Tennesee Williams and Me

Madeleine Sherwood in Sweet Bird of Youth

Yesterday, I watched Sweet Bird of Youth on Turner Classics, part of their Tennessee Williams festival.

It reminded me of 1982, when I worked as a copywriter at a radio station in Montreal. I guess Tennessee died in 1982, because one of the other copywriters came into the room and announced, “One of us has died.”

I turned to my friend, Nora, and smiled. One of us indeed. We wrote ads for Greeks restaurants, “Step into the Sunshine at la Casa Grecque,”

I just checked. He died in 83, so my memory serves.

You see, I was a big fan of the playwright. I had studied theatre at McGill, not for the acting bit, which  I simply hated, but for the plays. Tennessee was a favorite. Edward Albee and Pinter, too.

Now, I don’t recall reading Sweet Bird of Youth, although I likely did. I missed the movie, though for sure. In 1962, when the movie came out, Montreal children couldn’t  go to the movies. (My play Milk and Water explains.)

And besides, I was just 8. Anyway, this movie is still damn relevant, I think.

Now, Madeleine Sherwood is in the movie Sweet Bird of Youth, playing a distinctly different character than she played in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. A mistress to a powerful man. She played the same role, Miss Lucy, on stage.

Madeleine Sherwood, as it happens, is the granddaughter of Paul Villard, who figures in my story Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, the follow up to Threshold GIrl.

My ebook story is based on family letters from the 1910 era and in that era Edith Nicholson was working at French Methodiste Institute. Paul Villard, a medical doctor and doctor of divinity, was the Principal of the Missionary School on Greene Avenue.

He figures largely in the story, as he helps Edith through a number of crises and then she suddenly turns on him and quits. (I have somewhere a letter of recommendation he wrote, rather abrupt and hastily written.) Edith seems to have been friends with Yvonne Villard, his daughter. Yvonne visits Tighsolas in the summer of 1911.

I have spent a great deal of time trying to figure why. (I wondered at one time if it was because of the Church Union controversy going on. Edith was a Presbyterian.) But no, I realize that it had to do with Villard appointing another woman head of the teachers.

So I am writing that part right now. I have read Dr. Villard’s books on the school and its mission, so know all about it.

I see on the net that Nicole Kidman was set to start in a revival on stage, last year, but nothing more has come of it. Nichol does have a similar acting style to Geraldine Page, I think.

Ecole Methodiste teachers. I am pretty sure the man on the right is Paul Villard. One of the girls other than Edith, might be Yvonne Villard.

Fire and Water and Milk.

My grandfather’s letter of resignation to the City Council, dated September 23, 1930. It is stamped by the City Clerk’s office, Sept 29 and was debated in Council that very evening.

(Before Jules Crepeau, my grandfather,  was appointed Director of Services in 1920, he was the Assistant City Clerk. I thought that ‘ a little job ‘ but it wasn’t. EVERYTHING pertaining to City Business went through that office and my grandfather had a memory like a steel trap.)

Anyway, I have transcribed part of the long debate over my grandfather’s resignation, that has it all, anger, indignation, innuendo, veiled threats, humour and buffoonery, even some wit and clever repartee (a skill now extinct among politicians of all stripes and levels.)

I put it on my other blog, which mirrors this one: Flo in the City:

http://flointhecity-aworkinprogress.blogspot.com/2011/11/mayor-houde-picks-up-gloveand-loses-his.html

Hmm. The more I read this front page Gazette report, the more questions I have about the REAL reason my grandfather was fired. Indeed, the opposition keeps asking this very question. I suspect EVERYBODY knows, but no one wants to spell it out.

The given reason, that it was his job as Director of Services to STOP the purchase of Montreal Water and Power is nutty. As if it was his job to tell the elected officials what to do.

During this debate, towards the end, Houde brings up the Laurier Theatre Fire, totally out of context. Now, that was, from what I have dug out of Internet archives, a troubling issue with respect to my grandfather….That’s the infamous fire where many children were killed and the reason why I couldn’t see movies in theatres as a child in Montreal.

So much so, I am wondering whether I should change the working title of my play about Montreal in 1927, Milk and Water, to Fire and Water.

My grandfather’s brother was VP of United Theatre Amusements. He ended up falling from an office window in 1932. In 1926, My grandfather is accused of allowing theatre owners to break the rules and let in young children unattended(by controlling the Police) by a Mr. Raney testifying before a US Senate hearing on Prohibition. Raney is a former Ontario Attorney General and one of those anal anti-everything fun Presbyterians. )

(I thought my mother once told me another brother was Fire Chief, but I have found no evidence of that.)

The 1927 Typhoid epidemic was caused by milk, not water, although the US scientists brought in to investigate couldn’t pinpoint the genesis of the epidemic, which  afflicted 5,000 and killed a few hundred.

An article was published in September in the Journal of the American Medical Association. My grandfather will talk about this in the play, which takes place in early September.

The scientists gave Montreal Tap water a clean bill  of health then. My grandfather will get down on my husband’s grandfather for exploiting the situation to sell his bottled water. As he did in 1909 the date of the last big typhoid epidemic, and since.

“It was from MILK, not water, ” my grandfather will say.

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other, “my husband’s grandfather will say. (This is an inside joke, as my husband uses this expression a lot!) It’s also what most people thought.

“Then why are we here?” my husband’s grandfather will ask.

“The Prince never drinks tap water, anywhere,” will reply my grandfather.

“I’m here to get him to approve of my new ginger ale, ” says my husband’s grandfather.

Something like that.

Here’s the ironic part. I found an article from the 1927 in the Gazette which claimed that 3,000 caught typhoid (“not alot in a city of a million”) when 4,500 did, according to the JAMA report.

That May article doesn’t say where the contagion came from though, so they didn’t know then. The article says city water is tested for bacteria daily and then goes on to praise Montreal’s wonderful water works.

So, in early September, when Milk and Water takes place, because the Royal Princes are in town to decompress and have fun, it probably wasn’t widely known that the epidemic came from milk.

I can play around with this.

The article mentions that the last great typhoid epidemic was in 1909. Funny,  no one seems too concerned about city water in the Nicholson Letters. There are no warnings from Mother Margaret, and she worries about EVERYTHING. Especially about her daughters catching colds and La Grippe.

I think this speaks to another key ‘angle’ of the MILK AND WATER  story… The Presbyterians weren’t worried so much about water and stuff, as they were CLEAN in spirit and body and habits.

Disease was a French and immigrant problem. Or so it was thought.

And the French and Immigrants looked skeptically upon the HYGIENIST movement because they were aware, of some level, that clean and pure meant WHITE and Protestant. They were aware the PURITY MOVEMENT was as much about ridding the world of certain races, as about health and well-being.

Father Norman, who had typhoid in 1896, says he doesn’t trust the water up North on the railway and goes around parched all the time. Funny.

Westmount 1911

The Westmount Library.

Well, I went to visit the Westmount Library on a two tiered research mission; to check out the library itself and to check out some books in the library. Well, not check out as I am not a member.

I found a book on Montreal trams there, by a Richard Binn, a very detailed book. In 1911, there was a hodgepodge of different trams, some open, some closed, some convertible, some only convertible on one side.. and I think some still horse drawn.

Some had seats like seen today in busses, but some had bistro like swivel chairs.

Anyway, I also found some books about OLD Westmount to see what tram Edith and Flo might have taken from Greene to downtown.

In 1911 there were two tram loops, so I’ll work on that. I am not 100 percent sure they were electric.

Anyway, that library is celebrating the 100 year anniversary of its children library. They have a nice picture of said children’s room in 1922, like a large Victorian room with a big fireplace – and, according to a book I read, pictures from characters in Alice in Wonderland.

I will have Flora and Edith visit the library and she’ll see a rich girl in a clean, starched dress with glistening hair tied in a bow… and nanny.

I also learned that POM bakery started in Westmount back then. A man who wanted crumpets like in England started his ‘homestyle’ bakery. As a girl, I often ate the crumpets from POM. I loved them, buttered big time. Dionne and Dionne specialty grocers was also in Westmount in 1911.

I might mention that in Edith’s story.

And most important as I have to change this in my first draft, Westmount Park was called Victoria Jubilee Park.

In 1911, Westmount spent 640 on Coronation decorations…. So I can also mention that… Probably in the park, after all.

Westmount Park on a sunny June 2011 day.