Franco D’Alessandro

ME, TENNESSEE, AND THE ROMAN MUSE

PROLOGUE

Italy, in general (and Rome, in particular), has always been a special place to me spiritually, creatively, and intellectually since the age of 19 when I explored that glorious country (one that my grandparents called home for most of their lives) by myself for the first time as a student and traveler. Over the last 37 years, I have visited countless times, often staying for weeks and months for study, work, and pleasure. I understand full well the intoxicating allure of the land of my ancestors.

My immigrant grandparents came from Matera to the United States as older people (ages 45 and 35), with my father being born six months after settling here, so the connection to Italy was real and deep. They never learned English, however, my father (who attended public schools) learned to speak unaccented by age 10. My father, who lived in Bologna, Italy, in the 1950s for six years of medical school, was proud to be Italian and encouraged me to learn the language and read Italian authors, listen to Italian music (including the classical Opera Lirica), and view Italian films of the neorealismo movement. However, as a young person in the 1970s and 80s, authentic Italian-American stories were not easy to come by.

In 1980, when I was 13, almost simultaneously, I discovered the plays of Tennessee Williams and the films of Anna Magnani; I stole my older brother’s copy of A Streetcar Named Desire and attended (with my papà) an annual Italian film festival that was showing The Rose Tattoo and Bellissima. I was later intrigued as to why the author of Streetcar and The Glass Menagerie (which I read in 1981) would write a play about everyday Italians in America —free of the mystique and false glamour of the mafia.

In 1989, while finishing college, I became obsessed with understanding why Tennessee Williams, an author so associated with the American South, would write plays with Italian subject matter for Anna Magnani. In fact, I’d learn that both Magnani (the woman) and Italy (culture) would inspire Williams as many of his plays, poems, and stories written after 1949 have Italian references or themes. It struck me that the collaboration, in which Williams wrote these two particular plays and Magnani acted in their subsequent film versions, resulted in a blockbuster comedy, The Rose Tattoo, and a troubling drama, Orpheus Descending, aka The Fugitive Kind. As someone who identifies with both the American and Italian cultures, I felt it was my destiny to go digging. I thus began my ten-year journey of research and discovery into the Williams-Magnani connection.

In 1997, I began compiling my notes; in 1998, I began writing Roman Nights, and by 1999, I was workshopping the play in its various two and three-character versions. In 2002, the play successfully premiered in New York; it soon moved to London and has since toured the world with translations into nine languages and performances in over 12 cities.

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the death of Anna Magnani, I am given pause and reflect on how important her role was for Italian immigrant visibility and dignity. In the 1950s and the aftermath of WWII, Italians were still not widely accepted or respected. Our otherness was exaggerated as mafia myths and negative stereotypes still prevailed. Magnani’s important work with Williams offers us a valuable and unique exploration —as sociological and historical documents— of the 20th-century Italian experience in America and the pain, passion, and pride that attended that cultural phenomenon we all now take for granted.

-Franco D’Alessandro, 2023

ME, TENNESSEE, AND THE ROMAN MUSE

“I was always in awe of Anna Magnani… She never exhibited any lack of self-assurance… and she looked right into the eyes of whomever she confronted, and during that golden time in which we were the dearest of friends, I never heard a false word fall from her mouth.”

-Tennessee Williams, Memoirs (1975).

Perhaps it is easier to believe in magic when the setting is a city as enchanting as Rome. Perhaps, too, we no longer live in a time and place where a writer can set out to meet an actress who so completely captivates him, unfettered by the managers, agents, and handlers that accompany many of today’s not-so-bright stars. And that such a meeting would result in a remarkable friendship that would endure more than two decades and inspire several theatrical masterworks is almost unimaginable in today’s contrived and calculated world of artless entertainment.

But there was magic in the air in the fall of 1948 as Tennessee Williams arrived in Rome for preparations for the Italian production of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Williams was desperately seeking a woman he had tried in vain for two years to contact by mail and telegram. A woman he was desperate to meet and would call upon friends and acquaintances —from American Gore Vidal to Italians Roberto Rossellini and Luchino Visconti— to arrange such a meeting. A woman of whom he once said: “It is not often I am profoundly moved by a performance on the screen, but this woman, Anna Magnani, has sunken the claws into my heart… I feel inspired, perhaps compelled, to write a play for her” (T.W. 1947). That play would eventually become The Rose Tattoo.

Magnani gained international stardom when she starred in Rossellini’s neo-realist masterpiece Open City, which ran at The World Cinema in New York City for almost two years, allowing Williams to view it repeatedly. In fact, Tennessee was so inspired by her stunning performance in that film he would start writing a new play for her before they ever even met. At the same time, Luchino Visconti was directing the Italian productions of The Glass Menagerie (1947) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1949) at Rome’s renowned Teatro Eliseo, which provided Tennessee with only more encouragement to pursue Magnani as he had wanted her for both Amanda in Menagerie and Blanche in Streetcar. Destiny, however, had other plans for Anna Magnani and Tennessee Williams. Of her first rejection, Magnani would say that the character (not-so-loosely based on Williams’ eccentric real-life mother) was an “awful woman” and “I am too young to play a mother who has a 24-year-old son.” Of her rejection of Blanche, little is known other than that Magnani most probably did not fully understand the quintessentially American, Southern Gothic-style play in its rather poor, incongruous first translation. Magnani did attend the Roman premiere, and in front of a crowd backstage at the Teatro Eliseo, she summarily smacked Visconti and said: “That’s what you must do to me the next time I turn down a part like that!”

By now, Magnani was undoubtedly intrigued, and Visconti eventually facilitated the first (and uneventful) meeting in Paris in March of 1949. Williams recounts that the entire time at lunch, Magnani was obsessing over Rossellini’s new ‘friendship’ with “this Swedish actress,” which rendered their encounter inauspicious at best. While Tennessee was disillusioned and disappointed, he was still terribly fascinated with Magnani. Two months later —in Rome this time— Anna and Tennessee would reconnect, and their friendship would begin to blossom like the fragrant and alluring mimosa trees found throughout the eternal city. Williams’ repeated on-screen viewing of Magnani in Open City was the spark that ignited a creative passion. His coming to Rome, a city that would greatly inspire him for many years, commenced his most prolific period as a playwright. Tennessee, Anna, and Rome would become a love triangle of inspiration and theatrical art that would endure for over two decades.

But what drew Tennessee to Anna? When one looks at the biggest Hollywood stars of the 1940s and 1950s —Rita Hayworth, Susan Hayward, Veronica Lake, Gene Tierney, Betty Grable, and Katherine Hepburn—there is a shared American aesthetic; even amongst the Mexican Dolores Del Rio, the Austrian Heddy Lamar, the Swede Ingrid Bergman, and the French Claudette Colbert (while ethnic exceptions to the rule), one could easily note a commonality in physiognomy. Magnani, who had more in common with dramatic giants such as Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, looked nothing like any of these women. She was different in every way: her dark hair, buxom build with petite stature, little make-up, and lack of a fancy hairstyle only accentuated an acting style that was revolutionary in its honesty, rawness, and audacity. How could a star be so real? If we consider that Tennessee Williams’ goal was to map the rocky terrain of the human heart while exploring the dilemmas of modern America, then Magnani was a perfect muse.

By the time Magnani finally read Williams’ 1950 version of The Rose Tattoo script, she and Tennessee had spoken for hours, over the course of a year, about the story and the female protagonist he was crafting for her. However, fears of performing eight shows a week in English and the commitment of the standard Broadway one-year contract, which would keep Anna away from her beloved son, Luca, and her city, Roma, conspired against their common dream of her playing Serafina on the New York stage.

Williams and Magnani shared a common shyness when in unfamiliar situations, which was evident when Anna, almost embarrassed by her sudden and unexpected role as an international star, spoke after thunderous applause at a 1950 New York screening of the Visconti film Bellissima: “This surpasses my every expectation… I am moved by what I have seen, for what I have received, truly I am… I never thought I would be remembered in this way, so far from my home.”

Magnani made a big splash with Bellissima, but the artistic conquest turned love affair was not only mutual; it was only just starting. In 1954, when she was in the United States to film The Rose Tattoo, Anna commented in a radio interview with Gianni Granzotto: “New York is a city you can’t forget. I find it real, human, truly human… I find New York so very intimate; it has a grand personality like Rome […] There are no two cities like New York and Rome… both are cities you are meant to walk and explore… The spontaneous and honest aggression of its people…these are a genuine people.”

Anna Magnani’s visceral power to communicate raw and authentic emotion would ultimately inspire Tennessee Williams to create not only “The Rose Tattoo” and “Orpheus Descending” —which were written expressly for her— but also “Sweet Bird of Youth” and “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore,” which have their roots in Williams’ fascination with the great actress, whose unconventional lifestyle and demand for equality, can be seen in the female protagonists of these plays.

It makes sense, then, that two of this century’s most significant contributors to drama; both theatrical and cinematic, would come to embody the classical Greco-Roman paradigm of the artist and the muse. At a time when Italy and the United States of America were recovering from a war that held them as mortal enemies, Anna and Tennessee would come to symbolize the enduring love affair between those two countries. ‘Exiles’ would be Williams’ preferred expression of his kinship with Magnani, though Magnani was partial to the word ‘avantisti’ (people ahead of the times). They each possessed highly individualized —if not stylized— approaches to leading their non-traditional lives, which at times were as different as the cultures from which they hailed. Williams’ openness about his homosexuality and Magnani’s pride in single motherhood were qualities not exactly acceptable —or legal, for that matter—in the repressive culture of the 1940s and 1950s. Williams, whose penchant for creating scenes in public places and pushing the limits, was often contrasted by Magnani’s cool, effortless Romanissima way of life. However, Magnani’s reputation for being volcanic and impassioned preceded her, and Tennessee was every inch the genteel and articulate Southern gentleman.

Magnani and Williams seemed larger than life because both of them experienced terrific tragedy and towering triumphs, and regardless of whether they were coasting through the high times or drudging through the low ones, both Anna and Tennessee believed firmly that life’s salve was humor. Both possessed a riotous, distinctive laugh that many peers and colleagues recalled. Her home, in the Palazzo Altieri, was where the two would engage in la ruzza (troublemaking), often in the form of middle-of-the-night prank phone calls to famous friends and rivals.

Anna Magnani provided a loving and stern maternal figure who understood the mind of a theatrical genius and also appreciated his often intense and erratic disposition. It was not Tennessee’s drinking or flamboyance that would raise Magnani’s ire, nor his melancholy or paranoia. Rather it was his notorious philandering that perturbed Magnani, especially concerning his longtime lover, Frank Merlo, to whom Anna became very close over the years. Merlo, who was called Frankie by intimates, was a first-generation Sicilian-American and Navy veteran who spoke and understood Italian, if not slightly accented, with Sicilian intonations by way of New Jersey. Williams’ profound love for Merlo was marred by his unfortunate lack of monogamous devotion to him. Tennessee’s sexual straying was something Magnani could only begrudgingly abide as they served as a painful reminder of her own past betrayals by Goffredo Alessandrini (her husband), Massimo Serato (her son’s father), and most famously, Roberto Rossellini (her true love), whose infidelity with Ingrid Bergman was played out on the covers of every major newspaper and magazine in 1949-50. Williams had met Merlo (ten years his junior) in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1947, the same time when his fascination with all things Italian began.

Magnani was familiar with the sharp sting of betrayal and could not bring herself to accept this weakness in her friend. And, when Tennessee committed such sexual indiscretions on Roman soil, it was Anna who would roar reproachfully at the great writer. Magnani herself was on the receiving end of some of Tennessee’s verbal indiscretions —in particular, his poorly chosen words to the press regarding her participation in the incommensurate and mawkish “The Secret of Santa Vittoria” (1969). She neither ignored nor indulged his transgressions as many of his closest peers and associates did. A woman all too familiar with the frailty of man’s fidelity, her great capacity for compassion ran anemic in the face of voluntary betrayal or, as Tennessee would refer to it, ‘deliberate cruelty’.

Williams’ addiction to pills and his regular and heavy consumption of alcohol can easily be explained by his family dysfunction, the pressures of fame, and the general anxiety of being an artist, which left him in an almost constant state of exhaustion. However, it does not explain his constant cheating and affaires de coeur. Why did Tennessee cheat on Frank Merlo? Well, if “desire is the opposite of death,” as Tennessee wrote in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” then our answer is there. He simply could not be faithful. To not tenaciously pursue physical love —whenever and wherever he found it— would have been a virtual impossibility for Tennessee, whose life embodied the tormented battle between desire and death. The tragedy of his sister Rose’s frontal lobotomy —a type of death— and the sudden death of his first love, Kip (at the tender age of 26), sealed Tennessee’s fate where love and monogamy were to be concerned.

Perpetual motion. Embracing lightning. A quest for magic. Williams’ psyche seems a haunted combination of Prometheus, Orpheus, and Sisyphus, running to desire and away from death. Such are the ingredients of poetry and, indeed, great drama. Anna Magnani understood this; one need only note that she was a severe insomniac, and after her broken heart —courtesy of Rossellini— she spent the next 20 years in the arms of much younger men. Indeed, Magnani knew well enough of the primordial impulse to embrace amorous passions as the ultimate protest against death, and she saw the same fire of Tennessee’s tormented and tangled truth in herself. She, however, had a conventional streak and valued loyalty in a way that Williams never quite could. In my play, Roman Nights, while reflecting on his compulsive sexual dalliances, Williams utters the line: “Men are prisoners to their sexuality, and women are persecuted for theirs.”

Anna inspired Tennessee simply by living her life in the way she did, purely, bravely, and relentlessly. The exhilarating spring and summer nights on Magnani’s terrace, with its stunning panoramic view of the eternal city, were the backdrop of this prolific period for Williams in the 1950s. Filled with spiritual energy and creative inspiration, Tennessee was keen on spending spring and summer in Italy, and he was utterly enchanted by la bella Roma and its most famous and enigmatic resident. He once wrote: “Rome is a city that Anna seems to preside over, not like a queen but rather a goddess.”

Their friendship, born out of a deep appreciation for and a complex understanding of one another as artists as well as human beings, was forged on that terrace above the Piazza Minerva overlooking the Pantheon, where the two talked and confided for hours on end for over two decades. It is no wonder that the characters of Serafina in “The Rose Tattoo” and Lady in “Orpheus Descending” are mesmerizingly close to the Anna Magnani we were only vaguely allowed to see in real life. They were facets of her deeply rich and alluring personality forged in a hardscrabble life of pain and passion where nothing came easy.

Born in Rome amidst a scandal between her unwed Roman mother and her roguish Calabrese father, Magnani was subsequently raised by her grandmother, who eventually sent her to an acting conservatory where she sang, performed, and played the piano. The world never knew this side of Anna Magnani. In the post-war era and boom of neo-realist cinema, it was simple and effective to have her known as a ‘non-actor’ and an ‘earth mother’ or ‘peasant.’ The truth could not have been more different. A Romana di Roma, growing up, Magnani was hardly a peasant girl. She was a street-smart kid with a solid education, a passion for the theater, and a knowledge of great literature. In American newspapers and cinema magazines, however, the complex life of this woman was reduced to a bit of a caricature. This, no doubt, contributed to her wariness of Hollywood offers and the American roles, which preferred broad strokes to crafted nuance. There is an intriguing irony when we note that Anna Magnani lived so far from the conventions of the society and culture that loved and adored her.

Magnani was clearly a woman well ahead of her time, and she lived her life entirely on her own terms. She alone raised her son, Luca, who was stricken with polio at age two, and had the boldness to give him the last name Magnani —a gesture that required money and a legal petition at the time. Anna also demanded equality and respect on the set with her directors and off the set with friends and lovers. While shooting Rossellini’s Roma: Citta` Aperta (Open City), when she discovered that her male co-star (Aldo Fabrizi) was being paid more, she refused to come to the set for work. From that point on, Magnani would always demand equal pay to her male co-stars. It was that fierce determination and assertiveness which helped to create the awe that surrounded the name, Anna Magnani. Tennessee Williams, however, was one of the few who was allowed to see her tender, vulnerable side. Tennessee was intrigued by her complexity and was inspired by her determination, yet there was something that set her apart from Tallulah Bankhead, Bette Davis, and Elizabeth Taylor. What could it have been that Williams first saw in that heartbreaking (and now iconic) scene in Open City where Nazis brutally gun her down as she chases after her fiancé?

Passione. An Italian characteristic that Anna deemed a Roman virtue. As Tennessee was drawn to her, his work began to change. This artist/muse relationship —born of the ancient paradigm— can be credited with a particular evolution in the work of Tennessee Williams. It was not until Tennessee fell in love with Rome and his subsequent friendship with Magnani that the female characters in his plays began to blossom into fiery, sensuous women. The female protagonists who inhabit the world of Williams’ plays from his first endeavors into playwriting in the 1930s through his more sophisticated early plays Not About Nightingales, Summer and Smoke, The Glass Menagerie, and, to some degree, A Streetcar Named Desire, are all Southern women who are sexually detached —if not repressed— and dominated and victimized by the men in their lives. These women are no doubt born from and influenced by the insular world of Williams’ own childhood upbringing in the conservative Christian south of Mississippi.

In his plays after 1950, the women are passionate, complicated, self-assured, prepossessed, and sexually vital. Tennessee Williams would become known for his complex female characters imbued with a dimension, texture, and eroticism not yet seen on the American stage. It is not a coincidence that after his friendship with Magnani, one begins to see a significant shift in the characterization of the Williams women. With the Williams/Magnani alliance, we see a very different kind of woman inhabiting the infinitely rich and poetic plays Tennessee Williams gave the world.

Magnani inspired the characters of Serafina in The Rose Tattoo, Lady in Orpheus Descending, and Alexandra Del Lago in Sweet Bird of Youth, but, I would also argue that her unconventionality and rebel status can be found in the three younger women in each of those plays and their subsequent films: Rosa (rebel); Carol (outcast); and Heavenly (provocateur). Furthermore, a thorough examination of the Williams oeuvre reveals reflections of Magnani in Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Maxine in Night of the Iguana, and certainly, Flora Goforth in The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore. While the titular Karen Stone (an aging, lonely diva) in Williams’ novella, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, is American, one can see how Magnani and the city of Rome inspired the author in terms of both character and setting. If it is accepted that artists are inspired by their muses, then it is a likely conclusion that it was La Magnani who inspired Tennessee to create many of these (now iconic) female characters, who today have their rightful place in the pantheon of 20th Century International Theater.

Magnani’s impact on Williams’ work is discovered upon examination of the evolution of the stage play The Rose Tattoo; in the earlier (1948) version, the loss of Serafina’s husband is the dramatic focus. However, after the Williams-Magnani relationship is established, infidelity becomes the driving force of the drama. By 1950, the version of the play does not even have the husband on stage, and the focus shifts from his death to the posthumous discovery of his betrayal of Serafina. Meanwhile, from 1949-50, Magnani (like Serafina) was struggling with the “loss” of Rossellini, her true love, and the humiliation of being abandoned for Ingrid Bergman (not unlike the play’s equally Scandinavian-sounding character of the mistress, Estelle Hohengarten). Both Magnani and Serafina were subjected to relentless gossip and whisperings about public revelations of their private lives, including their ignominiously being given le corna, the Italian “horns” of cuckoldry. Whether subconsciously or quite deliberately, Williams delivered a new script to Magnani that very much echoed her own passions and pains, longings and losses, and thematically explored second chances, forgiveness, and the redemptive power of love.

While Magnani did not realize the role of Serafina on the Broadway stage as Tennessee Williams had dreamed, she went on to star in the 1955 film adaptation of The Rose Tattoo, directed by Daniel Mann and co-starring Burt Lancaster. Magnani is simply spellbinding in this drama-filled romantic comedy. When we first encounter her Serafina Delle Rose she is riding high and a tad imperious, but fortune changes and she is soon a wildly grieving widow shut down, shut out, and shut in from the world. Utilizing her background in variety-show comedies of the late 1920s-30s, Magnani delivers a rollercoaster of emotions like no one else can. Her magnificent physical gestures and emotive facial expressions gloriously speak when words —Italian and English— fail. It is her Serafina with whom we connect and who reaffirms our belief in the infinite possibilities of love and life.

The Rose Tattoo: Scene Study

With Magnani, every moment is a Master Class, but these scenes in The Rose Tattoo require special attention…

The moment when Serafina is notified of her husband’s death by the village women is a study in the power of understatement: no hysterics, no shouting, no tears. Instead, Magnani opts to go inward when any other actress would go outward; she goes small and quiet when the opportunity to go big and loud presents itself. Her stifled gasps only allow for the repeated words, “Don’t speak!” —as if she can stop death itself if the words are not spoken. As Serafina sinks, quietly thrashing to the floor, the effect is utter devastation.

Serafina’s visit to the local priest, Father De Leo, is another stand out in its intelligence and profound emotionality. Serafina has heard the gossip of her husband’s infidelity and seeks out the local priest to ask if it is true —pleading that he break his sacred vow and share anything Rosario might have confessed. Everything is at stake here! Her marriage, as she says, was a religion to her; to find out that she had been given “the horns” would be the ultimate betrayal and mean her life was a lie. This scene is loaded with movement —it begins outside of the church with her confronting the priest and, surrounded by the ubiquitous whispering townswomen, then tracks into the church itself where Magnani does more with her brilliant eyes and loaded sighs than any actor —man or woman— on earth can do. Finally, when the priest’s reluctance proves unshakable, Serafina erupts! Magnani infuses her character with such tormented pain and pathos that when she, with palpable impulsivity, grabs the priest’s frock and shakes him like a doll, exclaiming, “Tell me! Father DeLeo, tell me! I need to know!” —only to be passed off to Lancaster’s Mangicavallo, who, in trying to calm the widow, has his shirt ripped by a wild Serafina. The scene ends with Serafina, a broken woman, pounding on the closed church doors and wailing as she collapses and covers her face in shame. The scene —then and now—is astonishingly violent, real, raw, and moving.

Finally, the confrontation with Estelle Hohengarten in the Mardi Gras Club is a study of Magnani’s quicksilver magic; like a Ferrari, she can go from 0 to 90 in a flash. She barrels into the scene with fierce determination, tauntingly and repeatedly shouting “Liar!” to the woman with whom she unknowingly shared her husband. Her eyes are like blazing daggers as she pursues her enemy with a particular masculine predation. In less than two seconds, Serafina flies from defeated, cuckolded wife to the volcanic, victorious widow, from taking the blow of the confirmation of infidelity (via the revealed rose tattoo on Estelle’s breast) with near-fainting exhaustion to suddenly smashing Estelle across the face with her pocketbook. The violence is earned here, it is Serafina’s only way to save some dignity and release the rage of betrayal boiling inside her.

In March of 1956, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Anna Magnani an Oscar® as Best Actress for her performance. The film was an enormous international box office success, with Magnani winning countless international acting awards and prizes for the part that Williams wrote especially for her.

Immediately following the release of the film The Rose Tattoo, there was already talk about “what would be next”, in particular, Orpheus Descending having its Broadway debut with Anna Magnani and Marlon Brando on stage together. In fact, Brando and Magnani had briefly met through Williams, who already had the vision to pair his two friends, whom he considered the very best actors alive. From 1955 to 1957, there were many conversations and plans to get Magnani on the Broadway stage —with Brando and even Elvis at one point! — but, alas, her fears of English and being away from home for such a long time meant Magnani would realize her dreams with Tennessee only on screen.

Four years after their triumph, in 1959, Magnani starred as Lady Torrance in the film adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play Orpheus Descending titled The Fugitive Kind, directed by Sydney Lumet and co-starring Marlon Brando and Joanne Woodward. Magnani is electrifying and heartbreaking as a 40-something immigrant who, at 18, was orphaned (when the KKK murdered her father) and then soon after jilted by the man she loved and later is forced to make the unenviable decision to marry for financial security. She ends up marrying the very man who killed her beloved papa —the malevolent Jabe Torrance. Magnani’s mesmerizing performance as a modern-day Eurydice is filled with complexity, depth, and fervor, and it is as powerful, relevant, and moving today as it was sixty years ago. Anna was a collaborator Tennessee Williams trusted; a review of her detailed notes and suggestions for The Fugitive Kind screenplay quickly reveals Magnani to be a paragon of integrity and honesty as well as a genius at understanding character and plot. For example, where most actors would fight for more screen time, Magnani fought to have her character’s first appearance reduced and delayed so as to underscore Lady’s marginalization as an immigrant (in the early part of the 20th century, immigrant Italians were not considered “white” in many parts of the USA). Magnani understood Lady’s role as an outcast of low status. She and Tennessee even added a small moment during her first scene where the three men entering the Torrance Mercantile store ahead of Lady allow the door to shut in her face.

The film, which deals with a stunning array of subjects: racism, classism, bigotry, violence, misogyny, and the corruption of politics and religion, all set amidst a forbidden love story, was ahead of its time but has aged well. Both Anna and Tennessee were extremely proud of the work they created together, understanding that they had made a sociologically important —if not necessary— film that is at times as beautiful and poetic as it is horrific and violent. Despite its all-star cast, The Fugitive Kind had only modest box-office success, however, Magnani would receive several awards, including the 1960 Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globe® for Best Actress.

The Fugitive Kind: Scene Study

Magnani’s skill and power are showcased in the confrontation between Lady and her first love, David Cutrere, who jilted her twenty years earlier. In this scene, which begins as Lady slowly descends the staircase to confront David, she is calm and cool, desperate to convince him that her life has not turned out so badly. Magnani delivers her lines with an eerie detachment belied by an almost imperceptible seething. As Lady begins to reminisce about their past, she loses control and cannot help but reveal her secret: she was pregnant with their child and forced to abort it when he abandoned her for a southern “white” girl with money, land, and family status in a social-climbing move. “I carried your child the summer you quit me… But I lost our child… I wanted death after that… but death don’t come when you want it!”, Lady growls through her tears. David, tacitly confessing to his betrayal and sheepishly admitting he still loves her, is viciously rebuffed when he attempts to embrace her. Lady erupts, “Get out! Get out of here! I just want you to know… my life ain’t over!” The words are heartbreaking as we understand —all at once— why and how she was forced to marry the miserable Jabe and why she now, so many years later, hopes for a second chance at love with Val.

Magnani and Brando certainly have a complex on-screen chemistry; when Lady kindly invites Val to stay nights in the store, it turns into a confrontation when Val (who hustled tricks in New Orleans) feels Lady is testing him or, worse, mocking him. Magnani exudes an awkward sweetness and shy tenderness when dealing with Brando’s confident, tough, cynical Val. The scene takes an unexpected turn when Val confronts Lady’s true (romantic) intentions, and Lady is too shocked and embarrassed to admit her attraction, so she quickly hardens and, struggling with words, calls Val “cheap” and, without warning, slaps him across the face! Val pushes Lady onto the bed and then throws the money he had “borrowed” at her as he departs. But Lady is not finished. She springs up, exclaiming, “No! No; Val, don’t go!” The camera zooms in on her luminous and vulnerable tear-stained face as she —in a moment of surrender— says, “I need you… to live… to go on living.” Here, Lady may be the combination of Persephone and Eurydice, but the moment is purely and unmistakably La Magnani.

The famous “Fig Tree” monologue is electrifying; the camera adores Magnani’s bright, soulful eyes that are teeming with life as she delivers this ode to hope and resilience to Brando’s adoring Val. In it, she compares herself to a fig tree from her childhood that for years never bore any fruit, and when it finally did bear, the young Lady decorated the tree with Christmas ornaments to celebrate its victory of giving life. That magnetic force of Magnani is in full effect here as the lyricism and imagery are eerily contrasted with the impending violence from Jabe as she exults joyfully and defiantly: “Put the ornaments on me, Val! Put them all on me! I’ve won, Mr. Death, I’m going to bear!” Val and Lady embrace lovingly, but this is Greek Hades or Christian Hell, and seconds later, doom and death are ineluctably visited upon them.

In this regard, and with these two films, Magnani —by way of Williams’ writing— became a major voice for the struggle of the Italian immigrants in America and elsewhere. Her popularity in the United States and, indeed, the world over was as massive as it was intense. Between 1951 and 1959, Magnani made four trips to America, and with each one, she was greeted by adoring crowds and fans gathered in the thousands. A large percentage of these people were Italian-Americans (immigrants and first generation) who found in Anna Magnani —the woman and the actress— someone who looked like them, sounded like them, and represented them. Simply put, Magnani spoke the language of the Italian soul both in Italy and abroad.

While separately, both Magnani and Williams had been at the top of their respective fields for well over a decade, together —with two films in just five years— Anna and Tennessee had conquered the world. There were even more plans for collaboration, but various issues—both personal and professional—arose at this time that prevented Magnani from doing the Broadway or Italian theatrical productions and the filmed versions of Sweet Bird of Youth, Night of The Iguana, and The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore. Yet, Anna and Tennessee continued to meet up for their famous Roman nights, in which (along with dining and drinking) they would make plans to work together again and support each other’s creativity. The relationship between Williams and Magnani was truly synergistic: contrasting and complementary. They each offered the other a much-needed and loyal companionship: Anna was the surrogate strong, big sister to Williams, who had all but lost his lobotomized sister, Rose; Tennessee was the adoring male partner whose fearsome fidelity was creative, not sexual. Their friendship endured the well-known tests of time, which, in the treacherous and disposable world of Hollywood, is all too rare.

As the two entered their 60s, it was a bitter irony that Anna Magnani and Tennessee Williams would be revered internationally yet discarded by their native countries. Much of the 1960s and the 1970s would find Williams cruelly savaged by critics and vilified by homophobic editorialists and politicians. As early as 1960, the parts usually reserved for Magnani would start to go to Sophia Loren, and throughout that decade, most of the roles offered to her were beneath her talent. At this time, a blow to both Tennessee and Anna came in September 1963, when Williams had to bury his lover, Frank Merlo, who succumbed to lung cancer at the age of 43. This would mark a dark time for him, personally and creatively, which saw Williams consuming ever-increasing amounts of alcohol and drugs (particularly prescription narcotics), a period he would later jokingly refer to as his “stoned age.” Anna Magnani, who never played the “tits-and-ass” game on either side of the Atlantic, was now no longer desired as a leading lady since she did not have the face and body that producers wanted in films.

By the late 1960s, the new regime of critics, editors, and writers dominating the scene had changed, and a more liberal tone had begun dominating American newspapers and magazines. Journalists and critics armed with various pseudo-psychological analyses began to opine that Williams was ‘a self-loathing homosexual’. As the 1960s came to an end and the post-Stonewall revolution era began, Tennessee Williams, who for so long was considered scandalous and perverted for being open about his homosexuality, was now being publicly derided and attacked for not being queer enough. To add to his frustration, during this time, Williams began having increasing difficulty getting his new plays produced, and the offers for film adaptations seemed to stop. The indomitable Magnani, however, made the best of a bleak creative situation and finally returned to where her career had started —the theater. From 1965 to 1969, she was triumphant on the European stage in sold-out productions of Medea directed by Gian-Carlo Menotti as well as the acclaimed Franco Zeffirelli production of Giuseppe Verga’s La Lupa. Magnani was doing some of her greatest work, yet the great film roles were eluding her.

In 1969, Williams would suffer a nervous breakdown and collapse from toxicity (due to the drugs and alcohol) and would be signed into a facility (against his will) by his brother. That same year, Magnani would —against her better judgment— accept a part in Stanley Kramer’s The Secret of Santa Vittoria (a major Hollywood film shot in Italy), in which she would reunite with Anthony Quinn, with whom she had great success (and another Oscar® nomination) in the 1957 film, Wild Is The Wind. The cliché-riddled film, a WWII romantic-comedy, was beneath Magnani’s talent and ultimately an artistic embarrassment. In a time of personal and professional turbulence, the two artists would take refuge in the sanctuary of Anna’s majestic roof-top terrace overlooking that magical, eternal city from which they both drew creative inspiration.

As the 1970s began, both Tennessee and Anna were feeling the sting of rejection and disappointment. In 1971, Magnani was reduced to making three 90-minute television movies (though they were excellent, TV was seen as a comedown) and gave a magnificent final performance (starring alongside Marcello Mastroianni) in the outstanding historical drama, 1870, directed by Alfredo Giannetti. Sadly, the film was not widely seen but greatly appreciated in the film community. Appropriately, Anna Magnani’s last film appearance would be an intriguing cameo as herself in Federico Fellini’s Roma (1972), with her final, telling and ironic words being: “Go home, go to bed… I don’t trust you… Good night!” During this very same period, Williams and his work were being brutally massacred by critics and relegated to Off-Broadway and regional productions. Too scandalous for general audiences in the 1960s, by the 1970s, Williams —undoubtedly America’s greatest playwright— was being written off as passé. The lives and careers of Magnani and Williams paralleled one another, from anonymity to world fame to abandoned legends; they were inextricably linked in heart, mind, and art.

Although their letters reveal that Anna and Tennessee continued to discuss various projects and the two planned to collaborate once again, time was not on Anna’s side. In her native and beloved Rome, on September 26th, 1973, Magnani died, at age 65, of pancreatic cancer. Anna’s death, at a time when so many of Williams’ friends were dying, was in many ways a coup de grace for the intensely sensitive playwright. Tennessee was quoted as saying: “Age has made it difficult for me to have much faith in things, but the death of Anna Magnani has made it almost impossible. It still seems incomprehensible that the world—my world—can function without her in it.”

This loss left Williams so emotionally devastated he was unable to attend Magnani’s burial ceremony, which shut down the entire city of Rome as throngs in the thousands jammed the streets around the Basilica of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva and, rather appropriately, the Pantheon. To this day, many people wonder why Tennessee Williams sent twenty dozen roses to her funeral. What was symbolic about the number twenty? The answer is simple; “Ci vediamo alle venti” which means “see you at 20:00” (8 o’clock). Alle venti was the designated meeting time for conversations, cocktails, and confessions… Alle venti meant Magnani’s roof-top terrace—that a magical, inspirational place overlooking the city that had so captured Tennessee’s heart. “See you at 20” was often how the two signed their telegrams and letters, and, presumably, it was how the twosome ended their late-night carousing, making a date for their next Roman night where their creative aspirations were shared over aperitivi. After 30 years of research, it is the only reason why I can think Tennessee Williams sent twenty dozen roses to the woman, friend, and muse who forever would embody the fiery, wild rose in two of his acclaimed plays immortalized on film. The Muse never really dies, like the goddess of Rome to whom Williams first likened Anna Magnani; her spirit endures forever.

Franco D’Alessandro is an Irish-Italian-American poet and playwright who has had multiple international, Off-Broadway, and regional productions of his work. He has been published or produced in nine languages in over 12 countries on four continents. His hit play Roman Nights explores the tumultuous lives of stage and screen legends Anna Magnani and Tennessee Williams.

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