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