Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (95 page)

, p. 320.)

20

“seems to make a slight obeisance”: LOA1, p. 274.

20

“

BETTER RETURN AT ONCE

”: Tennessee Williams, “Better Return at Once” (unpublished), HRC.

20

“I am becoming more and more”: Williams to Donald Windham, May 1, 1941,

, p. 22.

20

“twenty-six years of living”: He was actually twenty-nine. Tennessee Williams, undated Ms., HRC.

20

“I remembered particularly”: Williams, “Better Return at Once,” HRC.

21

“Old,” Williams said: Ibid.

22

sent Odets into semipermanent theatrical retirement: Between 1935 and 1940, Odets wrote seven plays; from 1940 until his death in 1963, at the age of fifty-seven, he wrote only three more.

22

“What can we produce”: Williams to Paul Bigelow, Oct. 23, 1941,

, p. 352.

22

“We were deceived by the maturity”:

, p. 69.

22

“Probably no man has ever written”: LOA1, p. 275.

22

no experience with casting: Lawrence Langner and Theresa Helburn, the Guild’s co-directors, were described by Margaret Webster as “masters of miscasting.” (

, p. 68.)

22

“before I knew”: LOA1, p. 275.

22

“low and common”: Leverich,

, p. 363.

22

“It’s impossible, darling”: Ibid., p. 364.

23

“a deep collective death wish”:

, p. 136.

23

“a bunch of prissy old maids”: Williams to Joseph Hazan,

, Jan. 2, 1941, p. 297.

23

“raised the roof”: Williams to the Williams Family, Nov. 18, 1940, ibid., p. 293.

23

“seem much interested”:

, p. 69.

23

“I am old, I am tired”: Williams to the Williams Family, Nov. 18, 1940,

, p. 293.

23

“For heaven’s sake, do something”: LOA1, p. 283.

24

“a not very satisfactory cast”:

, p. 71.

25

“Up and down the aisles”: LOA1, p. 285.

25

“To an already antagonistic audience”: Ibid., p. 285.

25

“The bright angels”: Williams to Joseph Hazan, Jan. 2, 1941,

, p. 297.

25

“He appeared so suicidal”: William Jay Smith,

(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2012), p. 54.

26

“The play gives the audience the sensation”: Leverich,

, p. 393.

26

“which seemed to us the roar of a cannon”:

, p. 136.

26

“I will crawl on my belly”: Ibid., p. 137.

26

Lawrence Langner: In subsequent correspondence with Audrey Wood, Williams referred to Langner as “Lawrence Stanislavsky Langner, the one who operates that famous Art Theatre on E. 56th St.” (Williams to Audrey Wood, June 20, 1945,

, p. 565.)

26

“At that moment”: Audrey Wood to Williams, undated, HRC.

26

“putrid”: Gilbert Maxwell,

(Cleveland: World Publishing, 1965), p. 51.

26

“improper and indecent”: Ibid.

26

“too many of the lines”: Leverich,

, p. 394.

27

“DIRT”:

, p. 298.

27

“Tennessee was completely taken by surprise”:

, p. 72.

27

“censors sat out front”: LOA1, p. 286.

27

“an insult to the fine young man”: Leverich,

, p. 394.

27

“MIRIAM HOPKINS SAYS”:

, p. 72.

27

“You don’t seem to see”: Maxwell,

, p. 50.

27

“You must not wear your heart”: Leverich,

, p. 395.

27

“I don’t think I had an answer”: Ibid.

27

“for recasting, re-writing, re-everything”: Williams to Joseph Hazan, Jan. 2, 1941,

, p. 297.

27

“What a failure!”: Williams to James Laughlin, Apr. 2, 1944, ibid., p. 521.

27

“Nothing whatever in this whole experience”:

, p. 72.

27

“the play was more a disappointment”: Leverich,

, p. 395.

27

“I am right smack behind the eight-ball”: Williams to Lawrence Langner, Feb. 26, 1941,

, pp. 305–6. When the rewrite was rejected by the Theatre Guild, Williams wrote to Audrey Wood, “Spit in Langner’s face for me.” (Williams to Audrey Wood, Sept. 2, 1941, ibid., p. 318.) On June 27, 1941, Williams’s revised script of

was rejected by the Theatre Guild. He was philosophical about it. “It is apparent that no definitive script has yet emerged, though . . . one eventually will—and ‘Battle of Angels’ can afford to wait, perhaps more than such plays as ‘Watch on the Rhine,’ ‘There Shall Be No Night,’ Etc.,” he told Langner, adding, “I have made this play out of such enduring stuff as passion, death, and the spiritual quest for the infinite, which are elements that time can only improve.” (Williams to Lawrence Langer, July 3, 1941, ibid., p. 317.)

29

“O lonely man”: “Speech from the Stairs,” CUCOHC, p. 819.

29

“That is the one ineluctable gift”: Williams to Joseph Hazan, Sept. 3, 1940,

, p. 275.

29

“the days AB—After Boston”:

, Feb. 16, 1941, p. 221.

29

“This is a one-way street”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Feb. 27, 1941,

, p. 308.

30

“I have diverted myself”:

, June 27, 1941, p. 227.

30

“a rich and exciting period sexually”: Ibid.

30

“a celluloid brassiere”: Williams to James Laughlin, May 29, 1943,

, p. 455.

30

“Dear Child of God”: Williams to Audrey Wood, June 20, 1945, ibid., p. 564.

30

“I want an

”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Sept. 1, 1942, ibid., p. 402.

30

“I cannot see ahead nor can anyone”:

, July 9, 1942, pp. 301–3.

30

“The things that I have to sell”: Williams to Joseph Hazan, Sept. 24, 1940,

, p. 285. The undertow of war also seemed to drown the highfalutin poetic drama of Maxwell Anderson as well as the work of George Kelly, Robert Sherwood, Paul Green, and Philip Barry, who had dominated Broadway theater in the thirties.

31

“I must be able to be a post-war artist”:

, Feb. 25, 1942, p. 281.

31

“a new form, non-realistic”: Williams, undated, HRC.

31

“I think there is going to be”: Williams to William Saroyan, Nov. 29, 1941,

, p. 359.

31

“We must remember that a new theatre”: Williams to Horton Foote, Apr. 24, 1943, ibid., p. 443.

31

“It is appalling”:

, Oct. 26, 1943, p. 401.

31

“no overwhelming interest”: Williams to Donald Windham, July 28, 1943,

, p. 94.

31

“I have been horribly worried”: Williams to Margo Jones, Aug. 27, 1943, HRC.

32

“Have finished ‘The Caller,’ ”: Williams to Donald Windham, Aug. 1944,

, p. 148.

32

“I said, ‘Ma, c’mon, now,’ ”: Dowling, Nov. 21, 1964, CUCOHC, p. 819.

32

“The few minutes she had”:

, p. 412.

32

“She played almost through a fog”: Dowling, Nov. 21, 1964, CUCOHC, p. 820.

32

“There was nothing left inside of her”:

p. 412.

32

“supernatural quality on stage”: Williams, “On Laurette Taylor,” HRC.

32

“Laurette’s basic tragedy”: Ibid.

32

“There is an inexplicable rightness”: Stark Young,

Apr. 16, 1945.

33

“Stop all this hand clasping”:

, p. 143.

33

“haunted household”: Williams to Donald Windham, Apr. 1943,

, p. 57.

33

“We can’t say grace”: LOA1, p. 401.

33

“I begin with a character”:

, p. 412.

33

“in exact ratio to the degree”: Williams to Kenneth Tynan, July 26, 1955,

, p. 306.

33

“There are only two times”: Williams to Donald Windham, July 28, 1943, ibid., p. 91.

33

“that thing that makes me write”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, Sept. 2, 1959, BRTC.

34

“I have a vast traumatic eye”:

, [“I Have a Vast Traumatic Eye”], p. 173.

34

“sixteen cylinders inside a jalopy”: Williams to Lawrence Langner, Aug. 22, 1940,

, p. 267.

34

“the climate of my interior world”: Greil Marcus and Werner Sollers, eds.,

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009).

34

“The turbulent business of my nerves”: LOA1, p. 276.

34

“It seemed to me that even the giants”: Ibid.

34

“a frustrating lack of vitality”: Ibid., p. 275.

34

“had not seen more than two or three”: Ibid.

34

“In five years’ time”:

, “Portrait of a Girl in Glass,” p. 119.

35

“irreconcilably divided”: Williams to Jessica Tandy, as quoted in Mike Steen,

(New York: Hawthorn Books, 1969), p. 181.

35

“his basic repertory company”: Gore Vidal, “Tennessee Williams: Someone to Laugh at the Squares With,” in Gore Vidal,

(London: Andre Deutsch, 1987), p. 53.

35

“so absorbed”: JLI with Gore Vidal, 2000, JLC.

35

“Nowhere was ease”:

, “Cortege,” p. 30.

35

“was completely unshadowed by fear”:

, p. 19.

36

“had fallen in love with long distances”: LOA1, p. 401.

36

hung onto his mother’s skirts: Williams observes, “My mother’s overtly solicitous attention planted in me the makings of a sissy.” (

, pp. 11–12.)

36

“His winter breath”:

, “Cortege,” p. 30.

36

“the blue devils”: Williams to Donald Windham, July 28, 1943,

, p. 91. “It’s like having wild cats under my skin.”

36

“When my family first moved”: Tennessee Williams, “Why the Title” (unpublished), HRC.

38

“was no tenement”:

, p. 28.

38

“We could not afford”: Ibid., p. 32.

38

“The Williamses had fought the Indians”:

, p. 59.

39

“In the beginning there was high adventure”: “The Wingfields of America” (unpublished), HRC.

40

“the saddest man I ever knew”:

, “Mes Cahiers Noirs,” 1979, p. 751.

40

“the emollient influence of a mother”:

, p. 12.

40

“fierce blood”: Williams to Donald Windham,

, p. 298.

41

“continual excitement”: Leverich,

, p. 519.

41

“I have an instinct for self-destruction”: LOA2, p. 221.

41

“the least demonstrative person”:

, p. 162.

41

“not the most masculine of men”:

, Mar. 9, 1962.

41

“Grecian vice”: JLI with Gore Vidal, 2000, JLC.