by John Lahr
164 “mawkish, murky”: John Coleman, New York Daily News, Oct. 7, 1948.
164 “mediocre job”: Williams to Donald Windham, Oct. 19, 1948, TWLDW, p. 225.
164 “Not inspired, not vital”: Ibid. By the same time the following year, Williams’s disappointment had turned to disgust over Jones’s slapdash Chicago touring production of the play. “Very cross with Margo,” he wrote to Britneva. “Two sticks could not be crosser. Her Chicago company which she praised so highly was a poor travesty of what it should have been.” (Williams to Maria Britneva, Oct. 9, 1949, FOA, p. 27.)
164 “Something started or something stopped”: CP, “Little Horse,” pp. 75–76.
164 “He was enthusiastic about everything”: JLI with Mary Henderson, 2001, JLC. Between 1979 and 1985, she was curator of the theater collection at the Museum of the City of New York. Among her books were The City and the Theatre and Mielziner: Master of Modern Stage Design.
165 “fleshed in a god’s perfection”: “A Separate Poem”: “You put on the clothes of a god which was your naked body / and moved from window to window in a room made of windows, drawing, closing the curtains, your back / turned to me showing no sign that you knew that you were / building an island: then came to rest, fleshed, in a god’s perfection beside me . . . ” (CP, “A Separate Poem,” pp. 80–81.)
165 swarthy complexion: “Perhaps Frankie will get into the movies,” Capote wrote in 1949, referring to him as “that loathsome Merlo boy.” “I understand all the old Lon Chaney movies are going to be remade, and by hiring him they’d save on makeup.” (Truman Capote to Andrew Lyndon, Aug. 23, 1949, in Capote, Too Brief, p. 98.)
165 “change-of-life baby”: JLI with Mary Henderson, 2001, JLC.
165 “He was far better read than Tennessee”: JLI with Gore Vidal, 2006, 2001, JLC.
165 “I damn near got to know”: Frank Merlo to Frank Gionataiso, Nov. 3, 1942, LLC.
165 “I had just witnessed”: Ibid.
165 “The path was very narrow”: Ibid.
166 “It’s a very well set up book”: Frank Merlo to Frank Gionataiso, Feb. 27, 1943, LLC.
166 “high brow”: Frank Merlo to Frank Gionataiso, Feb. 3, 1943, LLC.
166 “Every symphony that has come to San Francisco”: Ibid.
166 “When I do, watch out cousin”: Frank Merlo to Frank Gionataiso, Apr. 8, 1942, LLC.
166 “In regards to travelling after the war”: Frank Merlo to Frank Gionataiso, Feb. 27, 1943, LLC.
166 “I had intentions of marrying Lena”: Frank Merlo to Frank Gionataiso, Feb. 3, 1943, LLC.
167 “who may soon be my future wife”: Frank Merlo to Frank Gionataiso, Feb. 27, 1943, LLC.
167 “Tomorrow I have liberty”: Frank Merlo to Frank Gionataiso, Feb. 27, 1943, JLC.
167 “He got a job in New York”: JLI with Mary Henderson, 2001, JLC.
167 “My tongue, of late”: Frank Merlo to Frank Gionataiso, Feb. 27, 1943, LLC.
167 lover of the Washington columnist Joseph Alsop: Gore Vidal, Palimpsest: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 1995), pp. 200–201.
169 “Pancho is in town”: Audrey Wood to Irene Selznick, June 2, 1948, HRC.
169 “I thought you knew about Frankie”: Oliver Evans to Marion Vaccaro, Jan. 30, 1950, THNOC. Evans, a poet and professor of English, was known to Williams as “The Clown”; Vaccaro, an heiress and another traveling companion, was dubbed “The Banana Queen.”
169 “Frank was a warm, decent man”: Donald Spoto, The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985), p. 153.
169 “It is a small world”: Williams to Carson McCullers, July 5, 1948, L2, p. 201.
169 “What do you do?”: CWTW, p. 235.
169 “He gave me the connection”: Ibid., p. 340.
169 “He kept his wig on”: Spoto, Kindness, p. 153.
169 “the cleft in the rock”: LOA1, p. 546.
170 “My sexual feeling for the boy”: M, p. 159.
170 “the most charming ship”: Ibid.
170 “Finit”: N, Dec. 4, 1948, p. 487.
170 “She meant as an artist”: Ibid., p. 489.
171 “The simple truth”: Williams to Elia Kazan and Molly Day Thacher, July 12, 1949, L2, p. 261.
171 “GLADYS: Your son misses you”: Tennessee Williams, “The Big Time Operators” (unpublished), HRC.
172 “It doesn’t seem very like me”: N, Dec. 5, 1948, p. 493.
172 “You are really washed up”: Williams, “Big Time Operators,” HRC.
172 “The trouble is that I am being bullied”: N, Dec. 5, 1948, p. 493.
172 “the baleful sun of success”: Ibid., July 22, 1950, p. 515.
172 “Talent died in me”: Ibid., Dec. 5, 1948, p. 493.
172 “The trouble is that you can’t make”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, June 1949, L2, pp. 258–59.
173 “gauze hung over gauze”: CP, “The Soft City,” p. 10. Williams sent off the poem in May. “And if there is something which is not soft in the city,” he wrote “such as a cry too hard for the mouth to hold, God puts a soft stop to it. / Bending invisibly down, He breathes a narcosis / Over the panicky face upturned to entreat Him.”
173 “slowly with great pomp”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Feb. 15, 1949, L2, p. 234.
173 “one long blue and gold ribbon”: Williams to James Laughlin, Apr. 10, 1949, ibid., p. 249.
173 “The fear that I am repeating myself”: Williams to James Laughlin, Jan. 30, 1950, ibid., p. 297.
173 “There is no point in hiding”: N, May 27, 1949, p. 501.
173 “I received today five complete sets”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Feb. 15, 1949, L2, p. 234.
173 “the cornball department”: “A disgrace to any name that is signed to it,” Williams said of the screenplay, on whose front page he wrote, “A horrible thing! Certified as such by Tennessee Williams.” (Williams to Audrey Wood, May 13, 1949, ibid., p. 245.) As early June 1949, he told his publisher Jay Laughlin, “It’s a real abomination.” (Williams to James Laughlin, June 3, 1949, ibid., p. 252.)
174 “ridiculous state of gloom”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, June 1949, ibid., p. 258.
174 “my little secretary”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Feb. 15, 1949, ibid., p. 233.
174 “I do hope that I can manage”: Ibid., p. 235.
174 “a sorry companion”: Williams to Donald Windham, Mar. 23, 1949, TWLDW, p. 236.
174 “I am not alone”: Williams to Carson McCullers, Mar. 23, 1949, L2, p. 240.
174 “latched onto us like barnacles”: Truman Capote to Andrew Lyndon, Mar. 28, 1949, in Capote, Too Brief, p. 72. The noticeable strain Capote was referring to was the altercation that took place after he repeated Margo Jones’s canard to the cast of Summer and Smoke: “This is the play of a dying man.”
174 “He hates the dependence”: Williams to Donald Windham, Mar. 23, 1949, TWLDW, p. 234.
174 “Frankie’s passion is clothes”: Williams to Donald Windham, Apr. 8, 1949, ibid., p. 238.
175 “Picked up Frank”: N, May 23, 1949, p. 499.
175 “Violent (verbally) scene on the streets”: Ibid., June 3, 1949, p. 505.
175 “Faint as leaf shadow does he fade”: CP, “Faint as Leaf Shadow,” pp. 8–9.
176 “When I see him enjoy so much”: Williams to Donald Windham, Mar. 23, 1949, TWLDW, p. 236.
176 “Frank is possessive and destructive”: FOA, July 11, 1949, p. 25.
176 “There is a curious listlessness”: Ibid., June 10, 1949, p. 19.
176 titled “Stornello”: Tennessee Williams, “Stornello: Brief Outline of Play in Progress,” HRC.
176 “This may turn out to be foolish”: Williams to James Laughlin, June 3, 1949, L2, p. 251.
176 “the drift”: RS, p. 21.
176 “Eyre de Lanux is a woman”: Williams to James Laughlin, June 3, 1949, L2, p. 252. De Lanux died in 1996 at the age of 102.
177 “stopped”: RS, p. 37.
177 “Mrs. Stone knew
it”: Ibid., p. 85.
177 “you can’t retire from an art”: Ibid., p. 16.
178 “wounded gladiator”: N, Dec. 5, 1948, p. 493.
178 “King On The Mountain”: Williams to Donald Windham, Apr. 4, 1960, TWLDW, p. 298: “I gathered out of my father’s fierce blood, the power to rise somehow. And how could that rise be gentle.”
178 “Scrambling, pushing, kicking”: RS, pp. 82–83.
178 “Security is a kind of death”: NSE, p. 36.
178 “Being purposeless was like being drunk”: RS, p. 34.
178 “She had been continually occupied”: Ibid., pp. 86–87.
179 “could not bear to look at him”: Ibid., p. 55.
179 “Their marriage, in its beginning”: Ibid., pp. 67–68.
179 “they exchanged their eagerly denying smiles”: Ibid., p. 71.
179 “Her effort to express a tenderness”: Tentative play outline for The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (unpublished), HRC.
179 “What she felt, now, was desire”: RS, p. 52.
179 “emotional anarchy”: Ibid., p. 76.
179 “Mrs. Stone knew, as well as Paolo”: Ibid., p. 29.
180 “I will call you in the morning”: Ibid., p. 34.
180 “incontinent longings”: Ibid., p. 51.
180 “When we’re alone together”: Ibid., p. 95.
180 “Frankie and I have been happy”: N, May 30, 1949, p. 503.
180 “I love F.—deeply”: Ibid., May 29, 1949, p. 501.
181 “somewhat taller than Paolo”: RS, p. 36.
181 “to be waiting to receive a signal”: Ibid., p. 10.
181 “Nothing could not be allowed”: Ibid., p. 116.
181 “It was nothing that she had planned”: Ibid.
181 “the occult reasons”: Ibid., p. 64.
181 “does not need to be conscious knowing”: Ibid., p. 40.
181 “It looked up at her”: Ibid., p. 116.
181 “Yes, in a few minutes now”: Ibid., pp. 116–17.
182 “I don’t ask for your pity”: LOA2, p. 236.
182 “wandered”: Williams to Elia Kazan and Molly Day Thacher, July 12, 1949, L2, p. 261.
182 “idolizes”: Tennessee Williams, “Stornello” (unpublished), HRC.
182 “To say she is fallen in love”: Ibid.
182 kill herself with a butcher’s knife: Rose Williams, in her dementia, according to Memoirs (p. 119), once “put a kitchen knife in her purse and started to leave for the psychiatrist’s with apparent intent to murder.” Edwina Williams, in her memoir, Remember Me to Tom (p. 85), writes, “One of the psychiatrists told Cornelius something I do not think he should have. He said to my husband, ‘Rose is liable to go down and get a butcher knife one night and cut your throat.’ ”
182 “a young bull of a man”: Williams, “Stornello,” HRC.
183 “tremendously understanding”: Ibid.
183 “crawls sobbing to the Madonna”: Ibid.
183 “My efforts to make it sound”: Williams to Elia Kazan and Molly Day Thacher, July 12, 1949, L2, p. 262.
183 “Honesty about failure”: Williams to James Laughlin, Aug. 17, 1949, ibid., p. 266.
183 “Approaching a crisis”: N, July 12, 1949, p. 507.
183 “illogical phantoms”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Feb. 24, 1950, WUCA.
184 “Left F. at theatre”: N, July 12 or 13, 1949, p. 509.
184 “Saw Frank only in morning”: Ibid., July 16, 1949, p. 509.
184 “the nightingales sang”: Ibid., Aug. 10, 1949, p. 511.
184 “They say they don’t want a fairy-tale”: Williams to James Laughlin, Aug. 17, 1949, L2, p. 266.
184 half a million dollars, plus a percentage: RBAW, p. 157.
185 “I always feel Tennessee is bound”: Audrey Wood to George Cukor, Sept. 7, 1949, HRC.
185 “like a wet dream of Louella Parsons’s”: Williams to Elia Kazan, undated, L2, p. 269.
185 “who was arranging place cards”: RBAW, p. 156.
185 “The deeper you go”: Williams to Elia Kazan, undated, WUCA.
185 “They are all very nice”: Ibid.
186 “The vulgarities have been eliminated”: Williams to Walter Dakin, Edwina Williams, and Dakin Williams, Sept. 1949, L2, p. 268.
186 Gertrude Lawrence: Bette Davis, Tallulah Bankhead, Miriam Hopkins, Mildred Dunnock, Judith Anderson, and Ethel Barrymore had been considered for the role.
186 “dismal error”: L2, p. 269. See note.
186 “amazingly good”: Williams to Walter Dakin, Edwina Williams, and Dakin Williams, Sept. 1949, L2, p. 269.
186 “I brought her a corsage”: Williams to Maria Britneva, Oct. 9, 1949, FOA, p. 26.
186 “in my heart the ending as it exists”: Williams to Irving Rapper, Aug. 5, 1949, L2, p. 264.
186 “I think it is all right to suggest”: Ibid.
186 “If we don’t show that Laura changes”: R. Barton Palmer and Williams Robert Bray, Hollywood’s Tennessee: The Williams Films and Postwar America (Austin: University of Texas, 2009), p. 52.
187 “We have tagged on the ending”: Ibid.
187 “quality of poetic mystery and beauty”: Williams to Jack Warner, Jerry Wald, and Charles Feldman, May 6, 1950, L2, p. 316.
187 “Life isn’t a bust”: Variety, Sept. 19, 1950.
187 “ ‘The Glass Menagerie’ Reaches the Screen”: Bosley Crowther, New York Times, Sept. 29, 1959.
187 “travesty”: Ibid.
187 “Am surprised at Tennessee”: Jack Warner to Mort Blumenstock, Apr. 29, 1950, in Palmer and Bray, Hollywood’s Tennessee, p. 58.
187 “I can’t impress upon you”: Palmer and Bray, Hollywood’s Tennessee, p. 58.
188 “In the picture there is less darkness”: Ibid., p. 59.
188 Key West in November 1949: They arrived around November 12. See L2, p. 271.
188 “a sort of Tom Thumb mansion”: Williams to Maria Britneva, Nov. 1949, FOA, p. 30.
188 “improvised poultry yard”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Nov. 1949, L2, p. 272.
188 “magnificent black goat”: Ibid.
188 “Life here is as dull as paradise”: Williams to James Laughlin, Dec. 9, 1949, James Laughlin Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
188 improved on his paradise: CWTW, p. 167.
188 “the water, the eternal turquoise”: Williams to Carson McCullers, Apr. 1950, L2, p. 310.
188 “Frank is now happy here”: Williams to Paul Bigelow, Dec. 4, 1949, ibid., p. 275.
188 “Grandfather is having the time”: Williams to Margo Jones, Jan. 2, 1950, ibid., p. 280.
189 “pretending to be deaf”: Williams to Donald Windham, Jan. 26, 1949, TWLDW, p. 230.
189 “Tom is so good to me”: Rev. Walter Dakin to Audrey Wood, Jan. 30, 1949, LLC.
189 “A girl makes her best contacts”: Williams to Paul Bigelow, Dec. 4, 1949, L2, p. 275.
189 “I feel somewhat rejuvenated”: Williams to Margo Jones, Jan. 2, 1950, ibid., p. 280.
190 “five drinks a day”: Williams to Carson McCullers, Dec. 6, 1949, ibid., p. 278.
190 “He will bring you good-luck”: Ibid., p. 277.
190 “the nicest piece of jewelry”: Williams to Jane Lawrence and Tony Smith, Jan. 5, 1950, ibid., p. 282.
190 “Frankie had lost weight at home”: Williams to Jane Lawrence and Tony Smith, Jan. 5, 1950, L2, p. 282.
190 “We shall all be together again soon”: Frank Merlo to Rev. Walter Dakin, July 6, 1950, LLC.
190 “kitchen sink version”: In the note to this first draft, Williams writes, “I call this ‘the kitchen sink draft’ because I have thrown into it every dramatic implement I could think of. Perhaps all of them will work. Perhaps none of them will work. Probably a few of them will work.” (See Williams to Paul Bigelow, Dec. 4, 1949, L2, p. 275.) For Williams, the completion of a play was always a moving goal. As late as February 2, 1950, he was writing to Windham about The Rose Tattoo: “I am pleased with the way I think it
is going to be.” (TWLDW, p. 254.)
190 “dark, blood-red translucent stone”: Williams to Elia Kazan, June 16, 1950, L2, p. 324.
190 “During the past two years”: Ibid., pp. 324–25.
190 “Well, this is your little friend”: Tennessee Williams, “The Rose Tattoo” (unpublished kitchen-sink version), HRC.
190 “one of those Mediterranean types”: Ibid.
190 “Humble Star”: Williams to Paul Bowles, Feb. 23, 1950, HRC. This early draft was later published in a much-revised version as “Death Is High” without the dedication to Merlo.
192 “I want him to feel some independence”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Mar. 27, 1950, L2, p. 300.
192 “in return for Sicily”: LOA1, p. 246.
192 “I remember Frankie telling us”: FOA, pp. 18–19.
192 “My approach to my work”: Williams to Elia Kazan, June 16, 1950, L2, p. 325.
192 “Have I ever told you”: Williams to Maria Britneva, Mar. 5, 1949, FOA, p. 16.
193 “the Dionysian element”: NSE, p. 63.
193 “somewhere along the Gulf Coast”: LOA1, p. 654.
193 “giant step forward”: Audrey Wood to Williams, Mar. 5, 1950, HRC.
193 “the baffled look”: Williams to Elia Kazan, June 16, 1950, L2, p. 324.
193 “tentative and mixed”: Ibid.
193 “very optimistic”: Williams to Audrey Wood, undated, LLC.
193 “that the script might be something”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Feb. 24, 1950, L2, p. 289.
193 “I said I was still too nervous”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Jan. 23, 1950, HRC.
193 “The play is probably too subjective”: Williams to Paul Bigelow, Feb. 23, 1950, HRC.
193 “Audrey is sitting on the new script”: Williams to Gore Vidal, Mar. 1, 1950, L2, p. 293.
194 “It is a kind of comic-grotesque Mass”: Elia Kazan to Williams, undated, HRC.
194 Williams himself later adopted it: NSE, p. 63.
194 “Your letter about the play”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Feb. 27, 1950, L2, p. 289.
194 “Kazan, Kazan”: KAL, p. 223.
194 Gadg: “I despised my nickname,” he wrote later. “It suggested an agreeable, ever-compliant little cuss, a ‘good Joe’ who worked hard and always followed orders.” (KAL, p. 5.)
194 “I do not think the material”: Elia Kazan to Williams, undated, HRC.