Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (112 page)

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Authors: John Lahr

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BOOK: Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
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going
to!”: Ibid.
335
“a true love”: Ibid., p. 89.
335
“Oh, don’t talk about love”: Ibid.
335
“You’ve given me life”: Ibid., p. 94.
336
“in a sort of delirium”: Ibid., p. 95.
336
“Oh, God, what did I do?”: Williams,
Orpheus Descending
, p. 77. In LOA2, p. 95, Lady moans, “Oh, God, oh—God.”
336
“The show is over”: LOA2, p. 96.
336
“the Tigress of the Tiber”: Tennessee Williams, “Anna Magnani: Tigress of the Tiber,”
New York Herald Tribune
, Dec. 11, 1955.
336
“a woman who met with emotional disaster”: LOA2, p. 24.
336
“The only important thing in life”: Anna Magnani to Martin Juro, Sept. 11, 1955, LLC.
336
“She was beyond convention”:
M
, p. 165.
336
“the intermediary between my reserve”: Ibid., p. 163.
337
“Forget that bit about her being nervous”: Williams to Elia Kazan, undated, WUCA.
337
“incomparable sense of truth”: Williams, “Anna Magnani.”
337
“like a mackerel sky”: Ibid.
337
“surpasses mine but is more excusable”: Williams to Audrey Wood, June 29, 1956,
L2
, p. 616.
337
“Ciao, Tenn. What is the program”:
M
, pp. 163–64.
337
“I know how to write for that boy”: Williams to Audrey Wood, June 1955,
L2
, p. 573.
337
ghostwriting mash notes:
TWIB
, p. 227.
337
“She has a genius”: Williams to Maria Britneva, Sept. 29, 1954,
FOA
, p. 104.
337
“This news gave me a great joy”: Anna Magnani to Audrey Wood, undated, HRC.
337
“I know that Brando is very much interested”: Anna Magnani to Audrey Wood, November 3, 1955, HRC. About Brando, Magnani goes on to say, “As far as I am concerned I am not interested in him as a person, he only remains the perfect actor for the role of Val. That’s about all. For the rest I don’t give a damn.”
339
“You wrote your funky ass off”: Marlon Brando to Williams, undated, Columbia.
339
“When you play with her”: Quotation from undated letter from Marlon Brando reproduced by permission of Brando Enterprises, L.P.
340
“The money wasn’t nearly as much a problem”: JLI with Sidney Lumet, 2011, JLC.
340
“After we had some meetings”: Marlon Brando with Robert Lindsey,
Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me
(New York: Random House, 1994), p. 262.
341
“The essence of Anna?”: JLI with Sidney Lumet, 2011, JLC.
341
“It completely ruined my staging”: Ibid.
341
“sputters more often”: Review of
The Fugitive Kind
,
Variety,
Dec. 31, 1959.
341
“throbbing and feeling staggered”: Bosley Crowther, “2 Theatres Show Film from Williams Play,”
New York Times
, Apr. 5, 1960.
341
“the first time I saw the rushes”: JLI with Sidney Lumet, 2011, JLC.
342
offered to mount one of Williams’s one-act plays: Williams to Audrey Wood, Feb. 7, 1940,
L1
, p. 230: “Clurman took long play [
Battle of Angels
] to Boston with him. . . .
Clurman
says he may do 1-acts if Odets play is successful—this spring—Afraid the ‘
if
’ clause is a big one.”
342
“It is the ‘peculiar people’ ”: Harold Clurman, “Introduction,” in Tennessee Williams,
Tennessee Williams:
Eight Plays
(Garden City, N.Y.: Nelson Doubleday, 1979).
342
“dear man and fine critic”:
M
, p. 172.
342
“Harold’s rehearsals”:
KAL
, pp. 121–22.
342
“I know that Anna would break”: Williams to Audrey Wood, July 28, 1955,
L2
, p. 587.
342
“under-directed”:
M
, p. 172.
342
“For your own sake, honey”: Williams to Cheryl Crawford, Dec. 1956,
L2
, p. 641.
343
“a truly shattering setback”:
M
, p. 172.
343
“one of Mr. Williams’s pleasantest plays”: Brooks Atkinson, “Theatre: Rural Orpheus,”
New York Times
, Mar. 22, 1957.
343
“something missing”: “Only the Flashes,”
Newsweek
, Jan. 1, 1957.
343
“a drama of notable power”: Richard Watts Jr., “The World of Tennessee Williams,”
New York Post
, Mar. 22, 1957.
343
“The trouble with Tennessee Williams’s new play”: Wolcott Gibbs, “Well, Descending, Anyway,”
The New Yorker
, Mar. 30, 1957.
343
“put it down with a vengeance”:
M
, p. 173.
343
“There was an emotional shock”: Williams to Donald Windham,
TWLDW
, June 13, 1957, p. 293.
343
“If he ever refers to my sister”: CC Williams to Audrey Wood, Feb. 8, 1950,
L2
, p. 274.
343
“a flop”:
Knoxville News-Sentinel
, Mar. 28, 1957, LLC.
343
“my desperate old father”:
N
, June 6, 1954, p. 639.
343
“I’ve stopped hating my father”: Williams to Kenneth Tynan, July 26, 1955,
TWLDW
, p. 302.
344
“So a tragic situation works itself out”: Williams to Paul Bigelow, Jan. 7, 1948,
L2
, p. 143.
344
“My father was really quite an embarrassment”: LLI with Dakin Williams, 1985, LLC.
344
“I was surprised that Tennessee came”: Ibid.
344
“Dakin told me”:
RMTT
, p. 202.
344
both Dakin and Tennessee cried over their father:
TWIB
, p. 212; see also Gilbert Maxwell,
Tennessee Williams and Friends: An Informal Biography
(Cleveland: World Publishing, 1965), p. 222.
344
“The Williams family was not one”:
TWIB
, p. 150.
344
“I wonder if he knew”:
CS
, “The Man in the Overstuffed Chair,” p. xvii.
345
as “an exceptionally beautiful service”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Jan. 5, 1957, LLC.
345
“Am I wrong in thinking”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Apr. 31, 1957,
L2
, p. 646. The previous month Kazan had written Williams his critique of the production of
Orpheus Descending
. “I think you should have gotten more of a fight from somebody; a tougher, a keener, or possibly more unpleasant collaborator, telling you more objectively what was wrong with the script, where it was unclear, where it was too sudden, where it appeared unmotivated and abrupt. In fact, you needed someone to take the chance that I took in CAT. To take the chance that you would be resentful later and feel that you had been too strongly influenced. . . . You might have written another preface saying, ‘I didn’t really mean that version you saw on the Broadway stage,’ but still I think all in all you would have been happier now.” (Elia Kazan to Williams, Mar. 27, 1957,
The Selected Letters of Elia Kazan
, ed. Albert J Devlin with Marlene J. Devlin [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014], p. 350.)
345
“Tenn became a terrific hypochondriac”: Spoto,
Kindness
, p. 215.
345
“a certain stop”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, Mar. 24, 1957,
L2
, p. 644.
345
“Since the failure of ‘Orpheus’ ”: Williams to Lady St. Just, June 7, 1957,
FOA
, p. 147.
345
“What a season we’ve been having”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Apr. 24, 1957, HRC.
345
“I can’t be the better part”: Williams to Sandy Campbell, Jan. 5, 1957,
TWLDW
, p. 292.
345
“The moment has certainly come”:
N
, Mar. 31, 1957, p. 701.
CHAPTER 6: BEANSTALK COUNTRY
346
“Who am I”:
CP
, “You and I,” p. 123.
346
hard-drinking poet Gilbert Maxwell: “I saw Gilbert throw his drink squarely iTenn’s face more than once; when he was in a particularly bitchy mood he’d call Tennessee ‘Ta-ness-a,’ ” the director George Keathley said. (Keathley, unpublished Ms., JLC.)
346
biographical album about his life: Richard Leavitt’s album was
The World of Tennessee Williams
. He also published
Tennessee Williams and the South
, with Kenneth Holditch, in 2002.
346
“I announced that I was retiring”:
N
, Apr. 1, 1957, p. 703.
346
“He reminded me of Thomas Wolfe”: Eugene B. Brody, “Introduction,” in Lawrence S. Kubie,
Symbol and Neurosis: Selected Papers of Lawrence S. Kubie
(Madison, Conn.: International Universities Press, 1978), p. 6.
348
“The tree of psychoanalytic theory”:
N
, Apr. 1, 1957, p. 703.
348
Kubie was the man: In a 1966 survey that asked 490 of the country’s leading psychiatrists to list the outstanding living psychiatrists, Kubie came in fifth, ahead of such renowned clinicians as the Menningers. See Norman Cousins,
Memorial
(privately published), p. 237.
348
history of the place: Lawrence Kubie,
The Riggs Story: The Development of the Austen Riggs Center for the Study and Treatment of the Neuroses
(New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1960).
349
“What is cut off”: Lawrence Kubie,
Practical and Theoretical Aspects of Psychoanalysis
(Madison, Conn.: International Universities Press, 1950), p. 129.
349
“a good team-player”: Gore Vidal, “Tennessee Williams: Someone to Laugh at the Squares With,” in Gore Vidal,
Armageddon? Essays 1983–1987
(London: Andre Deutsch, 1987), p. 54.
349
The psychoanalyst”: Kubie,
Practical and Theoretical Aspects
, p. 131.
349
“I don’t think I can stand much”:
N
, June 3, 1957, p. 705.
349
“salvation”: Ibid., June 7, 1957, p. 705.
349
“my favorite city in the Americas”: Williams to Elia Kazan, June 10, 1957, WUCA.
349
“goofed”:
N
, June 13, 1957, p. 707.
349
“With the plane trip as an excuse”: Ibid., June 11, 1957, p. 707.
349
“rarely take[s] more than one goofball”: Williams to Elia Kazan, June 10, 1957, WUCA.
349
“The swimming and the fucking”: Ibid.
350
“I am going on with my work”: He was working on
The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond
, which was made into a film in 2008.
350
“had knocked me out so completely”: Williams to Frank Merlo, June 1957, THNOC.
350
had nightmares: Williams to Lady St. Just, June 17, 1957,
FOA
, p. 148.
350
“a plush-lined loony-bin”: Ibid.
350
“a Christian Retreat”: Williams to Audrey Wood, June 19, 1957, HRC.
350
“I stayed only five minutes”: Williams to Edwina Williams, June 28, 1957,
N
, p. 706.
350
“My analyst is very anxious”: Williams to Paul Bowles, June 1957, HRC.
351
“Analysis is very upsetting at first”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Aug. 27, 1957,
FOA
, p. 149.
351
“into a swinging honky-tonk”: Williams to Oliver Evans, undated, Harvard.
352
“I’ve been wanting to try it”: Williams to Edwina Williams, June 28, 1957,
N
, p. 704.
352
“With Kubie I have worked”: Williams to Elia Kazan, June 28, 1958, WUCA.
352
“If only we could turn up something”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Oct. 30, 1957,
FOA
, p. 150.
352
“Kubie would imitate my father”:
CWTW

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