True story: Early in his career, after a first try at The Fugitive Kind, Tennessee Williams set out to write a play about Vincent Van Gogh. He didn't get far: He had a writing assignment at a theater lab, and his assignments kept him so busy, he said, he hardly had time for "independent work."
Nonetheless, inspired by Van Gogh's letters, and also possibly by the popular historical novel Lust for Life, by Irving Stone, Williams wrote some scenes for a play about the great idealist and painter.
In a letter to a theater producer and mentor named Willard Holland, (who liked Williams, and directed a number of his early scenes and plays) Williams wrote:
I am still planning to write the "Van Gogh" for which I have chosen the title "The Holy Family," suggested by an anecdote from his life. He took a prostitute to live with him who soon gave birth to an illegitimate child by another man. V.G.'s friend, Gauguin, tried to persuade V.G. to leave the woman but V.G. remained devoted to her. In disguist, as he left, the friend exclaimed, "Ah, the Holy Family — maniac, prostitute, and bastard." Does that sound too profane? I think the real story of the relationship is rather beautiful and would make good dramatic material.
What exactly did Williams write?
Apparently there are "surviving fragments" of a play, in which "a drunken Van Gogh proclaims his loneliness to Margaret (Magda), a pregnant prostitute with whom he wishes to live and to treat "like a sister."
[That account comes from volume one of Williams' letters, pp107-109, and includes the excerpt above, from a letter to Holland.]
Wouldn't those scenes be fascinating to read — or see enacted?
[This is the earliest known self-portrait of Van Gogh, from 1886, which was three years after the painter's relationship with his mistress Sien fell apart, strained by art, gonorrhea, family and poverty]
Kit Stolz 