troubled psyche. Like many gay men of his era, Tennessee didn’t have sex with somebody else until late—his late twenties—and when his shrink ordered him to stop having sex and even give up Frank Merlo, his devoted partner of fourteen years, he did. After Merlo died young of cancer, Williams was remorseful for the rest of his life.
Williams reportedly came to regret some of the anti-gay screen changes to which he’d so readily, and profitably, agreed, as in
The Night of the Iguana
(1964), featuring extra lines—not by Tennessee—ordered by director John Huston which made the lesbian character Miss Fellowes seem more villainous and pathetic. Just as well that by the mid ’60s celluloid adaptations of Williams’s work were no longer guaranteed hits and finally petered out.
Gore Vidal, who remained friends with Tennessee—but not with fellow gay novelist Truman Capote; they had an amity-shattering argument in Tennessee’s home—observed that although Tennessee “survived witch doctors and envenomed press, they wore him out in the end.”
By his late sixties Williams was admitting, “I don’t feel a day over eighty. Not most of the time.” Success or no, he continued writing, which he considered his lifeline. The only time he’d been, as he put it, “scared scriptless,” was when he’d been hired by Hollywood to write heterosexual love dramas. When a British reporter inquired of the gay playwright about loneliness and whether he regretted being “childless”—or child-free—Tennessee responded, “Well, my children are my plays … they are my posterity. And unlike the other kind of offspring, they support me rather lavishly in my old age.”
Tennessee Williams’s body of work is arguably the greatest left behind by any American playwright. But he learned the hard way that personal truth costs. During the painful 1970s he pointed out, “In writing classes, they say, ‘Write about what you know.’ What they don’t say is, ‘Write about what you know
unless
we disapprove of who you are and what you know.’ ”
The Life of William Inge: No Picnic
“W ILLIAM I NGE WAS THE EXTREME EXAMPLE of a playwright who killed himself for lack of continuing success,” said Tennessee Williams. “I think that unlike most homosexual playwrights, he felt too little of and about himself.… Without success and the sustenance of acclaim, he chose to end his residency.”
William Inge (1913–1973) put the Midwest on the Broadway map, dramatically speaking. Before him, many Midwestern characters were happy and/or rural, often musical, and frequently shallow. Angst was not part of the scene. Inge’s themes were loneliness, frustration, loss, and despair. His characters craved love, and he was to the Midwest what mentor and, briefly, lover Tennessee Williams was to the South. In the 1950s Inge enjoyed four consecutive Broadway hits:
Come Back, Little Sheba, Picnic, Bus Stop
, and
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
.
Picnic
won him a Pulitzer Prize, and he later earned an original-screenplay Academy Award for
Splendor in the Grass
, a 1961 movie. (The shy ex-instructor had declined to go to the ceremonies in Los Angeles until the studio stopped insisting he attend with a female starlet.) The statuette was Inge’s last glittering piece of professional success.
A deeply closeted man who apparently never lived with and never had a longtime partner, Inge didn’t introduce gay characters into his work until late in his career. His Jewish youth who kills himself because of anti-Semitism in
Dark
has often been called a stand-in for a homosexual character. Once Inge did include gays, all too often they were stereotypes, and he did not abandon his habit of endorsing majority mores and relationships, only.
Inge had begun as an actor but due partly to parental desires (he was a fifth and final child) focused on teaching. He was an occasional radio news announcer and scriptwriter; also an art, music, book, and drama
Williams reportedly came to regret some of the anti-gay screen changes to which he’d so readily, and profitably, agreed, as in
The Night of the Iguana
(1964), featuring extra lines—not by Tennessee—ordered by director John Huston which made the lesbian character Miss Fellowes seem more villainous and pathetic. Just as well that by the mid ’60s celluloid adaptations of Williams’s work were no longer guaranteed hits and finally petered out.
Gore Vidal, who remained friends with Tennessee—but not with fellow gay novelist Truman Capote; they had an amity-shattering argument in Tennessee’s home—observed that although Tennessee “survived witch doctors and envenomed press, they wore him out in the end.”
By his late sixties Williams was admitting, “I don’t feel a day over eighty. Not most of the time.” Success or no, he continued writing, which he considered his lifeline. The only time he’d been, as he put it, “scared scriptless,” was when he’d been hired by Hollywood to write heterosexual love dramas. When a British reporter inquired of the gay playwright about loneliness and whether he regretted being “childless”—or child-free—Tennessee responded, “Well, my children are my plays … they are my posterity. And unlike the other kind of offspring, they support me rather lavishly in my old age.”
Tennessee Williams’s body of work is arguably the greatest left behind by any American playwright. But he learned the hard way that personal truth costs. During the painful 1970s he pointed out, “In writing classes, they say, ‘Write about what you know.’ What they don’t say is, ‘Write about what you know
unless
we disapprove of who you are and what you know.’ ”
The Life of William Inge: No Picnic
“W ILLIAM I NGE WAS THE EXTREME EXAMPLE of a playwright who killed himself for lack of continuing success,” said Tennessee Williams. “I think that unlike most homosexual playwrights, he felt too little of and about himself.… Without success and the sustenance of acclaim, he chose to end his residency.”
William Inge (1913–1973) put the Midwest on the Broadway map, dramatically speaking. Before him, many Midwestern characters were happy and/or rural, often musical, and frequently shallow. Angst was not part of the scene. Inge’s themes were loneliness, frustration, loss, and despair. His characters craved love, and he was to the Midwest what mentor and, briefly, lover Tennessee Williams was to the South. In the 1950s Inge enjoyed four consecutive Broadway hits:
Come Back, Little Sheba, Picnic, Bus Stop
, and
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
.
Picnic
won him a Pulitzer Prize, and he later earned an original-screenplay Academy Award for
Splendor in the Grass
, a 1961 movie. (The shy ex-instructor had declined to go to the ceremonies in Los Angeles until the studio stopped insisting he attend with a female starlet.) The statuette was Inge’s last glittering piece of professional success.
A deeply closeted man who apparently never lived with and never had a longtime partner, Inge didn’t introduce gay characters into his work until late in his career. His Jewish youth who kills himself because of anti-Semitism in
Dark
has often been called a stand-in for a homosexual character. Once Inge did include gays, all too often they were stereotypes, and he did not abandon his habit of endorsing majority mores and relationships, only.
Inge had begun as an actor but due partly to parental desires (he was a fifth and final child) focused on teaching. He was an occasional radio news announcer and scriptwriter; also an art, music, book, and drama
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