The Books: “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore” (Tennessee Williams)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

Next on the script shelf:

Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf is The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore.

Produced in 1963 – this haunting play shows the direction Tennessee Williams began to take as he got older. He moved further and further away from traditional drama, traditional plots – and began to experiment with other theatrical elements. I love his stuff in the 60s – even as it gets more and more phantasmagoric, and fantastic. The writing is still solid. But Tennessee Williams was not the kind of writer to just keep trying to repeat himself. He did not become a caricature of his earlier self. So refreshing. I admire his journey as an artist so much – because of many things, but mainly because of his insistence on growth. He INSISTED on it. It was not easy. He was not always applauded for it. His plays in the 60s and 70s were greeted with baffled silence broken up by occasional questions along the lines of: “Why don’t you write another Streetcar?” To him the answer was simple. He was younger when he wrote Streetcar, he had different concerns, different energy … and it was natural that that energy would change as the years went on.

Anyway. I’ve always admired him because he didn’t sit back on his laurels. He said once: “I write. Sometimes I like what I write. That is enough.” Incredible.

So this play. Tallulah Bankhead starred as Mrs. Goforth (uhm – you can see, just by her name, that he is moving into more obvious symbolic territory). And Tab Hunter starred as Christopher Flanders (another symbolic name – since this character, whenever and wherever he shows up, is usually a harbinger of impending death).

Mrs. Goforth is an old rich widow (married 4 times) – a former Ziegfeld girl – a woman with a legendary past (in her own mind, anyway) – kind of a famous party girl, once upon a time. She is now dying (only she will not admit it) – and she lives on top of a mountain overlooking the Mediterranean. She has her entire house wired with microphones, because she is dictating her memoirs – into the thin air – and wants to make sure that whatever room she is in, whatever time she wakes up, the microphones will be there to pick up her detailed exquisite memories. She has a fantasy that her book will be better than Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Basically: deep down she knows she’s dying, and she is terrified. Her memoir MUST be complete before she goes. But none of this is admitted to herself. She just staggers around her mansion, in her old Ziegfeld costumes and jewelry, shouting out her memories into thin air – to be transcribed later – she pops codeine, she coughs until she bleeds, and she maintains a fantasy that she suffers from bursitis.

Great character. Paranoid, inappropriate, an aging floozy who stalks around her bedroom naked – demanding that whoever is in there with her (a servant, whoever) compliment her body. She’s a nut. But of course, you have tremendous sympathy for her – because of how Williams writes her. She’s running from her demons. Williams had a deep abiding love for anyone tormented by demons – because he was as well.

Then one random day – a drifter beatnik poet climbs up the mountainside to see her. He arrives unannounced, uninvited. This is Christopher Flanders. He’s kind of a creepy fellow. He has a nose for death. Especially old dying rich women. He seems to show up right before they go … sometimes becoming their last lover … and then many of them (of course) re-adjust their wills, leaving everything to him … causing enormous family brou-hahas, etc. Chris is not well-liked, obviously. He shows up and people start to get worried. He has a nose for death.

The journey of this play (only 6 scenes long) is Mrs. Goforth’s gradual realization that she is dying – and her gradual acceptance of that fact. She could not accept it without the presence of Chris. He is a patient (kind of creepy) presence … who refuses to leave until his “job” is done.

Williams was probably really depressed when he wrote this play. It’s very creepy. A real end-of-the-road play.

I’ll print an excerpt from one of the long scenes between Mrs. Goforth and Chris. He is starving, he’s been walking through Italy on foot, and Mrs. Goforth is pretty much refusing to feed him – unless he plays along with her game. She is trying to figure out what he’s about, and he’s trying to figure out what she’s about.

EXCERPT FROM The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, by Tennessee Williams

CHRIS. How does it feel, Mrs. Goforth, to be a legend in your own lifetime?

MRS. GOFORTH. [pleased] If that’s a serious question, I’ll give it a serious answer. A legend in my own lifetime, yes, I reckon I am. Well, I had certain advantages, endowments to start with: a face people naturally noticed and a figure that was not just sensational, but very durable, too. Some women my age, or younger, ‘ve got breasts that look like a couple of mules hangin’ their heads over the top rail of a fence. [touches her bosom] This is natural, not padded, not supported, and nothing’s ever been lifted. Hell, I was born between a swamp and the wrong side of the tracks in One Street, Georgia, but not even that could stop me in my tracks, wrong side or right side, or no side. Hit show-bix at fifteen when a carnival show, I mean the manager of it, saw me and dug me on that one street in One Street, Georgia. I was billed at the Dixie Doxy, was just supposed to move my anatomy, but was smart enough to keep my tongue moving, too, and the verbal comments I made on my anatomical motions while in motion were a public delight. So I breezed through show-biz like a tornado, rising from one-week “gigs” in the sticks to star billing in the Follies while still in m’teens, ho ho … and I was still in my teens when I married Harlan Goforth, a marriage into the Social Register and Dun and Bradstreet’s, both. Was barely out of my teens when I became his widow. Scared to make out a will, he died intestate, so everything went to me.

CHRIS. Marvelous. Amazing.

MRS. GOFORTH. That’s right. All my life was and still is, except here, lately I’m a little run down, like a race horse that’s been entered in just one race too many, even for me … How do you feel about being a legend in your own lifetime? Huh?

CHRIS. Oh, me! I don’t feel like a — mythological — griffin with gold wings, but this strong fresh wind’s reviving me like I’d had a — terrific breakfast!

MRS. GOFORTH. Griffin, what’s a grffin?

CHRIS. A force in life that’s almost stronger than death. [He springs up and turns to the booming sea] The sea’s full of white race horses today. May I — would you mind if I — suggested a program for us? A picnic on the beach, rest on the rocks in the sun till nearly sundown, then we’d come back up here revitalized for whatever the lovely evening has to offer?

MRS. GOFORTH. What do you think it would have to offer?

CHRIS. Dinner on the terrace with the sea still booming? How is that for a program? Say, with music, a couple of tarantella dancers brought up from the village, and —

[Rudy appears on the terrace]

RUDY. Mrs. Goforth, I’ve taken care of that for you. They’re going — on the way out.

MRS. GOFORTH. No trouble?

RUDY. Oh yeah, sure, they want to see the Signora.

MRS. GOFORTH. No, no, no. I won’t see them! [But “they” are appearing upstage: the members of her kitchen staff, who have been discharged] Here they come, hold them back! [She staggers up, turns her back on them. They cry out to her in Italian. Rudy rushes upstage and herds them violently off. A wave crashes.]

CHRIS. [quietly] Boom. What was their –?

MRS. GOFORTH. What?

CHRIS. — transgression?

MRS. GOFORTH. They’d been robbing me blind. He caught them at it. We had — an inventory and discovered that — they’d been robbing me blind like I was — blind …

CHRIS. [his back to her, speaking as if to himself] When a wave breaks down there, it looks as delicate as a white lace fan, but I bet if it hit you, it would knock you against the rocks and break your bones …

MRS. GOFORTH. What?

CHRIS. I said it’s so wonderful here, after yesterday in Naples …

MRS. GOFORTH. What was wrong with yesterday in Naples? Were you picked up for vagrancy in Naples?

CHRIS. I wasn’t picked up for anything in Naples.

MRS. GOFORTH. That’s worse than being picked up for vagrancy, baby.

[She chuckles, he grins agreeably]

CHRIS. Mrs. Goforth, I’m going to tell you the truth.

MRS. GOFORTH. The truth is all you could tell me that I’d believe — so tell me the truth, Mr. Flanders.

CHRIS. I’ll go back a little further than Naples, Mrs. Goforth. I’d drawn out all my savings to come over here this summer on a Jugoslavian freighter than landed at Genoa.

MRS. GOFORTH. You’re leading up to financial troubles, aren’t you?

CHRIS. Not so much that as — something harder, much harder, for me to deal with, a state of — Well, let me put it this way. Everybody has a sense of reality of some kind or other, some kind of sense of things being real or not real in his, his — particular — world …

MRS. GOFORTH. I know what you mean. Go on.

CHRIS. I’ve lost it lately, this sense of reality in my particular world. We don’t all live in the same world, you know, Mrs. Goforth. Oh, we all see the same things — sea, sun, sky, human faces and inhuman faces, but — they’re different in here! [touches his forehead] And one person’s sense of reality can be another person’s sense of — well, of madness! — chaos! — and, and —

MRS. GOFORTH. Go on. I’m still with you.

CHRIS. And when one person’s sense of reality, or loss of some of reality, disturbs another one’s sense of reality — I know how mixed up this —

MRS. GOFORTH. Not a bit, clear as a bell, so keep on, y’haven’t lost my attention.

CHRIS. Being able to talk: wonderful! When one person’s sense of reality seems too — disturbingly different from another person’s, uh —

MRS. GOFORTH. Sense of reality. Continue.

CHRIS. Well, he’s — avoided! Not welcome! It’s — that simple … And — yesterday in Naples, I suddenly realized that I was in that situation. [He turns to the booming sea and says “Boom”.] I found out that I was now a — leper!

MRS. GOFORTH. Leopard?

CHRIS. Leper! — Boom! [She ignores the “Boom”.] Yes, you see, they hang labels, tags of false identification on people that disturb their own sense of reality too much, like the bells that used to be hung on the necks of — lepers! — Boom! The lady I’d come over to visit, who lives in a castle on the top of Ravello, sent me a wire to Naples. I walked to Naples on foot to pick it up, and picked it up at American Express in naples, and what it said was: “Not yet, not ready for you, dear — Angel of — Death …”

[She regards him a bit uncomfortably. He smiles very warmly at her. She relaxes]

MRS. GOFORTH. Ridiculous!

CHRIS. Yes, and inconvenient since I’d —

MRS. GOFORTH. Invested all your remaining capital in this standing invitation that had stopped standing, collapsed, ho, ho, ho!

CHRIS. — Yes …

MRS. GOFORTH. Who’s this bitch at Ravello?

CHRIS. I’d rather forget her name, now.

MRS. GOFORTH. But you see you young people, well, you reasonably young people who used to be younger, you get in the habit of being sort of — professional house guests, and as you get a bit older, and who doesn’t get a bit older, some more than just a bit older, you’re still professional house guests, and —

CHRIS. Yes?

MRS. GOFORTH. Oh, you have charm, all of you, you still have your good looks and charm and you all do something creative, such as writing but not writing, and painting but not painting, and that goes fine for a time but —

CHRIS. You’ve made your point, Mrs. Goforth.

MRS. GOFORTH. No, not yet, quite yet. Your case is special. You’ve gotten a special nickname, “dear Angel of Death”. And it’s lucky for you I couldn’t be less superstitious, deliberately walk under ladders, think a black cat’s as lucky as a white cat, am only against the human cats of this world, of which there’s no small number. So! What’re you looking around for, Angel of Death, as they call you?

CHRIS. I would love to have some buttered toast with my coffee.

MRS. GOFORTH. Oh, no toast with my coffee, buttered, unbuttered — no toast. For breakfast I have only black coffee. Anything solid takes the edge off my energy, and it’s the time after breakfast when I do my best work.

CHRIS. What are you working on?

MRS. GOFORTH. My memories, my memoirs, night and day, to meet the publisher’s deadlines. The pressure has brought on a sort of nervous breakdown, and I’m enjoying every minute of it because it has taken the form of making me absolutely frank and honest wiht people, comparatively. But now much more so. No more pretenses at all …

CHRIS. It’s wonderful.

MRS. GOFORTH. What?

CHRIS. That you and I have happened to meet at just this time, because I have reached the same point in my life as you say you have come to in yours.

MRS. GOFORTH. [suspiciously] What? Which? Point?

CHRIS. The point you mentioned, the point of no more pretenses.

MRS. GOFORTH. You say you’ve reached that point, too? [Chris nods, smiling warmly] Hmmmm. [The sound is skeptical and so is the look she gives him]

CHRIS. It’s true, I have, Mrs. Goforth.

MRS. GOFORTH. I don’t mean to call you a liar or even a phantasist, but I don’t see how you could afford to arrive at the point of no more pretense, Chris.

CHRIS. I probably couldn’t afford to arrive at that point any more than I could afford to travel this summer.

MRS. GOFORTH. Hmmm. I see. But you traveled?

CHRIS. Yes, mostly on foot, Mrs. Goforth — since — Genoa.

MRS. GOFORTH. [rising and walking near the balustrade] One of the reasons I took this place here is because it’s supposed to be inaccessible except from the sea. Between here and the highway there’s just a goatpath, hardly possible to get down, and I thought impossible to get up. Hmmm. Yes. Well. But you got yourself up.

CHRIS. [pouring the last of the coffee] I had to. I had to get up it.

MRS. GOFORTH. [turning back to him] Let’s play the truth game. Do you know the truth game?

CHRIS. Yes, but I don’t like it. I’ve always made excuses to get out of it when it’s played at partied because I think the truth is too delicate and, well, dangerous a thing to be played with at parties, Mrs. Goforth. It’s nitroglycerin, it has to be handled with the — the carefulest care, or somebody hurts somebody and gets hurt back and the party turns to a — devastating explosion, people crying, people screaming, people even fighting and throwing things at each other. I’ve seen it happen, and there’s no truth in it — that’s true.

MRS. GOFORTH. But you say you’ve reached the same point that I have this summer, the point of no more pretenses, so why can’t we play the truth game together, huh, Chris?

CHRIS. Why don’t we put it off till — say, after — supper?

MRS. GOFORTH. You play it better on a full stomach, do you?

CHRIS. Yes, you have to be physically fortified for it as well as — morally fortified for it.

MRS. GOFORTH. And you’d like to stay for supper? You don’t have any other engagement for supper?

CHRIS. I have no engagements of any kind now, Mrs. Goforth.

MRS. GOFORTH. Well, I don’t know about supper. Sometimes I don’t want any.

CHRIS. How about after –?

MRS. GOFORTH. — What?

CHRIS. After lunch?

MRS. GOFORTH. Oh, sometimes I don’t have lunch either.

CHRIS. You’re not on a healthful regime. You know, the spirit has to live in the body, and so you have to keep the body in a state of repair because it’s the home of the — spirit …

MRS. GOFORTH. Hmmmm. Are you talking about your spirit and body, or mine?

CHRIS. Yours.

MRS. GOFORTH. Our long-ago meeting between us, and you expect me to believe you care more about my spirit and body than your own, Mr. Flanders?

CHRIS. Mrs. Goforth, some people, some people, most of them, get panicky when they’re not cared for by somebody, but I get panicky when I have no one to care for.

MRS. GOFORTH. Oh, you seem to be setting yourself up as a — as a saint of some kind …

CHRIS. All I said is I need somebody to care for.