: LOA2, p. 495.
443
“Consume my heart away”: Williams to Hermione Baddeley, undated, LLC.
443
“a portrait”: Williams to John Hancock, undated (ca. 1965), Harvard.
443
“swamp-bitch”: LOA2, p. 555.
443
“demented memoirs”: Ibid., p. 512.
443
“We’re working against time”: Ibid., p. 497.
443
scattershot ramblings about her six husbands: Mrs. Goforth seems unclear about how many husbands she’s had. Sometimes it’s four, sometimes it’s six.
443
“apparently never thought”: Ibid., p. 512.
443
“A legend in my own lifetime”: Ibid., p. 541.
444
“I beg you to play the broken queen”: Williams to Hermione Baddeley, undated, LLC.
444
“death angel”: LOA2, p. 549.
444
“a guest desperately wanted”: Williams to Hermione Baddeley, Jan. 1963, HRC.
444
“Sometimes, once in a while”: LOA2, p. 576.
444
“I can’t explain Chris”: Williams to John Hancock, undated, Harvard.
445
“There’s the element of the con man”:
CWTW
, p. 288.
445
“Everything about him”: LOA2, p. 529.
445
“We don’t all live in the same world”: Ibid., p. 543.
445
“And one person’s sense of reality”: For the first Broadway staging, Kabuki-style screens turned the stage into a dreamy, disorienting world and reinforced the sense of separation between realms.
445
“It sounds like something religious”: LOA2, p. 518.
446
“You have the distinction”: Ibid., p. 575.
446
“You need somebody or something”: Ibid., p. 576.
446
“Once the heart is thoroughly insulated”: Williams to Kenneth Tynan, July 26, 1955,
TWLDW
, p. 307.
446
“Grab, fight, or go hungry”: LOA2, p. 555.
446
“a shell of bone round my heart”: Ibid., p. 579.
446
“Here’s where the whole show started”: Ibid., p. 563.
446
“burning me up like a house on fire”: Ibid., p. 572.
447
“In my own writing”: Williams to David Lobdell, Apr. 17, 1967, HRC.
447
“Anything solid takes the edge”: LOA2, p. 545.
447
“One long-ago meeting between us”: Ibid., p. 547.
447
“panicky when I”: Ibid.
447
“can’t stand the smell of food”: Ibid., p. 554.
447
“
Chris opens the milk bottle
”: Ibid., p. 571.
447
“We’re all of us living in a house”: Ibid., p. 548.
448
“That’s what it means”: Ibid., p. 582.
448
“the sound of shock”: Harry Medved and Michael Medved,
The Hollywood Hall of Shame: The Most Expensive Flops in Movie History
(New York: Perigee Books, 1984), p. 107.
448
Joseph Losey’s 1968 film adaptation
Boom!
: The film starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. “You don’t call something ‘Boom!’ (since 1945) and imply that one of the characters is an angel of death without having something nuclear in mind,” John Hancock said. (JLI with John Hancock, 2012, JLC.)
448
“much better written than the play”:
CWTW
, p. 288.
448
“
Don’t leave me alone
”: LOA2, p. 581.
448
“fierce life”: Ibid.
449
“clothed in a god’s perfection”: Ibid., p. 501.
449
“You put on the clothes of a god”: Ibid.
449
“Blackie, the boss is sorry”: Ibid., p. 500.
449
“just barely marching”: Williams to Marion Vaccaro, June 28, 1962, LLC.
449
“Angel”:
M
, p. 188.
449
“He’s a desperate young man”: Williams to Robert MacGregor, Aug. 1, 1967, LLC.
449
“I was stacking books”: LLI with Frederick Nicklaus, 1983, LLC.
449
“I have engaged a very gentle”: Williams to Lilla Van Saher, Aug. 1962, HRC.
449
“soul-searching”: LLI with Frederick Nicklaus, 1986, LLC.
450
“villa”: Robert Hines to Nancy Tischler, undated, LLC.
450
“The ‘fireworks’ started immediately”: Robert Hines to Nancy Tischler, June 2, 1996, LLC.
451
“Robert, Sir, do me the honor”: Robert Hines to Nancy Tischler, undated, LLC.
451
“Frankie was hurt and stunned”: Ibid.
451
“All quiet”: Ibid.
451
“Tenn took to baiting Frankie”: Robert Hines to Nancy Tischler, June 2, 1996, LLC.
451
“who understands life so well”: Tennessee Williams, “Intimations of Mortality,” THNOC. “Closing Time” is handwritten over the typed original title, “Intimations of Mortality” (an early one-act play with later revisions).
452
“It has, or seems to have”: Williams to Andreas Brown, Feb. 23, 1962, HRC.
452
“has lost so much weight”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Mar. 19, 1962, WUCA.
452
“I feel that if we didn’t have to share”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Apr. 15, 1962,
FOA
, p. 180.
452
“I may not be in the apartment”: Williams to Frederick Nicklaus, May 6, 1962, LLC.
452
“I was as frightened to see him”:
M
, p. 188.
452
“Frankie was on his best behavior”: Ibid.
453
“I remained curiously resolute”: Ibid.
453
“My young companion”:
CP
, “Tangiers: The Speechless Summer,” p. 139.
453
poem dedicated to “T.W.”: Frederick Nicklaus,
The Man Who Bit the Sun
(New York: New Directions, 1964), p. 29.
453
“. . . You woke in the night”: Frederick Nicklaus, “Tangier 1,” in ibid., pp. 29–30.
453
“inept at anything of a practical nature”: Williams to Andreas Brown, 1962, LLC.
454
“like a flea”: Williams to Robert Hines, undated, LLC.
454
“The beauty of my companion”:
M
, p. 187.
454
“internal bleeding”: Williams to Lilla Van Saher, Aug. 16, 1962, HRC.
454
“I am still able to do my morning’s work”: Ibid.
454
“the Merlo situation”: Williams to Robert MacGregor, Summer 1962, LLC.
454
contemplated pulling up stakes: Williams to Robert Hines, Sept. 1962, LLC.
454
“I’m still desperately looking”: Williams to Andreas Brown, Sept. 17, 1962, THNOC.
454
“Get on your knees and pray”: Williams to Herbert Machiz, Nov. 1962, Columbia.
454
“There was just too much double-talk”: Williams to Hermione Baddeley, undated, HRC.
455
“Unless a miracle happens in Philly”: Williams to Audrey Wood, undated, HRC.
455
“Mistuh Williams, He Dead”: Richard Gilman, “Mistuh Williams, He Dead,”
Commonweal
, Feb. 8, 1963.
455
“Why, rather than be banal”: Ibid.
455
“The truth I guess”: Williams to John Hancock, undated, Harvard.
455
“swollen up like a pumpkin”: Williams to Robert MacGregor, Mar. 27, 1963, LLC.
455
“Suspect following circumstances: lung cancer”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 8: WAVING
and
DROWNING
456
“Nobody heard him”: Stevie Smith, “Not Waving but Drowning,” in Stevie Smith,
Selected Poems
, ed. James MacGibbon (London: Penguin Books, 1978), p. 167.
456
“waiting shakily”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Sept. 9, 1963, WUCA.
456
Key West doctors had attributed Merlo’s exhaustion: Donald Spoto,
The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1985), p. 255.
457
“the cumulative effect of passing 14 years”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Apr. 15, 1962,
FOA
, p. 179. Although Merlo was a four-packs-a-day man, neither the doctors nor Williams made any connection between his smoking and the likelihood of cancer.
457
“I was stricken with remorse”:
M
, p. 189.
457
“He was quite matter-of-fact”: Ibid.
457
“I hung up”: Ibid.
457
writer James Leo Herlihy: LLI with Frederick Nicklaus, 1985, LLC.
457
“Frankie was quite unaware”:
M
, p. 190.
457
“the sudden and shocking illness of Frank”: Williams to Edwina Williams, Feb. 25, 1963, LLC.
458
“I saw a white dove in a tree”:
CP
, “Morgenlied,” p. 143.
458
“waiting to take over the house”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Apr. 5, 1963,

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