If doubts remain about who America's greatest playwright is, John Lahr's masterful Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (Norton, $39.95) will end them. He expertly shows how the openly gay Williams (1911-83), an extraordinarily autobiographical writer, transformed his life into groundbreaking theatre, unforgettably giving voice to all the turbulence, pain, beauty, hopes, and fears that tormented him. At his best, he made the personal universal. Lahr, theatre critic for The New Yorker, illuminates how Williams exposed his innermost anxieties. He was simultaneously vulnerable and courageous.
Lahr's volume was originally intended to complete the work of Lyle Leverich's extraordinary Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams (1995), which ended with the triumphant 1945 Broadway opening of The Glass Menagerie. Sadly, Leverich, Williams' authorized biographer, died before starting the second book. (Full disclosure: Leverich was a close friend.) Lahr's work stands alone, but focuses on Williams' life from 1940.
Williams' hits alternated with misses. Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and The Night of the Iguana (1961) were revolutionary and commercially viable. But Battle of Angels (1940) closed after a disastrous Boston preview; retitled Orpheus Descending (1957), it failed on Broadway; Summer and Smoke (1948) flopped, but was successfully revived in 1952, making a star of Geraldine Page. The Rose Tattoo (1951) won the Best Play Tony, but lost money. Camino Real (1953) confused critics and audiences. It had a brief run. After Iguana, Williams never had another success.
Lahr's discussions of the plays, their development, the egos involved, and the struggles Williams endured balancing artistic integrity with popular appeal are fascinating. He astutely assesses Elia Kazan's collaborations with Williams. Kazan directed Streetcar, Camino, Cat and Youth, improving them all. Later, in the published versions, Williams often reverted to his original concepts. Kazan also directed the 1951 movie of Streetcar and the controversial Baby Doll (1956), based on a one-act play by Williams.
Williams' relationships with his lovers became themes in his works. His passionate, violent affair with handsome Pancho Rodriguez was unforgettably reimagined in Streetcar's battle between Blanche and Stanley. The sexual pleasure he got from Frank Merlo, whom Williams nicknamed "The Horse," and who was his longest-lasting lover, is crucial to Tattoo, whose widowed heroine mourns her husband's carnal prowess.
His ongoing conflict between self-destruction and creativity was powerfully evoked in Cat. His initial portrait of his frigid, desperate mother in Menagerie was revised – she became the monstrous Violet Venable in the gripping one-act play Suddenly Last Summer (1958), in which her homosexual poet son is cannibalized. Alexandra del Lago in Youth embodies Williams' terror of never having another hit, and his joy in finding unexpected acclaim. In Iguana, he hauntingly articulated his longing for "purity," and his "shameful" surrender to sexual pleasure and alcohol.
Lahr's account of Iguana is riveting. Williams created the lead character, Hannah Jelkes, for Katharine Hepburn, who originally wasn't interested, but later wanted very much to play her – but only for six months. Neophyte producer Charles Bowden insisted on a year's commitment. She refused. Consequently, Margaret Leighton essayed her, winning a Tony for her incandescent performance. Williams and Bowden then signed Bette Davis, who hadn't appeared in a Broadway play for decades, for the secondary role of Maxine, contingent upon the part being expanded. Davis, miscast, floundered. She responded with vicious tirades, abusive outbursts, outrageous demands, and bullying behavior. The constant havoc became so unbearable that co-star Patrick O'Neal nearly strangled her to death during a rehearsal.
Lahr superbly reassesses the later plays, jubilantly trashed by critics. He makes a compelling case that The Gnadiges Fraulein (1966) and In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1968) are worthwhile achievements, proof of Williams' ability to change.
He gets to the truth behind Williams' self-created mythology. For example, he shows that while Williams loved and provided for his lobotomized sister Rose, he wasn't always kind to her, and never forgave himself for his early cruelty. He discloses Williams' changing perspective of his fearsome father Cornelius, and reveals that his beloved grandfather, the Reverend Walter Dakin, was blackmailed because of homosexual liaisons. His recounting of Merlo's premature death and his complicated relationship with Williams is sensitive and moving.
Lahr writes sympathetically of Williams' ever-increasing reliance on alcohol and prescription drugs. That dependence forced his brother Dakin to forcibly institutionalize him, thereby saving his life. Williams denied needing such help, however, and disinherited his sibling. Lahr gives a balanced account of the impact psychiatrist Lawrence Kubie had on him.
Sadly, by 1970, Williams' alcohol- and drug-induced paranoia escalated. Enabled by his manipulative confidant Lady Maria St. Just (who was called "none of those" by Margot Peters), he fired his long-time agent Audrey Wood, whose early support had been crucial to his success. (St. Just would later use her position as Rose's guardian to delay publication of Tom .)
Although Lahr excels at the historical context in which Williams found acclaim and, later, failure, he doesn't link the latter to the era's rampant homophobia. Additionally, with few exceptions, he says little about the movies based on Williams' writings – 16 were released from 1950 to 2008. Vivien Leigh, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden, Anna Magnani, and Ed Begley won Oscars for their characterizations in those pictures, and Elizabeth Taylor (twice), Page (twice), Marlon Brando, Marisa Pavan, Carroll Baker, Mildred Dunnock, Paul Newman, Hepburn, Lotte Lenya, Una Merkel, Shirley Knight, and Grayson Hall earned nominations for their performances, an unprecedented record.
Nonetheless, Lahr's achievement is monumental. Williams wasn't always likeable, good, or admirable. He was self-centered. No individual mattered as much as his work. Writing gave him his identity, his solace, his escape from demons. It enabled him to turn the mundane into art. His legacy can be measured in many ways, but one indication is enough: his plays have been translated into more languages, produced and revived more frequently than any English-language writer except Shakespeare. Once Williams found his voice, the world listened. It still does.