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) (137 page)

“And then there were the plays,” Porter said. “One failure after another, and I attended every one of them, always finding some merit, some poetry, in all of them. The critics were harsh, even cruel. Tennessee thought they were deliberately cruel, and that was the one thing Blanche DuBois could not forgive.”

Maria Callas, Katharine Hepburn, Simone Signoret, & Ingrid Bergman Each Say “HELL NO!”

“People don’t like sustained success.”
—Elizabeth Taylor

Audrey Wood, still Tennessee’s agent, pulled off a remarkable deal. She sold the movie rights of
The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore
for $50,000, and even got an additional $100,000 for Tennessee to write the screenplay. Producer David Merrick was stunned, since previously, he’d already produced the play on Broadway on two separate occasions, the first with Hermione Baddeley and later with Tallulah Bankhead. Both productions had flopped.

Tennessee learned that Joseph Losey would be the director, and subsequently, he and Bill Glavin, during the closing months of their relationship, flew to London to meet with him. In America, Losey was a controversial figure, having been blacklisted during the communist witch hunt scare, as spearheaded by Joseph McCarthy, during the early 1950s.

Losey had studied in Germany with Bertold Brecht and had accumulated a string of impressive credits, notably the film,
The Servant
(1963), by Harold Pinter. A superb study of brooding decadence, it had co-starred James Fox and Dirk Bogarde. It was the story of how a corrupt manservant had become the master of his employer.

In England, after his meeting with Tennessee and Glavin, Losey was concerned with their physicalities and the perceived states of their health. Glavin said he’d have to undergo surgery for some gastrointestinal problem, and Tennessee confessed that he was suffering from “terminal hemorrhoids and the bloody mess of my rosebud.”

Privately, Glavin told Losey that Tennessee had become heavily dependent on drugs, especially Doriden
[a sedative normally used for the treatment of sleep disorders]
and that the drug seemed to be driving him deeper and deeper into paranoia.

Losey was disturbed by this admission, and wondered if Tennessee would be able to complete the scriptwriting project.

Tennessee liked what Losey held out as a promise. “I want to make a visually lyrical film in a beautiful island setting about both the welcome and the terror of an aging actress facing death.”

Losey didn’t like the title of
Milk Train
, and consequently, Tennessee agreed to change it to
Goforth
, in honor of the play’s leading character, Flora Goforth, who is “going forth” into death.

In London, Tennessee wanted to know if Losey missed—because of the Blacklist—not working in America. “I’m in sympathy with you. I’m surprised that J. Edgar Hoover didn’t put me in a dungeon as a communist homosexual.”

“I’m not really that bitter anymore,” Losey said. “If I had not been expelled, blacklisted, I would probably own three Cadillacs, two swimming pools, and millions of dollars—and I’d be dead. It is terrifying. It is disgusting. But you can get into the money trap. A good shaking up never did anyone any harm. I’m still here, and I’m still working, I’m still creative.”

There remained the problem of casting. For some reason, Tennessee wanted Sean Connery to play the male lead, that of the “Angel of Death,” a young poet, Chris Flanders.
[Tab Hunter had starred in the role with Bankhead on Broadway.]
At the time, Connery was about thirty-seven years old, and the role demanded a young man in his early 20s.

For the female lead, both Losey and Tennessee came up with a surprise
[but probably brilliant]
choice, Maria Callas. But both the opera diva and Connery turned down the roles. Losey then pursued James Fox and Simone Signoret, again to no avail.

Losey was also having trouble casting the “Witch of Capri,” Flora Goforth’s gossipy island neighbor, a role which had previously been portrayed on Broadway by Mildred Dunnock.

Losey approached Dirk Bogarde to accept the role, but was turned down. “It’s too high camp for me, and would spoil my macho image,” the gay actor said.

Losey reminded him that he’d played a gay character in the 1959 film,
Libel
, and again in the 1961 film,
Victim
, but Bogarde still refused. “I was gay in those films, but not a queen.”

Losey then approached Katharine Hepburn. After reading the script, she was furious, telephoning Losey to denounce him. At first, she told him how offended she was to have been offered such a small role. “Not only that, but the character is perverse. As you know, I appeared on the screen as Violet Venable in
Suddenly Last Summer
. That is the last time I want to play one of Tennessee Williams’ perverse characters. I am a very normal woman. I do not understand perversity—never have, never will.”

Finally, Losey, in another surprise casting call, decided he wanted Noël Coward to interpret the role of “The Witch of Capri.” At first he expected to be turned down, but Coward said he’d be delighted to play “This queen of High Camp. It would be a lark for me.” Subsequently, Coward agreed to sign a contract.

Losey still hadn’t signed the leads. He thought Ingrid Bergman and James M. Fox might be ideal. But when Bergman read the script, she raised violent objections. “The role is vulgar, and I’ve never been known to play vulgar women. I can’t even say the word ‘bugger’ without blushing.”

Tennessee was in Key West with Glavin when Losey called him. “You won’t believe this. “Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton are signing to do the movie. Burton doesn’t really want to do it, but Elizabeth does. Burton said he’ll do it because they need the money to meet their extravagant living expenses.”

“I love Elizabeth,” Tennessee told Losey, “and I have great admiration for Burton as an actor. But Flora, or ‘Sissy Goforth’ as I call her, is an actress whose face has been ravished by time. Tallulah was the right age, but was in such desperation she couldn’t wrap herself around the dialogue. Tab Hunter looked right for the part, but couldn’t pull it off.”

“I’ll be really blunt with you,” Losey said. “With Burton and Taylor cast as the leads, we can raise the rest of the money we need to make the film. In spite of their recent financial failures on the screen, the couple is still bankable.”

Then, before ringing off, he told Tennessee, “Incidentally, the title of Goforth has been nixed. We’ve retitled it as
Boom!”

En route to the film’s location in Sardinia, Tennessee and Glavin stopped in Portofino, where Elizabeth and Burton had anchored their yacht. There, accompanied by various members of their family, they were visiting Rex Harrison and his alcoholic wife, the Welsh actress, Rachel Roberts.

Tennessee warmly embraced Elizabeth, who kissed him directly on the mouth. Burton followed suit, even giving him a flicker of his tongue. “I did god damn all right playing Maggie the Cat and that poor girl in
Suddenly Last Summer,”
Elizabeth told Tennessee. “And Richard did just fine as that defrocked pervert in
Iguana
. I think we can pull the rabbit out of the hat one more time.”

Tennessee was delighted to hear that. But what disturbed him, as he later claimed, was the instant physical attraction between Glavin and Elizabeth. Perhaps Burton noticed it, too. “From the moment I introduced Elizabeth to Bill, she looked like she wanted him to fuck her. It didn’t help matters that whenever she sat down, that miniskirt she was wearing, the shortest I’d ever seen, clearly revealed her crotch. Bill, it seemed, couldn’t take his eyes off that ‘bush of fire’ that had already enflamed so many suitors in the past, including President Kennedy.”

The Burtons and the Harrisons, along with Tennessee and Glavin, gathered for pre-dinner drinks at La Gritta Bar along Portofino’s waterfront. It was clear that Roberts was already drunk.

Tennessee announced to everyone at the table that from then on, he wanted to be addressed as “Tom,” which had technically been his name since birth.

After drinks, the party was invited aboard the Burton/Taylor yacht.

“Even before we went aboard, while we were still onshore, at the bar, Tom spoke in a loud and powerful voice, very penetrating,” Burton said. “He was incoherent, and it was somewhat embarrassing. Elizabeth told him to lower his voice a few times, since the Burtons attracted far too much attention as it was.”

That evening aboard the yacht, moored next to one of Portofino’s most prominent quays, would be the first of many disastrous nights associated with the Burtons. Those embarrassments continued regularly onto the island of Sardinia, where most of
Boom!
would be shot.

“Fortunately, our brood had already retired downstairs when the riffraff came aboard,” Burton said. “And whereas Tom might have embarrassed us in the bar, Rachel was the supreme embarrassment once we climbed aboard.”

Things started amicably aboard the
Kalizma
. Burton explained that the yacht had been purchased for $200,000, but that it had cost another $150,000 to refit it. Built in 1906, it had originally been commissioned by an eccentric Englishman who had installed an organ so that he could play Bach during storms at sea. At one point, Sir Winston Churchill was said to have sailed aboard it. The 120-foot motor ship had been used as a patrol boat during both World Wars. By the time Burton and Taylor acquired it, it cost $150,000 a year in upkeep costs.

Elizabeth invited Glavin, but not Tennessee, below for a view of her state-room, where she explained that their designer, Arthur Barbosa,
[who had previously designed the Harrison’s villa]
, had painted it the color of mustard. “I screamed when I saw it and immediately ordered that it be repainted canary yellow.”

Tennessee noted that Glavin and Elizabeth were off alone together for a long time. It didn’t help when Burton told Tennessee, “Maybe she’s knocking off a quickie, if your boy is bisexual like me. With that miniskirt she’s wearing, it would be convenient to mate.”

Three hours later, the party dissolved into existential horror. As Tennessee recalled, “Roberts became drunk beyond belief,” he said. “She lambasted Rex, telling him he couldn’t satisfy a woman. She attacked his sex organ, claiming it was not big enough for the job, and that she might have to turn to Burton for the penetration she so desperately needed for sexual satisfaction.”