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) (155 page)

For years, Herlihy was my best friend. He introduced me to
Stanley Mills Haggart
, an author, art director for television commercials, and an awesome force in the arts and entertainment underground of Hollywood.

Stanley and his mother had arrived in Hollywood during its Silent Picture era, and got to know many of the players there, including both the friends and enemies of Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin, and later, Cary Grant and Randolph Scott. For years, he was a “leg man,” and reporter, gathering secrets (many of which could not be printed back them) for Hedda Hopper’s much-feared, widely syndicated newspaper column.

Until he died in 1980, I worked with Stanley in television advertising. In those days, movie stars shamelessly promoted commercial products,
Ronald Reagan
selling Arrow Shirts,
Eva Gabor
selling cigarettes, and
Joan Crawford
hawking Coca-Cola.
[Later, after she married Alfred Steele, Chairman of the Board at Pepsi, despite her preference for vodka, she switched soft drinks.]

With Stanley, I created a series of travel guides to Europe that became known as the Frommer Guides, selling a few million copies.

Near the end of his life, Stanley had me ghost-write his memoirs, which eventually stretched out in a disorganized draft to five volumes, never submitted for publication. He’d known not only Tennessee, but Truman Capote and Gore Vidal. He’d become close friends of these writers in the immediate aftermath of World War II. He met them through a mutual friend, the diarist,
Anaïs Nin
. Although later, I got to know both Truman and Gore personally, for the purposes of this book I drew heavily on Stanley’s revelations about Gore and Truman in the 1940s and 1950s.

Without the experiences of both Frank and Stanley, this book could not have been written—at least not with so much inside information into the writers’ private lives.

I’m also deeply grateful to Key West resident and author
Donald Windham
, who had co-authored, with Tennessee, the play
You Touched Me!
in the early 1940s.

Three women in Tennessee’s life offered invaluable information—
Marion Vaccaro, Maria St. Just
, and
Margaret Foresman
, the managing editor of
The Key West Citizen
before she came to live and work with me in New York.

Over the years, as I roamed the world doing research for Simon & Schuster, Prentice Hall, or any other entity then in control of the
Frommer Guides
, I encountered literally hundreds of people who had had some experience with Tennessee—everyone from movie stars, such as
Elizabeth Taylor
and
Richard Burton
, to hustlers and bartenders.

Countless others also had memories to share of Truman and Gore. Even if I couldn’t use all their material, I did come across many revelations that made their way into this book. I can’t mention all of those who contributed—some sources asked to remain anonymous—but my gratitude is extended.

There were, however, some people who were especially helpful because of their individual familiarity with one or even all three writers. I’ve singled them out for particular mention below:

Alvin Ailey
(for his memories of
House of Flowers);
Hermione Baddeley
(for her experience starring in
The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore);
Anne Bancroft
(a dear friend of long ago who shared her memories of both Broadway and Hollywood in the 1950s);
Tallulah Bankhead
(whose stories were always outrageous and fascinating);
Diana Barrymore
(a tragic, dear soul);
Barbara Baxley
(the female star of a film based on a novel I wrote and one of Tennessee’s favorite actresses);
Anne Baxter
(for those long, soggy nights in Connecticut);
Ingrid Bergman
(who allowed me to visit her vacation home on an island in Sweden);
Lem Billings
(at the Garon/Brookes Literary Agency, JFK’s best friend once discussed with me his hope of penning his memoirs);
Joan Blondell
(who was spontaneous and generous with her memories over extended periods in my home);
José Bolaños
(whom I first met in Puerto Vallarta);
Jane and Paul Bowles
(my friends when I lived in Tangier);
Marlon Brando
(who allowed me to show him “the hidden treasures” of Key West);
Montgomery Clift
(and especially his brother,
Brooks
); “Celebrity Seer”
John Cohan
(for his insider tips);
Noël Coward
(the information on this witty charmer came from
Greta Keller’s
unpublished memoirs, which I ghost-authored);
Joan Crawford
(for our association during the period when she was promoting Pepsi-Cola);
Candy Darling
(back when I was a frequent visitor to Andy Warhol’s Factory);
Bette Davis
(who, to my knowledge, always spoke the truth, as devastating as it was);
Marlene Dietrich
(she told me only what she wanted to tell—and nothing else!);
Troy Donahue
(whom I met when the Hollywood parade had ended);
Tom Drake
(a gentle man ruined by Hollywood);
Mildred Dunnock
(a great actress and a great human being);
Jack Dunphy
(Truman was his favorite subject);
Carlos Fiore
(who knew most of Marlon Brando’s secrets);
Frank Fontis
, Tennessee’s Key West gardener and handyman, “a spy in the house of love”; actor
Robert Francis
(one of Gore’s lovers who died before completing his life);
Ava Gardner
(my fellow Tarheel and a forever delight);
Tamara Geva
(a difficult friend, but a loyal one); my traveling companion in the Balearic Islands,
Dick Hanley
(for his memories of Elizabeth Taylor);
Gregory Hemingway
(for his remembrances of a brutal father);
William Inge
(my houseguest in Key West);
Christopher Isherwood
(who shared memories of all three writers, especially of Tennessee during his early days in Hollywood); my friend and neighbor
James Kirkwood
(who knew all three writers intimately);
Harold Lang
(for his relationship with Gore Vidal);
Guy Madison
(who, during our meetings in Thousand Oaks refused to let me ghost-write his memoirs—perhaps with good reason!);
Carson McCullers
(for her special, often provocative, insights into Tennessee and “that squeaky dwarf, Truman Capote”);
Anaïs Nin
(for her disapproving memories of Gore Vidal, and for the many times I was invited into her home in Greenwich Village);
Patrick O’Neal
(for his side of the story about the theatrical run of
Night of the Iguana);
Anne Meacham
(for sharing details of those turbulent weeks she spent with Tennessee); and for my friend
Danny Stirrup
(for his shared memories of the early days, in the 1940s and 50s, of Tennessee and Frank Merlo’s time together in Key West). I also owe a special debt of gratitude to the information relayed to me by Tennessee’s long time literary agent,
Audrey Wood
. (“Marketing and coping with Tennessee was one bumpy ride,” she said. “But what a thrilling experience it was.”)

Most of all, I am grateful to my co-author,
Danforth Prince
, for the tireless months he spent reviewing mountains of data and researching the most minute details of what happened when. He’s a marvelous young publisher and writer, a tireless researcher, who seems to know how to locate the “gold nuggets” in a field of stones.

Darwin Porter

January, 2014
New York City

As an intense and precocious nine-year-old,
Darwin Porter
began meeting movie stars, TV personalities, politicians, and singers through his vivacious and attractive mother, Hazel, a somewhat eccentric Southern girl who had lost her husband in World War II. Migrating from the depression-ravaged valleys of western North Carolina to Miami Beach during its most ebullient heyday, Hazel became a stylist, wardrobe mistress, and personal assistant to the vaudeville comedienne Sophie Tucker, the bawdy and irrepressible “Last of the Red Hot Mamas.”

Virtually every show-biz celebrity who visited Miami Beach paid a call on “Miss Sophie,” and Darwin as a pre-teen loosely and indulgently supervised by his mother, was regularly dazzled by the likes of Judy Garland, Dinah Shore, Veronica Lake, Linda Darnell, Martha Raye, and Ronald Reagan, who arrived to pay his respects to Miss Sophie with a young blonde starlet on the rise—Marilyn Monroe.

Hazel’s work for Sophie Tucker did not preclude an active dating life: Her
beaux
included Richard Widmark, Victor Mature, Frank Sinatra (who “tipped” teenaged Darwin the then-astronomical sum of ten dollars for getting out of the way), and that alltime “second lead,” Wendell Corey, when he wasn’t emoting with Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford.

As a late teenager, Darwin edited
The Miami Hurricane
at the University of Miami, where he interviewed Eleanor Roosevelt, Tab Hunter, Lucille Ball, and Adlai Stevenson. He also worked for Florida’s then-Senator George Smathers, one of John F. Kennedy’s best friends, establishing an ongoing pattern of picking up “Jack and Jackie” lore while still a student.

After graduation, as a journalist, he was commissioned with the opening of a bureau of
The Miami Herald
in Key West (Florida), where he took frequent morning walks with retired U.S. president Harry S Truman during his vacations in what had functioned as his “Winter White House.” He also got to know, sometimes very well, various celebrities “slumming” their way through off-the-record holidays in the orbit of then-resident Tennessee Williams. Celebrities hanging out in the permissive arts environment of Key West during those days included Tallulah Bankhead, Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, the stepfather of Richard Burton, a gaggle of show-biz and publishing moguls, and the once-notorious stripper, Bettie Page.

For about a decade in New York, Darwin worked in television journalism and advertising with his long-time partner, the journalist, art director, and distinguished arts-industry socialite Stanley Mills Haggart. Jointly, they produced TV commercials starring such high-powered stars as Joan Crawford (then feverishly promoting Pepsi-Cola), Ronald Reagan (General Electric), and Debbie Reynolds (selling Singer Sewing Machines), along with such other entertainers as Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Arlene Dahl, and countless other show-biz personalities hawking commercial products.

During his youth, Stanley had flourished as an insider in early Hollywood as a “leg man” and source of information for Hedda Hopper, the fabled gossip columnist. When Stanley wasn’t dishing newsy revelations with Hedda, he had worked as a Powers model; a romantic lead opposite Silent-era film star Mae Murray; the intimate companion of superstar Randolph Scott before Scott became emotionally involved with Cary Grant; and a man-about-town who archived gossip from everybody who mattered back when the movie colony was small, accessible, and confident that details about their tribal rites would absolutely never be reported in the press. Over the years, Stanley’s vast cornucopia of inside Hollywood information was passed on to Darwin, who amplified it with copious interviews and research of his own.

After Stanley’s death in 1980, Darwin inherited a treasure trove of memoirs, notes, and interviews detailing Stanley’s early adventures in Hollywood, including in-depth recitations of scandals that even Hopper during her heyday was afraid to publish. Most legal and journalistic standards back then interpreted those oral histories as “unprintable.” Times, of course, changed.

Beginning in the early 1960s, Darwin joined forces with the then-fledgling Arthur Frommer organization, playing a key role in researching and writing more than 50 titles and defining the style and values that later emerged as the world’s leading travel accessories, The Frommer Guides, with particular emphasis on Europe, California, New England, and the Caribbean. Between the creation and updating of hundreds of editions of detailed travel guides to England, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Germany, California, and Switzerland, he continued to interview and discuss the triumphs, feuds, and frustrations of celebrities, many by then reclusive, whom he either sought out or encountered randomly as part of his extensive travels. Ava Gardner and Lana Turner were particularly insightful.

One day when Darwin lived in Tangier, he walked into an opium den to discover Marlene Dietrich sitting alone in a corner.

Darwin has also written several novels, including the best-selling cult classic
Butterflies in Heat
(which was later made into a film,
Tropic of Desire
, starring Eartha Kitt),
Venus
(inspired by the life of the fabled eroticist and diarist, Anaïs Nin), and
Midnight in Savannah
, a satirical overview of the sexual eccentricities of the Deep South inspired by Savannah’s most notorious celebrity murder. He also transformed into literary format the details which he and Stanley Haggart had compiled about the relatively underpublicized scandals of the Silent Screen, releasing them in 2001 as
Hollywood’s Silent Closet
, “an uncensored, underground history of Pre-Code Hollywood, loaded with facts and rumors from generations past.” A few years later, he did the same for the country-western music industry when he issued
Rhinestone Country
.

Since then, Darwin has penned more than a dozen uncensored Hollywood biographies, many of them award-winners, on subjects who have included Marlon Brando; Merv Griffin; Katharine Hepburn; Howard Hughes; Humphrey Bogart; Michael Jackson; Paul Newman; Steve McQueen; Marilyn Monroe; Elizabeth Taylor; Frank Sinatra; John F. Kennedy; Vivien Leigh; Laurence Olivier; the well known porn star, Linda Lovelace; and all three of the fabulous Gabor sisters.

As a departure from his usual repertoire, Darwin also wrote the controversial
J. Edgar Hoover & Clyde Tolson: Investigating the Sexual Secrets of America’s Most Famous Men and Women
, a book about celebrity, voyeurism, political and sexual repression, and blackmail within the highest circles of the U.S. government.