Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
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He is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter.
1981 Something Cloudy, Something Clear premieres Off-Broadway on August 24 at the Jean Cocteau Repertory Theatre, where it runs in repertory into the next year.
The Notebook of Trigorin, his free adaptation of Chekov’s The Seagull, premieres November 12 at the Playhouse Theatre in Vancouver.
1982 The second of two versions of A House Not Meant to Stand opens for a limited run at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago on May 8.
A workshop production of Gideon’s Point is produced in August at the Williamstown Theater Festival.
Williams receives an honorary degree from Harvard University.
1983 Williams is found dead in his room at the Hotel Elysée in New York City on February 25. He is later buried in St. Louis.
Clothes for a Summer Hotel is published.
1984 Stopped Rocking and Other Screenplays is published.
1985 His Collected Stories, with an introduction by Gore Vidal, is published.
1988 The Red Devil Battery Sign is published.
1995 Lyle Leverich’s biography, Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams, which chronicles Williams’s early life, is published by Crown Publishers.
Something Cloudy, Something Clear is published.
1996 On September 5, Rose Williams dies at the age of eighty-six in Tarrytown, New York.
The rights to all writings by Williams transfer to the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, and his papers are a bequest to Harvard University.
The Notebook of Trigorin, in a version revised by Williams, opens at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park on September 5 and is published in 1997.
1998 Not about Nightingales, directed by Trevor Nunn, premieres at the Royal National Theatre in London on March 5 and later moves to the Alley Theater in Houston, Texas.
1999 Spring Storm premiers at the Actors Repertory of Texas, Austin, on November 6 and is published the same year.
On November 25, Not about Nightingales opens on Broadway.
2000 Volume 1 of The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams is published.
Stairs to the Roof is published.
2001 Fugitive Kind is published.
2002 Collected Poems is published.
2004 Candles to the Sun is published.
Volume 2 of The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams is published.
2005 Mister Paradise and Other One-Act Plays is published.
2006 Williams’s personal journals are published by Yale University Press under the title Notebooks.
2008 A House Not Meant to Stand and The Traveling Companion and Other Plays are published.
Dakin Williams dies at the age of eighty-nine in Belleville, Illinois.
2009 New Selected Essays: Where I Live is published.
2011 The Magic Tower and Other One-Act Plays is published.
Celebrations and productions around the world are dedicated to Williams during his centennial year.
The Comédie-Française in Paris produces Un tramway nommé Désir, staged by American director Lee Breuer, the first play by a non-European playwright in the company’s 331-year history.
Notes
ABBREVIATIONS USED
BDC—Betty Davis Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University.
BRTC—Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Columbia—Tennessee Williams Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
CP—The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams, by Tennessee Williams. Edited by David Roessel and Nicholas Moschovakis. New York: New Directions, 2002.
CS—Collected Stories, by Tennessee Williams. New York: New Directions, 1985.
CUCOHC—Columbia University Center for Oral History Collection, Columbia University.
CWTW—Conversations with Tennessee Williams, edited by Albert J. Devlin. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986.
Delaware—Tennessee Williams Collection, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library.
DPYD—Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage, by Margaret Webster. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972.
Duke—Carson McCullers Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University.
ESC—Ed Sherin Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University.
FOA—Five O’Clock Angel: Letters of Tennessee Williams to Maria St. Just, 1948–1982, by Tennessee Williams. With commentary by Maria St. Just. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
Harvard—Tennessee Williams Papers, Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Houston—Cheryl Crawford Collection, Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries.
HRC—Tennessee Williams Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
Huntington—Manuscripts Department, Huntington Library.
ISC—Irene Mayer Selznick Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University.
JLC—John Lahr Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University.
JLI—John Lahr Interview. John Lahr Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University.
KAL—A Life, by Elia Kazan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
KOD—Kazan on Directing, by Elia Kazan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.
L1—The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, vol. 1: 1920–1945, by Tennessee Williams. Edited by Albert J. Devlin and Nancy M. Tischler. New York: New Directions, 2000.
L2—The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, vol. 2: 1945–1957, by Tennessee Williams. Edited by Albert J. Devlin, co-edited by Nancy M. Tischler. New York: New Directions, 2004.
LIB—Laurette: The Intimate Biography of Laurette Taylor, by Marguerite Courtney. New York: Limelight Editions, 1984.
LLC—Lyle Leverich Collection, attached to the John Lahr Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University.
LLI—Lyle Leverich Interview. Lyle Leverich Collection, attached to the John Lahr Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University.
LOA1—Tennessee Williams: Plays 1937–1955, by Tennessee Williams. New York: Library of America, 2000.
LOA2—Tennessee Williams: Plays 1957–1980, by Tennessee Williams. New York: Library of America, 2000.
M—Memoirs, by Tennessee Williams. New York: Doubleday, 1975.
Maryland—Katherine Anne Porter Collection, University of Maryland Libraries.
Morgan—Carter Burden Collection of American Literature, Morgan Library and Museum.
Ms.—manuscript.
Ms. “Memoirs”—“Memoirs” (unpublished manuscript), by Tennessee Williams. Lyle Leverich Collection, attached to the John Lahr Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University.
N—Notebooks: Tennessee Williams, by Tennessee Williams. Edited by Margaret Bradham Thornton. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006.
NSE—New Selected Essays: Where I Live, by Tennessee Williams. Edited by John S. Bak. New York: New Directions, 2009.
RBAW—Represented by Audrey Wood, by Audrey Wood, with Max Wilk. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981.
RMTT—Remember Me to Tom, by Edwina Dakin Williams, as told to Lucy Freeman. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1963.
RS—The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, by Tennessee Williams. London: Vintage Classics, 1999.
Sewanee—Archives of the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee.
THNOC—Fred W. Todd Tennessee Williams Collection, Williams Research Center, The Historic New Orleans Collection.
TWIB—Tennessee Williams: An Intimate Biography, by Dakin Williams and Shepherd Mead. New York: Arbor House, 1983.
TWLDW—Tennessee Williams’ Letters to Donald Windham, 1940–1965, by Tennessee Williams. Edited and with comments by Donald Windham. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1977.
Wisconsin—Wi
sconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society.
WUCA—Elia Kazan Collection, Cinema Archives, Wesleyan University.
EPIGRAPH
ix “Art to me”: Mark Rothko, Writings on Art (Dexter, Md.: Thomas Shore, 2006), p. 45.
PREFACE
xiii “The one duty”: Oscar Wilde, Oscar Wilde: The Major Works, ed. Isobel Murray (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 256.
xiv “a picture of my own heart”: N, Apr. 9, 1939, p. 147.
xiv “to be simple direct”: Ibid.
xiv “The real fact”: Robert Van Gelder, New York Times, sec. 2.1, Apr. 22, 1945.
xv “to report his cause aright”: Lyle Leverich, Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), dedication page.
CHAPTER 1: BLOOD-HOT AND PERSONAL
1 “Into this scene comes”: Clifford Odets, The Time Is Ripe: The 1940 Journal of Clifford Odets (New York: Grove Press, 1988), pp. 217–18.
1 8:50 P.M.: In an earlier era, Broadway show time was 8:40 P.M.—a fact memorialized in one of the most famous revues of the thirties, Life Begins at 8:40.
1 “like a farm boy”: TWIB, p. 125.
1 “You’re only as good”: RBAW, p. 143.
2 “It seems to me”: Audrey Wood to Tennessee Williams, Apr. 1, 1939, L1, p. 164.
2 “not a finished dramatist”: Audrey Wood to Tennessee Williams, Apr. 28, 1939, ibid., p. 172. Wood was “deeply impressed” by Williams’s theatrical sketches, American Blues, but thought his dramatic problem was “going to be how to sustain a dramatic idea in a full length play.” On May 4, 1939, Williams wrote to his mother, “The Group Theatre and my new agent, Audrey Wood, both urge me to devote all my time to writing one long, careful play as they feel I have been working too rapidly and without sufficient concentration on one thing.” (Williams to Edwina Williams, May 4, 1939, ibid., p. 168.)
2 “You are playing a very long shot”: Williams to Audrey Wood, June 25, 1939, ibid., p. 178.
2 “I’d reached the very, very bottom”: CWTW, p. 330.
2 “Yes, I have tricks”: LOA1, p. 400.
3 aftermath of an Actors’ Equity suspension: Lyle Leverich, Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), p. 547.
3 “on the longest wake in history”: LIB, p. 415.
4 “She’d closed many a show”: Reminiscences of Eddie Dowling, Nov. 21, 1964, Columbia University Center for Oral History Collection (hereafter CUCOHC), p. 815.
4 “the alcoholic of alcoholics”: Ibid.
4 “Nothing like this”: Ibid., p. 819.
4 “It’s Amanda”: Ibid., p. 165.
4 “This was just about the time”: Ibid., p. 820. Dowling’s account of the first lines doesn’t correspond with the printed text. But, as Williams knew to his cost, Dowling and Taylor were chronic ad-libbers.
4 “Audrey I love the play”: Dowling, Nov. 6, CUCOHC, p. 165. Wood at first refused. “Eddie, this is the wrong way. This boy has all these failures,” Dowling recalled her saying. (Ibid., p. 166.)
4 “a sick, tormented boy”: Ibid., pp. 165–67.
5 “Success is like a shy mouse”: Williams to Donald Windham, Apr. 1943, TWLDW, p. 58.
5 “a nauseous thing”: N, p. 413.
5 “I gave up a sure $25,000”: Dowling, Nov. 6, 1963, CUCOHC, p. 171.
5 “I said, ‘Make up your mind.’ ”: Ibid., pp. 170–71.
7 “she’d been hibernating”: Ibid., pp. 171–73.
7 “jam about money”: Laurette Taylor to Dwight Taylor, undated, HRC.
7 “Between two and three in the morning”: Effie Allen, “You Can’t Whip the Charm of Laurette Taylor,” Chicago Tribune, Feb. 1945. Taylor is quoted as saying, “Tell them there is no escape from grief. They had to stand and face it. I know because I tried to escape. . . . I know now that you can’t outrun sorrow. You just have to learn to bear it.”
7 “I could look back”: Helen Ormsbee, “Laurette Taylor Knew Amanda Was Her Absolutely Right Part,” New York Herald Tribune, 1945.
7 “tobacco-spitting mammas”: Allen, “You Can’t Whip the Charm.”
7 “She’d spruced up a little bit”: Dowling, Nov. 6, 1963, CUCOHC, pp. 173–74.
8 “Oh, Mr. Dowling”: Ibid., p. 817. Williams wrote to Donald Windham that even in Chicago, Taylor still sounded like “the Aunt Jemima Pancake Hour.” (Dec. 18, 1944, TWLDW, p. 155.) Taylor, however, claimed Williams as the model for her Southern accent. “All during rehearsals I’d say to him, ‘Just talk to me, Tennessee. Don’t explain how to pronounce the words; just keep talking to me.’ We had quite a lot of talks. Amanda’s drawl is the result.” (LIB, p. 397.)
9 “Wouldn’t it be great, George”: Dowling, Nov. 6, 1963, CUCOHC, p. 177.
9 “As Tiny Tim said”: Ibid., Nov. 21, 1964, pp. 177–78.
9 “Ilka Chase”: Ilka Chase (1900–1978), a well-born, droll actress of stage and screen, was in the original Broadway productions of Claire Booth Luce’s The Women (1938) and Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park (1963). For a few years in the forties she hosted a radio show, Luncheon at the Waldorf. Her epitaph reads, “I’ve finally gotten to the bottom of things.”
9 “Laurence Stallings”: Laurence Stallings (1894–1968) was a playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. On stage, he collaborated with Maxwell Anderson in What Price Glory?; on the screen, his credits included John Ford’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and King Vidor’s Northwest Passage. He was a member of the Algonquin Round Table.
9 “He doesn’t mean to hurt you”: Dowling, Nov. 6, 1963, CUCOHC, pp. 179–80.
9 “It’s just in the lap of the gods”: Williams to James Laughlin, Dec. 15, 1944, L1, p. 539.
11 “Well, it looks bad, baby”: N, Dec. 9, 1944, p. 431.
11 “My God, what corn!”: Williams to Donald Windham, Dec. 18, 1944, TWLDW, p. 155.
11 “What was she working toward”: Tennessee Williams, “On Laurette Taylor,” undated, HRC.
12 “Mr. Dowling”: Laurette Taylor to Dwight Taylor, Chicago, undated, HRC.
12 “I can’t find the tranquility”: Ibid.
12 “Tennessee, don’t change that ending”: Murray Schumach, “A Texas Tornado Hits Broadway,” New York Times Magazine, Oct. 17, 1948.
12 “It was a strange night”: Dowling, Nov. 21, 1964, CUCOHC, p. 796.
12 “the greatest play in fifty years”: Advertisement in clipping file, LLC.
12 “was respectful but hardly ecstatic”: RBAW, p. 142.
13 “For eight weeks, we starved”: Dowling, Nov. 6, 1963, CUCOHC, p. 183.
13 writing was on the fourth wall: “Finally when we announced we’re going to leave in two weeks, they tore the doors down. We had to give two extra matinees, and it was the consensus of opinion that we could have stayed there for a couple of years. But we had to come in because Singer had come on and made a contract for the Playhouse Theatre on 48th Street.” (Ibid.)
13 “When Miss Taylor plays”: Laurette Taylor correspondence, Chicago, undated, HRC.
13 “the distortions that have taken place”: Williams to the Editor, Feb. 25, 1945, L1, p. 546.
13 “Pandemonium back-stage!”: Williams to James Laughlin, Mar. 11, 1945, ibid., p. 553.
13 “We arrived in New York”: Dowling, Nov. 21, 1964, CUCOHC, pp. 813–14. “Taylor has been drinking, but so far no sign of drunkenness,” Williams wrote to Windham a week before the Chicago opening. (Dec. 18, 1944, TWLDW, p. 155.) By February, there were plenty of signs. “Worried about Laurette,” Williams wrote to Audrey Wood. “She got terribly drunk at a party night before last. Literally passed out cold and fell on the sidewalk—first time this has happened.” (Williams to Audrey Wood, Feb. 5, 1945, L1, p. 545.)
14 “a quick run-through”: Dowling, Nov. 21, 1964, CUCOHC, p. 815.
14 “It seemed incredible to us”: LIB, p. 412.
14 “All the company were on me”: Dowling, Nov. 21, 1964, CUCOHC, p. 815.
14 “artistically my big broth
er”: John Lahr, “Lucky Man: Horton Foote’s Three Acts,” The New Yorker, Oct. 26, 2009, p. 90.
14 “a torrential downpour”: Dowling, Nov. 21, 1964, CUCOHC, p. 816.
14 “The most beautiful rainbow”: Ibid.
15 “thanking all of the gods”: Ibid., p. 818.
15 “soaking, wringing wet”: Ibid.
15 “Hel-lo, Ray”: Ibid.
15 “We could hear the buzzing”: Ibid.
15 “Eddie, can you get him a seat”: Horton Foote, Beginnings: A Memoir (New York: Scribner, 2001), p. 258.
15 “a pineapple ice cream soda”: Lahr, “Lucky Man,” p. 90.
15 kept Foote in Williams’s mind as possible casting: Williams to Horton Foote, Apr. 24, 1943, L1, p. 443. “I have been working with tigerish fury on ‘The Gentleman Caller,’ ” he wrote Foote in 1943, adding in the next sentence, “It has at least one part in it for you and maybe two, if you can imagine such a thing.”
15 “Tennessee, tell them in front”: Foote, Beginnings, p. 258.
16 “Oh, my God, our fate”: Dowling, Nov. 21, 1964, CUCOHC, p. 817.
16 “Now is the time for unexpected things”: LOA1, p. 187.
16 “a huge advance over its predecessors”: Williams to Theatre Guild, Sept. 20, 1940, L1, p. 279.
16 “to fuse lyricism and realism”: N, Dec. 11, 1939, p. 173. “One must learn . . . to fuse lyricism and realism into a congruous unit—I guess my chief trouble is that I don’t. I make the most frightful faux pas. . . . I feared today that I may have taken a distinctly wrong turn in turning to drama—But, oh, I do feel drama so intensely sometimes.”
16 “Onto it I projected the violent symbols”: Leverich, Tom, p. 383.
18 “one of my biggest troubles”: LOA1, p. 212.
18 “When people read it”: Ibid., p. 243.
18 “Says he’s exploring the world”: Ibid., p. 199.
18 “always feel that I bore people”: N, June 14, 1939, p. 187.
18 “I, too, am beginning to feel”: DPYD, p. 74.
18 “Decent is something that’s scared”: LOA1, p. 235.
18 “Passion is something to be proud of”: Ibid., p. 258.
19 “We of the artistic world”: Williams to Donald Windham, Sept. 1940, TWLDW, p. 14.
19 “shiny black satin”: LOA1, p. 207.