Barnett, David. "Battle of Angels and Orpheus Descending (1939–1941 and 1957)." The Theatre of Tennessee Williams: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2014. 35–50. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 25 Sep. 2021. <http:// dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781472515452.0008>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 25 September 2021, 07:56 UTC. Copyright © Brenda Murphy 2014. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. CHAPTER 2 BATTLE OF ANGELS AND ORPHEUS DESCENDING (1939 – 1941 AND 1957) “ The sensitive, non-conformist individual ” : Battle of Angels Battle of Angels , written in the summer and fall of 1939, during Williams ’ s stays in Taos, in his parents ’ attic in St Louis, and in New York, was a combination of the ideas and tropes he had been developing in the previous four plays, and an expression of what he announced to his newly acquired agent Audrey Wood in December 1939 as the “ one major theme for all my work which is the destructive impact of society on the sensitive, non-conformist individual. ” In Battle of Angels , he said, the individual was “ a boy who hungered for something beyond reality and got death by torture at the hands of a mob ” (L1: 220). In an essay written for the play ’ s fi rst publication, in the short-lived New Directions magazine Pharos in 1945, he explained that Battle of Angels was the fi rst of his plays to “ release and purify the emotional storms of my earlier youth. ” Referring to its setting in a small Mississippi town, he wrote that “ the stage or setting of this drama was the country of my childhood. Onto it I projected the violent symbols of my adolescence. It was a synthesis of the two parts of my life already passed through ” (P1: 277). Th is was true, but it also took on the themes and characters that would preoccupy him for the rest of his life: the plight of the social outcast, particularly the bohemian artist struggling to create art in a hostile environment; the “ fugitive kind, ” who seek a necessary escape from the oppressive norms and institutions of society; and the individual ’ s struggle with sexuality and sexual identity. Having returned to his parents ’ house after his wandering year spent in New Orleans, Southern California, Taos, and briefl y New 35 TTheatre.indbheatre.indb 3355 110/11/20130/11/2013 110:28:340:28:34 AAMM The Theatre of Tennessee Williams York, Williams wrote to Molly Day Th acher at the Group Th eatre that he was “ back in St. Louis, writing furiously with seven wild- cats under my skin, as I realize that completing this new play is my only apparent avenue of escape. My whole life has been a series of escapes, physical or psychological, more miraculous than any of Houdini ’ s but I do at the present moment seem to be hanging by that one thread: obtaining a fellowship and/or producing a successful play ” (L1: 213 – 14). To Audrey Wood he wrote that his life in St Louis was “ hopelessly circumscribed by the wholesale shoe business on one side and the D.A.R. [Daughters of the American Revolution] on the other although I must admit there is considerably less anxiety about the next meal than there was on the Coast. But I am one of those noble animals who would rather starve in a jungle than grow fat in a cage ” (L1: 215). Fortunately, the escape arrived in December with the news that Williams had been awarded a Rockefeller fellowship, and he quickly departed for New York. At this point, his chief anxiety about Battle of Angels was the “ violent, melodramatic nature of the material. ” He was concerned that Wood would not like the “ pathological characters or violent theme ” (L1: 215). He was also concerned about its fi re motif, particularly the confl agration that ended the Th ird Act, which he thought melodramatic, but as he revised the play, he thought he had integrated the fi re theme enough that the ending would not seem just “ a melodramatic trick to add horror to the atmosphere ” (L1: 217). After Audrey Wood reassured him that a violent theme would not be detrimental to the play ’ s chances for production, he was much relieved, sending her a draft at the end of November. Th e circumstances of the play ’ s production were a young playwright ’ s fantasy come true. Wood fi rst submitted it to the Group Th eatre, which had shown interest in Williams ’ s work, and awarded him a $ 100 prize, and to Guthrie McClintic, who she hoped would see it as vehicle for his wife, the distinguished actor Katharine Cornell. McClintic passed, however, and Th e Group was on the verge of disbanding. Besides, as Williams knew, Battle of Angels was not the sort of play that would appeal to their leftist agenda. In March he wrote to Wood that he thought a copy of the play should go to the Th eatre Guild, the producer 36 TTheatre.indbheatre.indb 3366 110/11/20130/11/2013 110:28:340:28:34 AAMM Battle of Angels and Orpheus Descending (1939 – 1941 and 1957) of Eugene O ’ Neill and George Bernard Shaw, and the fi rst choice for any American playwright who had aspirations to literary distinction as well as commercial success. Williams had a foot in the door of the Th eatre Guild because he was attending a playwriting workshop at New York ’ s New School that was run by John Gassner, a distinguished drama scholar who was serving as play reader for the Guild, and Th eresa Helburn, one of its directors. Th e plan worked. Gassner read the play and was so impressed that he and Helburn held a meeting of the New School workshop, at which “ the play was thoroughly dissected and many changes were suggested ” (L1: 241), and Williams, without consulting Wood, agreed to give the Th eatre Guild the play in exchange for a $ 100 option. He was quite pleased with this exploitative deal, and it took some tough talk from Wood and the Dramatists Guild to extricate him from it and make an arrangement more favorable to the playwright, which abided by the Dramatists Guild ’ s rules. With the promise of the $ 100 check, Williams had immediately made his escape, stopping to visit his parents and grandparents on an intended trip to Mexico. Writing to Th eresa Helburn in response to a wire she sent to his parents ’ house, he said that he had bolted from New York because “ my residence there had become a sort of endurance contest in which I felt myself to be rapidly losing out. ” In true fugitive- kind style, he wrote, “ I seem to be constitutionally unable to stay [in] one place more than three months and I had been in Manhattan nearly four and had an excruciating nostalgia for the beach again ” (L1: 250). He agreed to return to New York to fi nish the revisions, however, and was back in the city a week later. While this behavior, suddenly disappearing without a word, was to become typical of Williams during productions and fi lm shoots, in this case, he may have had a better sense of what was necessary for him to fi nish the script than the producers did. On 11 April, 2 days after the New School reading, he had sent John Gassner a letter that included his notes for a major revision of the script, which involved changing the setting and action of one of the Acts, and eliminating some characters and developing others. Williams may have known that he would have a hard time concentrating on his writing amid the distractions of New York and a big-time commercial production for which he was completely 37 TTheatre.indbheatre.indb 3377 110/11/20130/11/2013 110:28:340:28:34 AAMM The Theatre of Tennessee Williams unprepared. He perhaps instinctively sought to re-create the peace and solitude that had proven benefi cial to his writing in Big Sur, California the previous year. In any case, he worked on the play in New York, sending the Guild a new Act 1 at the beginning of May, and commenting rather naively that “ we can now regard the play as completed from the structural standpoint. What remains is simply pruning down and some manipulation with glue-pot, pencil and scissors, a purely mechanical business which perhaps can be done most eff ectively with the cooperation of actors and director when the play is actually in rehearsal ” (L1: 252). At this point, Williams did not realize how unusual had been his working relationship with Willard Holland on the Mummers ’ productions. Holland had actually functioned as play-doctor as well as director, taking Williams ’ s rather fl abby drafts and working with him to turn them into producible scripts. He seemed to expect that his experience in the commercial theatre would be similar. As he wrote 5 years later: I realize that I had fooled these people. Because certain qualities in my writing had startled them, they took it for granted that I was an accomplished playwright and that some afternoon when I was not busy with interviews, casting, rehearsals, I would quietly withdraw for an hour or two and work out the dramaturgic problems as deftly as such things were done by men like [Philip] Barry and [George S.] Kaufmann [ sic ] and [S. N.] Behrmann [ sic ].