To Honor My Father's Passing, Yesterday, I Viewed His Favorite Film: THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS. STONE (1961)

It was in the 1990s when Tennessee Williams's film THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS. STONE came up in conversation that Dad exclaimed, "No kidding -- I had no idea Tennessee wrote that, it has ALWAYS been my favorite film!" (1961 version, although the later one starring Helen Mirren is great, differently, too.) And my friend (Tennessee's really, but he lived with us about three weeks), Gavin Lambert WROTE that screen play. 

Bottom Line: My father's fave film was written my my old boss, Tennessee, and old friend Gavin Lambert, and only last night, did I realize what a PECULIAR FACT that is. 

Besides what shows on Dad's "resume", he raised his younger sister, Doris, often with the help of black share-croppers after his Dad, a Klansman who lost ALL his wealth in the Great Depression and fires in his cotton and tobacco warehouses, my grandmother died and grandpa took to drink and ended up later marrying Annie Childers, who already had one child out of wedlock, and didn't get along with ANY of Dad's siblings (and they had almost no food -- same time the rich Kenans rode around Wilmington in Norma Desmond style limos), my grandfather moving them more than once per year on average, after being kicked out for non-payment of rent.

William Randolph Hearst with Marion Davies

But before WWII, Dad rode the rails with hobos and settled in San Francisco where he became head of the gift department of the most prestigious department store, selling gifts to William Randolph Hearst's buyer for Marion Davies, so he had picked up social skills, and I have often wondered about the details of his life at that time (straight guys don't usually make it big in the gift department, and Dad's nickname at New Hanover High School had been "Middle-Leg" -- for good reason). Could he have sold it on the side???

Dad especially admired the Comtessa, played by Lotte Lenya (Kurt Weill's wife known for her renditions of his songs) in Roman Spring. She matched handsome young men with rich, lonely American women in post-war Rome, and the whole story really resonated with Dad.

And strangely, at the same party in January of 1982 where Jackie Kennedy Onassis told Tennessee that Sewanee, the Episcopal Church, and Republican Party (with CIA and/or FBI help), planned to murder him before he changed his will to benefit Harvard instead of the Episcopalian university, Warren Beatty, the original gigolo in Roman Spring, approached me thinking I was Tommy Tune!!!

He's 6' 8".

There is a lot of mystery about Dad's early years, but from what my much older cousins have told me, Dad loved to drink with his brother Rufus Harlee Kenan's girlfriend, Virginia, who married Uncle Harlee when she got pregnant. My cousin Graham Harlee Kenan is 6' 8", while Harlee and Virginia were about 5' 6" and 5' 2". My cousins assume Graham is my half-brother. (And my father, especially, became completely estranged from Aunt Virginia after Uncle Harlee died at age 56 -- Aunt Virginia putting out the warning that she carried a gun in her purse and would shoot Dad DEAD if she ever ran into him on the street.)

In the 1980s, Dad asked me for recommendations on Philadelphia gay bars. I think it fair to say that Dad was comfortable going BOTH ways.

Oh, and my cousin Judy (who is keeping some distance from me now, due to her Southern Baptism, my colorful mouth, and all), recorded on her computer, her mother, my late Aunt Doris, singing all the songs my Dad made up to cheer them out of their nearly homeless, virtually parent-less childhood. And Dad was an extra in eight episodes of YOUNG INDIANA JONES, so we got him walkin' around, too!!!

But Lotte Lenya knew how to cast spells, and when Robert Carroll (a previous lover of Tennessee's who I BET is the person who sold Tennessee Williams' cancelled checks for YEARS on eBay to signature collectors), came to visit Tennessee Williams and the police, drugs, a gun, and general madness were all part of his visit, That was when I met Tennessee and helped calm all the non-sense at his house. As the police restrained the crazed Robert, he kept howling to the moon how Lotte Lenya loved him (and I have no idea if they had ever met or not).

You can read more about that in my Chapter Two: http://laterdaysoftennesseewilliams.blogspot.mx/2013/10/chapter-2-employment.html

Dad at my sister Julie's wedding.

My father has always been outgoing and gregarious, and in the 1980s and 90's, every slightly-older-than-me female friend I had thought he was JUST SO HANDSOME!!!


But in the early days, he was skinny as could be:

Us.

.