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) (99 page)

When Guinness heard rundowns of Davis’ many grievances, he (at first) was gracious. He told Gore, “Not only did Bette not trust Hamer, but she was suspicious of me right from the beginning. She seemed to think I was going to steal scenes from her. I had no intention of doing that, and was falsely accused. Miss Davis did not like any of the British crew, especially Hamer and me.”

When Bette’s vicious and oft-repeated attacks later reached the press, Guinness responded, “Bette Davis entirely missed the character of the old countess, and she wanted to be extravagantly over-dressed and surrounded, quite ridiculously, by flowers. She spat out her lines in her familiar way, like she was attacking Miriam Hopkins in one of her old movies. She is a strong and aggressive personality. She held me responsible for the failure of her performance, which she might more accurately have attributed to herself.”

Guinness also battled with Gore over his script, defining it as “fussy.”

When Du Maurier was shown the rushes, she also attacked Gore, claiming that “He has saddened me by making a disaster out of my novel.”

Guinness later contributed to the growing feud, intoning, “It was a film that should never have been done with that lamentable script of Vidal’s.”

Wanting someone to blame, Du Maurier continued her public criticisms of Gore prior to the film’s release.

Gore counter-attacked, asserting: “Her novel,
The Scapegoat
, is dreadful. I also don’t appreciate the bitch going around calling me ‘the hack from Hollywood.’ I’ve tried to exercise tact and patience with this supreme best-selling author, and Guinness treats her like a potential werewolf at dusk.”

Despite his contentions with Guinness and Du Maurier, Gore bonded with the alcoholic director, Robert Hamer. “We maliciously read Du Maurier’s prose out loud,” he said, “savoring the rich tautologies, the gleaming oxymorons, and the surreal syntax.”

Hamer introduced Gore to his so-called girlfriend, Joan Greenwood, an English actress known for her slow, precise elocution and her husky voice. Gore had seen her as Gwendolen in the 1952 film version
The Importance of Being Earnest
.

“Hamer privately told me that Joan claimed she was ‘too small to be entered,” so their lovemaking was limited,” Gore said. “Actually, Hamer was mainly homosexual. One drunken night he came on to me.”

Du Maurier’s biographer, Margaret Forster, claimed that “Du Maurier’s denial of her bisexuality unveiled a homophobic fear of her true nature.”

When the author attacked Gore on his homosexuality, he fired back. He’d learned from Noël Coward that Du Maurier had had affairs with actress Gertrude Lawrence and with Ellen Doubleday, the wife of her American publisher. Vengefully, in response, Du Maurier told a reporter, “I find it impossible to get through any book Vidal ever wrote.”

Gore vollied back with: “At least my work isn’t plagiarized.”

[As a literary scholar, Gore made it a point to investigate frequently aired charges of plagiarism in Du Maurier’s work, and he found that these accusations had merit. Gore discovered embarrassing similarities between Du Maurier’s
Rebecca
and a novel
, The Successor
, written by a Brazilian, Carolina Nabuco. In addition, Du Maurier’s famous short story
, The Birds
(1952), later adapted into Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film, was very similar to Frank Baker’s novel
, The Birds
(1936). Finally, her 1959 short story, “Ganymede,” contained many similarities to Thomas Mann’s semi-autobiographical 1912 novella
, Death in Venice
.]

Months later, when Bette met Gore in Hollywood, she said, “Making
The Scapegoat
was one of the most unpleasant experiences I’ve ever had on any set. Guinness is an egomaniac.”

“At least you were spared the lesbian advances of Daphne Du Maurier,” Gore told her.

Years later, Gore was approached by two middle-aged filmmakers planning to film a TV documentary on the life and career of Bette Davis. He granted a filmed interview with them. Later, to his surprise, he learned that the project had been abruptly cancelled.

Months had gone by when Gore, by happenstance, encountered one of the filmmakers at Chasen’s in Los Angeles, Gore asked what had happened to their documentary.

In response, Gore was told that “The young powers that be at our studio, the ones with the money, had never heard of Bette Davis.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Maggie the Cat
(later retitled
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)
got off to a rocky start. Deep in his drug-induced paranoia, Tennessee charged that his loyal and longtime agent, Audrey Wood, “detested my play. She even wrote me asking if I had ‘flipped out.’ She claimed she didn’t understand it.”

To Tennessee, under fire, Wood denied these accusations. “I received a large, rather bulky and disorganized manuscript,” she said. “Most of it had been typed on hotel stationery from various parts of the world—Key West, Los Angeles, Mexico, Rome. Some pages were even handwritten.”

“I stayed up until four in the morning, reading every word of this disjointed material, which had enough dialogue for three or four plays. If presented in its entirety, the play would have opened at four o’clock in the afternoon, with the curtain rung down by midnight or later. But from the beginning, I realized its great potential, and, of course, I understood it, including the theme of latent homosexuality. My God, half of my clients, including Bill Inge, were gay.”

“I wrote Tennessee that when a shorter draft emerged,
Maggie the Cat
would be his best play since
A Streetcar Named Desire
. Not only that, but I told him that with the proper script—one that would appease the Production Code in Hollywood—I could get the best movie deal ever for him, at least half a million dollars, enough for him to retire—with Frankie Merlo.”

With his revised play, by now officially retitled
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
, Tennessee and Audrey went first to Cheryl Crawford, who had previously functioned as producer (1950-1951) of the theatrical version of
The Rose Tattoo
. Tennessee was greatly disappointed when she rejected his latest play, claiming “There is not one character the audience can root for.”

In January of 1955, Wood won the approval of Playwrights’ Company to produce the play on Broadway, knowing that—based on its theme of impotence and repressed homosexuality—that it would be controversial.

The play focused on the interactions of characters rarely assembled together on Broadway, centering around members of a rich family, owners of an important plantation in the Deep South. Featured were Brick, a former athlete and now an alcoholic, and his sexually frustrated wife, Maggie the Cat.

Brick is in mourning in the wake of the suicide of his friend, Skipper. It was obvious to hip and sophisticated playgoers in 1955 at the Morosco Theatre in New York City that Brick was really in love with Skipper, but had rejected him. Skipper had slept with Maggie to prove that he was not homosexual, but during their interlude together, he was impotent. This was supposedly a key element that contributed to his suicide.

Brick’s parents, Big Daddy and Big Mama, were some of the strongest roles ever written for Broadway. The play opens as Big Daddy returns from the hospital. He thinks he was given a clear bill of health, but his greedy family, including Sister Woman, Brother Man, and their “no neck monster children,” are fully aware that he is dying of cancer.

In New York, in January of 1955, Tennessee met with the play’s director, Elia Kazan, who had previously helmed
A Streetcar Named Desire
. He was shocked at the massive rewrites Kazan demanded. “I fear my original intention has gone the way of my virginity!” he told Kazan. Nonetheless, he agreed to follow Kazan’s advice on the rewrites. He told Frank Merlo, “I’m desperate for a success.”