The Luck of Friendship
Page 35
Mitch Douglas: TW’s agent from September 1978 through October 1981. Douglas was a strong advocate for Williams and his later plays; however, he was forced to draw strict boundaries due to TW’s overwhelming personal demands.
207. TL—2
May 4, 1979 [New York]
DEAR TENN:
Yes, it has been a long time, and that makes hearing from you all the more a pleasure! It was awfully good to see you at the J.L. P.E.N. session and I know he really appreciated your presence, too.
Mitch [Douglas] told me about the strange shooting of your gardener, Frank Fontis, and the cache of papers which showed up in the aftermath, down in Key West. I can only begin to imagine how “touching” Bob’s letters must have been from 333 Sixth Avenue. He was a correspondent in the 19th Century sense and his letters were absolutely superb.
[ . . . ]
Vieux Carré will be coming out this May, although the exact publication date is still a little fuzzy, I’m afraid. Once things are in sharper focus, I’ll let either you or Mitch know, of course. There’s a pretty good chance that I’ll have reasonably firm dates from our binder just before your N.Y.U. reading, on May 10th. I hope to see you there and was delighted to learn from Mitch that you had accepted the invitation.
[ . . . ]
Yes, after all of thirty years, we’ve finally been “turfed out” of our old quarters at 333. It was quite a traumatic experience for us all—that is, taking on a new distributor (the nice W. W. Nortons) and having to move our quarters almost simultaneously. Our new offices are at 80 Eighth Avenue (New York, N.Y. 10011), in a charming Art Deco building which was once owned by none other than Joseph P. Kennedy. We’re on the nineteenth floor and have absolutely sensational views of the Hudson River, harbor, Statue of Liberty, and Staten Island on a clear day. Next time when you’re in town, and it’s sunny, perhaps you’d like to come visit and enjoy our sensational vistas. [ . . . ]
With all best wishes,
Frederick R. Martin
« • »
the nice W. W. Nortons: ND’s new distributor, employee-owned W. W. Norton & Company. In 1978 ND’s longtime distributor, J. B. Lippincott & Company, was acquired by Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. Alarmed when the Harper salespeople called his books “products,” JL began looking elsewhere and soon formed an alliance with W. W. Norton president George Brockway, a fellow member of the Century Club, for distribution, warehousing, and certain financial services. The association is ongoing.
208. TLS—1
9/26/79 [Norfolk]
DEAR TENN:
Just watched you on the Cavett show and I thought you were in great form. Who else of our friends can give off so much human warmth and mellowness. Somehow you have triumphed over the vicissitudes.
When can we see the script of the play about the Fitzgeralds [Clothes for a Summer Hotel]? He is one of my favorites in this century. I agree with you that The Last Tycoon was potentially his greatest, but I can always read Tender Is the Night with enormous emotion. And some of the short stories.
We had a quiet summer, here in July and then on Ann’s family’s ranch in Wyoming, but it was all nice, as I had time to read a lot of good books I had missed in college.
I want to thank you again for coming to the affair at the PEN. I was in a state of nerves and you really helped me get through it.
Very best,
[James Laughlin]
« • »
Cavett show: TW appeared at least three times on Dick Cavett’s talk show in the 1970s as well as two special programs in which Cavett interviewed TW in New Orleans.
209. TL—1
1.16.80 [Norfolk]
DEAR TENN:
I just read Clothes for a Summer Hotel and wanted to rush you my congratulations. It’s a beautiful and very moving play. And most ingenious the way you have worked out the flashbacks and double roles. You certainly did a lot of research. I have read quite a bit about Zelda and Scott, but you’ve come up with a lot of things I didn’t know about them. They come through as very real people.
Congratulations, too, on your Washington medal. Now if you were English you’d be Sir Tennessee. We watched the ceremony on the tube and were so happy for you.
As ever,
[James Laughlin]
« • »
your Washington medal: TW was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by President Carter at the Kennedy Center Honors on December 2, 1979. JL is referring to when the event was televised December 29, 1979. TW was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House by President Jimmy Carter on June 9, 1980.
210. ALS—3
[rc’d 1/31/80] [Chicago]
DEAR JAY—
Conrad Hilton does not provide a rental typewriter nor even pen and stationery in their $50 a night hotel rooms, just TV and a “Rainbow Cinema box” that offers a bunch of “R” rated movies at $5 a selection.
I’m back in Chicago with my final batch of re-writes. The Company is recalcitrant. I feel apologetic about every effort I’m obliged to make to protect them and the play [Clothes for a Summer Hotel] and myself from the wolves waiting for us on Broadway.
All anybody told me about the script before it was rushed into rehearsal was that it was beautiful. That beautiful things may be damned was something that even Fitzgerald knew in his early romantic youth.
The hazards of writing about real-life characters, re-assembled for a ghost play, was never mentioned. And I had not anticipated them. Consequently, the hectic revisions have been more demanding than the original work.
Latest development is that Sheilah Graham (Lily Shiel) is threatening to sue me for depicting her as vulgar. I refer you to her autobiography called “A State of Heat!”—passages from it would throw the case out of court at once.
The script for publication will be as different from the playing script as was Camino Real.
Thanks for your supportive letter.—Business has been excellent despite negative notice in Washington Post and almost continual snow in Chicago.
Maria is joining me for first preview in New York. Please let me know if you wish to attend the opening March 26.
Love,
10.
« • »
Sheilah Graham: (1904–1988), English-born, as Lily Shiel, to Ukrainian immigrants, American gossip columnist during Hollywood’s “Golden Age.” She is best known for her intimate relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald in the several years before his death in 1940, a relationship immortalized in her 1958 book (and the subsequent movie) Beloved Infidel. Her memoir, A State of Heat, was published in 1972.
opening March 26: Also TW’s sixty-ninth birthday.
211. TL—1
May 29, 1980 [Norfolk]
DEAR TENN:
I am more grateful than I can say for the wonderfully warm message which you sent to the Rochester presentation. It meant so much to me.
The event was somewhat chaotic because of dear old Rexroth’s condition. He has a hiatal hernia and gets a lot of pain from it. At times I thought he was going to pass out, but we managed to find a wheelchair for him, and so he completed the event. Actually, when he got on his feet and talking, he was as wonderful as ever.
I was pleased to see from the office envelope that Mitch had approved the contract for the Fitzgerald play. Whatever its fate on Broadway, I like it as much as ever, and will be proud to publish it.
With best wishes, as ever,
James Laughlin
« • »
the Rochester presentation: JL was honored for his publishing by the New York State Literary Center in Rochester, New York, in April 1980. The ailing Kenneth Rexroth was brought in from California as one of the main speakers. TW had sent an encomium to be read at the event: “The recipient of your award, Mr. James Laughlin, was my first publisher and will undoubtedly be my last, should his tolerance endure to that point. Kindly extend to him my congratulations on this important event. Tennessee Williams” (TW to A. Poulin at the New York State L
iterary Center, 4/20/80).
Whatever its fate on Broadway: After opening on TW’s sixty-ninth birthday, March 26, 1980, at the Cort Theater, his last play produced on Broadway, Clothes for a Summer Hotel, ran for only fifteen performances.
212. TLS—1
2/17/81 [Key West]
DEAR FRED:
Mitch Douglas tells me that you plan to continue the volumes of Theatre of T.W. Of the long plays not published, there are nearly complete revisions of Clothes for a Summer Hotel, the definitive edition of The Red Devil Battery Sign as performed last Fall in Vancouver (Brit. Col.) and now there is one yet to be performed [A House Not Meant to Stand] at The Goodman Institute [sic] in Chicago, scheduled to start rehearsals on March 10. As of the moment I haven’t settled upon a title—probably one will occur to me before we open—the subtitle is A Gothic Comedy. Oh—and Something Cloudy, Something Clear.
As for the one-acts or short plays, I think all the plays in the two published volumes, 27 Wagons and Dragon Country, should be included and in addition there are a few not yet published. They are more experimental. The ones I prefer are Demolition Downtown, The Traveling Companion, A Cavalier for Milady, Green Eyes. By the time you go to press—hopefully before—the list will increase.
I guess you are pretty much “keeping shop” at N.D.—Remember me to Jay. I hope he’s well and enjoying his relative leisure.
With every good wish,
Tennessee
« • »
The Red Devil Battery Sign: After its failure in Boston in 1975, Red Devil was revised and presented at the English Theater in Vienna in 1976 with Keith Baxter and Maria Britneva St. Just in the leading roles. Baxter was instrumental in shaping the new version and both directed and played the role of King in the 1977 London production, which was the basis for ND’s 1988 published version. The play is dedicated “To Keith Baxter.” Although TW says that the “Vancouver” script is “definitive,” Maria St. Just, acting as TW’s literary executor at the time of the play’s preparation for publication, insisted on the use of the London script since it was the same version in which she had appeared in Vienna.
213. TL—1
March 5, 1981 [Norfolk]
DEAR TENN:
What happiness for me to be able to wish you joy and a long life on your 70th Birthday. It seems only yesterday, though it must be nearly 35 years, that we first met at Lincoln Kirstein’s party, and became friends. And how much pleasure you have given me in those years: the opening night in Chicago of Glass Menagerie; and then of so many other wonderful plays; visits in Key West and encounters in various parts of Europe; your beautiful poems; and above all your loyalty to New Directions which has made possible the publication of so many young and unknown authors.
Long may you flourish!
[James Laughlin]
« • »
to wish you joy: This note was likely written in advance for a birthday party thrown for TW at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, by Artistic Director Gregory Mosher, where A House Not Meant to Stand was rehearsing. Very few out-of-town guests attended.
214. TL—1
3/26/81 [Norfolk]
DEAR TENN -
I have just been reading those 4 TV or film scripts that Mitch sent over to Fred, and I think they are very fine. You have added so many good new parts to the old ones, and I think that Stopped Rocking is one of the most powerful and moving things you ever did. It really shook me.
I hope we can do a book of them.
Best, as ever,
[JL]
« • »
film scripts: Published as Stopped Rocking and Other Screenplays (ND 1984), this volume includes All Gaul Is Divided, The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, One Arm, and Stopped Rocking.
215. ALS—3
[March 1981] [Orlando, Florida]
DEAR FRED:
How could you imagine that I (of all people) would not want to contribute some words of homage to Jay? The delay has been due to extraordinary pressures as I prepare (2 work sessions a day) for at least one more full-length new play production at The Goodman Theatre in Chicago. Please feel free to edit this. I am flying to Chicago from a most exhausting sort of “festschrift” in a preposterously ultra-conservative place—Orlando. Don’t know how I got through it but it now appears that I did . . .
Homage to “Jay”
It was “Jay” Laughlin who first took a serious interest in my work as a writer. My first notable appearance in print was in an N.D. volume called Five Young American Poets in 1944. True, I had suffered an abortive play production in 1940, which collapsed in Boston. It appeared to me that this failure was conclusive. Jay thought otherwise. Consistently over the years his sense of whatever was valuable in my work was my one invariable criterion.
Among all the multitude of persons I’ve encountered in the world of letters and theatre (if that distinction is permissible), “Jay” Laughlin remains the one I regard with the deepest respect and affection. My gratitude to him is an inexpressible thing and I trust that he knows it always.
Ever,
Tennessee
« • »
homage to Jay: A slightly revised version of this tribute appeared in Conjunctions: I, Inaugural Double-Issue, A Festschrift in Honor of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions, edited by Bradford Morrow (1981).
full-length new play: The first production of A House Not Meant to Stand at the Goodman Theater.
216. TLS—2
[received 10/30/81] [New York]
DEAR FRED:
Very regrettably Mitch Douglas didn’t let you know that I was not releasing Now the Cats with Jeweled Claws but was holding it back for re-writes of a considerable nature and all quite essential. This play was written while I was quite ill in the Sixties and the fact is embarrassingly evident in the text, especially as I read it in print. I’m afraid that everything about my professional relationship with Douglas was regrettable.
With any luck it is now terminated.
I don’t suppose there is any way that—in this volume Seven—you could indicate that the inclusion of the particular play was due to this misunderstanding? I am well aware that I have failed to keep in direct personal touch with you. These past few years the work-load has been much greater than Douglas appears to have understood: consequently long works as well as this particular short one were thrown into production before ready.
Clothes for a Summer Hotel was already cast, except for a supporting role, when I arrived in New York for rehearsals.
And confidentially two plays [Kirche, Küche, Kinder (An Outrage for the Stage) and Something Cloudy, Something Clear] were placed with the Jean Cocteau Repertory Company while I thought they were still in reserve—for second drafts—at Studio Duplicating.
I am a slow and conscientious writer if permitted to be. Not an electric rabbit at a dog race.—Of course these misapprehensions are finally set right. I’ve done two versions of Clothes since the one thrown with such cavalier haste onto Broadway. One is being held by a good management in London and if you wish a copy, just call the Dramatists Play Service.
The semi-retirement of dear Jay and the loss of Bob MacGregor somehow interrupted the flow of communications between N.D. and me. Let’s now try to restore it.
A serious writer needs serious contacts to keep on the right track.
Yours faithfully,
Tennessee
« • »
Now the Cats with Jeweled Claws: TW was upset about the inclusion of The Youthfully Departed in Volume 7 of The Theatre of Tennessee Williams and so it was replaced with Now the Cats with Jeweled Claws, which TW had revised and sent to his agent Mitch Douglas to submit for publication or production. Peggy Fox sent all proof pages to TW c/o Mitch Douglas early in 198
1 and TW had then approved them, prior to this letter of protest.
written while I was quite ill in the Sixties: In the late 1960s TW wrote multiple drafts of a play he called “Now and at the Hour of Our Death.” Through his agent Bill Barnes he submitted a new version of that play to ND in 1977 with the working title “Urban Problems Confronting.” A revised version, with the play’s current title, Now the Cats with Jeweled Claws, was sent to ND in 1980 by Mitch Douglas, along with The Youthfully Departed and A Cavalier for Milady, under the collective title “Three Plays for the Lyric Theatre.”
two plays were placed with the Jean Cocteau Repertory Company: Kirche, Kutchen, und Kinder (1979) (published by New Directions in 2008 under the title Kirche, Küche, Kinder) and Something Cloudy, Something Clear (1981). According to Mitch Douglas and director Eve Adamson, TW was well aware that these titles were offered to Jean Cocteau Repertory Company and pleased by the company’s desire to produce them.
217. TL—2
November 24, 1981 [Norfolk]
DEAR TENN:
Fred showed me a copy of your last letter to him, and I am very grateful for your kind postscript to me on the letter. I have always had great faith in your high artistic standards, and I don’t think you have ever let me down, or ever will.
You speak of me as being in “semi-retirement,” and I just wish that that were true. I seem to be working as hard as ever. I don’t come down to the office as much as I used to, as I really don’t like New York any more, but I am very busy reading manuscripts and keeping up correspondence. In addition, this late in life, I have taken on a kind of new career as lecturer and literary entertainer at colleges. This means a lot of work doing the research to get up the lectures. I think I did ten of them this year, and have six more scheduled between now and the end of spring. I don’t know exactly why I do this, except that it rejuvenates me to get out in the college world and meet the young students, who are so wonderful. They really are bright and keep me on my toes.