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) (74 page)
Authors: Darwin Porter,Danforth Prince
Troy Donahue
...starring in an orgy
Seeing her condition, Ginsberg gave a lecture on the “glories of menstruation,” explaining how in the animal kingdom, menstrual blood was an important component of lubrification.
Gore later claimed he believed that Kerouac wanted to demonstrate to him how devoted he was to sexual contacts with women. He removed Grahame’s tampon and performed cunnilingus on her. He rose up only once to confront Gore. “Unlike you, I’m not put off by the scent of cunt blood.”
During the orgy, in a far corner of the room, Donahue was sodomizing Ginsberg. Still clad in his underwear, Gore stood surveying the scene, not wanting to join either grouping.
Allen Ginsberg
was never shy about appearing naked. His favorite expression of honesty was nakedness. “The poet stands naked before the world,” he proclaimed.
Facing a heckler at a reading in Los Angeles, he stripped naked and demanded that the man do the same.
He later admitted, “Except for a slight interest as a voyeur to decadence, the scene did not intrigue me. It was Kerouac’s show to reveal to me how straight he was. I was not impressed—in fact, rather disgusted by the whole scene. I put on my pants and quietly left.”
***
When Gore next encountered Ginsberg, the author of
Howl
discussed some of the dynamics of that orgiastic evening. “Let’s face it: Jack found himself in the bedroom with three faggots, and he had to show how macho he was. He had to reveal that he was a real cunt-man. After you left, everybody dipped into all sorts of combinations. As it ended up, Troy, not Gloria, was the belle of the ball.”
After the death of Kerouac in 1969, in New York City, the poet said to Gore, “It was a tragic ending for Jack. He died on October 20. For breakfast, he’d opened a tin of tuna fish. He was sitting in his favorite armchair drinking Johnny Walker scotch. Believe it or not, he was making notes for a book about his father’s print shop in Lowell. His wife, Stella Sampas, was in the kitchen. He yelled for her: ‘I’m bleeding.’ By the time he reached the hospital, it was too late. Blood was pouring from his mouth. His liver, after years of abuse, just exploded. Doctors operated on him to stop the bleeding, but he never regained consciousness. He was only forty-seven.”
As Gore remembered his final encounter with Ginsberg, the poet was not in good shape. Gore described him as thin and beardless, with his right eyelid drooping. He complained of diabetes, high blood pressure, and an irregular heartbeat, and was surviving on macrobiotic food.
Ginsberg was heading off to Lawrence, Kansas to meet Burroughs for what would be his final visit. Burroughs was deeply self-involved and preoccupied with his heroin addiction.
“Were you two guys ever lovers?” Gore asked.
“He made many sexual advances to me,” Ginsberg admitted. “I had no desire for him, but I gave in as an act of kindness.”
In the words of Burrough’s biographer, Ted Morgan, “Sexually, it was too bizarre to be satisfying to Ginsberg. For Burroughs, the act of sex underwent an amazing transformation. This reserved, sardonic, masculine man became a gushing, ecstatic, passionate woman in bed. The change was so extreme and startling that Ginsberg was alarmed.”
Young
Johnny Depp
Burroughs died in Lawrence on August 2, 1997, from complications from a heart attack he’d suffered the previous day.
Ginsberg was soon to follow. In New York, at the age of seventy, he died on April 5, 1997.
After being unsuccessfully treated for congestive heart failure, Ginsberg returned home. Knowing he was dying, he made phone calls to his friends for some final farewells.
His last call was to actor Johnny Depp, which he interrupted several times with wracking sobs.
Chapter Twenty-One
Tennessee Copes with La Lupa, Italy’s Volcanic Earth Mother
Anna Magnani,
the pasionate, dark-haird
realismo
star of Robert Rossellini’s
Open City
and Jean Renoir’s
Golden Coach
, was selected as the female star of the film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’
The Rose Tattoo
. She was forty-six, but, in Tennessee’s estimation, still thought of herself as a girl of twenty-eight.
Cast opposite her was Burt Lancaster, still at the peak of his celebrated male beauty.
“I tried to be the peacemaker,” Tennessee said, “as these two enormous egos came together like two high-speed trains, heading toward each other on the same track.”
After months of scheming
, Burt Lancaster had been awarded with a star role in the film version of a drama by Tennessee Williams,
The Rose Tattoo
(1955) opposite Anna Magnani.
He had been cast as the buffoonish truck driver, Alvaro Mangiacavallo
[which translates from the Italian as “Eat a Horse”]
, who woos a prickly widow, Serafina Delle Rose
[as played by Magnani]
back to life, romance, and love. The context was within a community of Sicilian immigrants uprooted and transplanted to the Mississippi shores of the Gulf of Mexico.
During the early stages of Burt’s involvement with
Rose Tattoo
, Tennessee met with him for drinks at the Beverly Hills Hotel to talk over the upcoming film. But first, they had to clear the air about why Burt hadn’t accepted the coveted role of Stanley Kowalski on Broadway in
A Streetcar Named Desire
in 1947.
Tennessee Williams
often didn’t like the way an actress brought one of his characters to the screen, but he thought
Anna Magnani
was magnificent in the role of Serafina. On a personal note, he praised her ability “to live within society yet to remain so free of its conventions.”
“In our later years, she picked up and discarded young men as fast as I did. It was what her heart desired, regardless of what others might think.”
“I realize now that the part was the greatest male role of the American post-war theater, and I’m still pissed off that I let it slip through my fingers,” Burt said. “I wanted the part, but my business partner, Harold Hecht, nixed the idea, for which I will never forgive him.”
Burt continued with a confession, “But frankly, I have to admit that Marlon did it better than I could have. As an actor, he’s a genius, although genius is a goddamn dangerous thing to possess. Perhaps I’m lucky to be merely talented.”
“Actually,” Tennessee responded, “I wrote a letter about you to Elia Kazan in 1947, telling him that I had met with you and that I was favorably impressed,” Tennessee said. “I told Gadge that you had more force and quickness than I expected from the rather phlegmatic character you portrayed in
The Killers
with Ava Gardner. I also told him you seemed like a man who would work well under good direction.”
“If I was phlegmatic in
The Killers
, it was because Ava drained me of all my testosterone throughout the course of the filming.”
“I noticed that Mr. Hecht was guarding you like a trunk of gold from Fort Knox,” Tennessee said. “That’s understandable. You were his meal ticket.”
“I’d teamed up with him,” Burt said. “With his experience, who wouldn’t? He was a former dancer with the Martha Graham troupe and the son of a Brooklyn iron contractor.”
“Perfect qualifications to make it in the movies,” Tennessee said. “For the film version, Jack Warner actually wanted you and Olivia de Havilland in the roles.”
Tennessee Evaluates Lancaster’s “Rose Tattoo”
“With that cast, it would have been altogether a different movie,” Burt said. “I’ve learned that many of the roles I’ve played were originally offered to Marlon. Now for the big question. Did you offer the role of Alvaro in
Rose Tattoo
to Marlon before me?”
Back to back,
Marlon Brando
(left)
and shirtless
Burt Lancaster
were often rivals for the same screen roles. Burt had wanted to star in
A Streetcar Named Desire
, and Marlon had considered appearing as the alcoholic husband (a role Burt had made famous) in
Come Back, Little Sheba
, the 1952 film adaptation of a William Inge play.
Burt later said that the greatest disappointment of his career was when he lost the role of Don Vito Corleone to Marlon in
The Godfather
.