1960-06-25 — Page 5

THE CHINA - MAIL, SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1960,

DEA

THE WEIRD

Williams at ease............in symbolic setting. On guard:

OUT

the dog he calla Satun.

Key West, Florida.

at sea where the Atlantic nudges the Gulf of Mexico the man in the white helmet and black trunks swims strongly and swiftly.

After he has swum 200 yards or maybe more he returns to the shore and walks up the beach distastefully loooking at a group of children dig- ging holes in the sand. "What a mess they make," he says.

The man is of medium height with close-cropped hair and a tidy moustache. He walks light- ly, leaning forward a-Bille on the balls of his feet. His breath- ing is even.

This is Tennessee Williams at home on the coral, sand, and palm-tree-fringed island that is Key West. At home....but not nt rest. Mr Williams, at the peak of his power as a writer, can find no rest.

Every day he works. Every afternoon he swims. "The water tranquillises me," he says, "it is a sort of therapy. I feel at ease

in the water."

When Anna Magnani was making The Fugitive Kind' I told her I was going to die in six mouths.

"All she said was scared?'"

'Are you "And are you?" I asked. A sudden laugh. "No," he said. "I'm too fatigued to be scared. Langevily runs in my family. My grandfather lived to be 98."

A comedy

Down here

WORLD OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

Pare

from the pen of

The critics have at once been repelled and fascinated by the latest · film Tennessee Williams—“Suddenly Last Summer.” Another equally disturbing and compelling product of this turbulent mind is due shortly in Britain. To explore fully this frightening but brilliant talent, the China Mail sent DAVID, LEWIN_four thousand miles to spend some time charting the Weird World of Tennessee Williams; and to define truly its lonely inhabitant... begin it today.

at his Key West home he tells me

IF I HAD A TITLE

TO SUM UP MY LIFE IT WOULD BE

'Desperation'

"Only we're not calling it a the place where his friends Comedy in case the actors start meet and talk. gagging it up." he said.

Every morning in Key West he works at his electric type writer for three or four hours.

At times Tallulah Bankhead comes down to the Keys. She is a firm favourite. Miss Bank- head's latest/news is of a new He has three new plays in clause she insists on having in various stages of completion, every contract for the theatre. two of them entitled, charac- It declares that no "Method" teristically. "Night of the actor may work in a play with Iguana" (the iguana is a her, Mexican lizard) and "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Any More."

"I am a compulsive

writer,"

No 'Method'

We laughed about this and Tennessee Williams, who has had much experience with Method men like Marlon Brando,

On the beach a baby suddenly cried. Left alone by its mother It had fallen with its hairless head into the soft sand and was in danger of suffocating.

Tennessee and I dashed to pick it up and dusted it off trying to find some protection for it from the sun.

When the mother was brought over Tennessee Williams ad- monished her for negleel.

Talk, drink

He was serious and offended. Too many people have children they don't know how to look after," he said. "I'm not very fond of children so it's as well I'll never be a father."

Tennessee Williams first came to Key West in 1941 on a couple of hundred dollars given him by the Theatre Guild to rewrite one of his earliest plays, "Battle

Preview of his next shocker.

Anna Magnani, Marlon Brando in close-up clinch for 'The Fugitive King.”

what he heard and started to get drunk as read.

But every so often the monkey "Streetcar Named Desire," for a while because 1 road it to on his back starts to scratch and "Suddenly Last Summer," "Cat a friend who took a dim view of his personal atmosphere is on a Hot Tin Roof." charged with static. For a year, more or less regularly, he went to a psychoanalyst (it cost him nearly £1 a day.)

He was outraged and f WRE discouraged, so two days later started "Streetcar." i finlebed it in four months and it came out as though it had always been in me -- recollection

("they

He works urgently at a title don't flow easily"), usually after a play is written. The titles hook the rudience be "He was a good man but he cause "I am a commercial couldn't cure me and I left be- writer, not a iterary gent." fore the course was finished. you must go through hell

I said to him: "Give me 3 saved, the analyst said to me. you." And he paused only for it was

be title to sum up your life and rather than an invented piece. But I told him I was in hell now a moment and then he laughed, grandfather was with me at the so what was the difference."

"Desperation I guess,

of Angels,' which subsequently It is this personal hell that Desperation." was called "Orpheus Descend- ing."

In 1948 he bought a house and now plans to spend most of the year here.

drives him to create in this peaceful background characters who end cruelly. Women go into lunatic asylums....men burned or mutilated....brutality slugs it out with tenderness.

The drama is heightened by

are

I

Anatomy of a hit...

no effort to me; my

Tes. time and he was always a calm.

ing influence. As for "Summer and Smoke" (it is being filmed soon with Laurenco Harvey), 1 never mastered that again when I returned to it. I was too vul- nerable.

#$ When they Came to Alm thought Vivien

THIS is how Williams works. "Streetcar

anxleties "my neuroses," he Fugitive Kind," will have its day is posthumous. I'm only said: "They are so serious now, connected by bridges or cause- the fact that the room in which This is the background to his Leigh would be totally wrong

But on land the pressures of his life and his past, his calls them bear down on him, "Always I have this monkey on my back," he said to me, "Always it is there-until I die, I suppose, which I used to think would be soon. The years shuttle pust like felegraph poles and already I am middle-aged (he is 49).

these Method people.

I have come to Key West to be with Tennessee Williams. In London his latest film, "Suddenly he said by way of explanation. Last Summer," is a success. "You see, I must work.

The Keys are a pattern of a few weeks, another Soon, in

"When I stop the rest of the

Islands strung below Miami and Tennessee Williams film, "The

really alive when I'm writing.

ways. "It suits me better than world debut.

"This is not to say I can't "A couple of them came to anywhere else I have struck," he

But for a reading of my latest play, said, "except, perhaps, Rene. enjoy myself. I do.

They sat solemnly side by side "The strain in New York is me real life is willing.

We sat in the afternoon in like deacons, heads nodding too great although I have an opened and the keen sun on a concrete pler down over script. But occasion apartment there. There is not casting is starting for his new watching the shrimp boats go ally one would take a sidelong much to do in Key West except work, "Period of Adjustment," out to sea, primly in line. After glance at the other to make sure talk and drink and listen to hi-f

records." his swim he was calm. This is he was doing the same thing." which is a comedy.

In New York he is already

represented by these two pic tures (both doing well), and recently a revival of his play.

Real," "Camino

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Named Desire."

She was brilliant under the direction of Elia Kazan.' Now

all this comes to life is simple greatest success, "Streetcar for the part. But I was wrong. and painted a pure white.

And so there flows the words and the poetry which make Tennessee Williams one of the greatest writers in the English language today.

His titles have the magic about them: "Sweet Bird of Youth."

I was living in New Orleans she is an even better actress. at the time and it was ex. She has had so many personal tremely easy to write probably troubles and now she is entering the easlest of them all. Actually her greatest phase. That can I had started "Summer and happen after trouble. Smoke" first, but I gave that up

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