The William Carlos Williams-Julian Beck Correspondence and the Production of Many Loves.
[In the following essay, Fedo discusses a correspondence between Beck and William Carlos Williams regarding The Living Theatre's production of Williams's play Many Loves.]
Some years ago Karl Bissinger, a member of the Living Theatre, wrote in a letter: “It seems to me there is a very interesting story concerning Dr. Williams and the L. T. But Julian would have to give it to you—I don't trust my memory.”1 The story concerned the first major production of a Williams play, Many Loves, published in 1942 but not staged until 1959, when Julian Beck and his wife Judith Malina, founders of the Living Theatre, produced it in New York City.2
That production was a long time in preparation, and many of the details are found in correspondence between Williams and Beck written over a period of 14 years, from 1948 until the early 1960's. This correspondence, held by the University of Texas at Austin, consists of some 60 letters and two postcards, and has never been published.
The record of the writing of Many Loves is already clear. Although completed at the suggestion of Williams' friend Kathleen Hoagland as three separate one-acts, and intended for production by the Little Theatre of Rutherford, the work was never presented in Rutherford.3 Instead, in the early 1940's William recast the one-acts into a form that Charles L. Mee, Jr. would call “a poor man's Pirandello.”4 The connecting link or framing action became the poet-playwright Hubert's attempt to organize a drama that would reshape the idiom of the American stage. Reworked for publication in New Directions (1942), the play was titled Trial Horse No. 1. By 1959 it had become Many Loves.
As the correspondence makes evident, the New York production was a story of false starts, long delays, and then modest triumph. On May 21, 1948 the Becks had announced, in a letter to Williams, plans for their revolutionary new Living Theatre, “the purpose of which will be to present plays which in concept and method will correspond to the enormous advances made during this century by the other arts: painting, literature, music, the dance.” Contemporary verse dramas were especially sought, and the Becks wondered whether “we might be able to see you, discuss our plans with you, and arrange, if it is agreeable to you, for production of one of your plays.”
Williams, long critical of the state of modern American theatre,5 responded five days later (May 26) with unconcealed pleasure: “You've got me shaking in my shoes! Nothing in and perhaps out of this world could possibly give me more satisfaction than a performance on an actual stage of a suitable play by me. And that's putting it mildly.” But he also admitted anxiety: “… I am scared! scared to think that what should sound light may sound heavy—to the unwilling.”
Williams' worry was that Many Loves, not intended for the commercial theatre, would find New York alien ground. The Becks allayed those fears, but did not formalize production plans for several years. By then the Living Theatre had already performed Gertrude Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights (December 1951). Williams saw that brilliant production, and wrote to the Becks in great excitement (December 15): “I'm walking in a dream, the aftermath of what I saw and heard at your Cherry Lane Theatre last evening—in all that snow. … Such a beautiful thing. Such a truly entrancing experience!”
Successes for the Living Theatre in the formative years were interspersed with interruptions and failures—and Many Loves was postponed. In 1954, however, there was a reading of the play in the Becks' loft at Broadway and 100th Street. Beck later wrote to Williams, in part (February 6, 1956):
The play had a remarkable effect. By the time the evening was over, one felt that somehow every aspect of love had been touched upon. It was exhausting, in a real kind of Aristotelian sense. The form of the play stood up wonderfully; all of the calculated effects seemed to come off with a genuine aplomb. The actors enjoyed acting it (always a sign of a good play), and the response was truly exciting. The language rang so clean that it seemed as if the play was written in an altogether new tongue. One listened for every word; and yet there was the constant feeling that what was being said was a factual duplication of everyday speech. It sounded as if this was the first time that a writer succeeded in reproducing the rhythms and vocabulary of actual speech on the stage. The characters too, in the traditional sense, were full of variety and less like the single projections of a single mind that one finds in so many contemporary plays. Surely it must please you to know that this play, which you wrote perhaps 15 years ago sounds more contemporary on the stage than anything else that we know of that is around today. It really sees and feels straight thru to the core of things.
Three years passed, and the Becks had moved the Living Theatre into a reconverted department store on the Avenue of the Americas. Many Loves was scheduled to open during the 1957 fall season, but the delays persisted. Beck explained to Williams in a series of letters:
There have been so many false alarms, so many starts that have never come to realization, that I wonder that you still have any faith in us. I hope you do. We are more anxious to make the play live by putting it on the stage.
(May 29, 1957)
Always an excuse but never a theatre.
(August 13, 1957)
We are optimistically setting February 15, 1958 as the opening date.
(November 19, 1957)
We have temporarily set September 30th as the opening date for Many Loves, but I do not promise that we shall actually open then. That is a working date. But it shouldn't be far from that date. A matter of weeks at the most. And we may make it on time.
(July 24, 1958)
Allen Ginsberg came in last night and said he had seen you and that you were not certain as to when the play would finally be done. … In any case the play is now scheduled to open Sunday evening Dec. 21.
Looks like it really will too. The rehearsals are going marvellously well. …
(December 5, 1958)
The actual premiere occurred on January 13, 1959, nearly 10 years after Williams' A Dream of Love had failed in the botched production off-Broadway. But this time there was reason to be pleased. Brooks Atkinson in The New York Times wrote that the play was “original in form, exhilarating in content and alive with knowledge about human beings.”6 Williams did not attend Tuesday's opening night performance, but went the following Sunday and wrote approvingly to the Becks (January 20):
That was a “tonic” experience, as Brooks Atkinson said and a particularly pleasant one for me to have seen your production of my play last Sunday afternoon. Really, I was thrilled. You two have made the thing come alive. …
The persistence of your effort in spite of disappointment was phenomenal—and you put it over triumphantly—to the least member of the cast, they worked together to produce not perhaps a finished performance but a performance in which you were all interested and showed your interest in the intelligent reading of the lines.
Although the other reviews were generally mixed, Karl Bissinger reported that “The response was very often good, and with a small majority it became a cult play.”7Many Loves ran in the Living Theatre repertory through November 17, 1959; there were 216 performances in all. Three days before the play closed Beck had written to Williams:
It will be a regretful and sentimental occasion for us all. We have been so in love with the play and so grateful to it and to you for the success it has brought us, for the joy and pleasure we have gotten out of bringing it to audiences. It was the very perfect play for opening our theatre, really a play which set a high standard and which represents so much what we want to achieve in the theatre and which points the way in which we hope other poet-playwrights will travel.
Williams responded (November 17): “I wish I could be present for the last performance but I can't make it.”
As it happened, Many Loves was revived in the spring of 1961, with Beck taking over the part of Peter. “The play opened with great success,” wrote Beck to Williams on May 25, “and those who saw the original production all said without exception, that the new production surpasses the old one.” That summer the Living Theatre was invited to perform Many Loves in Europe, along with Jack Gelber's The Connection and Bertolt Brecht's In the Jungle of Cities. Beck recalled (July 5, 1970) that “many loves was liked on that tour, but so much of the strength of the play resides in its language that could not come thru to italian/french/german audiences, they seemed more impressed by judith's performance.”8
Through its 1961-1962 season, the Living Theatre performed Many Loves 15 times. But financial problems and the Internal Revenue Service had already begun to present serious problems, and in 1964 the theatre was forced to close. The Becks, according to the IRS, had failed to pay taxes.
As the correspondence shows, the relationship between Williams and the Becks seems to have been a very cordial one, save for misunderstandings arising out of money. Apparaently, the largest weekly gross for Many Loves, $2,682.95, was collected during the week ending February 1, 1959. Williams received $131.44 as his share. By mid-March, Beck asked Williams to take a cut in his percentage whenever revenues dropped; Williams consented, and averaged well under a $100-a-week commission from that time on.
Beck apparently was not always prompt in getting checks into the mail, and even after the initial run was over Williams had to complain in order to set matters straight (February 14, 1960): “Isn't it time you made good on your promise made in your letter of Nov. 10th to send a check cleaning up your account with me? It's embarrassing to me as it must be to you to have to refer to this long overdue account, you must be in a much improved financial position by this time. Don't theatre people own to some sense of responsibility? I've given you plenty of time to make good, let me hear from you at an early date.” Beck, burdened by debts amounting to $26,000, replied (March 1, 1960) that he would get the check (for $176.75) to him “during the next month.”
Tibor Serly, the composer who briefly worked with Williams on The First President, observed in a letter that “Bill Williams had no practical comprehension of the stage and theatre.”9 That is not really true: Dr. Williams, as Mrs. Williams has pointed out, was a lifelong theatre-goer and advocate; he also acted in and wrote short plays for amateur theatricals.10 It is true that Williams did not take an active role in the Living Theatre production of Many Loves; but that was, as Beck points out, not so much a matter of experience as it was a question of health:
dr w was of course bearing the results of his strokes in 1959 when we first did the play, he came to no rehearsals, but did change a few details to accommodate our needs; serafina became a puerto-rican instead of a swede because it seemed more relative to time/place and also to adjust to judith's physical ‘type.’11
The correspondence reveals very little about the intended meaning of Many Loves, though Julian Beck had raised the question with Williams. He recalls: “i once asked him what many loves was about and he answered ‘accuracies.’ it wiped me out, that answer. it has had its affect [sic] on my whole life, in and out of art.”12
Notes
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Personal letter to David A. Fedo, June 30, 1970.
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Williams' play A Dream of Love had been performed by a young group of actors called “We Present” in Greenwich Village in July of 1949. The director, Barbara J. Whiting, then just a shade over 20, had ambitious plans for the play, but lack of money prevented a “major” production and A Dream of Love closed after a few nights. In I Wanted to Write a Poem (Boston, 1958), p. 75, Edith Heal quotes Mrs. Williams as complaining: “They emasculated it. It was not the play Bill wrote.”
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The evolution of Many Loves can be traced through early fragments and drafts in the Williams collection at SUNY at Buffalo. But elsewhere Williams has acknowledged his debt to Noel Coward's play Tonight at 8:30 (see I Wanted to Write a Poem, pp. 69-70), provided relevant details from his own experience at the old French hospital in New York (see Dr. John Thirlwall's “Notes” to Many Loves and Other Plays [New York, 1961], pp. 431-432), and spoke freely about his association with the Little Theatre of Rutherford. In a letter to D. A. F. (July 5, 1970), Mrs. Hoagland wrote in part: “I even suggested a theme to him, from a story he had told me about the hermaphrodite rabbit. Later this was incorporated from his first draft, in the final version of ‘Many Loves.’” In addition, “he worked out a play for two particular actors in the RLT whom he knew well could do the parts, about a woman ironing, and gulping wine, while talking to the man … an episode later in ‘Many Loves.’”
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“The Becks' Living Theatre,” Tulane Drama Review, vii, 2 (Winter, 1962), p. 197.
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Dr. Thirlwall, in his “Notes” (p. 434), quotes Williams writing to Norman Holmes Pearson sometime around 1949: “I don't really believe a ‘serious’ play can be produced in the U.S. in our time; there is no audience for it.” Mrs. Williams, speaking to D. A. F. in Rutherford on August 19, 1970, said her husband's favorite American playwrights were Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams.
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“Avant-Garde ‘Many Loves,’” The New York Times, January 14, 1959, p. 28.
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Personal letter to D. A. F., op. cit.
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Personal letter to D. A. F., July 5, 1970. Beck wrote about his experiences in Many Loves from Paris; he has since returned with the Living Theatre to the United States.
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Personal letter to D. A. F., July 4, 1970.
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Interview with Mrs. Williams, op. cit. Among these early plays are Betty Putnam and Sauerkraut to the Cultured, both of which exist in manuscript in the American Literature Collection at Yale University. The plays were acted by members of the family and Rutherford friends. “He was a very good actor,” Mrs. Williams wrote of her husband in a letter to D. A. F. on March 27, 1970.
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Personal letter to D. A. F., op. cit.
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Personal letter to D. A. F., op. cit.
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