by John Lahr
568 “I will never recover”: Williams to Mitch Douglas, Apr. 14, 1980, LLC. “UNSPEAKABLEY DISGUSTED AND APPALLED!” Williams wrote to Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy about the critical reception of Clothes. (Williams to Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, Mar. 29, 1979, LLC.)
568 “Tennessee was difficult”: JLI with Mitch Douglas, 2012, JLC.
568 “Well, that would be difficult”: Ibid.
568 “Mitch, the windows are filthy”: Ibid.
568 “You guys play so fucking good”: Ibid.
569 “time runs short”: Michiko Kakutani, “Tennessee Williams: ‘I Keep Writing. Sometimes I Am Pleased,’ ” New York Times, Sept. 23, 1981.
569 “level with each other”: Williams to Mitch Douglas, undated, Harvard.
569 “Let’s do”: Mitch Douglas to Williams, July 27, 1981, Harvard.
569 “You’ve been quoted in the press”: Ibid.
571 “I wish you luck”: Williams to Mitch Douglas, Aug. 1981, LLC. In the same letter, Williams added, “Mitch, I’m winding things up and not with too much regret. I mean the career side of my life. . . . I like you. I admire you. I respect you. But I have entered a stage in my life that you should not have to cope with.”
571 “Can you place me in the hands”: Williams to Milton Goldman, Dec. 18, 1981, LLC.
571 “I will not again open an envelope”: Ibid.
571 his review of Clothes: Harold Clurman, “Theatre,” Nation, Apr. 19, 1980.
571 “There are periods in life”: Williams to Oliver Evans, Jan. 12, 1981, Harvard.
571 “that stands for ‘The Beast of the Apocalypse’ ”: Williams to Elia Kazan, July 5, 1980, Harvard.
571 hung over her bed: JLI with Mitch Douglas, 2012, JLC.
571 “a long, long stretch of desolation”: N, Spring 1979, p. 739.
572 “When I am very ill”: Williams to Oliver Evans, Jan. 12, 1981, Harvard.
572 “There’s an explosive center”: Frank Rich, “Play: Adapted Memoirs of Tennessee Williams,” New York Times, Sept. 11, 1981.
572 “spook sonata”: Tennessee Williams, A House Not Meant to Stand (New York: New Directions, 2008), p. 100.
572 “Never, never, never stop laughing!”: Williams to Truman Capote, July 2, 1978, LLC.
573 “I don’t compete with Joe Orton”: CWTW, p. 341.
573 “panicky disarray”: Tennessee Williams, A House Not Meant to Stand: A Gothic Comedy (New York: New Directions, 2008), p. 3.
573 “to produce a shock of disbelief”: Ibid.
573 “a large mantel clock”: Ibid.
573 “ticks rather loudly”: Ibid.
573 “a metaphor for the state of society”: Ibid.
573 “Things fall apart”: William Butler Yeats, The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, vol. 1: The Poems, rev. 2nd ed. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), p. 187.
573 “sinister times”: Williams, House Not Meant to Stand, p. 48.
575 “I don’t respect tears”: Ibid., p. 35.
575 “Miss Nancy”: NSE, p. 93.
575 “I remember when”: Williams, House Not Meant to Stand, p. 22.
575 “CORNELIUS: You encouraged it”: Ibid., p. 7.
575 “No one whom I have discussed”: Williams to Edwina Williams, Mar. 3, 1972, LLC.
576 “Dancie money”: Williams, House Not Meant to Stand, p. 18.
576 “lunacy runs rampant”: Ibid., p. 17.
576 “alarming incidences”: M, p. 116.
577 “CHARLIE: Mom?”: Williams, House Not Meant to Stand, p. 21.
577 “Bella should be presented”: Thomas Keith, “Introduction: A Mississippi Fun House,” in ibid., p. xxi.
577 “My eyes keep clouding over”: Williams, House Not Meant to Stand, p. 35.
577 “CORNELIUS: [half-rising and freezing in position]”: Ibid., p. 6.
577 “Little Joanie”: Ibid., p. 72.
577 “All I had was a little nervous break down”: Ibid., p. 71.
578 “Blow out your candles, Laura”: LOA1, p. 465.
578 “Ghostly outcries of children”: Williams, House Not Meant to Stand, p. 82.
578 “enchanting lost lyricism of childhood”: Ibid., p. 85.
578 “VOICE OF YOUNG CHIPS:—Dark!”: Ibid.
578 “Chips—will you say”: Ibid., p. 86.
578 “We can’t say grace”: LOA1, p. 401.
578 “Ceremonially the ghost children rise”: Williams, House Not Meant to Stand, p. 86.
578 “to glance back at their mother”: Ibid.
579 “When I hear [the critics] say”: N, Nov. 24, 1981, p. 764.
579 “the best thing Williams has written”: Gerald Clarke, “Show Business: Sweating It out in Miami,” Time, June 28, 1982.
579 “My God, that’s Mother Teresa”: Primus V, “Blessed Unexpectedly,” Harvard Magazine, Jan.–Feb. 2013.
580 “It was an Underwood typewriter”: Spoto, Kindness, p. 363.
580 “He looked old”: LLI with John Uecker, 1985, LLC.
580 “That’s the end of the performance”: Ibid.
580 “I don’t understand my life”: Williams to Kate Moldawer, May 31, 1982, LLC.
580 spent several days recovering: Peter Hoffman, “The Last Days of Tennessee Williams,” New York, July 25, 1983.
580 “He just wouldn’t have it”: LLI with John Uecker, 1983, LLC.
580 toyed with the idea of renting: “Ask him if he knows how I can dispose of this old shambles of a house. For this summer at least. If I do return to it (improbably) it will be with a little, warm-hearted Sicilian,” he wrote to Moldawer. (Williams to Kate Moldawer, May 31, 1982, LLC.)
580 “I won’t ever be coming home again”: Rader, Tennessee, p. 339.
580 “Before Mr. Tom went away”: Ibid.
582 “It was James Laughlin in the beginning”: Williams on James Laughlin, Jan. 1983, LLC.
582 “I know that it is the poetry”: Ibid.
582 “I’ve gone from good reviews”: JLI with Dotson Rader, 2011, JLC.
582 “To us”: RBAW, p. 325.
582 “I, I, I!—a burden to be surrendered”: N, p. 729.
CHAPTER 10: THE SUDDEN SUBWAY
583 “The Sudden Subway”: Unless otherwise noted, material in this chapter is drawn from John Lahr, “The Lady and Tennessee,” The New Yorker, Dec. 19, 1994.
583 “Tennessee called death the sudden subway”: James Laughlin, “Tennessee,” in James Laughlin, Peter Glassgold, and Elizabeth Harper, New Directions 47: An International Anthology of Poetry and Prose (New York: New Directions, 1983), p. 180.
583 “He wrote his own life”: JLI with John Uecker, 2010, JLC.
583 when the police arrived at Williams’s room: Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Report of Death, Case M83-1568.
583 “I run, cried the fox, in circles”: CP, “Cried the Fox,” pp. 6–7.
584 “I knew he was dealing”: LLI with John Uecker, 2010, JLC.
584 “deathly afraid of institutions”: Tennessee Williams, The One Exception, Jan. 1983, LLC.
584 “retreated to her room”: Ibid.
584 “She dreads any encounter”: Ibid.
584 “She used to have periods of depression”: Ibid.
584 “I—can’t talk much”: Ibid.
584 “I wonder if it wouldn’t be better”: Ibid.
584 “nods with a senseless look”: Ibid.
584 “Kyra takes a few hesitant steps”: Ibid.
585 “Tennessee begged me”: JLI with John Uecker, 2010, JLC.
585 “I most certainly will not”: LLI with John Uecker, 1985, LLC.
585 “Every time I’d go in the room”: JLI with John Uecker, 2010, JLC.
585 “right-hand bower”: LOA1, p. 419.
585 “I can’t write”: JLI with John Uecker, 2010, JLC.
585 “I have faced the fact”: Ibid.
585 “I said, ‘What if he should take the whole bottle?’ ”: LLI with John Uecker, 1983, LLC.
586 “He just seemed
to be in dreamland”: JLI with John Uecker, 2010, JLC.
586 “It was bad”: JLI with John Uecker, 2011, JLC.
586 “My next thought”: JLI with John Uecker, 2010, JLC.
586 “Water witches crowned with reeds”: Thomas Chatterton, “Minstrel Song” from Aella: The final verse reads, “Water-witches, crowned with reytes, / Bear me to your lethal tide. / I die! I come! My true-love waits . . . / Thus the damsel spake, and died.”
587 “There were so many people”: JLI with John Uecker, 2011, JLC.
587 “I’ve got to see him!”: JLI with John Uecker, 2010, JLC.
587 “The cause of death”: Suzanne Daley, “Williams Choked on a Bottle Cap: No Evidence of Foul Play Seen by the Medical Examiner,” New York Times, Feb. 27, 1983.
587 “was not wide enough”: Michael M. Baden with Judith Adler Hennessee, Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner (New York: Ballantine, 2005), p. 73.
588 official public story about his death: Daley, “Williams Choked on a Bottle Cap.”
588 “an autopsy was performed”: Ibid.
588 “Gross told me”: Philip Shenon, “Broad Deterioration in Coroner’s Office Charged,” New York Times, Jan. 30, 1985.
588 “apparently the overcap”: LLI with John Uecker, 1984, LLC.
588 toxicology report: The report from the toxicology laboratory shows the breakdown of secobarbital in Williams’s body. Blood: 1.8 mg%; Brain: 2.6 mg%; Stomach content: 96 mg/85 ml; Liver: 5.5 mg%; Kidney: 3.7%; Urine: 0.4%. Certified by Dr. Milton Lessa Bastos, April 6, 1983. (Copy of report, LLC.)
588 “sad group noises”: Letter from Elia Kazan, Mar. 25, 1983, LLC.
588 “The man lived a very good life”: Ibid.
589 “In order to negotiate life”: Michiko Kakutani, “The Legacy of Tennessee Williams,” New York Times, Mar. 6, 1983.
589 “For a while the theater loved him”: “Williams Dies Alone in Midtown Hotel: Literary, Theater Greats Mourn a Towering Talent,” New York Post, Feb. 26, 1983.
589 “the Orthodox Jewish coffin”: Peter Hoffman, “The Last Days of Tennessee Williams,” New York, July 25, 1983, p. 41.
589 “It is a time of reconciliation”: Sara Rimer, “Fans Give Williams Last Review,” Miami Herald, Mar. 3, 1983.
589 “I’m to be borne out to sea”: Tennessee Williams’ South, DVD, directed by Harry Rasky (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1972).
590 “If he had to die”: David Richards, “The Long Shadow of Tennessee,” Washington Post, Mar. 15, 1983.
590 “Suddenly out of obscurity”: Ibid.
590 “Parisian outfit”: Hoffman, “Last Days of Tennessee Williams,” p. 42.
590 “The milk train doesn’t stop”: Margaria Fichtner, “Another Williams: Dakin for President,” Miami Herald, June 9, 1983.
590 “I’m sure he’d disapprove”: New Orleans Times-Picayune, Mar. 6, 1983.
590 “Dakin planned a concession stand”: JLI with Dotson Rader, 2011, JLC.
591 Dakin could make him pay in death: Robert Bray, the Williams scholar who knew Dakin and interviewed him, recalled other schemes to exploit the Williams franchise: “Dakin’s idea of digging up the coffin in St. Louis and repatriating TW back to New Orleans, in order to establish a TW theme park. He’d say, ‘You know, we could have Brick hobbling around on a crutch, Amanda strolling about with her jonquils, Shannon looking for a drink.’ ” (JLI with Robert Bray, 2012, JLC.)
591 the city he called “St. Pollution”: CWTW, p. 180.
591 “Tennessee’s two great loves”: Lahr, “Lady and Tennessee,” p. 88.
591 her own obituaries: Maria St. Just died February 15, 1994.
591 “THE ARISTOCRATIC HELLCAT”: Lahr, “Lady and Tennessee,” p. 88.
591 “She was Williams’s closest woman friend”: Ibid.
592 “an occasional actress”: M, p. 149.
592 “I will write more about Maria later”: Ibid.
592 “The lady is afflicted”: Ibid., p. 215.
592 “In the American edition of my memoirs”: Lahr, “Lady and Tennessee,” p. 86.
592 “The answer is no”: Ibid.
592 “I suppose in a way he had”: Ibid.
592 “My last request is a last command”: Ibid., p. 96.
593 throws himself in the Thames: Ibid.
593 “He knew that she had exaggerated”: Ibid.
593 “weaning himself away from her”: Ibid.
593 “Maria was very much a presence”: Ibid.
593 “he was a procrastinator”: Ibid., p. 92.
593 “She was always whining”: Ibid., p. 88.
594 “Ultimately, money”: Ibid.
594 percentage of the royalties: Edwina got 50 percent of the royalties from The Glass Menagerie, which was returned to Williams on her death. Merlo also got a percentage of The Rose Tattoo; however, much to Williams’s annoyance, Merlo’s royalties were not assigned back to him by the family after Merlo’s death.
594 “second best bed”: William Shakespeare’s Last Will and Testament (1616) contains this stipulation: “Item, I give unto my wife my second best bed with the furniture.”
594 “Suppose both Peter and Tenn were terminally ill?”: Lahr, “Lady and Tennessee,” p. 86.
594 “What do you think?”: Ibid.
595 “ ‘Tell her I’m asleep’ ”: Ibid., p. 92.
595 “I knew that she was the one”: Ibid.
595 “BANG, BANG, BANG”: Ibid., p. 90.
595 “the oubliette”: Ibid.
595 “She was engaged in vigorous battles”: Ibid., p. 86.
596 “Maria was the greatest cheerleader”: Ibid., p. 92.
596 “Eastman is perfectly willing”: Ibid.
596 “These are the people”: Ibid., p. 88.
596 “Denying this group of users”: Ibid., p. 89.
596 “Maria wasn’t really interested”: Ibid., p. 96.
597 St. Just wrote: Lady St. Just to Ed Sherin, Mar. 27, 1983, ESC.
597 “I wanted to name”: Lahr, “Lady and Tennessee,” p. 93.
597 disliked because it was “homosexual”: Ibid., p. 89.
597 “She said, ‘The play is not doable’ ”: Ibid., p. 95.
597 “She pretended an awful lot”: Ibid., p. 94.
598 “His personal image”: Ibid., p. 89.
598 “I explained to her”: Ibid.
598 Many biographers were called: A. Scott Berg, Judith Thurman, Virginia Spencer Carr, John Lahr.
598 “She definitely wanted to vet the manuscript”: Lahr, “Lady and Tennessee,” p. 89.
598 “I would never trust you with him”: Ibid.
598 “You have ruined Tennessee Williams!”: Ibid.
598 “full access to my private correspondence and journals”: Ibid., p. 90.
599 “Baby, you write it!”: Ibid.
599 “pirate book”: Ibid.
599 “fit into Maria’s plans”: Ibid., p. 91.
600 “I admired the depth of its research”: Ibid.
600 “As I recall”: Ibid.
600 “The answer is spelled blackmail”: Ibid.
600 “I must remain friends”: Ibid.
600 “I’ve denounced her”: Ibid.
600 “submit for your review and comment”: Ibid.
600 “Maria wreaked havoc”: Ibid.
601 allowed Leverich’s biography to proceed to publication: The Late Plays of Tennessee Williams, by the director and theater professor William Prosser, set aside in 1991 because of St. Just’s diktats, was also posthumously published, in 2009.
601 In 2000: The figures were provided and confirmed by the University of the South, which owns the Williams copyrights.
601 “. . . this much will be clear”: CP, “Part of a Hero,” p. 34.
601 “I have always depended”: LOA1, p. 563.
601 “Sometimes—there’s God”: Ibid., p. 529.
601 “Nowadays the world is lit”: Ibid., p. 465.
601 “Make voyages!”: LOA1, p. 7
97.
601 “fatal need”: Gilbert Maxwell, Tennessee Williams and Friends: An Informal Biography (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1965), p. 20.
602 “the tragic division of the human spirit”: Williams to Jessica Tandy, undated, as quoted in Mike Steen, A Look at Tennessee Williams (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1969), p. 181.
602 “I want to get my goodness back”: Lahr, “Lady and Tennessee,” p. 91.
602 “What implements have we but words”: NSE, p. 188.
Sources
ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
Betty Davis Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass.
Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, New York, N.Y.
Carson McCullers Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C.
Carter Burden Collection of American Literature, Morgan Library and Museum, New York, N.Y.
Cheryl Crawford Collection, Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries, Houston, Tex.
Chicago Theater Collection, Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago Public Library, Chicago, Ill.
Columbia University Center for Oral History Collection, New York, N.Y.
Elia Kazan Collection, Cinema Archives, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn.
Fred W. Todd Tennessee Williams Collection, Williams Research Center, The Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans, La.
Irene Mayer Selznick Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass.
James Laughlin Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
John Lahr Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass.
Katherine Anne Porter Collection, University of Maryland Libraries, College Park, Md.
Lyle Leverich Collection, attached to the John Lahr Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass.
Manuscripts Department, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.
Papers of the Rev. Walter Dakin, Archives of the University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn.
Tennessee Williams Collection, Archives of the University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn.