by John Lahr
442 “Which brings us to Mr. Williams’ own predicament”: Walter Kerr, “Williams’ Reworked ‘Milk Train’ Is Back,” New York Herald Tribune, Jan. 2, 1964.
442 “Courageous title, by the way”: John Hancock to John Lahr, Nov. 11, 2011, JLC. When Jules Irving and Herbert Blau left the San Francisco Actor’s Workshop to run the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center in New York, Hancock became then the youngest-ever American director of a repertory theater.
443 “ ‘the daid Mistuh William’ ”: Williams to John Hancock, undated, 1965, Harvard.
443 most difficult of his plays to write: Henry Hewes, Best Plays of 1964–1965 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1965).
443 “a golden griffin”: LOA2, p. 495.
443 “Consume my heart away”: Williams to Hermione Baddeley, undated, LLC.
443 “a portrait”: Williams to John Hancock, undated (ca. 1965), Harvard.
443 “swamp-bitch”: LOA2, p. 555.
443 “demented memoirs”: Ibid., p. 512.
443 “We’re working against time”: Ibid., p. 497.
443 scattershot ramblings about her six husbands: Mrs. Goforth seems unclear about how many husbands she’s had. Sometimes it’s four, sometimes it’s six.
443 “apparently never thought”: Ibid., p. 512.
443 “A legend in my own lifetime”: Ibid., p. 541.
444 “I beg you to play the broken queen”: Williams to Hermione Baddeley, undated, LLC.
444 “death angel”: LOA2, p. 549.
444 “a guest desperately wanted”: Williams to Hermione Baddeley, Jan. 1963, HRC.
444 “Sometimes, once in a while”: LOA2, p. 576.
444 “I can’t explain Chris”: Williams to John Hancock, undated, Harvard.
445 “There’s the element of the con man”: CWTW, p. 288.
445 “Everything about him”: LOA2, p. 529.
445 “We don’t all live in the same world”: Ibid., p. 543.
445 “And one person’s sense of reality”: For the first Broadway staging, Kabuki-style screens turned the stage into a dreamy, disorienting world and reinforced the sense of separation between realms.
445 “It sounds like something religious”: LOA2, p. 518.
446 “You have the distinction”: Ibid., p. 575.
446 “You need somebody or something”: Ibid., p. 576.
446 “Once the heart is thoroughly insulated”: Williams to Kenneth Tynan, July 26, 1955, TWLDW, p. 307.
446 “Grab, fight, or go hungry”: LOA2, p. 555.
446 “a shell of bone round my heart”: Ibid., p. 579.
446 “Here’s where the whole show started”: Ibid., p. 563.
446 “burning me up like a house on fire”: Ibid., p. 572.
447 “In my own writing”: Williams to David Lobdell, Apr. 17, 1967, HRC.
447 “Anything solid takes the edge”: LOA2, p. 545.
447 “One long-ago meeting between us”: Ibid., p. 547.
447 “panicky when I”: Ibid.
447 “can’t stand the smell of food”: Ibid., p. 554.
447 “Chris opens the milk bottle”: Ibid., p. 571.
447 “We’re all of us living in a house”: Ibid., p. 548.
448 “That’s what it means”: Ibid., p. 582.
448 “the sound of shock”: Harry Medved and Michael Medved, The Hollywood Hall of Shame: The Most Expensive Flops in Movie History (New York: Perigee Books, 1984), p. 107.
448 Joseph Losey’s 1968 film adaptation Boom!: The film starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. “You don’t call something ‘Boom!’ (since 1945) and imply that one of the characters is an angel of death without having something nuclear in mind,” John Hancock said. (JLI with John Hancock, 2012, JLC.)
448 “much better written than the play”: CWTW, p. 288.
448 “Don’t leave me alone”: LOA2, p. 581.
448 “fierce life”: Ibid.
449 “clothed in a god’s perfection”: Ibid., p. 501.
449 “You put on the clothes of a god”: Ibid.
449 “Blackie, the boss is sorry”: Ibid., p. 500.
449 “just barely marching”: Williams to Marion Vaccaro, June 28, 1962, LLC.
449 “Angel”: M, p. 188.
449 “He’s a desperate young man”: Williams to Robert MacGregor, Aug. 1, 1967, LLC.
449 “I was stacking books”: LLI with Frederick Nicklaus, 1983, LLC.
449 “I have engaged a very gentle”: Williams to Lilla Van Saher, Aug. 1962, HRC.
449 “soul-searching”: LLI with Frederick Nicklaus, 1986, LLC.
450 “villa”: Robert Hines to Nancy Tischler, undated, LLC.
450 “The ‘fireworks’ started immediately”: Robert Hines to Nancy Tischler, June 2, 1996, LLC.
451 “Robert, Sir, do me the honor”: Robert Hines to Nancy Tischler, undated, LLC.
451 “Frankie was hurt and stunned”: Ibid.
451 “All quiet”: Ibid.
451 “Tenn took to baiting Frankie”: Robert Hines to Nancy Tischler, June 2, 1996, LLC.
451 “who understands life so well”: Tennessee Williams, “Intimations of Mortality,” THNOC. “Closing Time” is handwritten over the typed original title, “Intimations of Mortality” (an early one-act play with later revisions).
452 “It has, or seems to have”: Williams to Andreas Brown, Feb. 23, 1962, HRC.
452 “has lost so much weight”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Mar. 19, 1962, WUCA.
452 “I feel that if we didn’t have to share”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Apr. 15, 1962, FOA, p. 180.
452 “I may not be in the apartment”: Williams to Frederick Nicklaus, May 6, 1962, LLC.
452 “I was as frightened to see him”: M, p. 188.
452 “Frankie was on his best behavior”: Ibid.
453 “I remained curiously resolute”: Ibid.
453 “My young companion”: CP, “Tangiers: The Speechless Summer,” p. 139.
453 poem dedicated to “T.W.”: Frederick Nicklaus, The Man Who Bit the Sun (New York: New Directions, 1964), p. 29.
453 “. . . You woke in the night”: Frederick Nicklaus, “Tangier 1,” in ibid., pp. 29–30.
453 “inept at anything of a practical nature”: Williams to Andreas Brown, 1962, LLC.
454 “like a flea”: Williams to Robert Hines, undated, LLC.
454 “The beauty of my companion”: M, p. 187.
454 “internal bleeding”: Williams to Lilla Van Saher, Aug. 16, 1962, HRC.
454 “I am still able to do my morning’s work”: Ibid.
454 “the Merlo situation”: Williams to Robert MacGregor, Summer 1962, LLC.
454 contemplated pulling up stakes: Williams to Robert Hines, Sept. 1962, LLC.
454 “I’m still desperately looking”: Williams to Andreas Brown, Sept. 17, 1962, THNOC.
454 “Get on your knees and pray”: Williams to Herbert Machiz, Nov. 1962, Columbia.
454 “There was just too much double-talk”: Williams to Hermione Baddeley, undated, HRC.
455 “Unless a miracle happens in Philly”: Williams to Audrey Wood, undated, HRC.
455 “Mistuh Williams, He Dead”: Richard Gilman, “Mistuh Williams, He Dead,” Commonweal, Feb. 8, 1963.
455 “Why, rather than be banal”: Ibid.
455 “The truth I guess”: Williams to John Hancock, undated, Harvard.
455 “swollen up like a pumpkin”: Williams to Robert MacGregor, Mar. 27, 1963, LLC.
455 “Suspect following circumstances: lung cancer”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 8: WAVING and DROWNING
456 “Nobody heard him”: Stevie Smith, “Not Waving but Drowning,” in Stevie Smith, Selected Poems, ed. James MacGibbon (London: Penguin Books, 1978), p. 167.
456 “waiting shakily”: Williams to Elia Kazan, Sept. 9, 1963, WUCA.
456 Key West doctors had attributed Merlo’s exhaustion: Donald Spoto, The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985), p. 255.
457 “the cumulative effect of passing 14 years”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Apr. 15, 1962, FOA, p. 179. Although Merlo was a four-packs-a-day man, neither the doctors nor Williams made any connection between his smoking and the likelihood of cancer.
457 “I was stricken with remorse”: M, p. 189.
457 “He was quite matter-of-fact”: Ibid.
457 “I hung up”: Ibid.
457 writer James Leo Herlihy: LLI with Frederick Nicklaus, 1985, LLC.
457 “Frankie was quite unaware”: M, p. 190.
457 “the sudden and shocking illness of Frank”: Williams to Edwina Williams, Feb. 25, 1963, LLC.
458 “I saw a white dove in a tree”: CP, “Morgenlied,” p. 143.
458 “waiting to take over the house”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Apr. 5, 1963, FOA, p. 182.
459 “Tennessee got Frank a television set”: LLI with Frederick Nicklaus, 1985, LLC.
459 “We pulled up to the house”: Ibid.
459 When Merlo moved back: M, p. 190.
459 “I think Tennessee’s and my relationship”: LLI with Frederick Nicklaus, 1983, LLC.
459 “seemed annoyed that I remained”: M, p. 191.
459 “swimmingly”: LLI with Frederick Nicklaus, 1985, LLC.
459 “Tennessee was ready to go to bed”: Ibid.
460 “the worst crisis in our relationship”: LLI with Frederick Nicklaus, 1983, LLC.
460 “the air is as stimulating”: Williams to Marion Vaccaro, undated, THNOC.
460 “Although he made no reference to it”: Williams to Marian Vaccaro, 1963, THNOC.
460 “He has seen me through an intolerable period”: Williams to Paul Bowles, June 13, 1963, LLC.
460 “All this, the cutting short”: Williams to Marion Vaccaro, undated, THNOC. In The Kindness of Strangers (p. 251), Spoto contends that a telegram from Audrey Wood summoned Williams back to Key West, but there is nothing in Wood’s memoir or her archive or in any Williams letter to support this claim. Williams’s honorable instinct, it seems, was his own.
460 “I’d rather bear the heat of New York”: Williams to Audrey Wood, ca. July 1963, Harvard.
460 “We do very little”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Aug. 5, 1963, FOA, p. 184.
460 “Each night”: M, p. 191.
460 “a little Hercules”: Ibid., p. 193.
460 “It was a nightmare”: Ibid.
460 “I remember seeing Frank”: JLI with Alan U. Schwartz, 2009, JLC.
460 “had been in and out of Memorial”: M, p. 193.
461 “my dear buddy”: Maureen Stapleton and Jane Scovell, A Hell of a Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 86.
461 “I said, ‘He’ll die this Thursday’”: M, p. 193.
461 “like a hooked fish”: Ibid., p. 194.
462 “You sat up in the chair next to mine”: Tennessee Williams, “The Final Day of Your Life” (unpublished poem), THNOC.
462 “dreadful vigil”: Ibid.
462 “Frankie, try to lie still”: M, p. 193.
462 “pretended to sleep”: Williams, “Final Day of Your Life,” THNOC. In his memoirs, Williams says that Merlo “lay there silently.” (M, p. 194.)
462 “The statement of habituation”: M, p. 194.
462 “My name for him is Little Horse”: CP, “Little Horse,” p. 76.
462 “told him rather hysterically”: M, p. 194.
462 “Tennessee just couldn’t stand it anymore”: LLI with Richard Leavitt, 1983, LLC.
462 “friends that were mine”: Williams, “Final Day of Your Life,” THNOC.
462 “quite drunk”: Ibid.
462 “I usually answered the phone”: LLI with Frederick Nicklaus, 1983, LLC.
463 “I am just beginning”: Williams to Lady St. Just, Sept. 23, 1963, FOA, pp. 185–87.
463 “a recollection”: Gilbert Maxwell, Tennessee Williams and Friends: An Informal Biography (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1965), p. 322.
463 “He was a man of honor”: Ibid., pp. 322–24.
465 cemetery: Merlo is buried in Rosedale & Rosehill Cemetery in Linden, New Jersey. The birth year on Merlo’s tombstone was intentionally misdated. As his niece, Josephine DePetris, explained, “The year he was born was 1922. When he was 15 years old he enlisted in the US Navy, lied about his age and changed his birth certificate (you had to be at least 16 years old to enlist then). . . . When he passed away the family continued to list his year of birth as 1921 thinking they would get in trouble with the military if the truth came out.” (Josephine DePetris to John Lahr, July 4, 2013.)
465 “He was pacing the floor”: LLI with Elaine Steinbeck, 1985, LLC.
465 “When Frankie was dying”: Spoto, Kindness, pp. 258–59.
465 “made the talk somewhat dull”: Alan U. Schwartz, “Mr. Williams and His Monkey” (unpublished), 2005.
465 “I don’t know why this creature”: M, p. 190.
465 “Tenn, your monkey”: Schwartz, “Mr. Williams and His Monkey.”
466 “My heart is heavy”: Williams to Marion Vaccaro, Oct. 1963, THNOC.
466 “I have been very depressed”: Williams to Dakin Williams and Edwina Williams, Nov. 14, 1963, LLC.
466 “Things were never the same”: LLI with Frederick Nicklaus, 1983, LLC.
466 “The house, in fact the whole island”: Williams to Audrey Wood, undated, 1963, LLC.
466 “almost a miracle”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Oct. 31, 1963, LLC.
467 “to conclude my Broadway career”: Ibid.
467 “I have no more illusions”: Williams to Audrey Wood, July 18, 1963, LLC.
467 “one of your best”: David Merrick to Williams, May 3, 1963, LLC.
467 “liked writers in the way”: John Heilpern, John Osborne: A Patriot for Us (New York: Vintage, 2007), p. 203.
467 “Tony is a man of genius”: Williams to Audrey Wood, undated, LLC.
467 “Every good female part”: Brendan Gill, Tallulah (New York: Holt McDougal, 1972), pp. 83–84.
467 “more than slightly right”: Tennessee Williams, “T. Williams’s View of T. Bankhead,” New York Times, Dec. 29, 1963.
467 “Tennessee has written a play”: Gill, Tallulah, p. 84.
468 “It was an occasion when I might have lied”: Williams, “T. Williams’s View of T. Bankhead.”
468 “Well, dahling, that’s all right”: Gill, Tallulah, p. 84.
468 “I saw exactly what Tennessee meant”: Tony Richardson, The Long-Distance Runner: A Memoir (London: Faber & Faber, 1993), p. 145.
468 “It was either Tallulah”: Ibid., p. 146.
468 “I have spent a sleepless night”: Williams to Audrey Wood, undated, LLC.
469 Henry Willson: A gay agent credited with creating “his boys”: Rock Hudson, Rory Calhoun, Guy Madison, and Tab Hunter.
469 “your beneficent witch-craft”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Oct. 31, 1963, LLC.
469 “Everyone who mentions the production”: Ibid.
470 “YOUR PERFORMANCE”: Tab Hunter with Eddie Muller, Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books, 2006), p. 254.
470 “Fuck you!”: Ibid., p. 247.
470 “Tallulah was the most unpleasant person”: Richardson, Long-Distance Runner, p. 147.
470 “though they really couldn’t be called that”: Ibid.
470 “On the way to rehearsal”: Ibid., p. 149.
470 “Loud or soft”: Ibid., p. 147.
470 “Then, like a hideous old vulture”: Ibid.
471 “Don’t worry, darling”: Ibid.
471 “Why the fuck don’t you shut up!”: Hunter, Tab Hunter Confidential, p. 251.
471 “So that’s what the bitch”: Richardson, Long-Distance Runner, p. 148.
471 “In the middle of this”: Ibid.
471 “The second Milk Train”: Williams to Herbert Machiz, undated, Columbia.
471 “There was no way”: Richardson, Long-Distance Runner, p. 148.
471 “He showed a strange in
difference”: M, p. 199.
472 “I don’t think you’re insane”: Ibid. Williams added parenthetically, “Which was true at the time he said it, if not quite always.”
472 “I think it would kill Tallulah”: Ibid., p. 200.
472 “desertion”: Williams to Herbert Machiz, undated, 1964, LLC.
472 “Half the seats”: Hunter, Tab Hunter Confidential, p. 253.
472 “For the kind of playgoer”: “Tallulah and Tennessee,” Newsweek, Jan. 13, 1964.
472 “Miss Bankhead was hoarse”: John McCarten, “Durable Dame,” The New Yorker, Jan. 11, 1964.
472 “not a performance”: Walter Kerr, “Williams’ Play Revamp ‘Worse Than Original,’ ” New York Herald Tribune, Jan. 2, 1964.
472 an “appearance”: After Bankhead was passed over to star in the film adaptation, Boom!—a part she felt she had “originated”—she stopped speaking to Williams. Shortly before she died, in 1968, she happened to be in Miami when Boom! was playing. She hired a car to take her to Williams’s Key West home, and then she walked up to the front door in a mink coat. “I shouted, ‘Tallu, baby! Come in,’ ” Williams told Dotson Rader, who reported the conversation in Tennessee: Cry of the Heart. “She didn’t move. She just stood there glaring at me like a mongoose at a snake. And then she said . . . ‘Mr. Williams, I have come to tell you that I have just seen that dreadful movie they made of your terrible play!’ And that was the last time I ever saw her.” (Dotson Rader, Tennessee: Cry of the Heart (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985), p. 172.)
472 “I felt very badly about leaving New York”: Williams to Dakin Williams, Feb. 29, 1964, LLC.
472 “Stoned Age”: M, p. 212.
472 “It occurred in protracted stages”: Ibid., p. 203.
472 “The colored lights”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Mar. 4, 1944, L1, p. 516.
473 “I work but I have no faith left”: Williams to Sidney Lanier, Jan. 21, 1964, THNOC.
473 “I am floundering”: Williams to Frederick Nicklaus, Apr. 15, 1964, Columbia.
473 “an extended visit to Grant’s Tomb”: Marion Vaccaro to Charles Bowden, May 1964, LLC.
473 “I came for a weekend”: Ibid.
473 “I have been hoping each day”: Charles Bowden to Marion Vaccaro, June 18, 1964, LLC.
474 “He was in such a depressed condition”: Marion Vaccaro to Henry Field, Sept. 9, 1964, LLC.
474 “bitten by the culture bug”: Williams to Paul Bowles, Sept. 1964, LLC.
