Another version of the envelope story, Part II
These stories are feeling repetitive, and she had a lot more than just this to share. From now on I’ll ration the stories and categorize them so that you get a different type each time until I have to start the cycle over again. My reason for doing this is quite basic: she left a lot of writing! My first instinct was to just grab a pile and start typing a bit each day, but now I can see it will require some sorting first.
I want to give you not just Tennessee Williams and Audrey Wood stories, but also stories about Margo Jones, Frank and John Craven (there are oodles of those), her father the cinematographer, her mother the socialite, C. S. Lewis (a family friend), W. Somerset Maugham, Beverly Hills High School in the 1930s, Preston Sturges, Shirley Temple, Fred Astaire, Las Vegas, Palm Springs, Sun Valley, and all the fun. You’ll even get to see her in a kick-line wearing hotpants in high school, and a super-cute photo of her in a mildly cheesecake pose on the front of a Cord convertible circa 1937.
But for now, here is part II of the story I started for you yesterday. More variety to come!
Tenn was a shy young man who didn’t really believe his own talent. He said he wrote because it kept him from drinking too much, but I told him he wrote because he had a lot to say and that was the cold, hard truth. And he had had a short play produced at the Pasadena Playhouse out in California, and had the Bug from that moment on. He wrote about his mother and his jobs and his struggles with sex, and from Day One Audrey Wood knew he could become America’s Best — and he did, stepping aside for Eugene O’Neill, who was his favorite writer outside of Chekhov of Russia. (Tenn had dabbled with Communism for two minutes.)
But he had a certain simple style and a knack for dialogue, and he was broke. Audrey liked poor people better than she liked rich ones, and she had to mail him $25 checks once a week. They kept him alive and well in Mexico for six months or so. Then she obtained a writer’s contract for him at MGM, and they put him on a script for Lana Turner. Talk about mis-casting!
In the meantime, I persuaded her to persuade Tenn to get another title for “Gentleman Caller,” and he did and called it “The Glass Menagerie.” It opened in Chicago and was pretty much trashed, but Audrey stuck to her guns that she had a hit on her hands. Tenn cut and pruned to simplify things and it opened in NYC and was a great big hit, and Tenn was on his way.
He drank too much after that. And went to Europe and drank some more. But ideas kept whirling around in his head, and one day he sent Audrey (now in NYC at the Fred French building) a play (“Streetcar Named Desire”), and she loved it and felt sure it could be a prize-winner.
I ate lunch with Bill and Audrey every day — ask me why — she called me “daughter” — something she had always wanted, so I played the part, loving each and every minute of it.
So “Streetcar” was read and I told her I loved it, but it needed the best producer-director-case in the world — and Audrey saw to all that and of course it went on to win prizes, etc. I liked the play better than the movie. Vivien Leigh was awful in the movie — She got the part because she was a “name,” but she really was mis-cast, so the play did better than the movie, I thought. But Tenn had become America’s pet playwright, of course, and he was famous for as long as he lived, although his later works were pretty bad and he lapsed into serious drinking habits, etc., etc.
I remember taking checks to the bank for $100,000 (a lot of money in those days) and putting them in Tenn’s checking account, and mailing weekly money to his sister (for her care) and the rent and it going to the liquor store on 42nd Street. Tenn loved Italy and would have lived there forever, but Audrey would drag him back to NYC and his crummy apartment at 124 East 65th Street. I still remember his telephone number, Butterfield 8–7986.
Tenn smoked too much and played around too much, but we’d get together for drinks (mine was ginger ale) when he lived at the Elyse Hotel in NYC.
He broke with Audrey eventually (he didn’t like her criticisms of his new plays), and had productions, etc. But he was never again as happy as the days of “Glass Menagerie.” I told him once he broke his luck when he broke with Audrey, and from then on he never spoke to me.
I’m sure he’s up there on the Great White Way churning out plays and poems and scrawls for his friends — His letters should be published — or have they been?
I wish he had been happier.
I wish he had enjoyed his success.
I wish he hadn’t had so much liquor.
I wish — I wish —
