Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog

404 Pages·2015·4.2 MB·English

by  James Grissom

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2015 by James Grissom All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred
A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of
Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to HarperCollins Publishers for permission to reprint “Youth”
from New and Collected Poems: 1931–2001 by Czesław Miłosz, copyright © 1988, 1995, 2001 by
Czesław Miłosz Royalties, Inc. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Grissom, James.
Follies of God : Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog / James Grissom. — First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-307-26569-2 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-1-10187465-3 (eBook) 1. Williams, Tennessee,
1911–1983—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Characters and characteristics in literature. 3.
Women in literature.
I. Title.
PS3545.I5365Z666 2015 812′.54—dc23 2014021046
Jacket photograph courtesy of the Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s Jacket design by
Carol Devine Carson
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Illustrations
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Acknowledgments
Four women made the writing of this book possible:
Winnie Hubbard Grissom
Marian Seldes
Dr. Dale V. Atkins
Rose Byrnes
And one made it publishable:
Victoria Wilson
I have been very lucky. I am a multi-souled man, because I have offered my soul to so
many women, and they have filled it, repaired it, sent it back to me for use.
—TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Illustrations
1.1 Tennessee Williams in Jackson Square, 1977 (Christopher R.
Harris) 2.1 Marlon Brando and Maureen Stapleton on the set of
The Fugitive Kind, 1959 (Photofest) 2.2 Tennessee Williams and
Maureen Stapleton, 1975 (Photofest) 2.3 The garden behind St.
Louis Cathedral 3.1 Eva Le Gallienne, c. 1920 (Photofest)
4.1 Clarence Brown, 1940s (Photofest)
5.1 Miriam Hopkins, 1930s (Photofest)
5.2 Lillian Gish on Cielo Drive, 1940s (Photofest) 6.1 Lillian Gish,
mid-1930s (Photofest)
6.2 Lillian and Dorothy Gish, 1960s (Diane Arbus) 6.3 John Gielgud,
1970s (John Hedegcoe)
7.1 Jessica Tandy, 1947 (Carl Van Vechten) 7.2 Hume Cronyn, Jessica
Tandy, Lillian Gish, John Gielgud, 1966 (Corbis) 7.3 Irene
Selznick, Tennessee Williams, Elia Kazan, unidentified man, 1947
(Ruth Orkin) 8.1 Lois Smith, 1955 (Photofest)
8.2 Laurette Taylor, 1940s (Photofest)
8.3 Ida Lupino and Joan Leslie in The Hard Way; Jennifer Jones in The
Song of Bernadette, 1943 (Photofest) 9.1 Marian Seldes, 1960
(Getty Images)
9.2 Hermione Baddeley and Mildred Dunnock in The Milk Train Doesn’t
Stop Here Anymore, 1963 (Photofest) 9.3 Tallulah Bankhead,
1930s (Photofest) 10.1 Frances Sternhagen, 1970s (Photofest)
10.2 Julie Harris in The Member of the Wedding, 1950 (Photofest)
10.3 Isak Dinesen and Carson McCullers, 1959 (Corbis) 10.4 José
Quintero, 1950s (Photofest)
10.5 Kim Hunter, early 1950s (Corbis)
11.1 William Inge, 1950s (Photofest)
11.2 Elia Kazan and William Inge, 1961 (Photofest) 12.1 Barbara
Baxley, 1960 (Photofest)
13.1 Geraldine Page, 1961 (Photofest)
13.2 Geraldine Page, 1962 (Photofest)
13.3 Luchino Visconti, 1936 (Horst P. Horst) 15.1 Mildred Natwick,
mid-1940s (Photofest) 15.2 Jo Van Fleet, 1957 (Photofest)
16.1 Kim Stanley, 1960s
16.2 Katharine Cornell, 1940s (Photofest) 16.3 Lee Strasberg, 1950s
(Photofest)
16.4 Kim Stanley and Paul Massie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 1958 (BEI
Images/Rex USA) 17.1 Truman Capote, c. late 1940s (Photofest)
17.2 Ellis Rabb, 1970s
17.3 Rosemary Harris, 1950s
17.4 Eva Le Gallienne and Rosemary Harris, 1975 (Photofest)
18.1 Katharine Hepburn, 1955 (Photofest) 18.2 Katharine
Hepburn’s letter to author, 1990
18.3 Katharine Hepburn, 1959 (Photofest) 18.4 Stella Adler, 1943
(Photofest)
18.5 Irene Worth, 1950s (Photofest)
18.6 Tennessee Williams, early 1940s (Photofest)
One
“PERHAPS YOU can be of some help to me.”
These were the first words Tennessee Williams spoke to me in that
initial phone call to my parents’ home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was
September of 1982, a fact I noted in a small blue book. The book was
new and had been purchased for an upcoming test in World History that
I would not be taking because Tennessee invited me to lunch in New
Orleans, and I accepted.
I know that pleasantries were exchanged, and he laughed a lot—a
deep, guttural, silly theatrical laugh—but the first quotation attributable
to Tennessee Williams to me was the one I wrote in my small blue book.
Perhaps you can be of some help to me.
How could I be of help to Tennessee Williams? How, when in fact I
had written to him, several months before, seeking his help? From a
battered paperback copy of Who’s Who in the American Theatre, I had
found the address of his agent (Audrey Wood, c/o International Famous
Agency, 1301 Avenue of the Americas), and had written a letter—
lengthy and containing a photograph, and, I’m thankful, lost to us
forever—asking for his advice on a writing career. I wrote that his work
had meant the most to me; that I was considering a career in the theater.
I also enclosed two short stories, both written for a class taken at
Louisiana State University. It was a time I recall as happy: I was writing,
and exploiting the reserves of the school’s library and its liberal sharing
policy with other schools. I was poring over books and papers that
related to Tennessee and other writers I admired.
Tennessee (he told me, by the end of that first phone call, to call him
Tenn) was in a horrible “knot of time.” He asked me to imagine a knot of
time, but time for me at that point was something from which I was