Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [218]
Barnes and I, with the help of the staff, managed to walk him up the stairs and out the door to a taxi, into which Barnes bundled him briskly, while Tennessee wallowed in the back, eyes revolving, like somebody who fears they are being kidnapped but can do nothing to prevent it. Barnes leaped into the cab beside his client and slammed the door shut. “Don’t you worry,” Barnes shouted out to me, as the cab sped off. “He’s terrific on the tube.”
ACTUALLY, THE question of whether or not Tennessee Williams was terrific—or at any rate, would remain sober—on television was not my main concern. My first concern was whether he would stay sober enough to finish his novel, which was called, despite many attempts on my part to talk him out of the idea, Moïse and the World of Reason. The pages I saw at first made no sense at all, but I put that down to the fact that it was early days and that the ways of genius are not like those of ordinary men. It seemed to me that there was no plot as such in what I read, but whenever I brought the matter up in calls to Tennessee he simply chuckled and said, “I know, I know, baby, but it’ll come, don’t fret.” Criticism, at any rate, did not disturb him. Genius or not, like most playwrights he was used to rewriting things at the request of the director or the actors and took it all in his stride, with a good nature fueled, I had no doubt, by his favorite cold remedy.
As we became closer, I began to appreciate more and more the genuine sweetness of Tennessee Williams. It is not a word I normally apply to anyone, but it seems the only one to describe him. Yes, Tennessee could be difficult, certainly he had a temper when he felt himself betrayed, but the core of him was one of essential simplicity and sweetness. There was a gentleness and a capacity for trust in him that comes out so strongly in the characters in his plays he clearly loved best: Blanche in Streetcar, Laura in The Glass Menagerie—indeed, in most of his women. Pursued as he was by his own demons—an unhappy childhood, an attachment to his unfortunate sister, Rose, alcoholism, pill dependency on a heroic scale (mostly Seconal, Nembutal, Doriden, and amphetamines), a desperate need to be loved, and a taste for rough trade—he remained a true romantic about people, always trusting them until proven wrong, and sometimes, with dismaying effects, long afterward.
Shortly after S&S acquired his novel, I attended a black-tie dinner in his honor at the National Arts Club, at which he was to receive an award. The dinner was an elegant and star-studded occasion—literally, for many of the stars who had appeared in the Broadway productions of Tennessee’s plays over the years were present, as well as a glittering crowd of his admirers and various mandarins from the worlds of culture and high fashion. Tennessee himself sat on the dais, a shy smile on his face, his glasses again askew, and his black bow tie at an angle. To his left sat the mayor; to his right, smiling vacantly, a tiny, fragile-looking, elfin gnome of a woman in her late fifties, dressed in blue, with silver hair cropped short and a strangely unlined face like that of a china doll. As dinner was served, I noticed that Tennessee merely picked at his food, hardly eating a thing. From the expression on his face, I judged that he had been fighting off another cold with his favorite remedy.
Once dinner was over, the speeches began, each one more admiring than the one before. The mayor claimed Tennessee for New York City, various speakers from the National Arts Club claimed him for American culture, one after another actors and actresses rose to praise him or to relate intimate, affectionate anecdotes about him. The emotional temperature of the room was rising to a crescendo. Everywhere I looked there were people crying, by no means all of them actors. There were actual civilians