The playwright turned out to be…

This is the second installment of Rave’s memories, which will be a bit all over the place since I’m typing them out in daily/weekly segments from her handwritten notes. She was at her best discussing old Hollywood, and this recalls Culver City circa 1943. Rave’s father worked at MGM — he would later be nominated for an Oscar before dying at a too-young 55 — and he had helped her get a job as a script reader for famed theatrical agent Audrey Wood.

Audrey Wood, of Liebling-Wood, New York City (Fred French building), opened a second office. If my memory serves me correctly it was on South Beverly Drive, in Beverly Hills.

I had been reading plays for Audrey for quite a long time, when I lived in New York City. So one day the phone rang at my house (___ N. Alpine Drive, Beverly Hills) and it was Audrey. She always spoke abruptly — precisely, business-like — even if the subject was something not pertaining to the theatre (which was rare, for she lived and breathed Broadway). On the phone this day, Audrey said “Rave, I’ll be in California. Next week. Monday. Stand by.” And she rang off.

I stood by Monday. I would have stood upside-down for Audrey Wood (make nothing of this except in a business way!). Monday she called from the airport. I was to be at a certain building in Beverly Hills on Wednesday. Ten a.m. With a desk clock, a few coat hangers (for a small closet), pens, toilet paper, a thermos of hot coffee, paper plates and cups, black shoe polish, a tumbler of pencils, six boxes of face tissues, and one of the ceramic mugs marked MGM.

Audrey had visited that magic-making studio and fallen in love with all of it — even the ratty Culver City, where the studio was located. And she had met my father there — he was a Director of Photography at MGM. The dearest man this side of heaven.

So Audrey arrived in Beverly Hills and I was put in charge of the small office. Corinne Griffith, an old-time Hollywood actress, had built the office building. It was on a corner, two stories, pristine white. I walked up a flight of stairs loaded down with office supplies.

There was a small parking lot behind the building, and I parked my new beige car — a two-door knock-out, a truly gorgeous little gas-guzzler — and said to myself, “Rave, you have died and gone to heaven.” This is the loveliest new building in the loveliest city in the world.

(I never accepted a salary. I refused to be paid for something I adored doing — reading plays.) Audrey would press money on me for lunches, but I’d always shake my head and she stopped, eventually, shaking her head and no one, she told William Inge one day, had ever refused money before. I was a rare bird, she told Brooks Atkinson. I was the daughter she never had, she told Elia Kazan.

So — the second version of the Liebling-Wood Agency opened in Beverly Hills. An entry hall, Audrey’s office (at the right) and a very large office (mine) in the back, overlooking the parking lot. I had a very large desk posters of Toulouse-Lautrec were hung (they were all originals) and I could smell the fresh paint (pristine white). Two telephones — one on Audrey’s desk, one on mine.

Up the street, off Wilshire Boulevard, there was a drug store, and I would walk over every noon and buy myself a sandwich and a bottle of orange juice. The drug store had a lunch counter, and sometimes I’d eat lunch there, but more often than not I’d bring lunch back to the office, for it was empty those few minutes every weekday and that made me feel guilty. Wall-to-wall carpets in our space. The ladies’ room was down the hall. Flowers were in large vases (I still have one of them) on the two desks. We were on the second floor (a walk-up). The New York Times was at the door.

We were in business.

The mail was delivered every morning at 10:00. It arrived in sacks, for such as the fame and power of Audrey Wood’s name. Sacks of manuscripts — plays, novels, poems. They came from everywhere: Hong Kong, Africa, France. I bought a half-dozen letter openers, and two of the largest wastebaskets I could find. Address and telephone books were delivered. One of each for Audrey’s desk and mine. The two rooms were flooded with sunlight. It never rained in those days in California. It was hog heaven, a small Eden.

And one day — in the mail — a battered manila envelope arrived. It was smeared with what might have been strawberry jam, or blood, or red paint. The handwriting was mottled, bu the address and name (Miss Audrey Wood, agent) were correct, if messy and stained. I opened it first — everything else could wait. This was a weird envelope (thick) and the contents beckoned.

A manuscript, of course.

A letter marked Audrey Wood, Personal. I carried the letter into Audrey’s office and took the manuscript home with me. The disreputable condition of the whole package got me. And that night I read a play titled “A Gentleman Caller” and telephoned Audrey at the Beverly Wiltshire Hotel (where she had taken a single room) and said “Miss Wood” (it was always and forever Miss Wood), “I’ve just finished reading a play. It’s by someone named Thomas Lanier Williams and I think you’ve got yourself a new playwright.”

Yes, indeed. The playwright turned out to be Tennessee Williams. And the play he had sent all the way from Mexico turned out to be re-titled. I had yelled and screamed that the one I really, truly loathed (“A Gentleman Caller”) stank to high heaven and sounded like the locale could be a brothel. So the young author changed it to “The Glass Menagerie.”

And that’s how it all began.