Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (118 page)

, p. 182.

459

“Tennessee got Frank a television set”: LLI with Frederick Nicklaus, 1985, LLC.

459

“We pulled up to the house”: Ibid.

459

When Merlo moved back:

, p. 190.

459

“I think Tennessee’s and my relationship”: LLI with Frederick Nicklaus, 1983, LLC.

459

“seemed annoyed that I remained”:

, p. 191.

459

“swimmingly”: LLI with Frederick Nicklaus, 1985, LLC.

459

“Tennessee was ready to go to bed”: Ibid.

460

“the worst crisis in our relationship”: LLI with Frederick Nicklaus, 1983, LLC.

460

“the air is as stimulating”: Williams to Marion Vaccaro, undated, THNOC.

460

“Although he made no reference to it”: Williams to Marian Vaccaro, 1963, THNOC.

460

“He has seen me through an intolerable period”: Williams to Paul Bowles, June 13, 1963, LLC.

460

“All this, the cutting short”: Williams to Marion Vaccaro, undated, THNOC. In

(p. 251), Spoto contends that a telegram from Audrey Wood summoned Williams back to Key West, but there is nothing in Wood’s memoir or her archive or in any Williams letter to support this claim. Williams’s honorable instinct, it seems, was his own.

460

“I’d rather bear the heat of New York”: Williams to Audrey Wood, ca. July 1963, Harvard.

460

“We do very little”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Aug. 5, 1963,

, p. 184.

460

“Each night”:

, p. 191.

460

“a little Hercules”: Ibid., p. 193.

460

“It was a nightmare”: Ibid.

460

“I remember seeing Frank”: JLI with Alan U. Schwartz, 2009, JLC.

460

“had been in and out of Memorial”:

, p. 193.

461

“my dear buddy”: Maureen Stapleton and Jane Scovell,

(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 86.

461

“I said, ‘He’ll die this Thursday’”:

, p. 193.

461

“like a hooked fish”: Ibid., p. 194.

462

“You sat up in the chair next to mine”: Tennessee Williams, “The Final Day of Your Life” (unpublished poem), THNOC.

462

“dreadful vigil”: Ibid.

462

“Frankie, try to lie still”:

, p. 193.

462

“pretended to sleep”: Williams, “Final Day of Your Life,” THNOC. In his memoirs, Williams says that Merlo “lay there silently.” (

, p. 194.)

462

“The statement of habituation”:

, p. 194.

462

“My name for him is Little Horse”:

, “Little Horse,” p. 76.

462

“told him rather hysterically”:

, p. 194.

462

“Tennessee just couldn’t stand it anymore”: LLI with Richard Leavitt, 1983, LLC.

462

“friends that were mine”: Williams, “Final Day of Your Life,” THNOC.

462

“quite drunk”: Ibid.

462

“I usually answered the phone”: LLI with Frederick Nicklaus, 1983, LLC.

463

“I am just beginning”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Sept. 23, 1963,

, pp. 185–87.

463

“a recollection”: Gilbert Maxwell,

(Cleveland: World Publishing, 1965), p. 322.

463

“He was a man of honor”: Ibid., pp. 322–24.

465

cemetery: Merlo is buried in Rosedale & Rosehill Cemetery in Linden, New Jersey. The birth year on Merlo’s tombstone was intentionally misdated. As his niece, Josephine DePetris, explained, “The year he was born was 1922. When he was 15 years old he enlisted in the US Navy, lied about his age and changed his birth certificate (you had to be at least 16 years old to enlist then). . . . When he passed away the family continued to list his year of birth as 1921 thinking they would get in trouble with the military if the truth came out.” (Josephine DePetris to John Lahr, July 4, 2013.)

465

“He was pacing the floor”: LLI with Elaine Steinbeck, 1985, LLC.

465

“When Frankie was dying”: Spoto,

, pp. 258–59.

465

“made the talk somewhat dull”: Alan U. Schwartz, “Mr. Williams and His Monkey” (unpublished), 2005.

465

“I don’t know why this creature”:

, p. 190.

465

“Tenn, your monkey”: Schwartz, “Mr. Williams and His Monkey.”

466

“My heart is heavy”: Williams to Marion Vaccaro, Oct. 1963, THNOC.

466

“I have been very depressed”: Williams to Dakin Williams and Edwina Williams, Nov. 14, 1963, LLC.

466

“Things were never the same”: LLI with Frederick Nicklaus, 1983, LLC.

466

“The house, in fact the whole island”: Williams to Audrey Wood, undated, 1963, LLC.

466

“almost a miracle”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Oct. 31, 1963, LLC.

467

“to conclude my Broadway career”: Ibid.

467

“I have no more illusions”: Williams to Audrey Wood, July 18, 1963, LLC.

467

“one of your best”: David Merrick to Williams, May 3, 1963, LLC.

467

“liked writers in the way”: John Heilpern,

(New York: Vintage, 2007), p. 203.

467

“Tony is a man of genius”: Williams to Audrey Wood, undated, LLC.

467

“Every good female part”: Brendan Gill,

(New York: Holt McDougal, 1972), pp. 83–84.

467

“more than slightly right”: Tennessee Williams, “T. Williams’s View of T. Bankhead,”

, Dec. 29, 1963.

467

“Tennessee has written a play”: Gill,

, p. 84.

468

“It was an occasion when I might have lied”: Williams, “T. Williams’s View of T. Bankhead.”

468

“Well, dahling, that’s all right”: Gill,

, p. 84.

468

“I saw exactly what Tennessee meant”: Tony Richardson,

(London: Faber & Faber, 1993), p. 145.

468

“It was either Tallulah”: Ibid., p. 146.

468

“I have spent a sleepless night”: Williams to Audrey Wood, undated, LLC.

469

Henry Willson: A gay agent credited with creating “his boys”: Rock Hudson, Rory Calhoun, Guy Madison, and Tab Hunter.

469

“your beneficent witch-craft”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Oct. 31, 1963, LLC.

469

“Everyone who mentions the production”: Ibid.

470

“

YOUR PERFORMANCE

”: Tab Hunter with Eddie Muller,

(Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books, 2006), p. 254.

470

“Fuck you!”: Ibid., p. 247.

470

“Tallulah was the most unpleasant person”: Richardson,

, p. 147.

470

“though they really couldn’t be called that”: Ibid.

470

“On the way to rehearsal”: Ibid., p. 149.

470

“Loud or soft”: Ibid., p. 147.

470

“Then, like a hideous old vulture”: Ibid.

471

“Don’t worry, darling”: Ibid.

471

“Why the

don’t you shut up!”: Hunter,

, p. 251.

471

“So that’s what the bitch”: Richardson,

, p. 148.

471

“In the middle of this”: Ibid.

471

“The second Milk Train”: Williams to Herbert Machiz, undated, Columbia.

471

“There was no way”: Richardson,

, p. 148.

471

“He showed a strange indifference”:

, p. 199.

472

“I don’t think you’re insane”: Ibid. Williams added parenthetically, “Which was true at the time he said it, if not quite always.”

472

“I think it would kill Tallulah”: Ibid., p. 200.

472

“desertion”: Williams to Herbert Machiz, undated, 1964, LLC.

472

“Half the seats”: Hunter,

, p. 253.

472

“For the kind of playgoer”: “Tallulah and Tennessee,”

, Jan. 13, 1964.

472

“Miss Bankhead was hoarse”: John McCarten, “Durable Dame,”

, Jan. 11, 1964.

472

“not a performance”: Walter Kerr, “Williams’ Play Revamp ‘Worse Than Original,’ ”

, Jan. 2, 1964.

472

an “appearance”: After Bankhead was passed over to star in the film adaptation,

—a part she felt she had “originated”—she stopped speaking to Williams. Shortly before she died, in 1968, she happened to be in Miami when

was playing. She hired a car to take her to Williams’s Key West home, and then she walked up to the front door in a mink coat. “I shouted, ‘Tallu, baby! Come in,’ ” Williams told Dotson Rader, who reported the conversation in

. “She didn’t move. She just stood there glaring at me like a mongoose at a snake. And then she said . . . ‘Mr. Williams, I have come to tell you that I have just seen that

movie they made of your

play!’ And that was the last time I ever saw her.” (Dotson Rader,

(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985), p. 172.)

472

“I felt very badly about leaving New York”: Williams to Dakin Williams, Feb. 29, 1964, LLC.

472

“Stoned Age”:

, p. 212.

472

“It occurred in protracted stages”: Ibid., p. 203.

472

“The colored lights”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Mar. 4, 1944,

, p. 516.

473

“I work but I have no faith left”: Williams to Sidney Lanier, Jan. 21, 1964, THNOC.

473

“I am floundering”: Williams to Frederick Nicklaus, Apr. 15, 1964, Columbia.

473

“an extended visit to Grant’s Tomb”: Marion Vaccaro to Charles Bowden, May 1964, LLC.

473

“I came for a weekend”: Ibid.

473

“I have been hoping each day”: Charles Bowden to Marion Vaccaro, June 18, 1964, LLC.

474

“He was in such a depressed condition”: Marion Vaccaro to Henry Field, Sept. 9, 1964, LLC.

474

“bitten by the culture bug”: Williams to Paul Bowles, Sept. 1964, LLC.

474

“He calls me”: Ibid.

474

“To believe in pills”: Williams to Paul Bowles, Sept. 18, 1964, LLC.

474

“Tom came here to dinner”: Paula Laurence to Marion Vaccaro, Sept. 17, 1964, LLC.

475

“I am going into rehearsal”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Jan. 20, 1965,

, p. 190.

475

lost his audience: “I don’t have an audience, you see. I had one once, but I lost it in the 60’s.” Williams,

, Sept. 10, 1971.

475

“We are not soft people”: Williams to Mary Hunter, Apr. 1943,

, p. 439.

475

“matriculating in a school for the blind”: LOA1, p. 400.

476

“We are on the verge of Armageddon”: Harold Clurman, “The New Drama,”

Jan. 16, 1967.

476

“thrilling alienation”: Arthur Miller,

(London: Methuen, 1999), p. 542.

476

“Once again we were looking almost completely”: Ibid.

476

“The new theatre is lunging”: Stefan Kanfer, “White Dwarf’s Tragic Fade-Out,”

, June 13, 1969.

476

“The permission that Williams helped create”: JLI with Tony Kushner, 2011, JLC.

477

“Why pick on me?”: Geoffrey Wansell,

(London: Oberon Books, 2009), p. 365.

477

“the Broadway audience has changed”: Robert Brustein, “A Question of Identity,”