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) (80 page)

Wherever he traveled, Tennessee sporadically began to write dialogue for his play,
The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore
. He used his villa overlooking the sea along the
Costiera [i.e., Amalfi Drive]
as a setting for the play.

Nearly a decade would pass before the public would see
Milk Train
staged.

[The melodrama tells the story of the imperious Flora Goforth, who has retired to Italy after an extravagant life. Six-time-widowed, the American dowager is dictating her scandalous memoirs during her final days. She ingests a variety of alcoholic and chemical substances to help her sustain the illusion that death is not knocking on her door
.

But it appears. The “Angel of Death” is a handsome poet and creator of mobiles named Christopher Flanders. He arrives at her villa either to freeloador to help Flora find salvation. Most of the play consists of convoluted dialogue between the star and Chris. Finally, Miss Go-forth “goes forth” (i.e., she dies) after a long struggle with terminal illness.]

After years of struggle, Tennessee finally finished the first complete draft of
The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore
. While he was in Rome, word came from the dashing Gian Carlo Menotti, the Italian-American composer and librettist, that he wanted to present the first-ever production of the play at his
Festival dei Due Mondi
in the hilltown of Spoleto, north of Rome.

Tennessee agreed to have dinner with him and his equally dashing lover, Thomas Schippers, who was one of the world’s most famous conductors, highly regarded for his work in opera. Before moving in with Menotti, he’d shared the bed of Leonard Bernstein.

After the dinner, Tennessee agreed to allow his play to be previewed at Spoleto. “A great old British battle-ax was given the lead role of Flora Goforth,” Tennessee said. He was referring to the character actress, Hermione Baddeley, who had once lived with actor Laurence Harvey. Baddeley told Tennessee, “After my affair with the man we call ‘Florence of Lithuania,’ nothing in life is ever really too awful again.”

In Spoleto, in July of 1962, on opening night, Baddeley gave a stunning performance as Flora Goforth. Even Anna Magnani drove up from Rome and pronounced her as
come magnifica!”

Originally, Tennessee had planned to offer the part to Tallulah Bankhead for its eventual migration to Broadway. But he became so carried away that backstage, on opening night in Spoleto, he awarded the part, as it applied to its eventual run on Broadway more than a year later, to Baddeley. As he later said, “I still had some clout back then.”

“You are my Broadway baby,” he told Baddeley.

Tennessee spoke with disdain of the Spoleto Festival, calling it “mainly an ego-trip for the
maestro
, Gian Carlo Menotti, and his lover, Tommy Schippers. The climax was when Menotti and Schippers appear in white tie regalia and are charioted through the packed streets in a big new convertible, probably a caddy or a Rolls. Never mind. It was his kick, and I don’t think I should knock another man’s kick, nor his ego-trips, nor the fantasy world he lives in.”

In previews in New Haven and Boston, critics praised Baddeley’s performace, but attacked Tennessee’s play. Nonetheless, it opened on Broadway during a city-wide newspaper strike in January of 1963 and ran for only 69 performances at the Morosco Theater. Even though the play was a failure, Baddeley was nominated for a Tony for Best Performance by an Actress that year.

Mildred Dunnock got raves as the sharp-tongued old Witch of Capri, “who floats in wearing gauzy brown, looking like a superannuated ballerina
prima assoluta.”
As the young poet, Paul Robeling was deemed “utterly unconvincing.” Tennessee’s script itself was interpreted as “the most disappointing” element of the production. Writing in
The New York Times
, Howard Taubman declared, “Mr. Williams’ new play fails.”

In spite of the failure of his play on Broadway, Tennessee did not give up. He kept rewriting the drama. In some ways, his creation of Flora Goforth reflected his own problems and personality. He’d lost confidence in his work, and feeling that “Broadway audiences have deserted me. I fear that in the future my plays will be presented at workshops starring wannabees with no talent.

”Tennessee was aging and morbidly concerned with his physical deterioration. At times, he predicted to friends, “Like Frankie Merlo, my death is imminent.”

From Puerto Vallarta, in August of 1963, Tennessee spoke to Tallulah after many a chilly year. “Let’s stop the border wars between Alabama and Mississippi,” he said. “You always tell your cunties
[Tallulah’s nickname for her servants]
to press on. I’m in Mexico right now shooting
The Night of the Iguana
with Richard Burton and Ava Gardner and belting down a few at night with Elizabeth Taylor. She’s on the set during the day trying to protect her Welshman from the clutches of Ava Gardner.”

Brushing aside past insults and injuries, he asked Tallulah to appear as the aging actress Flora Goforth in his rewritten version of
The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore
, which had failed earlier that year.

Tallulah responded imperiously. “Although I swore I’d never appear in another play by one Tennessee Williams, have Audrey Wood send me the script tomorrow morning. I’ll belt down some bourbon and branch water, brace myself, and read through it in one sitting.”

She was true to her word. After reading it, she turned to her secretary, Ted Hook. He wants me to play “A promiscuous, pill-ravaged rip, born in a Georgia swamp. Tennessee obviously had me in mind when he conjured up that woman.”

The following day, the director, Tony Richardson, called on her. The young English director was “one of the hottest on the planet,” having scored a great success with the film
Tom Jones
. The bisexual actor was in a troubled marriage at the time to Vanessa Redgrave.

Amazingly, Richardson had never seen Tallulah perform when he met her. He also had not seen her most memorable film interpretation, her performance in
Lifeboat
(1944), directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

[When Lifeboat was screened for Richardson by David Merrick, the director told the producer, “I found her no livelier in that film than on the first night I met her.”]

Richardson told Tallulah that the David Merrick Foundation was willing to give the play a second try, blaming its initial failure on the newspaper strike. Richardson approved of Tennessee’s rewrites, saying, “He’s made his statement clearer now.”

“At least clearer to you,
dah-ling
,” Tallulah quipped. “This Flora Goforth sounds pretty muddled on drink and drugs, a condition I know only too well. I won’t even have to act the part—I’ll just be myself.” Then she lit a cigarette and stared at him.

“It could be one of your defining roles on the stage,” he said. “You don’t want to be remembered just for Noël Coward’s
Private Lives.”

Her face flushed anger. She was aware that to this avant-garde New Wave director, she evoked the frivolous British Theatre of yesteryear.

“Who have you cast as my leading man?” she asked.

“Tab Hunter,” he said, a bit too bluntly and defiantly for her tastes.

“Oh,
PLEASE
,
dah-ling
,” she responded. “People are eating. You’re not serious, are you?”

“Yes, I am,” he said. “Tab has tremendous potential, which has been wasted as a teen idol in Hollywood. At thirty-two he’s mature and is willing to work his butt off in this role.”

“Or working his butt off in some other way.”

Richardson seemed to resent Tallulah’s implication that he wanted Hunter in the play so that he could seduce him. Richardson’s enduring memory of his meeting with Tallulah involved being “wetted down by her white poodle, Dolores.”

When Tennessee returned to New York, he called on Tallulah. She told him, “That Richardson prick doesn’t give a fuck about Flora Goforth. All he’s interested in is bedding Tab Hunter.”

He was horrified at the sight of Tallulah. Since he’d last seen her, she had deteriorated badly. To make her condition worse, her hand was severely burned. A pack of matches had exploded when she was lighting a cigarette. Her doctor had told her not to bandage it because he diagnosed that access to the open air would make it heal more quickly.

“I don’t know if David Merrick will be a lot of help either,” Tennessee warned her, beginning to regret that he’d offered her the role. “That first-rate showman seems to be pouring all his energy into producing
Hello, Dolly!”

“As for Richardson, don’t blame him,” Tennessee said. “Who wouldn’t want to seduce Tab? Actually, Richardson first offered the role to Tony Perkins, Tab’s lover. He would have been perfect. It was Tony who suggested that Tab play the part.”

What Tennessee didn’t tell Tallulah was that Richardson had not only wanted Perkins for the male lead, but that he had wanted to cast Katharine Hepburn as Flora Goforth. She had rejected the offer, invoking the excuse that, “Spence is ailing, and I must take care of him.”

Her reference, of course, was to her platonic lover, Spencer Tracy.

When Tallulah finally met Hunter, she was most gracious. “How clean cut you look,” she said. “Thank God I’m here,
dah-ling
, to corrupt you.”

Later that afternoon, she complained to Richardson, “That Tab creature and I are going to get along like spitting cats.”

When they weren’t rehearsing, Hunter’s presence, points of view, and conversation bored her. He’d recently filmed
The Golden Arrow (aka La Freccia d’Oro;
1962).
[The story follows the tribulations of Hassan (Tab Hunter), a handsome adventurer who, viewers learn, is the lost heir to the throne of Damascus. When the sultan’s daughter (as interpreted by Rossana Podesta) is abducted, Hassam vows to rescue her. He survives and triumphs over a wizard who turns men to stone, and a vengeful sorceress who rules an underground managerie of flaming monsters. Through it all he is aided by a trio of wise-guy genies, a flying carpet, agolden arrow, and a magic mirror.]