A HOUSE NOT MEANT TO STAND

Maria Britneva, aka Maria St. Just, presumably in Wilbury, the first Palladian home in England which she gained control of after marrying Lord St. Just and promptly committing him to a mental hospital. One of her daughters married into the Bonham Carter family (think Helena), and she and/or Wilbury had bit roles in Merchant-Ivory films, A ROOM WITH A VIEW and MAURICE. Another married the guy who designed Andy Warhol's New Factory (Andy and Maria gave me and Jane Smith a tour after the memorial for Tennessee at the Shubert Theater a month after TW died).


Born in Russia in 1921, she and her mother escaped, leaving her father as a "sort of sacrifice to the Bolsheviks," according to what Tennessee Williams told me. He always told me when I worked for him that she would one day gain control of his business interests. She did, by colluding with lawyers Michael Remer and John Eastman after Tennessee died, despite his intention in his will and codicil to be certain she never could. (He told me this intention, too.)

Tennessee always claimed his plays were so popular in the USSR that he had more royalties there than anywhere else. (He might have exaggerated, but not too much.) Since no one could get rubles out of the USSR back then, he often fantasized that he would go over, and with Maria Britneva's Russian contacts, take at least some of it out of Russia in furs. I wonder if Maria got the money out later, after he died. Gave it to Remer and the Republican Party.

Does anyone know what happened to Tennessee's accumulated royalties collected in the USSR?

I also wonder why Texas Kate's family will have nothing to do with my book. Kate collected a lot of names through successive marriages, and became Kate Schweppe, Sharp, Moldawer, McNamara, and was a fixture in Houston society. She had a habit of collecting Republicans, and one husband (Dudley Crawford Sharp II) was a key Texas Republican, he the son of Dudley I:

On December 11, 1959, he became Secretary of the Air Force and served (President Eisenhower) until 1961. Sharp was also best friends with Howard Hughes for a time in his early life. Dudley met Howard because both Howard and Dudley's fathers were business Partners in the Sharp-Hughes Tool Company (which became Hughes Tool Company, see THE AVIATOR) Houston. -- Wikipedia.

Kate was much like the character Julia Roberts played in CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR. I loved her very much.

When Kate died on June 3, 2007, her children found a copy of my manuscript, WALKING ON GLASS: A MEMOIR OF THE LATER DAYS OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, front and center on her writing desk. I had recently sent it to her, and she had not shared that she was then so consumed by cancer that she was already blind. I like to think she got the essence through intuitive feel.

But Dudley Sharp, Tennessee's only known God son, won't answer my emails and voicemails, and his siblings are afraid to be even mentioned in the book. They specifically asked not to be, and then cut me off from communications. So different than back then: Dudley Crawford Sharp III of Houston, Kate Sharp Farris of Austin (I think), and M. H. Parker Moldawer of somewhere, Texas. I fear that, unlike their mother who loved Tennessee very much and whom I give a high place of honor, they are caught in a Republican Party hell.

In fairness, Dudley might not have received my emails and voicemails. The Republicans, working with the Chinese Communist Party, have used every trick in the electronic warfare book that in a recent NEW YORK TIMES article, were attributed to the Communist Party in China.

Really. And my computer has over 100,000 files IN ADDITION TO those it admits to. My anti-virus found them, and many are completely written in Chinese characters. I am NO student of the Chinese language!

Perhaps the Republicans will soon be fully exposed and my communications by internet, email, and phone will no longer be interrupted, intercepted, and even changed en route. John Blades, executive director of the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, helped me prove they were changing content of my emails between us.

I love how this is all unfolding. It is the extended version of Tennessee' play that premiered in its final version in Chicago at the Goodman Theatre under Gregory Mosher while I was in the playwright's employ: A HOUSE NOT MEANT TO STAND.

In this blog, I am only following my former employer's instructions that he gave me many years ago: "Protect the Artists. Avenge what happens to my estate." (ADDED April 16, 2015: I don't know what made me claim Tennessee told me that. He didn't -- and it's not even his VOICE!!! -- but then, I suppose he COULD HAVE.)

I'm trying. And someday, my well-reviewed book (see its site) will be published.