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Authors: John Lahr

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Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (110 page)

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292
“PLEASE PLEASE stop”: Elia Kazan to Williams, Oct. 18, 1954, WUCA.
292
“I’m scared to death”: Ibid.
292
“I have no good suggestions”: Elia Kazan to Williams, Oct. 20, 1954, WUCA.
292
“the richest land”: LOA1, p. 929.
292
“no-neck monsters”: Ibid., p. 883.
292
“
From Manager to Owner
”: HRC.
293
“My father had a great gift for phrases”: Donald Spoto,
The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1985), p. 198.
293
“strikes the keynote of the play”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Nov. 3, 1954,
L2
, p. 551.
293
“reached beyond”:
M
, p. 168.
293
“a monster of fertility”: LOA1, p. 942.
293
BIG DADDY:
(He snatches the glass from Brick’s hand)
: Ibid.
294
“long drawn cry of agony and rage”: First draft of
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
, HRC.
294
This play is about what the second act is about”: Elia Kazan to Williams, Oct. 18, 1954, WUCA.
295
“I am left at the end of Act II”: Elia Kazan to Williams, Oct. 20, 1954, WUCA.
295
“to get what you want”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Oct. 1954,
L2
, pp. 549–50.
295
“had committed himself (verbally)”: Williams to Maria Britneva, Oct. 29, 1954,
FOA
, p. 103.
296
“More melody in your voice”:
KAL
, p. 541.
296
“the core of the play very hard”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Nov. 3, 1954,
L2
, pp. 551–52.
296
“This is a play about good bastards and good bitches”: Ibid.
296
“Vitality is the hero of the play!”: Williams to Elia Kazan, undated, LLC.
296
“and concentrating on the character of Margaret”: Williams to Elia Kazan, undated,
N
, p. 658.
297
“Maggie the Cat”: “Last week Margaret Lewis Powell died in a nursing home in North Carolina. . . . We all called her ‘Maggie the Cat,’ and indeed she was a survivor. Tennessee knew her and had heard all the stories from Paul [Bigelow] and me. . . . I do think Tennessee took the name from her. She was
very
beautiful.” (Jordan Massie to Lyle Leverich, May 19, 1995, LLC.) “He seemed more interested in stories about Maggie than in her. That same summer he got to know Big Daddy. Obviously, the seeds were planted and subsequently grew into a major play in the Williams canon.” (Jordan Massie to Lyle Leverich, June 5, 1995, LLC.)
297
“I think a lot of you”: Williams to Maria Britneva, Nov. 7, 1954,
FOA
, p. 106.
297
“no-neck monsters”: LOA1, p. 883.
297
“Honey! I’m writing about your spirit”:
FOA
, p. 107.
297
“You can be young without money”: LOA1, p. 908.
297
“always had to suck up to people”: Ibid., p. 907.
297
“The dress I married you in”: Drafts of
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
, HRC.
298
“I introduced them”: Williams to Audrey Wood, July 8, 1952, HRC.
298
“made me cry with happiness”: James Laughlin,
The Way It Wasn’t: From the Files of James Laughlin
, eds. Barbara Epler and Daniel Javitch (New York: New Directions, 2006), p. 184.
298
“Jamesie! A RUSSIAN!”: Ibid., pp. 184–85.
298
“Darling!”: Williams to Maria Britneva, Mar. 27, 1954,
FOA
, p. 90.
299
“My God!”:
FOA
, p. 91.
299
“broken her engagement to a multimillionaire”: John Lahr, “The Lady and Tennessee,”
The New Yorker
, Dec. 19, 1994, p. 81.
299
“I think you are one of the world’s”: Ibid.
299
“She is so strong-willed”: Ibid.
299
wandered around Europe: Williams to Audrey Wood, Aug. 5, 1954,
L2
, p. 538.
299
“Poor little Maria”: Williams to Audrey Wood, undated, ibid., p. 540.
299
“All hell has broke loose here”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Sept. 1954, ibid., p. 547.
300
“Maria and I are writing letters”: Williams to Audrey Wood, July 10, 1954, HRC.
300
“an artist of outstanding merit”:
FOA
, p. 112.
300
“The help she needs”: Williams to James Laughlin, Dec. 3, 1954, James Laughlin Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
300
“I don’t think anyone has ever upset me”: James Laughlin to Williams, Jan. 9, 1955, James Laughlin Papers.
301
“exciting ideas about the doomed heroine”:
FOA
, p. 112.
301
“There is no point in pretending”: Brooks Atkinson, “Williams Play Revived by Originals Only,”
New York Times
, Mar. 4, 1955.
301
“He was in kind of strange shape”: Lahr, “Lady and Tennessee,” p. 82.
302
“He thought she could help him”: Ibid., p. 81.
302
“Maria was living in a tiny, tiny flat”: Ibid., p. 82.
302
“I am not at all sure”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Nov. 23, 1954,
L2
, p. 554.
302
“He loved it”: Ibid.
302
“Loathe every minute of it”:
N
, Dec. 3, 1954, p. 663.
303
“the poem of the play”:
L2
, p. 559. This phrase appears in a manuscript fragment held by HRC, which is mentioned in the
L2
source cited.
303
“I do get his point”:
N
, Nov. 29, 1954, p. 663.
304
“I’m going to do the Williams play”: Elia Kazan to Molly Day Thacher, undated, WUCA.
304
“I ‘buy’ a lot of your letter”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Nov. 31, 1954, WUCA.
304
“the romantic world of adolescence”: Ibid.
305
“Brick gives me a pain”: Elia Kazan to Williams, Feb. 3, 1955, WUCA.
305
“Tenn, it’s the job of the playwright”: Elia Kazan to Williams, Feb. 11, 1955, WUCA.
305
“go a little further””: Elia Kazan to Williams, Jan. 5, 1955, WUCA.
305
“BIG DADDY: What did you say to him?”: Ibid.
306
“BIG DADDY: You musta said”: LOA1, p. 951.
306
“worried sick”: Elia Kazan to Williams, Feb. 11, 1955, WUCA.
306
“Brick all thru!”: Ibid.
306
“We see here”: Ibid.
307
“It’s only fair to put you on notice”: Elia Kazan to Williams, Feb. 3, 1955, WUCA.
307
forgo the estate: Elia Kazan to Williams, Feb. 5, 1955, WUCA: “Mightn’t this be a good spot for him to say to Gooper and Mae that they can have the fucking plantation . . . thus making Maggie’s job harder?”
307
“Can we make him funny”: Elia Kazan to Williams, Feb. 11, 1955, WUCA.
308
“Truth is something desperate”: LOA1, p. 1004.
308
“a meaningless piece of chi-chi”:
N
, Mar. 2, 1955, p. 667.
308
“acted like a stuffed turkey”: Ibid., Feb. 26, 1955, p. 665.
308
“inadequate”: Ibid., Feb. 22, 1955, p. 665.
308
“Already making plans”: Ibid., Feb. 26, 1955, p. 665.
308
“I am being utterly sincere”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Mar. 1, 1955,
L2
, p. 567.
308
“I didn’t write, plan, or edit”:
KAL
, p. 544.
308
Kazan had winkled out of Williams: Ibid., p. 546: “In my wish to make them ‘mine,’ I did overpower these two plays [
Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof
and
Sweet Bird of Youth
]. A sort of distortion was going on. I remember I’d felt an irritable impatience as I’d worked on those plays and, with it, a need to speak for myself at last. Here was born, I must suppose, the resolve to stop forcing myself into another person’s skin but rather to look for my own subjects and find, however inferior it must be to Tennessee’s, my own voice.”
308
“I told a lie to Big Daddy”: LOA1, p. 1005.
308
“I’d phone ahead”: Ibid.
310
“What do you say?”: Ibid., p. 976.
310
“that he has it still in his power”: Brian Parker, “Swinging a Cat,” in Tennessee Williams,
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
(New York: New Directions, 2004), p. 181.
310
he was agitated:
FOA
, p. 108.
310
“The New York opening of
Cat
”:
M
, p. 169.
310
“was in such a state of anger”:
RBAW
, p. 169.
311
“a failure, a distortion”:
M
, p. 169.
311
one person he trusted: Williams to Audrey Wood, Aug. 9, 1955,
L2
, p. 592: “You’re the only person that I trust in this world.”
311
she had ruined his play:
FOA
, p. 108.
311
“The wait for the morning notices”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, Mar. 25, 1955,
L2
, p. 569.
311
Toffenetti’s: The Italian restaurant occupied the corner where NASDAQ now stands.
311
“ ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ is Mr. Williams’ finest drama”: Brooks Atkinson, “Tennessee Williams’ ‘Cat,’ ”
New York Times
, Mar. 25, 1955.
311
“Mr. Williams is the man of our time”: Walter Kerr, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,”
New York Herald Tribune
, Mar. 25, 1955.
311
“enormous theatrical power”: Richard Watts Jr., “The Impact of Tennessee Williams,”
New York Post
, Mar. 25, 1955
.
311
“He studiously refused to permit”:
RBAW
, pp. 169–70.
311
“the shocking
duality”
: Williams to Elia Kazan, Nov. 3, 1954,
L2
, p. 552.
311
“Now that you’ve written your lovely notice”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, Mar. 25, 1955, ibid., p. 569.
311
“invidious resentment of [William] Inge’s great success”: Inge interviewed Williams in 1944 for the
St. Louis
Star-Times
; they became friends and briefly lovers. Williams introduced Inge to Wood and to Margo Jones, who produced Inge’s first play,
Farther Off from Heaven
(1947).
312
“I wanted Kazan to direct the play”: LOA1, p. 978.
312
“gave people generally the idea”: Elia Kazan to Williams, Apr. 22, 1960,
KOD
, p. 136.
312
“a success when I had given up thought”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Aug. 1955,
L2
, p. 588.
312
half a million dollars: The fee was the equivalent in today’s purchasing power of four million dollars.
312
“Figures stagger imagination”: Williams to Audrey Wood, July 2, 1955,
L2
, p. 576.
312
“You and I have come to know how difficult”: Audrey Wood to Williams, Aug. 3, 1955, HRC.
313
“I think he [Kazan] cheapened”: Williams to Audrey Wood, July 28, 1955,
L2
, p. 586.
313
“I was terribly distressed”:
CWTW
, p. 72.
313
“You never stated that in your preface”: Elia Kazan to Williams, Apr. 22, 1960,
KOD
, pp. 136–37.
313
“One’s enemy is always part of oneself”: Williams to Maria Britneva, Jan. 10, 1956,
FOA
, p. 131.
313
“A failure reaches fewer people”: LOA1, p. 978.
314
“a sort of a lunar personality”:
N
, June 24, 1955, p. 675.
314
“I am running away from something”: Williams to Audrey Wood, July 11, 1955,
L2
, p. 574.
314
died, at ninety-seven: The Reverend Walter Dakin died February 14, 1955. “Your presence in the city [New York] would be a great joy and comfort as well as bringing good luck.” (Williams to Rev. Walter Dakin, Sept. 13, 1950, HRC.) “Why is luck so resolutely against me. Did it die with grandfather?” (
BOOK: Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
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