Pink Triangle

One hot summer night in 1945, three young American writers, each an enfant terrible, came together in a stuffy Manhattan apartment for the first time. Each member of this pink triangle was on the dawn of world fame-Tennessee Williams for A Streetcar Named Desire; Gore Vidal for his notorious homosexual novel, The City and the Pillar; and Truman Capote for Other Voices, Other Rooms, a book that had been marketed with a photograph depicting Capote as a underaged sex object that caused as much controversy as the prose inside.

Each of the three remained competitively and defiantly provocative throughout the course of his writing career. Initially hailed by critics as "the darlings of the gods," each of them would, in time, be attacked for his contributions to film, the theater, and publishing. Some of their works would be widely reviewed as "obscene rantings from perverted sociopaths."

From that summer night emerged betrayals that eventually evolved into lawsuits, stolen lovers, public insults, and the most famous and flamboyant rivalries in America's literary history. The private opinions of these authors about their celebrity acquaintances usually left scar tissue.

Vidal became the most iconoclastic writer since Voltaire, needling and satirizing the sacred cows of his era and explosively describing subjects which included America's gay founding fathers, the lesbian affairs of Eleanor Roosevelt, his own seduction of the Beat Generation's spiritual leader and guru, Jack Kerouac. The book contains an overview of Vidal's hot, then glacial, relationship with the fabled diarist Anaïs Nin, and the drawn-out slugfests which followed.

Capote became the mascot of the ultra-fashionable jet set, surrounded and showcased by his glamorous "swans." Eventually, Capote feuded not only with Vidal, but with "The Queen of the Best-Sellers," Jacqueline Susann, publicly referring to her as "a truck driver in drag." Capote's own struggles for bestsellerdom are depicted during the research of his all-time hit, In Cold Blood, wherein he falls hopelessly in love with one of its killers. The book contains details about his hosting of "The Party of the Century," and his self-destructive descent into isolation, alcohol, and drugs.

Tennessee Williams, attacked for his "incurable sense of decadence," became as notorious as his plays. His tumultuous private life is explored as never before in a portrait that's as poignant and flamboyant as any character he created, including that of Blanche DuBois. Did Tennessee really perform fellatio on JFK at his Palm Beach compound? Did Warren Beatty really have sex with him as a means of procuring his role as the gigolo in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone? What really happened when a then-unknown actor, Marlon Brando, arrived on Tennessee's doorstep in Provincetown during World War II?

Autorentext

By Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince

Inhalt

Contents

Introduction
Chapter One: Enfants Terribles 1
Chapter Two: Tennessee in Provincetown 19
Chapter Three: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 25
Chapter Four: Lana Turner and the Celluloid Brassiere 41
Chapter Five: Sybaritic Isherwood 49
Chapter Six: Clark Gable, Nina, and Eugene Vidal 63
Chapter Seven: Monty Clift 87
Chapter Eight: Tennessee's Glass Menagerie 107
Chapter Nine: Gore Meets the Glorious Bird 131
Chapter Ten: Tennessee Confronts Truman's "Forked Tongue" 149Chapter Eleven: Gore vs. Truman (The Eagle Meets the Condor) 161 Chapter Twelve: The City and the Pillar 171 Chapter Thirteen: Truman's Other Voices 179 Chapter Fourteen: A Streetcar Named Marlon Brando 185 Chapter Fifteen: Postwar Europe's Most Sought-After Male Prostitute 211 Chapter Sixteen: Tennessee's Rocky Ride on "The Little Horse" 221
Chapter Seventeen: Truman and His Mother 245
Chapter Eighteen: Scarlett O'Hara--She's Back! 267 Chapter Nineteen: Tennessee and Gore in Pursuit of Billy the Kid 283 Chapter Twenty: Gore Vidal Seduces Jack Kerouac 295
Chapter Twenty-One: Lancaster "Tattoos" Magnani 311
Chapter Twenty-Two: Tallulah vs. Tennessee 323
Chapter Twenty-Three: Truman Beats the Devil 345
Chapter Twenty-Four: Where Prostitutes Were Named After Flowers 355
Chapter Twenty-Five: Gore's Longtime Companion: Howard Austen 367
Chapter Twenty-Six: The Amorous Pursuits of Gore Vidal 377
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Gore "Dances" With Rudi in the Nudi 399
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Gore Confronts the Very Difficult Bette Davis 405
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Tennessee's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 419
Chapter Thirty: Gore's Ménage à Trois 437
Chapter Thirty-One: "The Dirtiest American Motion Picture Ever Made" 445
Chapter Thirty-Two: Truman's Hatchet Attack on Hollywood's Bad Boy 457
Chapter Thirty-Three: The Queering of Ben-Hur 467
Chapter Thirty-Four: Breakfast at Tiffany's 475
Chapter Thirty-Five: Fidel Castro: Radical, Revolutionary, and Media Star 497
Chapter Thirty-Six: Diana Barrymore: I Want To Be Mrs. Tennessee Williams 517
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Sweet Bird of Youth 527
Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Night of the Iguana (the play) 551
Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Debate Still Rages: Tennessee and JFK? 561
Chapter Forty: The Night of the Iguana (the movie) 567
Chapter Forty-One: A Trio of Illustrious Drunks Going Boom! 583
Chapter Forty-Two: In Cold Blood 599
Chapter Forty-Three: Myra Breckinridge 613
Chapter Forty-Four: Truman Capote's Party of the Century 627
Chapter Forty-Five: Caligula 639
Chapter Forty-Six: Answered Prayers 645
MEMORIAM: May They Rest in Peace 653 Acknowledgments 667 Recording the Voices, Pink Triangle: Its Authors 671 Index 677