Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (94 page)

Edited and with comments by Donald Windham. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1977.

Wisconsin—Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society.

WUCA

Elia Kazan Collection, Cinema Archives, Wesleyan University.

ix

“Art to me”: Mark Rothko,

(Dexter, Md.: Thomas Shore, 2006), p. 45.

xiii

“The one duty”: Oscar Wilde,

, ed. Isobel Murray (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 256.

xiv

“a picture of my own heart”:

, Apr. 9, 1939, p. 147.

xiv

“to be simple direct”: Ibid.

xiv

“The real fact”: Robert Van Gelder,

, sec. 2.1, Apr. 22, 1945.

xv

“to report his cause aright”: Lyle Leverich,

(New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), dedication page.

1

“Into this scene comes”: Clifford Odets,

(New York: Grove Press, 1988), pp. 217–18.

1

8:50

P.M

.: In an earlier era, Broadway show time was 8:40

P.M

.—a fact memorialized in one of the most famous revues of the thirties,

.

1

“like a farm boy”:

, p. 125.

1

“You’re only as good”:

, p. 143.

2

“It seems to me”: Audrey Wood to Tennessee Williams, Apr. 1, 1939,

, p. 164.

2

“not a finished dramatist”: Audrey Wood to Tennessee Williams, Apr. 28, 1939, ibid., p. 172. Wood was “deeply impressed” by Williams’s theatrical sketches,

, but thought his dramatic problem was “going to be how to sustain a dramatic idea in a full length play.” On May 4, 1939, Williams wrote to his mother, “The Group Theatre and my new agent, Audrey Wood, both urge me to devote all my time to writing one long, careful play as they feel I have been working too rapidly and without sufficient concentration on one thing.” (Williams to Edwina Williams, May 4, 1939, ibid., p. 168.)

2

“You are playing a very long shot”: Williams to Audrey Wood, June 25, 1939, ibid., p. 178.

2

“I’d reached the very, very bottom”:

, p. 330.

2

“Yes, I have tricks”: LOA1, p. 400.

3

aftermath of an Actors’ Equity suspension: Lyle Leverich,

(New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), p. 547.

3

“on the longest wake in history”:

, p. 415.

4

“She’d closed many a show”: Reminiscences of Eddie Dowling, Nov. 21, 1964, Columbia University Center for Oral History Collection (hereafter CUCOHC), p. 815.

4

“the alcoholic of alcoholics”: Ibid.

4

“Nothing like this”: Ibid., p. 819.

4

“It’s Amanda”: Ibid., p. 165.

4

“This was just about the time”: Ibid., p. 820. Dowling’s account of the first lines doesn’t correspond with the printed text. But, as Williams knew to his cost, Dowling and Taylor were chronic ad-libbers.

4

“Audrey I love the play”: Dowling, Nov. 6, CUCOHC, p. 165. Wood at first refused. “Eddie, this is the wrong way. This boy has all these failures,” Dowling recalled her saying. (Ibid., p. 166.)

4

“a sick, tormented boy”: Ibid., pp. 165–67.

5

“Success is like a shy mouse”: Williams to Donald Windham, Apr. 1943,

, p. 58.

5

“a nauseous thing”:

, p. 413.

5

“I gave up a sure $25,000”: Dowling, Nov. 6, 1963, CUCOHC, p. 171.

5

“I said, ‘Make up your mind.’ ”: Ibid., pp. 170–71.

7

“she’d been hibernating”: Ibid., pp. 171–73.

7

“jam about money”: Laurette Taylor to Dwight Taylor, undated, HRC.

7

“Between two and three in the morning”: Effie Allen, “You Can’t Whip the Charm of Laurette Taylor,”

, Feb. 1945. Taylor is quoted as saying, “Tell them there is no escape from grief. They had to stand and face it. I know because I tried to escape. . . . I know now that you can’t outrun sorrow. You just have to learn to bear it.”

7

“I could look back”: Helen Ormsbee, “Laurette Taylor Knew Amanda Was Her Absolutely Right Part,”

, 1945.

7

“tobacco-spitting mammas”: Allen, “You Can’t Whip the Charm.”

7

“She’d spruced up a little bit”: Dowling, Nov. 6, 1963, CUCOHC, pp. 173–74.

8

“Oh, Mr. Dowling”: Ibid., p. 817. Williams wrote to Donald Windham that even in Chicago, Taylor still sounded like “the Aunt Jemima Pancake Hour.” (Dec. 18, 1944,

, p. 155.) Taylor, however, claimed Williams as the model for her Southern accent. “All during rehearsals I’d say to him, ‘Just talk to me, Tennessee. Don’t explain how to pronounce the words; just keep talking to me.’ We had quite a lot of talks. Amanda’s drawl is the result.” (

, p. 397.)

9

“Wouldn’t it be great, George”: Dowling, Nov. 6, 1963, CUCOHC, p. 177.

9

“As Tiny Tim said”: Ibid., Nov. 21, 1964, pp. 177–78.

9

“Ilka Chase”: Ilka Chase (1900–1978), a well-born, droll actress of stage and screen, was in the original Broadway productions of Claire Booth Luce’s

(1938) and Neil Simon’s

(1963). For a few years in the forties she hosted a radio show,

. Her epitaph reads, “I’ve finally gotten to the bottom of things.”

9

“Laurence Stallings”: Laurence Stallings (1894–1968) was a playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. On stage, he collaborated with Maxwell Anderson in

; on the screen, his credits included John Ford’s

and King Vidor’s

. He was a member of the Algonquin Round Table.

9

“He doesn’t mean to hurt you”: Dowling, Nov. 6, 1963, CUCOHC, pp. 179–80.

9

“It’s just in the lap of the gods”: Williams to James Laughlin, Dec. 15, 1944,

, p. 539.

11

“Well, it looks bad, baby”:

, Dec. 9, 1944, p. 431.

11

“My God, what corn!”: Williams to Donald Windham, Dec. 18, 1944,

, p. 155.

11

“What was she working toward”: Tennessee Williams, “On Laurette Taylor,” undated, HRC.

12

“Mr. Dowling”: Laurette Taylor to Dwight Taylor, Chicago, undated, HRC.

12

“I can’t find the tranquility”: Ibid.

12

“Tennessee, don’t change that ending”: Murray Schumach, “A Texas Tornado Hits Broadway,”

, Oct. 17, 1948.

12

“It was a strange night”: Dowling, Nov. 21, 1964, CUCOHC, p. 796.

12

“the greatest play in fifty years”: Advertisement in clipping file, LLC.

12

“was respectful but hardly ecstatic”:

, p. 142.

13

“For eight weeks, we starved”: Dowling, Nov. 6, 1963, CUCOHC, p. 183.

13

writing was on the fourth wall: “Finally when we announced we’re going to leave in two weeks, they tore the doors down. We had to give two extra matinees, and it was the consensus of opinion that we could have stayed there for a couple of years. But we had to come in because Singer had come on and made a contract for the Playhouse Theatre on 48th Street.” (Ibid.)

13

“When Miss Taylor plays”: Laurette Taylor correspondence, Chicago, undated, HRC.

13

“the distortions that have taken place”: Williams to the Editor, Feb. 25, 1945,

, p. 546.

13

“Pandemonium back-stage!”: Williams to James Laughlin, Mar. 11, 1945, ibid., p. 553.

13

“We arrived in New York”: Dowling, Nov. 21, 1964, CUCOHC, pp. 813–14. “Taylor has been drinking, but so far no sign of drunkenness,” Williams wrote to Windham a week before the Chicago opening. (Dec. 18, 1944,

, p. 155.) By February, there were plenty of signs. “Worried about Laurette,” Williams wrote to Audrey Wood. “She got terribly drunk at a party night before last. Literally passed out cold and fell on the sidewalk—first time this has happened.” (Williams to Audrey Wood, Feb. 5, 1945,

, p. 545.)

14

“a quick run-through”: Dowling, Nov. 21, 1964, CUCOHC, p. 815.

14

“It seemed incredible to us”:

, p. 412.

14

“All the company were on me”: Dowling, Nov. 21, 1964, CUCOHC, p. 815.

14

“artistically my big brother”: John Lahr, “Lucky Man: Horton Foote’s Three Acts,”

, Oct. 26, 2009, p. 90.

14

“a torrential downpour”: Dowling, Nov. 21, 1964, CUCOHC, p. 816.

14

“The most beautiful rainbow”: Ibid.

15

“thanking all of the gods”: Ibid., p. 818.

15

“soaking, wringing wet”: Ibid.

15

“Hel-lo, Ray”: Ibid.

15

“We could hear the buzzing”: Ibid.

15

“Eddie, can you get him a seat”: Horton Foote,

(New York: Scribner, 2001), p. 258.

15

“a pineapple ice cream soda”: Lahr, “Lucky Man,” p. 90.

15

kept Foote in Williams’s mind as possible casting: Williams to Horton Foote, Apr. 24, 1943,

, p. 443. “I have been working with tigerish fury on ‘The Gentleman Caller,’ ” he wrote Foote in 1943, adding in the next sentence, “It has at least one part in it for you and maybe two, if you can imagine such a thing.”

15

“Tennessee, tell them in front”: Foote,

, p. 258.

16

“Oh, my God, our fate”: Dowling, Nov. 21, 1964, CUCOHC, p. 817.

16

“Now is the time for unexpected things”: LOA1, p. 187.

16

“a huge advance over its predecessors”: Williams to Theatre Guild, Sept. 20, 1940,

, p. 279.

16

“to fuse lyricism and realism”:

, Dec. 11, 1939, p. 173. “One must learn . . . to fuse lyricism and realism into a congruous unit—I guess my chief trouble is that I don’t. I make the most frightful faux pas. . . . I feared today that I may have taken a distinctly wrong turn in turning to drama—But, oh, I do feel drama so intensely sometimes.”

16

“Onto it I projected the violent symbols”: Leverich,

, p. 383.

18

“one of my biggest troubles”: LOA1, p. 212.

18

“When people read it”: Ibid., p. 243.

18

“Says he’s exploring the world”: Ibid., p. 199.

18

“always feel that I bore people”:

, June 14, 1939, p. 187.

18

“I, too, am beginning to feel”:

, p. 74.

18

“Decent is something that’s scared”: LOA1, p. 235.

18

“Passion is something to be proud of”: Ibid., p. 258.

19

“We of the artistic world”: Williams to Donald Windham, Sept. 1940,

, p. 14.

19

“shiny black satin”: LOA1, p. 207.

19

“an enemy of light”: Ibid., p. 270.

19

“You heard me cussing”: Ibid., p. 211.

19

“new patterns”: Williams to Joseph Hazan, Sept. 3, 1940,

, pp. 274–75.

19

“I have spent so many years”: Williams to Donald Windham, June 19, 1945,

, p. 174.

19

“a shameless, flaunting symbol”: LOA1, p. 273.

20

Conjure Man: “The Conjure Man, if you are looking for a symbol, represents the dark, inscrutable face of things as they are, the essential mystery of life—‘the one who knows but is not telling’—omniscience, fate, or what have you, of which death, life and everything else are so many curious tokens sewn about his dark garments.” (Williams to Lawrence Langner, July 3, 1941,