by John Lahr
414 “how to live beyond despair”: CWTW, p. 104.
414 “Ethereal, almost ghostly”: LOA2, p. 338.
414 “a dainty teapot”: CS, “Night of the Iguana,” p. 230.
414 “the oldest living”: LOA2, p. 377.
414 “a sense of really having a home”: Williams to Katharine Hepburn, Feb. 16, 1961, Delaware.
414 “When he died”: Ibid.
414 “When the old keep serenity”: Williams to Frank Corsaro, undated fragment, LLC.
415 “dedicated to the memory”: Tennessee Williams, “Three Acts of Grace,” HRC.
415 carnal: The young writer ejaculates on Edith. “She felt a wing-like throbbing against her belly, and then a scalding wetness. Then he let go of her altogether.” Later, she lies on her bed reflecting on the incident. “Just before falling asleep she remembered and felt again the spot of dampness, now turning cool but still adhering to the flesh of her belly as a light but persistent kiss. Her fingers approached it timidly. They expected to draw back with revulsion but were not so affected. They touched it curiously and even pityingly and did not draw back for a while. Ah, Life, she thought to herself and was about to smile at the originality of this thought when darkness lapped over the outward gaze of her mind.” (CS, “Night of the Iguana,” pp. 244–45.)
415 “See? The iguana?”: LOA2, p. 421.
415 “It’s horrible”: Ibid., p. 387.
415 “My life has cracked up on me”: Ibid., p. 343.
415 “I am a little bit in the condition”: Williams to Frank Corsaro, Mar. 13, 1960, Morgan.
415 “We—live on two levels”: LOA2, p. 380.
415 “Don’t ask me why”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Oct. 30, 1959, HRC.
416 “Hannah is not a loser”: Williams to Frank Corsaro, Aug. 17, 1960, Morgan.
416 “She is profoundly understanding”: Ibid.
416 “Passion Play performance”: LOA2, p. 403.
416 “understanding and kindness”: Williams to Lilla Van Saher, Oct. 20, 1959, HRC.
416 “As we were working”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
416 “I’m tired, the energy’s low”: Williams to Brooks Atkinson, Sept. 2, 1959, BRTC.
417 “I think the play for Spoleto”: Williams to Audrey Wood, May 7, 1959, HRC.
417 “Tenn dear, you’re right”: Anna Magnani to Williams, Nov. 23, 1961, Columbia.
417 Brooks Atkinson, who retired: “I’m almost inclined to follow you into retirement,” Williams wrote to Atkinson (June 3, 1960, BRTC).
417 “In all the letters and phone-calls and talks”: Williams to Audrey Wood, undated, HRC.
417 “Dear Horse: or Saint Francis”: Williams to Frank Merlo, Jan. 2, 1961, Columbia.
418 “I set myself down at our patio table”: M, pp. 184–85.
418 “When people I care for turn violent”: Gore Vidal, Palimpsest: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 405.
418 “There was no use in saying”: Ibid.
418 “declined to eat”: M, pp. 185–86.
419 “Are you going to leave me”: Ibid., p. 186.
419 “I’m not any longer”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Mar. 13, 1961, HRC.
420 “I have never stopped loving”: Ibid.
420 Marion Vaccaro: Williams first met and became friends with Marion Vaccaro in 1941 when her mother allowed him to stay in slave quarters at the back of “Tradewinds,” her 125-year-old mansion in Key West. Vaccaro, who had been expensively educated at the Hewlett School and Rosemary Hall, and who had attended both the University of Michigan and Smith College, was lively and charming, with an interest in the arts. For a time, before marrying Regis Vaccaro, the heir to the Standard Fruit and Steamship Company—thus her nickname “The Banana Queen”—she worked for the impresario Florenz Ziegfeld and his wife, the actress Billie Burke, as a tutor to their daughter. Williams kept a photo of Vaccaro from these early days by his Key West bedside. Hard drinking and high loving, she was the model of Cora in his short-story “Two on a Party.” She remained a close and big-hearted friend to Williams up to her death in 1970. (See Philip C. Kolin, “Tenn and the Banana Queen: The Correspondence of Tennessee Williams and Marion Black Vaccaro,” Tennessee Williams Annual Review, no. 8 (2006), available at www.tennesseewilliamsstudies.org/archives/2006/07kolin
.htm.)
420 “Perhaps I will meet”: Williams to Robert MacGregor, Apr. 30, 1960, LLC.
420 “terrific waves of loneliness”: Williams to Audrey Wood, undated, THNOC.
420 “the dreadful facts of my life”: Ibid.
420 “I gave my love”: Ibid.
420 “the answering party said”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Apr. 1961, THNOC.
420 “I suppose he is so revolted”: Williams to Robert MacGregor, Apr. 30, 1961, LLC.
420 “Sic Transit Gloria Swanson”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Apr. 29, 1961, HRC.
420 “I’ve always tried to respect his pride”: Williams to Audrey Wood, May 7, 1961, HRC.
421 “Magnani says”: Williams to Frank Corsaro and Charles Bowden, May 19, 1961, Morgan.
421 “Don’t! Break!”: LOA2, p. 346.
421 “I think of a home”: Ibid., p. 414.
421 “The Horse has done just about all”: Williams to Lady St. Just, undated (ca. 1961), FOA, p. 175.
422 “In Iguana you can have your finest play”: Cheryl Crawford to Williams, Aug. 6, 1960, Houston. After the Actors Studio workshop, Crawford reported to Wood, “Sunday night Ten saw Iguana and was so overcome he cried.” (Cheryl Crawford to Audrey Wood, May 31, 1960, HRC.)
422 “During the intermission”: Cheryl Crawford, One Naked Individual: My Fifty Years in the Theatre (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1977), pp. 197–98.
422 “This play is a dramatic poem”: Ibid., p. 199.
422 “I never thought that you really wanted”: Ibid.
422 “I want to be around for the staging”: Williams to Charles Bowden, Sept. 28, 1960, HRC.
422 “a terrifically dynamic man”: Bowden with H. Ridgely Bullock, his producing partner at the time, had mounted Hotel Paradiso, Caligula, Season of Choice, and a revival of Fallen Angels. “He truly ‘digs’ the play and will stop at nothing to give it the finest possible production. He doesn’t just call Hepburn and send her re-writes, he flies out to see her, for instance, and he is still operating, I understand, without a signed contract, which makes it all the more touching and impressive.” (Williams to Audrey Wood, Mar. 13, 1961, HRC.)
423 “silly putty—a silly person”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
423 “My scripts at this stage”: Williams to Charles Bowden, undated, HRC.
423 “The revisions extended certain areas”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
423 “undigested” scraps from a dung hill: Shannon: “Then she noticed, and I noticed too, a pair of very old natives of this nameless country, practically naked expect for a few filthy rags, creeping and crawling about this mound of . . . and . . . occasionally stopping to pick something out of it, and pop it in their mouths.” (LOA2, p. 422.)
423 “I said, ‘What do I do with them?’ ”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
423 “Despite your talent”: Williams to Frank Corsaro, July 1960, HRC.
424 “aristocracy of spirit”: Williams to Katharine Hepburn, Feb. 15, 1961, Delaware.
424 “I wrote the part of Hannah for Hepburn”: Williams to Elia Kazan, undated, Harvard.
424 “absolutely impossible”: Williams to Katharine Hepburn, Jan. 5, 1961, Delaware.
424 “You’re a hustler”: LOA2, p. 371.
424 “pitch”: Williams to Katharine Hepburn, Jan. 5, 1961, Delaware.
424 “an abortion”: Ibid.
424 “I don’t mean to put down”: Ibid.
424 “Yes, I know, I’m coming on”: Williams to Katharine Hepburn, Feb. 16, 1961, Delaware.
425 “Bit by bit”: Ibid.
425 “You must understand something!”: Dan Isaac, “Love in Its Purest Terms
: Williams, Hepburn and Night of the Iguana,” Village Voice, May 14, 1996.
425 “She won’t give us more time”: Ibid.
425 “that wonderful old bitch”: Williams to Oliver Evans, 1961, HRC.
425 highest-paid woman in America: James Spada, More Than a Woman: An Intimate Biography of Bette Davis (New York: Warner Books, 1994), p. 361.
425 “Granted she is a name”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Mar. 13, 1961, HRC.
425 “living definition of nature”: Williams to Bette Davis, undated, FOA, p. 176.
426 “the play wasn’t completely finished”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
426 “when she discovers”: Ibid.
426 “I love the play”: Williams to Charles Bowden, Oct. 4, 1961, HRC.
426 “longest and most appalling tour”: M, p. 180.
426 “over made-up like a mailbox”: John Maxtone-Graham, “Production Notes,” Sewanee.
426 “No one was to go near”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
426 “We don’t have to be friends”: Ibid.
426 “a piece of superb one-upsmanship”: Maxtone-Graham, “Production Notes,” Sewanee.
426 “She was frightened to death”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
426 “she came up behind me”: Ibid.
427 “I’m sick of this Actors Studio shit”: Maxtone-Graham, “Production Notes,” Sewanee.
427 “When she is on a rampage”: Ibid.
427 “This was the sight”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
427 “that she had an artistic difference”: Maxtone-Graham, “Production Notes,” Sewanee.
427 “a little red-rimmed around the eyes”: Ibid.
428 “a wild comedy”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
428 “suffering from a wrenched knee”: Barbara Leaming, Bette Davis: A Biography (London: Penguin Books, 1993), p. 230.
428 “She was only good on opening night”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
428 “She was really very disruptive”: Spada, More Than a Woman, p. 482.
428 “La Davis”: Leaming, Bette Davis, p. 229.
428 “Jessica Dragonet”: Maxtone-Graham, “Production Notes,” Sewanee.
428 “She was asking for rewrites”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
428 “I’m sorry to have to agree”: Ibid.
428 “perfidy galore”: Ibid.
428 “I can’t help feeling”: Maxtone-Graham, “Production Notes,” Sewanee.
428 “IGUANA LIMPS INTO DETROIT”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
429 “Overlong, dreadfully overlong”: Maxtone-Graham, “Production Notes,” Sewanee.
429 “Frank is not a bad boy”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Mar. 13, 1961, HRC.
429 “really didn’t feel well”: LLI with Charles Bowden and Paula Laurence, 1996, LLC.
429 “It’s over between us!”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
429 “He is a handy thing”: Williams to Oliver Evans, Nov. 1961, LLC.
429 seven stitches in Marion Vaccaro’s hand: Ibid.
429 “He used to sit in front of me”: M, p. 180.
431 “like a guardian”: Ibid.
431 “He was starting for my throat”: Ibid.
431 “had swollen up”: Ibid., p. 181.
431 his rampaging paranoia: Donald Spoto, The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985), p. 247.
431 “I’ll have a drink”: LLI with Charles Bowden and Paula Laurence, 1996, LLC.
431 “Frankie had dealt so well”: JLI with Maureen Stapleton, 2005, JLC.
431 “a pharmacology of the lost”: Mary F. Lux, “Tenn among the Lotus-Eaters: Drugs in the Life of Tennessee Williams,” Southern Quarterly (Fall 1999), p. 117.
432 “I hope to get through this”: Williams to Robert MacGregor, Apr. 30, 1961, LLC.
432 “I don’t care if it’s horse piss”: Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), p. 147.
432 revocation of Jacobson’s medical license: Boyce Rensberger, “Amphetamines Used by a Physician to Lift Moods of Famous Patients,” New York Times, Dec. 4, 1972.
432 Mellaril: M, p. 209. Besides the Mellaril, his daily cocktail of drugs included liquor, two Doriden tablets, and barbiturates.
432 “the Goforth Syndrome”: Williams to Joseph Losey, Nov. 11, 1966, HRC.
432 “I felt as if a concrete sarcophagus”: M, p. 208.
432 “Would you like to try it?”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
432 “EVEN FOR A MAN OF LESS TALENT”: Claudia Cassidy, “Even for a Man of Less Talent This Would Be a Bankrupt Play,” On the Aisle, Chicago Tribune, Nov. 22, 1961.
433 “What is rather pathetic”: John Maxtone-Graham, “Production Notes,” Sewanee.
433 “punch-drunk with new pages”: Mike Steen, A Look at Tennessee Williams (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1969), p. 67.
433 “Flushed with whisky”: Maxtone-Graham, “Production Notes,” Sewanee.
433 “I can’t”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
433 “It was insane”: Spada, More Than a Woman, pp. 486–87.
433 “that rather hysterical”: Maxtone-Graham, “Production Notes,” Sewanee.
434 “I can’t agree with you”: Williams to Bette Davis, Jan. 1962, BDC.
434 “Where have you been?”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
434 “You filthy cunt!”: Ibid.
435 “I can feel vibrations”: Maxtone-Graham, “Production Notes,” Sewanee.
435 “He was a frazzled man”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
435 “We now have no director”: Maxtone-Graham, “Production Notes,” Sewanee.
435 “He told Williams”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
435 “unabashed disregard”: Leaming, Bette Davis, p. 234.
435 “I think this creation of Maxine”: Williams to Bette Davis, undated, BDC.
436 “giving color and visual poetry”: Williams to Bette Davis, undated, BDC.
436 “It is made apparent that”: Williams to Bette Davis, undated, BDC.
436 “she’s ready for a night swim”: Williams to Bette Davis, undated, BDC.
436 “I thought Maggie Leighton’s final bit”: Elia Kazan to Williams, Feb. 12, 1962, Columbia.
436 “Mr. Williams is the most gifted”: Brooks Atkinson, “His Bizarre Images Can’t Be Denied,” New York Times, Nov. 26, 1961.
437 changed its theater critic: Ted Kalem (1961–1965) took over from Louis Kronenberger (1938–1961).
437 “in his best dramatic form”: Ted Kalem, “The Angel of the Odd,” Time, Mar. 9, 1962.
437 “I fell down”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
437 “allowed”: Ibid.
437 “greeted by a flat, dead house “: Spada, More Than a Woman, p. 489.
437 “tattered and forlorn splendor”: Walter Kerr, “First Night Report: ‘The Night of the Iguana,’ ” New York Herald Tribune, Dec. 30, 1961.
437 “The day I left New York”: Williams to Bette Davis, Jan. 1962, BDC.
437 “I want to tell you”: Ibid.
438 “It is hard to say which was worse”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Apr. 15, 1962, FOA, pp. 179–80. “All is chaos. La Winters has a fifth of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee sour mash whiskey in her dressing room and nips all through the show. She never enters on cue.”
438 “I’m so happy”: Spada, More Than a Woman, p. 492.
438 “Thirty years experience as an actress”: Variety, Sept. 21, 1962.
438 “We would sit there”: JLI with Frank Corsaro, 2011, JLC.
438 “I turned around”: Ibid.
438 “a minor league poet”: LOA2, p. 379.
439 “the earth’s obscene, corrupting love”: Ibid., p. 424.
439 “beings of a golden kind”: Ibid., p. 425.
439 “in a loud exalted voice”: Ibid., p. 426.
439 “my . . . brain’s going out now”: Ib
id., p. 423. “I am convinced the mind wears out more rapidly than the body.” (Williams to Oliver Evans, 1962, LLC.)
439 “The play may seem meaningless”: Harold Clurman, “Theatre,” Nation, Jan. 27, 1962.
439 “writing at the top of his form”: Howard Taubman, “ ‘Night of the Iguana’ Opens,” New York Times, Dec. 29, 1961.
439 “at his poetic, moving best”: John Chapman, “Williams Is at His Poetic, Moving Best with ‘Night of the Iguana,’ ” New York Daily News, Dec. 29, 1961.
439 “perhaps the wisest play he has written”: Kalem, “Angel of the Odd.”
439 “one of [his] saddest, darkest”: Richard Watts Jr., “Reveries of Tennessee Williams,” New York Post, Dec. 29, 1961.
440 “I can make it down the hill”: LOA2, p. 427.
440 “half leading half supporting him”: Ibid.
440 “chuckles happily”: Ibid.
440 “a dream of immobility”: Walter Kerr, “Iguana: True Tone,” New York Herald Tribune, Jan. 7, 1962.
440 “Shannon has given up”: Leaming, Bette Davis, p. 235.
440 “Oh, God, can’t we stop now?”: LOA2, p. 427.
440 “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well”: Elia Kazan to Williams, 1962, Columbia.
440 “I think my kind of literary”: CWTW, p. 99.
441 “I want to tell you tonight”: “An Evening with Nichols and May” ran for 306 performances from Oct. 8, 1960, to July 1, 1961, at the John Golden Theatre. A record of the show, An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May (directed by Arthur Penn, for Mercury Records, 1960), won the Grammy for Best Comedy performance in 1961.
441 “I didn’t and don’t blame him”: Mike Nichols to John Lahr, Aug. 23, 2011, JLC.
441 “I’m so tired”: Williams to Herbert Machiz, Oct. 1962, Columbia. Albee’s play opened on October 13, 1962.
441 “one of those works”: Ibid.
441 “astringency”: Williams to Joseph Losey, Mar. 5, 1967, HRC.
441 “crazy with jealousy”: CWTW, p. 98.
442 “While I’m in the theatre”: Ibid.
442 “my answer to the school of Ionesco”: Williams to James Laughlin, Sept. 24, 1962, JLC.
442 “They’re not just funny”: Ibid.
442 “dying monster”: LOA2, p. 512.
442 “a poem of death”: Williams to Herbert Machiz, Oct. 1962, Columbia.
442 “Ahhhhhhhh, meeeeeeeeee!”: LOA2, p. 496.