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) (50 page)

“You could almost hear the women in the audience swoon as if they had suddenly found the rapist of their dreams,” Dalrymple said. “Brando was a savage, but what a sexy one! He was violent, crude, and totally mesmerizing. I don’t recall having seen such utter rapture in a drama, and, believe me, I’ve seen the greatest performances of anybody of my generation—all the greats, from John Barrymore to Katharine Cornell. When the curtain went down that night, it was more than a new star had been born. We were actually devastated, as if a quart of our blood had been drained from us. I knew that after Brando’s performance that night in
Streetcar
, that acting, and Broadway itself, had changed for all time.”

Sitting in the front row, along with Irene and Tennessee, were such famous faces as Monty Clift, Edward G. Robinson, Paul Muni, and Cary Grant.

Robert Lewis was also in the audience that night. He would later reflect on that memorable evening in the theater. “Marlon paved the way that night for other actors to come. You just name them, beginning with Marlon’s understudy, Ralph Meeker, who in time also played Stanley. The parade of Marlon Brando clones continued: Rip Torn, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, and most definitely James Dean.”

When the final curtain fell that opening night, it was Brando’s mother, Dodie, who was first on her feet to launch applause for her son that lasted thirty minutes. “Backstage, Jessica was furious,” Kim Hunter recalled. “She knew that all that clapping was for Marlon and not for her star part.”

One of the investors, Cary Grant, was the first to rush backstage to greet Brando with a theatrical tongue kiss. “I’m going to get my money back from the show,” he proclaimed. “I see a future in Hollywood for you. Irene knows how to get in touch with me. When you get to Hollywood, I want to show you around. You’ll find no better tour guide.”

It might be hard for modern theater audiences to understand the fuss associated with
Streetcar
in 1947. Of course, the world people inhabited then was a far and different place. As one critic put it, “
A Streetcar Named Desire
was awful and sublime. Only once in a generation do you see such a thing in the theater.”

“During the forties and fifties, the anti-fag battalions were everywhere on the march,” Gore Vidal claimed. “From 1945 to 1961,
Time
attacked with unusual ferocity everything produced or published by Tennessee Williams. ‘Fetid swamp’ was the phrase most often used to describe his work. But, in
Time
, all things will come to pass. The Bird is now a beloved institution.”

The harshest attack came from Mary McCarthy, the novelist and astringent critic. She wrote “the work of Tennessee Williams reeks of literary ambition as the apartment reeks of cheap perfume.” She also claimed that his taste inclined more to “the jagged scene, the jungle motifs, (‘then they come together with low, animal noises’), the tourist Mexican, clarinet music, suicide, homosexuality, rape, and insanity. His work creates in the end the very effect of painful falsity which is imparted to the Kowalski household by Blanche’s pink lampshades and couch covers.”

After the opening night performance, Tennessee invited his mother Edwina and his brother Dakin to join him for a party at “21.” Director George Cukor was the official host, but behind the scenes, Irene was picking up the hefty tab. On the way there, Edwina told Tennessee that before the curtain she had met the Brandos, as he would later recall.

“They looked very respectable to me,” she said. “I don’t know how they could have produced a wild thing for a son. And, frankly, if you really want to know my opinion, I think Dakin is far handsomer than Brando.”

“Speaking of wild things,” Dakin chimed in, “at this fancy party, they just might be asking how a God-fearing woman like you could have produced Tom here.”

“Tom,” she said, gently reaching for her son’s hand, “for the life of me, I don’t know why you insist on writing about Southern decadence when there are so many more spiritually uplifting subjects about the South that you could write about. You just give Yankees ammunition to use against us. I mean, even if Blanche and Stanley weren’t blood-related, it’s still incest!”

“Mother, dearest, I’m writing about fallen women, who exist in every part of America, not just the South,” Tennessee said. “You know that’s true. I learned about fallen women only after I left home. With you as a mother to Rose, Dakin, and me, I grew up in the home of a Southern lady.”

Despite the approbation and spectacular gaucherie of his mother, Tennessee’s “hot ticket” on Broadway brought royalties and awards, notably the Drama Critics Circle Prize for best play of the year, followed by the Pulitzer Prize.

—Greta Garbo

After
Streetcar
opened and perhaps to impress Brando, Truman Capote showed up backstage one night with the photographer, Cecil Beaton on one arm, and with Greta Garbo on the other. Kim Hunter and Jessica Tandy were part of the “audience” at this moment in theatrical history, although they remained out of the loop, except as eyewitnesses to later report what occurred.

After congratulating Brando on his brilliant performance, Garbo told him that she was here tonight because she’d promised Tennessee that she’d go to see the play since he wanted her to star as Blanche DuBois in the eventual film version of the work. If Garbo were aware that she was speaking in the presence of Tandy, who wanted to appear in the film version herself, she didn’t seem to have any sensitivity to that.

“I must turn Tennessee down,” Garbo told the private audience standing and listening, in utter awe of her. “Blanche DuBois is difficult, much too un-sympathetic. I’m an honest and clear-cut woman. I see things with lucidity. I could never play such a complicated woman. I couldn’t bear to tell lies and see things around the corner instead of straight-on. Besides, who would believe me as an aging Southern belle on the verge of madness? I couldn’t play Scarlett O’Hara either.”

At the door to his dressing room, Garbo impulsively kissed Brando on both cheeks as a parting gesture. She reached for a rose held in the hand of Cecil Beaton and handed it to Brando with a certain passion. She seductively kissed the rose before passing it to him. “That will put the dew on it,” she said before adjusting her gray highwayman hat and departing into the night.

Beaton remained behind to make a request of Brando, asking him if, over the weekend, he’d pose for a series of photographs for
Vanity Fair
. “Normally, Marlon would turn down such a request from what I’d heard about him,” Truman recalled. “But I think he was charmed by Cecil. He must have known that Cecil was primarily homosexual. I’m sure Marlon had heard that Cecil regularly fucked Garbo. For some reason, that held enormous intrigue for Marlon, as I was later to find out. I think Marlon wanted to learn what this mysterious Cecil was all about. In other words, what did a primarily gay photographer have that would make Garbo, who was primarily a lesbian, want to go to bed with him? I fear Marlon never learned the answer to that riddle. But he did agree to the photographic session. I invited myself to attend. This, I just knew, was going to be the best show in town.”

The next day Brando encountered Tennessee and reported on his exchange with Garbo, telling the playwright that the actress had turned down the film role of Blanche DuBois.

“It’s just as well,” Tennessee said. “I got carried away when I offered her the role of Blanche. Garbo is wrong for Blanche.” He looked at Brando as if he were a judge at the Spanish Inquisition. “Have you ever seen a drag queen impersonate Garbo?”

Brando said that he had not.

“That’s because she is unique,” Tennessee said. “Almost impossible to capture in an impersonation. Actually, she’s a hermaphrodite, with the cold quality of a mermaid. Definitely not Blanche.” As an afterthought, Tennessee added, “I could play Blanche better than Garbo, as you al ready know from my reading with you that night back on the Cape.”

Inviting Brando for a drink, Tennessee told him that when he’d first gone to see Garbo about the role of Blanche, he’d gotten so nervous that he actually pitched a different story idea to her. “I told her all about a film script I was working on. It’s called
The Pink Bedroom
and it’s about this actress and her lover, who’s also her theatrical agent and promoter. For an hour, I babbled on about the script with frequent interruptions of ‘
Vonderful!
’ from Garbo. But when I finally shut up, Garbo, in what appeared to be a complete change of heart, imperiously rose to her big feet to dismiss me. ‘Give it to Joan Crawford,’ she told me, and then I was out the door.”