Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (116 page)
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Authors: John Lahr
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Literary
BOOK: Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
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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.
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