JESSIE: State Hospital Number Three is—
BELLA: Lunatic Asylum. I know, I know. My uncle Archie was there thirty years, so I know. Would you read it first and prepare me a little?
JESSIE: Bella, I can’t see to read without my reading glasses. Sooner or later you’ve got to read it. Of course you could put it off until tomorrow when the other problems are hopefully straightened out at the Moose Lodge.
BELLA [opening envelope]: Won’t sleep till I know. [Reads.] “Oh God!—Dear Mom. Don’t commit me. They can only hold me ten days without the consent of you or Pop. Pop would give it but you wouldn’t. All I had was a little nervous breakdown when that son of a bitch, that black mother I lived with in Jefferson Parish left me without a dime and went back to his wife.” Excuse me Jessie, she’s picked up some awful language. I’ll try to skip the worst. “Mom,” she says, “I swear I’m okay, never felt better in my life. I just want a chance to make a new start on my own. Without no prick of a . . .”
JESSIE: Bella!
BELLA: Sorry. [Resumes reading.] “I can go back to my old job at the Pizza King on the highway. I know the manager can’t wait to get me back there. So just sit tight. Don’t mention nothing to Pop. And for crissake don’t sign no papers. Love your little Joanie.”
JESSIE: Hmmmm. Never felt better in her life. How sad. Now Bella, there’s no way you can conceal this from Cornelius. So my advice is to let him handle it his way. Bella, don’t interfere. Just resign yourself to it. That girl is better off right where she is than that notorious Pizza King on the highway. Board of Health discovered the whole kitchen infested with vermin and half the staff was infected with V.D. “Can’t wait to get her back?” Bella, that girl is in a much better place so don’t be upset about it. Now. I will try to get through to Emerson at the Moose Lodge. Phone’s off the hook. [She replaces it. Then lifts to dial.] Operator?— [To Bella.] A death in the family is always upsetting. —Oh, operator, connect me with the Moose Lodge, please. —Ringing . . .
BELLA: —Chips—gone.
JESSIE: Did you say something, Bella?
BELLA: GONE, FIRS’ BAWN.
JESSIE: Whom I speakin’ to? Aw. Mrs. Emerson Sykes would like a word with her husband if you’d be so kind as to call him to the phone.
BELLA: Know what happened on the street, Jessie?
JESSIE: Yais, Charlie attacked Cornelius and a hysterical woman was involved in the—Em? Jessie! What’s the disturbance I hear? Find out. I’ll hold on.
BELLA: Yesterday like today. Same as—and tomorrow? Tomorrow? Years and years of it gone by.
JESSIE [attention on phone]: Yais, Bella, time is like that. [Pause. Then impatiently.] Oh, pshaw. Just a loud confusion of voices, you’d think the whole Lodge was in session.
BELLA: Moose Lodge? In session? This late?
JESSIE: No. I meant the noise, the confusion. Stag movies, Saturday nights, disgustin’. Emerson pretends to go ’possum hunting.
BELLA: Aw. The confusion in session . . .
JESSIE: Yes.
[Bella starts to rise from sofa, topples back on it.]
Take it easy, Bella. You seem unstrung.
BELLA: —Can I get you something to eat?
JESSIE: What, Bella?
BELLA: Want a bite of something? From the ice-box?
JESSIE: Oh—no, I—We had a late dinner, barbecue ribs at the Hickory Hollow on the highway. Emerson’s mad about barbecue but it’s too spicy for me the way that they prepare it. Doc Crane sent me to this proctologist in New Awleuns who advised me to avoid all strong-seasoned things. —My hemorrhoids are acting up again. I wonder if you could hand me over a cushion off the sofa. You know, at our time of life, so many afflictions come on us. Have you noticed?
BELLA: —Did you ask me something?
JESSIE: Have you ever had hemorrhoids? Well, I want to tell you, that’s an embarrassing affliction if ever there was one. I mean when they’re internal and severe. Inclined to get worse, not better. At first I got relief from an application.
BELLA [senselessly repeating]: Application. . . .
JESSIE: What, Bella?
BELLA: Soon’s I recover my strength, I’ll—
JESSIE: Don’t exert right now, you’re still looking under the weather.
BELLA: I’ll go look for something to—make us a snack while the Moose Lodge—
JESSIE: Oh, yes, I’m sure the Moose Lodge will straighten things out so much better than at the police station: could result in publicity of the wrong kind. Hand me a sofa pillow. Yes, my hemorrhoids have returned. Embarrassing thing to discuss. A woman of sixty obliged to expose such an intimate part of the body, but Dr. Crane, oh, I don’t mind old Dr. Crane who delivered my children, but when I had to go, at his insistence, to New Awleans to that proctologist, specializes in, uh . . . such conditions—what severe pain, had to sit on a rubber-doughnut all the way and the examination was too embarrassing to describe. Had to strip myself naked and lie on a table that doubled me up so that this specialist could—oh, my God, I am telling you, Bella, he had an instrument with a light on one end of it, the end—inserted—and a magnifying lens on the other end through which he looked up into the colon, all the way up the colon.
BELLA: —Colon . . . Jessie, maybe you could go in the kitchen and look in the ice-box faw me, I just don’t have the strength to.
JESSIE: Oh, I imagine some people aren’t embarrassed by any kind of a clinical procedure but to me it was the most mortifying experience of my life. And must be repeated. [Pause. A look of fright widens her eyes.] Oh, I don’t know when afflictions like this come on you, it might be better to—I was about to say just go, but I am scared to, Bella. Are you?
BELLA [discovers a morsel on a plate and devours it]: Me? What?
JESSIE: Isn’t everybody? But sooner or later, it’s one way or another like it or not. You do go, Bella.
BELLA: Lights on in the kitchen. Who’s eating in there?
JESSIE: See it coming, another trip on that rubber-doughnut to the specialist, Bella, and the instrument up my—Moose Lodge? Don’t leave the phone till you get me Emerson Sykes. Who is that shouting Jesus like a hyena? What is going on there? A Holy Roller session?
BELLA: That must be Charlie’s girlfriend! Charlie’s engaged to a bawn-again Christian.
JESSIE: Is he? Well, personally, I would rather be dead than a born-again Christian!
BELLA: Are you a beer-drinker, Jessie? Cornelius keeps a supply in the ice-box. You know the way to the kitchen. Right through the dining room, Jessie.
JESSIE: Later, Bella, not now. Got to check with Emerson on the Moose Lodge situation.
BELLA: Joanie—
JESSIE: Oh, now, Bella, we’ve been through Joanie. Let’s not revert to that subject.
BELLA: She never was brilliant at school. D average, plus a little or minus—you know, passable, never flunked out but once. Refused to go back. Her and Charlie. But Chips was bawn artistic and Cornelius blames me for it. Three children, now reduced to just two. All run home from the school together, raced in the back door, straight to the kitchen, the icebox where I had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches always ready an’ waitin’. Becomes such a habit, like life. Still keep Marches’ Peanut Butter and Ma Smileys jellies in ice-box. Come in several flavors. Each preferred different flavors.
JESSIE [raises receiver to ear]: Why, they hung up. [She dials again.] Operator, would you please get me the Moose Lodge. Moose Lodge? You get me Emerson Sykes on this phone at once, please, his wife speaking. —Emerson, how is—? Hold on? Surely the problems have been straightened out now! Emerson!
BELLA: Joanie’s letter. I don’t want Cornelius to find it.
JESSIE: Don’t worry, Bella, I’ve got it. [Shouting into phone.] EMM-ERR-SONN!— Sounds like terrific confusion, your son’s fiancé is still shouting Jesus! Useless to interfere yet. [Jessie hangs up and slumps exhaustedly back against pillows.]
BELLA: Dresses.
JESSIE: What was that Bella?
BELLA: Chips designed
such pretty girls’ dresses with colored crayons.
JESSIE: Yes, I remember, Bella. We heard that he used to model them himself with a wig on and it was misunderstood? Correctly.
BELLA: Charlie, youngest. Fine boy, not artistic. His problem was employment.
JESSIE: Oh, I thought it was unemployment.
BELLA: Charlie? Hit? Cornelius?
JESSIE: Fawget it, Bella. I’m sure tomorrow everything will be . . . well, not worse.
BELLA: —Why—cain’t I—git up?
JESSIE: Don’t try to, not necessary. You’re just worn out by the trip but—I will call Dr. Crane. Please connect me with Doc Crane’s.
BELLA: Moose . . . ?
JESSIE: Yais, he’s a Moose, too—ten antlers. —Henry? Jessie Sykes, callin’ from Bella McCorkle’s across the street. You’d better hurry right over, it looks to me like Bella has had a collapse.
[Bella’s eyes are now shut and she is in a sprawled position on sofa.]
BELLA: Old bodies git older, heavy, heavy with—time . . .
JESSIE [rises with phone in hand, eyes wide with excitement]: She is mumbling unconscious. Possibly’s had a stroke. —Bella? Can you hear me?
[Bella begins to snore hoarsely. Jessie screams and shuffles to the door and out, leaving it open: the dog barks feebly. Bella staggering from the sofa, blinks, then turns automatically, and goes to the kitchen where sounds are heard of the fridge door slammed open, articles dropped, etc. She starts back to living room.]
BELLA: Jelly. [She shuffles back slowly.]
DR. CRANE [offstage]: Yes, all right, the ambulance is called.
[The doctor enters in his pajamas, raincoat and with his medicine kit, followed by Jessie.]
JESSIE: Why, the—ambulance must of removed her!
DR. CRANE [crossly]: Make sense. How could it without time? We’re thirty miles from Biloxi.
JESSIE: Must of! Must of, she’s—
[Kitchen door swings open and Bella slowly shuffles back to the living room with articles from kitchen.]
JESSIE: My God, Bella! —What is that you got there?
BELLA [slowly, eyes in a trance]: Ma Smiley’s jellies and Marches’ peanut butter for sandwiches. They expect ’em in the icebox—run to it home after school. Habit of life—not changed at all . . .
JESSIE: Bella? Are you all right, Bella?
BELLA: Life—habit. —Know what I mean?
DR. CRANE [to Jessie]: Remove that stuff, throw it out.
[Jessie wrests the jars from Bella’s grasp. Bella wails childishly.]
I’ve repeatedly told this woman either she sticks to the diet or it’s just a question of time.
[Bella’s wail rises in volume. Jessie glances at the doctor. He spreads his arms in a gesture of resignation. Jessie sets the jars back down before Bella.]
Ambulance charge will have to be paid whether she goes or not.
BELLA: With some bread, please, and a knife to spread it on with. Oh, Jessie, forgot glazed paper to wrap sandwiches separately in.
JESSIE: [offstage]: Glazed paper?
BELLA: In cabinet by ice-box in kitchen always.
JESSIE: [offstage]: —Cabinet. —Yes!—Got it.
DR. CRANE: What are you going to do with the sandwiches, Bella?
BELLA: Will keep in the ice-box till they run home from school. [Jessie returns with tray that bears plate, bread, knife and glazed paper.] Thank you, Jessie. One for Chips, his flavor blackberry. One for Joanie, wild cherry. Charlie will have to be satisfied with the same. Cornelius is only interested in beer. [Glancing toward Jessie and the doctor.] I’m sorry to be—such a question of time. Well—Maybe the Moose Lodge will straighten everything out. . . .
[Fade in music with rain as Bella slowly, sensuously spreads the bread with jelly.]
THE END
NOTES ON THE TEXT
Playwrights often learn their craft by writing one-acts. Once successful, most move on to full-length plays and never look back. Tennessee Williams was different: he continued writing one-acts and experimenting with the short form throughout his life. Nearly all of his thirty-three full-length plays can be traced back to drafts that include one-act versions, and often closely related short stories or poems. Even the play thought to be his last—dated “January 1983” by the author—is a one-act, The One Exception, recently collected for the first time in The Traveling Companion and Other Plays, 2008.
Now, with the publication of the fifteen previously unpublished or uncollected titles in this volume, more than seventy one-act plays by Tennessee Williams are available in print. From the beginning, Williams envisioned evenings of his one-acts grouped in thematic cycles or performed as combinations. Some of the thematic groups were titled “Vieux Carré,” “Three Plays for the Lyric Theatre,” “Garden District,” “Dragon Country,” “Mississippi Sketches,” “Of Babylon, the Fall,” “Dominoes,” and “Williams’ Guignol.” But perhaps the most ambitious was a project titled “American Blues,” on which Williams worked from 1937 until at least 1943.
It was in 1939 that “the first three sketches in the series AMERICAN BLUES” won Williams “a special prize” of $100.00 from the prestigious Group Theatre. Though it has never been established exactly which short plays Williams submitted, it can be plausibly inferred from references in his letters, journals, and the typed lists (discussed below), that he had submitted four: Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry, The Dark Room, Hello From Bertha, and The Long Goodbye. To meet the contest requirement of being twenty-five or younger, Williams “changed” his birth year from 1911 and wrote it as 1914 on the entry form. Just for good measure, he went ahead and used his nickname as his first name and submitted his plays as “Tennessee Williams.” This was done in December 1938, just before he left on his first trip to New Orleans.
Two draft lists—trial balloons or musings, perhaps—of the “American Blues” plays are filed in Harry Ransom Humanities and Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin (“HRC”). Both are carefully typewritten to resemble playbills or title pages for a bound manuscript of completed plays. One reads as follows: “AMERICAN BLUES / (A program of one-act plays designed to approximate in dramaturgy / the mood, atmosphere and meaning of American Blues music) / 1. American Gothic / 2. Hello From Bertha / 3. Escape / 4. The Fat Man’s Wife / 5. The Big Game / 6. Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry.”
The other list is a bit more involved: “AMERICAN BLUES / A Program of One-act Plays / (designed to approximate in dramaturgy the mood, atmosphere and / meaning of American blues music) / by / Tennessee Williams / 1. Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry / 2. Hello From Bertha / 3. The Long Goodbye / (Also included in this cycle are Summer at the Lake, Every Twenty / Minutes, The Fat Man’s Wife, The Big Game, In Our Profession, Man- / ana Es Otro Dio, Death in the Movies and American Gothic).”
The first, shorter list is likely older (about 1937–38), since it is signed in the upper right corner by “T. L. Williams”—the name that Williams used professionally only until the end of 1938. The second list, by “Tennessee Williams,” likely was typed around the time Williams began writing under this pseudonym (late 1938).
Every surviving script that Williams named on these “American Blues” lists is now available in one of three New Directions volumes: The Magic Tower and Other One-Act Plays, Mister Paradise and Other One-Act Plays, and 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays. The one-acts can now be performed as Williams envisioned them—or in a variety of other combinations. Death in the Movies was a draft title for This Property is Condemned. Complete scripts of the two other listed one-acts are not known to have survived: Manana Es Otro Dio is thus far only found in draft fragments at the HRC under the English title Tomorrow is Another Day, and likewise the tantalizing American Gothic, inspired by the Grant Wood painting, is either unfinished or incomplete in surviving drafts at HRC.
The present volume also allows a reader to follow the development of Williams’s ideas for five more full-length plays by comparing them with their one-act counterparts: The
Glass Menagerie with The Pretty Trap; A Streetcar Named Desire with Interior: Panic; the full-length Kingdom of Earth with the one-act Kingdom of Earth; Vieux Carré with I Never Get Dressed Till After Dark on Sundays; and A House Not Meant to Stand with Some Problems for the Moose Lodge. Additional pairings of plays with their shorter precursors are available in various other New Directions volumes—The Rose Tattoo and The Dog Enchanted by the Divine View; Camino Real and Ten Blocks on the Camino Real; Sweet Bird of Youth and The Enemy: Time; Small Craft Warnings and Confessional; and finally, Something Cloudy, Something Clear and The Parade.
According to Williams’s college friend William Jay Smith, when Tennessee showed a new one-act play to his friends he never called it a one-act or a play, but rather offered them his latest “fantasy.” And some of them are fantasies. Others are sketches—still others are like poems, theatrical poems. Whatever they are called, and however beautifully some of them may read, these plays were written to be performed.
At Liberty (c. 1939)
The copy text is an undated script bound in a folder printed with the name and address of Williams’s agent, Audrey Woods, and filed at The Historic New Orleans Collection. This agency script corresponds closely to the first published version of the play in American Scenes, edited by John Kozlenko, John Day Company, New York, 1941, where it appeared along with This Property is Condemned under the collective title Landscape with Figures, (“Two Mississippi Plays”). At Liberty was subsequently published in 25 Non-Royalty One-Act Plays for All-Girl Casts, compiled by Betty Smith, Greenberg Publishers, New York, 1942.
At Liberty’s year of composition is most likely 1939—Williams mentioned it to Woods in a letter of January 29, 1940 as a one-act play in her possession, but not bound with “American Blues.” It is not on the known lists of “American Blues” plays. The first professional production of At Liberty has yet to be identified, but interestingly it was produced off-off-Broadway at LaMama Experimental Theater Club in 1964.