Rave wrote letters like the following almost weekly. She preferred yellow legal pads with a pale green rule, and she dashed things off with a loose, double-space script. As I transcribe her letters, I’ll add copies of the originals to an archive. Her stories repeated, but they were always interesting. She brought a whole world to life for me from the day we met when she was 84 (circa 2000), until she died almost 15 years later at age 98. She changed my life. I hope I contributed something half as good to hers. I am publishing these with her son’s permission.
You be sure and tell me when you’ve had enough of my memories of Audrey Wood and Tenn Williams and “Streetcar,” ETC. and all the rest. But I feel my memories are unique and maybe someday you can use them for an article about “Old Broadway and prize-winning plays.” I was certainly there and perhaps it’s worthwhile to let you know about such an interesting part of the theatres’ past and when plays could be put on for $35,000! And those memories are exclusively yours, hot from the source, so maybe, someday, you’ll have use for them.
No one recorded Tenn’s active life in the years of “Menagerie” and “Streetcar,” [this at the time it was happening.] He was a reticent young man and not too friendly with the press. And he really wasn’t colorful or talkative and sort of shunned the outside world. I found him to be shy and not quite able to believe when FAME hit him. He always knew he could write, but never really believed he’d know fame. And when he did he was just the same — no airs — no demons — He worked hard and when we were both down in Dallas, Texas, having our plays tried out by Margo Jones and her Theatre-in-the-Round, he was so reticent no one knew who he was. But then came “Streetcar” and his life changed. He had Big Bucks in the bank, he traveled to England for the first time. He didn’t have to skimp on cigarettes and I liked him because he stayed in the same ratty apt. on East — — Street for the rest of his life. (He also had an apt in Florida and rented in hotels in Italy — his favorite country).
I was Audrey Wood’s play reader when she chose “Streetcar.” Rehearsals were fun and everyone knew we had a hit on our hands and Tenn hadn’t started drinking, so everything went along smooth as cream.
I liked Brando. He didn’t have to audition for “Streetcar” — just strutted across the stage one day and Audrey called out “That’s it! You’ve got the part!” She was [an] astute lady — the Best of the NY theatre had to offer (never her like again, I fear). And she gave “Streetcar” to Irene Mayer Selznick, Louis B’s daughter. I told Audrey Mrs. Selznick would give it a gorgeous, expensive production and I was right — she threw her heart and lot of the Mayer (MGM) money into it. Who to play the lead? The thing — Seducer? Somebody said, “Marlon Brando,” but no one knew him. He’d been in a couple of flops and really had no stage background, but I remembered him in a K. Cornell play and I said “He’ll be great. He has stage presence.” Audrey told me to call him up (he was living in NY and sharing a tiny flat) so I rang him up. He answered on the first ring. “Just waiting for your call, honey,” he said, lying [through] his teeth, but he was interested in what I had to say. “The play is ‘Streetcar’ — and you’re a weird come-on adulterer. And you’re the only actor I know who can handle all that. You know where Audrey’s offices are? The Fred French Bldg on 5th Avenue. Be there 10 tomorrow.”
Tenn smoked day and night. He went through 2 lighters during the run of his plays, but it seems I was always there with matches. “You like my play, ‘Streetcar?’” he asked me. “No,” I said, “It doesn’t read well. You have to visualize everything. But it’s going to catch on, make a million dollars and will probably walk off with a Pulitzer.”
Which it did. But you still have to see the play to appreciate it. Brando was a pro, but he didn’t like to rehearse. He’d rather head for the theatre basement and play poker with the stage hands, but opening night he was a PRO and no one will be better. loved him in that soiled white underwear (shirt, bit of under-pants) and the way he mumbled came out sexy, which was ok, too.
“He’s a genius,” I told Audrey, “A throw-away artist, He doesn’t give a damn and the audience loves it.”
And then he went to Hollywood — out to MGM who put him in “Julius Caesar” and who is America gave a rat’s ass for classical movies? No one. And the other films he made, “Mutiny on the Bounty,” were freakish successes, but by then Marlon was obsessed with Tahiti and Tahitian girls and he fathered children in the islands and fancied himself a native and went a little goofy with all the money and success.
And one day he holed up in a house on Mulholland Drive in Hollywood and was never seen again. And there was a McDonald’s hamburger joint at the foot of his hill and he lived on burgers and french fries and ballooned up to almost [300] pounds and no one ever hired him again. I sat back and watched the self-destruction and was so sad for him, but he listened to no one — went his sorry way and died too soon and that was that.
I thought of the early days of “Streetcar Named Desire” and wanted to share my memories of the play with you.
Hope you can use it someday in an article (perhaps). There was a lot of drama behind getting that play on the stage and was there from Day One — Audrey Wood made Tennessee and I sat back and watched the whole scenario. Lots of laughs and more than a few tears and all the drinking began, which was ruinous and ridiculous and needn’t have happened, but Tenn broke with Audrey and fell into other hands and these other hands weren’t too clean and Tenn paid a high price in the end. He was deeply insecure and only a few of us knew this, but we pretended he wasn’t and I think that was a big mistake. Someone should have told him off a couple of times and maybe, just maybe, he would have stayed on with Audrey and not gone for the drugs and the Scotch so heavily and would have gone out with more hits than flops. Who knows? I saw the beginning and the end and the end was not Paradise.
