See you soon in Manhattan?
Ever fondly yours,
Tennessee
« • »
106. TL—2
Jan. 9, 1955 [New York]
DEAR TENN—
Thank you so much for your Christmas card and message. I’m so pleased that you liked my little poem that Johnny Myers printed. As you will no doubt have guessed, it was written for G[ertrude Huston], but grew out of M[aria Britneva]’s repeated accusations that G had me “under her thumb.” Well, if that’s where I am, as the poem says, I don’t much mind, and if there is any pressure it is certainly of a kind that I never feel. The “baubles,” of course, are out of Goldsmith, again thanks to M, and the business about running from life to life from the sayings of the Buddha . . . all of which just goes to show how odd are the ways in which a poem gets itself felt and made. And I’m so pleased that you liked it. I have quite a few accumulated since my last little book and must soon get busy and put them together for another. Not that I have much ambition for them . . . they come of themselves, little personal fantasies that are things unto themselves . . . but I like them, or some of them, and am pleased when friends do too.
[ . . . ]
I was much cheered up by our telephone conversation. As you have gathered, all this business with M is driving me half crazy. I don’t think anyone has ever upset me so much. She has wonderful qualities and if she would just get over her illusions—me, for one, and the idea that she has to be an actress for another—I think she would have a happy and useful life.
I do want to help her, but everyone whose advice I have asked thinks there has got to be a complete break in her mind. As long as she thinks I am helping her she thinks that means in the end I will accept her and it just prolongs the illusion and her misery. The very fact she went to such lengths to worm it out of the doctor where the help was coming from just proves that point. And her whole thought in going to him—as far as I can gather from talking to him—has been that by doing so she would alter her personality so that I would like her. In other words, she went to him not really to help herself, but just as a further means of getting at me. And she was much worse since going than before.
[ . . . ]
I want to talk to Bob Hutchins about it, of course, as you suggested. He is a really wise person, and a benevolent one. He flew in and out of town this week for a meeting, but I couldn’t get him alone. However, he’ll be back later in the month and I’ll surely get to talk to him then. As you say, it’s a real necessity for me, for my peace of mind and my sense of justice, to do the right thing. But I honestly think the right thing, for now at least, is the complete break. Perhaps later there will be other opportunities, when she gets rational and really starts on a new life. I hope so.
Thanks for being so nice to G when she was down there. She had a lot of fun going around with you. You can imagine how hard all of this business is on her. But she takes it with a smile and is very understanding.
I’m not just sure where you are now, so will send letter to Key West as well. Have fun, and let me know what develops.
As ever,
[James Laughlin]
« • »
my little poem: “It’s Warm Under Your Thumb,” dedicated “to Maria” in Collected Poems (1994) but without dedication in earlier and later printings.
Bob Hutchins: Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977), American educational philosopher who became dean of the Yale Law School in his twenties and at thirty years of age became the wunderkind president (1929–1945) and then chancellor (1945–1951) of the University of Chicago where he introduced numerous reforms such as the Great Books Program. He and JL worked together producing the Goethe Festival in Aspen in 1949, which was partially sponsored by the university. In 1951, Hutchins, now assistant director of the Ford Foundation, invited JL to Pasadena for a series of meetings concerning the new Ford Foundation outreach into the foreign arena, intended to counter Soviet influence in Europe. This led to JL’s employment by the Ford Foundation as head of Intercultural Publications Inc., which produced the magazine Perspectives USA. JL considered Hutchins a wise friend and mentor and often turned to him for advice.
107. TL—2
January 16th [1955] [New York]
DEAR TENN—
I hope that you had a good time in St. Louis and New Orleans, and that you found your Grandfather in better shape than you anticipated. As I told you, I am rooting hard for him to make it to 100, and feel sure that he will.
Audrey finally found a copy of the new play [Cat on a Hot Tin Roof] for me to read, and, frankly, I am still shaking all over. It is really shattering, a small atom bomb, and in parts as strange and true as Dostoevski—perhaps not the comparison you would choose yourself, but it hit me in the same sort of way.
You have certainly come to grips here with some of the most crucial problems of mortal existence and there are no holds barred. No doubt a lot of thin-skinned people are going to scream at you for this one—they just won’t be able to stand up to this direct facing of truth—but I think that those who can take it will be carried away with the almost barbaric mixture of terror and love.
Brick is a terrific character, and his “position,” if one can call it that, seems to me to fit in with what I learned out in India. If people will take the trouble, this play will give them a lot to think about—about the state of the world today, as it derives from the basic things in human nature—the role of strength, and the role of weakness, the drive for power, the hunger for love—it’s all there, and boiled down into a tight pattern that is as taut as a watch spring.
You have written some parts there that it is going to be hard to find actors big enough to handle. It’s almost like a composer putting down notes that the instrumentalist, or the singer, can hardly play or sing. I grope for the word to describe what I feel about some of these people; they are almost larger than life, as if more life—life as it really is—has been crammed into them than they can hold. I saw a German movie not long ago, about the Nibelungen, where the figures had this same sort of larger than life size—the passion and the drive were just swelling them up and bursting out of them. You get here, I think, into the realm of myth, almost.
I hope that Gadg will sense what is here and let it be played for what it really is. Forget the little laughs and little businesses and play it for the big values that are in it.
May we get Lustig started on a jacket for it? I’d like to have the book out as close to the opening as possible, because I think this one is going to raise the roof and the book should be available for people outside New York.
I’m going out skiing at Alta now for a week or two but will be back soon and will call you. Meanwhile, Bob can move ahead if you give him the word.
Best to Frank,
[James Laughlin]
« • »
to make it to 100: Reverend Dakin died on February 14 of that year at the age of ninety-seven. TW paid tribute to his grandfather with the character of the ninety-seven-year-old Nonno, “the world’s oldest living and practicing poet,” in The Night of the Iguana (1961).
108. TL—2
March 8, 1955 [New York]
DEAR TENNESSEE,
I had to rush back to the office early today so didn’t have a chance to talk with you. But I just want to thank you for such a wonderful evening and say that I was deeply impressed with the “Cat!” As you know, I am never very happy about Gadg’s “busy-busy” direction—he seems to be concentrating more on keeping all the actors wiggling all the time than on getting them to speak the lines beautifully—and I look forward to the day when you will direct your own plays and be able to bring out the full charge of poetry that is in them. It seems to me that in the theatres of London and Paris the directors don’t feel obliged to have everybody running every which way all the time. When a writer can write beautiful lines, as you can, they’re willing to let the actors stand still and recite them with depth and feeling. And it seems to me that all this hyper-a
ctivity is pseudo-theatre. Maybe it is necessary where you don’t have really great actors, but I wonder.
Of the present cast, I think I like the boy best, and then old Burl Ives, though he is not so good when he can’t be shouting. I thought he fell off badly in the last act where he had to convey a great deal in a subdued mood. He doesn’t seem to me to be an actor who can do much with his hands or face. Perhaps you could write in a few lines in [a] poetic vein at that crucial point which would indicate that he has reached some kind of inner resignation.
And I wonder about the elephant story. It struck me as something of an intrusion, breaking the structural continuity of the play. Do you feel that a laugh is needed at that point? I didn’t. But I may be wrong.
I think that BBG is not very good in her long opening monologue where she seems to be shouting and forcing, but gets much better when she quiets down and lets her suffering come through. Maybe you should cut the monologue somewhat if she can’t get to playing it better. I found her quite moving in the last scene and I think she carries that off. I wonder why you sacrificed one very beautiful line that was in the end of the script I read. I can’t quote it exactly from memory but the sense of it was to define Brick’s nature in poetic terms. Somehow I felt that Brick’s closing line of “I admire you” was not quite big enough to finish things off on the scale of values that the play has established. Why shouldn’t the author have the last word here in a line which finally establishes what he believes about Brick, who is, after all, the central figure.
I was a little bit troubled by the negro spiritual background music toward the end. This struck me as somewhat Hollywood. Do you think it is really needed? It seems to me that you have built up a sufficient charge of emotion by that time so that no false stimulants are needed.
Finally, I am not too happy about the abstract set. It doesn’t seem to me to be right for the texture of this particular play. Every time that Brick went out onto the veranda I had the feeling that he was doing some kind of mysterious ritualistic movement. Perhaps Gadg wanted this effect, but I can’t, in my own mind, tie it in to the central purpose of the play.
From all the above you might get the impression that I was dissatisfied. That is not the case. Actually I was deeply moved and convinced by the play as produced.
I think it will be equally effective in book form and am eager to get forward with that as soon as possible. When do you think you will have a final script? Is Paul [Bigelow] helping you with this this time? Meanwhile, could we have a temporary one to show to Lustig to get him started on the jacket? I like your idea of printing both versions of the ending.
Please be sure to give me a call when you get back to town, as there is much to talk about, and meanwhile thanks again for a really exciting evening.
As ever,
J. Laughlin
« • »
a wonderful evening: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opened on Broadway at the Morosco Theatre, March 24, 1955. JL must have seen the production three weeks earlier, during its out-of-town tryout in Philadelphia when the kind of feedback he provides here could actually have been incorporated into the production.
the boy: Actor Ben Gazzara (1930–2012) originated the role of Brick.
Burl Ives: Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives (1909–1995), American folk singer and stage and screen actor, originated the role of Big Daddy on Broadway and also played the part in the first Hollywood film version.
BBG: Actress Barbara Bel Geddes (1922–2005) originated the role of Maggie.
109. TLS—2
April 4, 1955 [Norfolk]
DEAR TENNESSEE,
I have recently been reading through the work of a lot of the most applauded younger American poets in order to make selection for a group in the forthcoming number of Perspectives. These are the people who are being published in the literary quarterlies and getting their books published.
My impression, after reading them en masse, is that they are simply decorators. They have a lot of technique and produce a beautiful surface, but they say absolutely nothing, and one gets the impression that they are afraid to touch real life or real human emotions and problems. Your poems, on the contrary, have a way of getting right into the marrow of life. They are charged with authentic emotion and they tell a story which people can understand and identify themselves with. They are not slick in the way these other poets are smoothed and polished, but after reading them, I begin to think this is a considerable virtue in itself.
Therefore I would like to urge you once again, and more firmly than ever, to put aside your modesty and get together for us a little selection of poems. Now please believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I think that the public is getting sick and tired of elegant poetry that has no content. I think you will be amazed and delighted with the response that you would get to a volume of your own poems. There would undoubtedly be a few snippy reviews from some of the high-brow critics but I believe that the real reaction would be measured by the number of letters you would get from readers who were touched and deeply moved by your understanding of what really goes on inside people’s hearts and minds.
And can you find for me, right away, a copy of the very beautiful poem you wrote for Maria at the time of Sandra’s death? I think that would be a good one to put in Perspectives in one of our next numbers.
As ever,
J. Laughlin
[signed in his absence by a secretary at ND]
« • »
Perspectives: A quarterly magazine for European distribution (with a small print run for the United States) published in English, French, German, and Italian. After initial discussions with Robert Maynard Hutchins of the Ford Foundation in 1951, JL proposed a beautifully produced magazine that would present American culture not only in literature but also in art and music, history and philosophy (and even architecture). The Ford Foundation funded Intercultural Publications Inc. (IPI) for five years. There were sixteen issues of Perspectives USA, the last appearing in 1957. In addition to the magazine promoting American achievement, JL believed in “reverse flow” and began producing sections on foreign cultures for an American audience that were published in The Atlantic Monthly, the first being Perspective of India in 1952. (See also note following Section X and note following JL’s letter to TW of April 11, 1953.)
very beautiful poem [ . . . ] Sandra’s death: “A Wreath for Alexandra Molostvova” was first published in In the Winter of Cities (ND 1956). Alexandra, called Sandra, was Maria Britneva’s cousin, raised by Maria’s mother.
110. TLS—1
8/20/55 [Rome]
DEAR BOB:
I have devoted most of the last three or four weeks to work on the long poem [“Those Who Ignore the Appropriate Time of Their Going”] and it is nearly ready to send you, so please don’t move on the book till you get it. Also by that time I hope to come up with a better title, maybe the new title of this poem. I’m grateful for your patience about this: I think the end result will justify it. I believe that our public is fairly used to postponements of publication, so that’s no great matter, perhaps it is even an advantage, it may work up a fever of expectation, people crowding Times Square for latest bulletins on its progress as on the eve of elections.
Today I am meeting Audrey Hepburn (with Hal Wallis who is in Rome) to discuss the possibility of her playing Miss Alma in Summer and Smoke. Then maybe tomorrow I am flying to Paris, Stockholm, and London, for a long junket before we sail (September 22nd) on the United States liner. This is a footloose summer. Since I think of settling down in Japan, I want to see everything in Europe that I still haven’t seen or want to revisit.
Give Jay my love. I presume he’s back, by this time, and can co-operate with us in the preparation of the poetry book. His sense of cadence, what I lack most, would be a great advantage, and why not use it.
Did you see Kenneth Tynan’s review of the book [Cat] in the London Observer? He gave Kazan hell, rather unjustly, but said that Cat was the most important play since Death of a Salesm
an and that the original version was much better. I hope Kazan doesn’t get hold of it. He will rage! We came to a total impasse on the film script when he suddenly sent me an outline for a new ending that shocked me almost shitless, it was such old mellerdrammer. I wrote him so. His reaction has not yet crossed the Atlantic. Having sold Cat to Metro for half a million, I think I ought to be much more scrupulous now about doing things in accord with my own conscience only.
I don’t think the copy of “Soft City” you sent me is the final version since it repeats a passage, giving a loose, flabby texture to the poem. I’m enclosing a corrected copy of the light verse you took off the Caedmon record. We may be able to get everything in order before I sail, but since I am traveling around so much, it doesn’t seem likely.
Fondly,
Tenn.
« • »
don’t move on the book: TW’s first book of poetry, In the Winter of Cities (ND 1956).
Audrey Hepburn: (1929–1993), British-born Hollywood actress.
Hal Wallis: (1898–1986), American film producer who produced the successful screen adaptation of The Rose Tattoo (1955).
Kenneth Tynan: (1927–1980), English theater critic.
Caedmon: TW recorded two albums with Caedmon Records, Tennessee Williams Reading from The Glass Menagerie, The Yellow Bird, and Five Poems (1952) and Tennessee Williams Reads Hart Crane (1965). TW comments on the latter in his letter of September 26, 1965.
111. TL—1
September 2, 1955 [New York]
DEAR TENNESSEE,
[ . . . ]
It seems strange to be back in New York after India.—a totally different world and way of life. Bob tells me that you are thinking now of going out to Japan. I know you will like it there—I did—but be sure not to forget about India, as it is even more marvelous, I think, in its very different way.
The Luck of Friendship Page 21