The Books: “This Property is Condemned” (Tennessee Williams)

Next on my script shelf:

Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf is, along with 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (excerpt here), probably his most famous one-act – and it is called This Property is Condemned (included in 27 Wagons Full of Cotton And Other One-Act Plays). This Property is Condemned is also one of his most difficult pieces to stage, for various reasons, the first being: the lead girl is 13 years old. Finding a child actor who can act is difficult enough – but to find one who can play this lead part?? It would require a Jodie Foster level of child actor talent. A child actress who can also convey a world-weary sense of knowingness. A Blanche DuBois in training. She is sexually knowing. She is a child. And the other character, Tom, has to be a 16 year old boy. Casting struggles. If the characters are not in their teens, the play doesn’t really work.

Also – it’s only 9 or 10 pages long, but it is an entire WORLD created. This is why it’s so famous, I think. The two characters – Willie and Tom – are complete individuals, three-dimensional … Williams is amazing how he just tosses you right into their world.

It takes place in Mississippi – in the middle of nowhere. A nowhere town with train tracks running through it.

Willie is a 13 year old girl. Listen to how Williams describes her to us. Makes me think he also could have written novels:

She is a remarkable apparition — thin as a beanpole and dressed in outrageous cast-off finery. She wears a long blue velvet party dress with a filthy cream lace collar and sparkling rhinestone beads. On her feet are battered silver kid slippers with large ornamental buckles. Her wrists and her fingers are resplendent with dimestone jewelry. She has applied rouge to her childish face in artless crimson daubs and her lips are made up in a preposterous Cupid’s bow. She is about thirteen and there is something ineluctably childlike and innocent in her appearance despite the makeup. She laughs frequently and wildly and with a sort of precocious, tragic abandon.

God. Williams just helps actors out enormously with character descriptions like that one.

The curtain goes up and we see her balancing herself precariously on a railroad track, walking along, trying to keep steady – it is a game, she tries to go further and further every day, starting at the water tank – in one hand she holds a doll, in the other she holds a rotten banana. Tom strolls along, he is holding a kite … he strikes up a conversation with Willie. He has heard about her, in the town, through gossip, but hasn’t met her before. She dropped out of school years ago.

Her story is this: She and her parents and her older sister Alva ran a boarding house right next to the train tracks. The main clientele were railroad men – and most of them continued to stop over there because of the attraction of Alva. All of this comes out in Willie’s conversation with Tom. We can read between the lines of Willie’s tale – Alva was sleeping with these men for money, and for things. They gave her chocolates, “jewels”, they took her out … But make no mistake – “they” took her out, not just one of the guys. Alva was sleeping with the entire staff of the railroad. The boarding house was a sort of one-girl whorehouse. Willie, a child, witnessed all of this and knew that the only thing she wanted to be when she ‘grew up’ was to be just like Alva. Meanwhile, Alva was probably 16 years old while all this was going on … so the entire story is sordid, depressing, and awful.

Then, Willie informs Tom, her mother died … her father disappeared … and for a while it was just Willie and Alva. Then Alva got sick in the lungs, and after a brief illness, she died. Willie is now on her own, orphaned, and still living in the old boarding house – which now has a big sign outside saying: THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED. Willie hides upstairs when the inspectors come. She rummages through garbage pails for food. And she dresses up in her dead sister’s whorish clothes. She puts makeup on her face. She is a garish little whore-in-training.

The whole thing is just awful. AWFUL. Williams is remarkable how he gets all of this information out. The entire play is exposition – basically Tom asking questions, and Willie answering – but none of it feels like exposition. It feels like this awful story being revealed, slowly … and the MOST awful thing about it is that Willie doesn’t really see it as awful. She wants to be a whore – she wishes the railroad men would come around again – she wants them to give her chocolates, and jewelry, and take her out dancing … but she is only 13 years old.

Argh. Great one-act. One of the best ever written I’d say. Beginning playwrights would do well to study the CRAP out of this play!!

I’ll start my excerpt almost 3/4 of the way through the play and take it to the end.

From This Property is Condemned, by Tennessee Williams

TOM. Frank Waters said that …

WILLIE. What?

TOM. You know.

WILLIE. Know what?

TOM. You took him inside and danced for him with your clothes off.

WILLIE. Oh. Crazy Doll’s hair needs washing. I’m scared to wash it though ’cause her head might come unglued where she had that compound fracture of the skull. I think that most of her brains spilled out. She’s been acting silly ever since. Saying an’ doing the most outrageous things.

TOM. Why don’t you do that for me?

WILLIE. What? Put glue on your compound fracture?

TOM. Naw. What you did for Frank Waters.

WILLIE. Because I was lonesome then an’ I’m not lonesome now. You can tell Frank Waters that. Tell him that I’ve inherited all of my sister’s beaus. I go out steady with men in responsible jobs. The sky sure is white. Ain’t it? White as a clean piece of paper. In Five A we used to draw pictures. Miss Preston would give us a piece of white foolscap an’ tell us to draw what we pleased.

TOM. What did you draw?

WILLIE. I remember I drawn her a picture one time of my old man getting conked with a bottle. She thought it was good, Miss Preson, she said, “Look here. Here’s a picture of Charlie Chaplin with his hat on the side of his head!” I said, “Aw, naw, that’s not Charlie Chaplin, that’s my father, an’ that’s not his hat, it’s a bottle!”

TOM. What did she say?

WILLIE. Oh, well. You can’t make a school-teacher laugh.
You’re the only star
In my blue hea-VEN …
The principal used to say there must’ve been something wrong with my home atmosphere because of the fact that we took in railroad men an’ some of ’em slept with my sister.

TOM. Did they?

WILLIE. She was The Main Attraction. The house is sure empty now.

TOM. You ain’t still living there, are you?

WILLIE. Sure.

TOM. By yourself?

WILLIE. Uh-huh. I’m not supposed to be but I am. The property is condemned but there’s nothing wrong with it. Some county investigator come snooping around yesterday. I recognized her by the shape of her hat. It wasn’t exactly what I would call stylish-looking.

TOM. Naw?

WILLIE. It looked like something she took off the lid of the stove. Alva knew lots about style. She had ambitions to be a designer for big wholesale firms in Chicago. She used to submit her pictures. It never worked out.
You’re the only star
In my blue hea-ven …

TOM. What did you do? About the investigator?

WILLIE. Laid low upstairs. Pretended like no one was home.

TOM. Well, how do you manage to keep on eating?

WILLIE. Oh, I don’t know. You keep a sharp lookout you see things lying around. This banana, perfectly good, for instance. Thrown in a garbage pail in back of the Blue Bird Cafe. [She finishes the banana and tosses away the peel]

TOM. [grinning] Yeh. Miss Preston for instance.

WILLIE. Naw, not her. She gives you a white piece of paper, says, “Draw what you please!” One time I drawn her a picture of — Oh, but I told you that, huh? Will you give Frank Waters a message?

TOM. What?

WILLIE. Tell him the freight sup’rintendent has bought me a pair of kid slippers. Patent. The same as the old ones of Alva’s. I’m going to dances with them at Moon Lake Casino. All night I’ll be dancing an’ come home drunk in the morning! We’ll have serenades with all kinds of musical instruments. Trumpets an’ trombones. An’ Hawaiian steel guitars. Yeh! Yeh! [She rises excitedly] The sky will be white like this.

TOM. [impressed] Will it?

WILLIE. Uh-huh. [She smiles vaguely and turns slowly toward him] White — as a clean — piece of paper … [then excitedly] I’ll draw — pictures on it!

TOM. Will you?

WILLIE. Sure!

TOM. Pictures of what?

WILLIE. Me dancing! With the freight sup’rintendent! In a pair of patent kid shoes! Yeh! Yeh! With French heels on them as high as telegraph poles! An’ they’ll play my favorite music!

TOM. Your favorite?

WILLIE. Yeh. The same as Alva’s. [breathlessly, passionately]
You’re the only STAR —
In my blue HEA-VEN …
I’ll —

TOM. What?

WILLIE. I’ll — wear a corsage!

TOM. What’s that?

WILLIE. Flowers to pin on your dress at a formal affair! Rosebuds! Violets! And lilies-of-the-valley! When you come home it’s withered but you stick ’em in a bowl of water to freshen ’em up.

TOM. Uh-huh.

WILLIE. That’s what Alva done. [She pauses, and in the silence the train whistles] The Cannonball Express …

TOM. You think a lot about Alva. Don’t you?

WILLIE. Oh, not so much. Now an’ then. It wasn’t like death in the movies. Her beaux disappeared. An’ they didn’t have violins playing. I’m going back now.

TOM. Where to, Willie?

WILLIE. The water-tank.

TOM. Yeah?

WILLIE. An’ start all over again. Maybe I’ll break some kind of continuous record. Alva did once. At a dance marathon in Mobile. Across the state line. Alabama. You can tell Frank Waters everything that I told you. I don’t have time for inexperienced people. I’m going out now with popular railroad men, men with good salaries, too. Don’t you believe me?

TOM. No. I think you’re drawing an awful lot on your imagination.

WILLIE. Well, if I wanted to I could prove it. But you wouldn’t be worth convincing. [She smooths out Crazy Doll’s hair] I’m going to live for a long, long time like my sister. An’ when my lungs get affected I’m going to die like she did — maybe not like in the movies, with violins playing — but with my pearl earrings on an’ my solid gold beads from Memphis …

TOM. Yes?

WILLIE. [examining Crazy Doll very critically] An’ then I guess —

TOM. What?

WILLIE. [gaily but with a slight catch] Somebody else will inherit all of my beaux! The sky sure is white.

TOM. It sure is.

WILLIE. White as a clean piece of paper. I’m going back now.

TOM. So long.

WILLIE. Yeh. So long. [She starts back along the railroad track, weaving grotesquely to keep her balance. She disappears. Tom wets his finger and holds it up to test the wind. Willie is heard singing from a distance]
You’re the only star
In my blue heaven —
[There is a brief pause. The stage begins to darken]
An’ you’re shining just —
For me!

CURTAIN