572
“There’s an explosive center”: Frank Rich, “Play: Adapted Memoirs of Tennessee Williams,”
New York Times
, Sept. 11, 1981.
572
“spook sonata”: Tennessee Williams,
A House Not Meant to Stand
(New York: New Directions, 2008), p. 100.
572
“Never, never, never stop laughing!”: Williams to Truman Capote, July 2, 1978, LLC.
573
“I don’t compete with Joe Orton”:
CWTW
, p. 341.
573
“panicky disarray”: Tennessee Williams,
A House Not Meant to Stand: A Gothic Comedy
(New York: New Directions, 2008), p. 3.
573
“to produce a shock of disbelief”: Ibid.
573
“a large mantel clock”: Ibid.
573
“ticks rather loudly”: Ibid.
573
“a metaphor for the state of society”: Ibid.
573
“Things fall apart”: William Butler Yeats,
The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats
, vol. 1:
The Poems
, rev. 2nd ed. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), p. 187.
573
“sinister times”: Williams,
House Not Meant to Stand
, p. 48.
575
“I don’t respect tears”: Ibid., p. 35.
575
“Miss Nancy”:
NSE
, p. 93.
575
“I remember when”: Williams,
House Not Meant to Stand
, p. 22.
575
“CORNELIUS: You encouraged it”: Ibid., p. 7.
575
“No one whom I have discussed”: Williams to Edwina Williams, Mar. 3, 1972, LLC.
576
“Dancie money”: Williams,
House Not Meant to Stand
, p. 18.
576
“lunacy runs rampant”: Ibid., p. 17.
576
“alarming incidences”:
M
, p. 116.
577
“CHARLIE: Mom?”: Williams,
House Not Meant to Stand
, p. 21.
577
“Bella should be presented”: Thomas Keith, “Introduction: A Mississippi Fun House,” in ibid., p. xxi.
577
“My eyes keep clouding over”: Williams,
House Not Meant to Stand
, p. 35.
577
“CORNELIUS: [
half-rising and freezing in position
]”: Ibid., p. 6.
577
“Little Joanie”: Ibid., p. 72.
577
“All I had was a little nervous break down”: Ibid., p. 71.
578
“Blow out your candles, Laura”: LOA1, p. 465.
578
“Ghostly outcries of children”: Williams,
House Not Meant to Stand
, p. 82.
578
“enchanting lost lyricism of childhood”: Ibid., p. 85.
578
“VOICE OF YOUNG CHIPS:—
Dark
!”: Ibid.
578
“Chips—will you say”: Ibid., p. 86.
578
“We can’t say grace”: LOA1
,
p. 401.
578
“Ceremonially the ghost children rise”: Williams,
House Not Meant to Stand
, p. 86.
578
“to glance back at their mother”: Ibid.
579
“When I hear [the critics] say”:
N
, Nov. 24, 1981, p. 764.
579
“the best thing Williams has written”: Gerald Clarke, “Show Business: Sweating It out in Miami,”
Time
, June 28, 1982.
579
“My God, that’s Mother Teresa”: Primus V, “Blessed Unexpectedly,”
Harvard Magazine
, Jan.–Feb. 2013.
580
“It was an Underwood typewriter”: Spoto,
Kindness
, p. 363.
580
“He looked old”: LLI with John Uecker, 1985, LLC.
580
“That’s the end of the performance”: Ibid.
580
“I don’t understand my life”: Williams to Kate Moldawer, May 31, 1982, LLC.
580
spent several days recovering: Peter Hoffman, “The Last Days of Tennessee Williams,”
New York
, July 25, 1983.
580
“He just wouldn’t have it”: LLI with John Uecker, 1983, LLC.
580
toyed with the idea of renting: “Ask him if he knows how I can dispose of this old shambles of a house. For this summer at least. If I do return to it (improbably) it will be with a little, warm-hearted Sicilian,” he wrote to Moldawer. (Williams to Kate Moldawer, May 31, 1982, LLC.)
580
“I won’t ever be coming home again”: Rader,
Tennessee
, p. 339.
580
“Before Mr. Tom went away”: Ibid.
582
“It was James Laughlin in the beginning”: Williams on James Laughlin, Jan. 1983, LLC.
582
“I know that it is the poetry”: Ibid.
582
“I’ve gone from good reviews”: JLI with Dotson Rader, 2011, JLC.
582
“To us”:
RBAW
, p. 325.
582
“
I, I, I!
—a burden to be surrendered”:
N
, p. 729.
CHAPTER 10: THE SUDDEN SUBWAY
583
“The Sudden Subway”: Unless otherwise noted, material in this chapter is drawn from John Lahr, “The Lady and Tennessee,”
The
New Yorker
, Dec. 19, 1994.
583
“Tennessee called death the sudden subway”: James Laughlin, “Tennessee,” in James Laughlin, Peter Glassgold, and Elizabeth Harper,
New Directions 47: An International Anthology of Poetry and Prose
(New York: New Directions, 1983), p. 180.
583
“He wrote his own life”: JLI with John Uecker, 2010, JLC.
583
when the police arrived at Williams’s room: Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Report of Death, Case M83-1568.
583
“I run, cried the fox, in circles”:
CP
, “Cried the Fox,” pp. 6–7.
584
“I knew he was dealing”: LLI with John Uecker, 2010, JLC.
584
“deathly afraid of institutions”: Tennessee Williams,
The One Exception
, Jan. 1983, LLC.
584
“retreated to her room”: Ibid.
584
“She dreads any encounter”: Ibid.
584
“She used to have periods of depression”: Ibid.
584
“I—can’t talk much”: Ibid.
584
“I wonder if it wouldn’t be better”: Ibid.
584
“nods with a senseless look”: Ibid.
584
“Kyra takes a few hesitant steps”: Ibid.
585
“Tennessee begged me”: JLI with John Uecker, 2010, JLC.
585
“I most certainly will not”: LLI with John Uecker, 1985, LLC.
585
“Every time I’d go in the room”: JLI with John Uecker, 2010, JLC.
585
“right-hand bower”: LOA1, p. 419.
585
“I can’t write”: JLI with John Uecker, 2010, JLC.
585
“I have faced the fact”: Ibid.
585
“I said, ‘What if he should take the whole bottle?’ ”: LLI with John Uecker, 1983, LLC.
586
“He just seemed to be in dreamland”: JLI with John Uecker, 2010, JLC.
586
“It was bad”: JLI with John Uecker, 2011, JLC.
586
“My next thought”: JLI with John Uecker, 2010, JLC.
586
“Water witches crowned with reeds”: Thomas Chatterton, “Minstrel Song” from
Aella
: The final verse reads, “Water-witches, crowned with reytes, / Bear me to your lethal tide. / I die! I come! My true-love waits . . . / Thus the damsel spake, and died.”
587
“There were so many people”: JLI with John Uecker, 2011, JLC.
587
“I’ve got to see him!”: JLI with John Uecker, 2010, JLC.
587
“The cause of death”: Suzanne Daley, “Williams Choked on a Bottle Cap: No Evidence of Foul Play Seen by the Medical Examiner,”
New York Times
, Feb. 27, 1983.
587
“was not wide enough”: Michael M. Baden with Judith Adler Hennessee,
Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner
(New York: Ballantine, 2005), p. 73.
588
official public story about his death: Daley, “Williams Choked on a Bottle Cap.”
588
“an autopsy was performed”: Ibid.
588
“Gross told me”: Philip Shenon, “Broad Deterioration in Coroner’s Office Charged,”
New York Times
, Jan. 30, 1985.
588
“apparently the overcap”: LLI with John Uecker, 1984, LLC.
588
toxicology report: The report from the toxicology laboratory shows the breakdown of secobarbital in Williams’s body. Blood: 1.8 mg%; Brain: 2.6 mg%; Stomach content: 96 mg/85 ml; Liver: 5.5 mg%; Kidney: 3.7%; Urine: 0.4%. Certified by Dr. Milton Lessa Bastos, April 6, 1983. (Copy of report, LLC.)
588
“sad group noises”: Letter from Elia Kazan, Mar. 25, 1983, LLC.
588
“The man lived a very good life”: Ibid.
589
“In order to negotiate life”: Michiko Kakutani, “The Legacy of Tennessee Williams,”
New York Times
, Mar. 6, 1983.
589
“For a while the theater loved him”: “Williams Dies Alone in Midtown Hotel: Literary, Theater Greats Mourn a Towering Talent,”
New York Post
, Feb. 26, 1983.
589
“the Orthodox Jewish coffin”: Peter Hoffman, “The Last Days of Tennessee Williams,”
New York
, July 25, 1983, p. 41.
589
“It is a time of reconciliation”: Sara Rimer, “Fans Give Williams Last Review,”
Miami
Herald
, Mar. 3, 1983.
589
“I’m to be borne out to sea”:
Tennessee Williams’ South
, DVD, directed by Harry Rasky (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1972).
590
“If he had to die”: David Richards, “The Long Shadow of Tennessee,”
Washington
Post
, Mar. 15, 1983.
590
“Suddenly out of obscurity”: Ibid.
590
“Parisian outfit”: Hoffman, “Last Days of Tennessee Williams,” p. 42.
590
“The milk train doesn’t stop”: Margaria Fichtner, “Another Williams: Dakin for President,”
Miami Herald
, June 9, 1983.
590
“I’m sure he’d disapprove”:
New Orleans
Times-Picayune
, Mar. 6, 1983.
590
“Dakin planned a concession stand”: JLI with Dotson Rader, 2011, JLC.
591
Dakin could make him pay in death: Robert Bray, the Williams scholar who knew Dakin and interviewed him, recalled other schemes to exploit the Williams franchise: “Dakin’s idea of digging up the coffin in St. Louis and repatriating TW back to New Orleans, in order to establish a TW theme park. He’d say, ‘You know, we could have Brick hobbling around on a crutch, Amanda strolling about with her jonquils, Shannon looking for a drink.’ ” (JLI with Robert Bray, 2012, JLC.)
591
the city he called “St. Pollution”:
CWTW
, p. 180.
591
“Tennessee’s two great loves”: Lahr, “Lady and Tennessee,” p. 88.
591
her own obituaries: Maria St. Just died February 15, 1994.
591
“THE ARISTOCRATIC HELLCAT”: Lahr, “Lady and Tennessee,” p. 88.
591
“She was Williams’s closest woman friend”: Ibid.
592
“an occasional actress”:
M
, p. 149.
592
“I will write more about Maria later”: Ibid.
592
“The lady is afflicted”: Ibid., p. 215.
592
“In the American edition of my memoirs”: Lahr, “Lady and Tennessee,” p. 86.
592
“The answer is no”: Ibid.
592
“I suppose in a way he had”: Ibid.
592
“My last request is a last command”: Ibid., p. 96.
593
throws himself in the Thames: Ibid.
593
“He knew that she had exaggerated”: Ibid.
593
“weaning himself away from her”: Ibid.
593
“Maria was very much a presence”: Ibid.
593
“he was a procrastinator”: Ibid., p. 92.
593
“She was always whining”: Ibid., p. 88.
594
“Ultimately, money”: Ibid.
594
percentage of the royalties: Edwina got 50 percent of the royalties from
The Glass Menagerie
, which was returned to Williams on her death. Merlo also got a percentage of
The Rose Tattoo
; however, much to Williams’s annoyance, Merlo’s royalties were not assigned back to him by the family after Merlo’s death.