Tenn on the Death of Anna Magnani

Interview with the Author

We sit here today, and I have to say that everything really fell apart in 1973. Green tables on the television over which the entire Watergate soap opera played its sad fable. William Inge takes that final drive in that car in the Hollywood hills. And Anna Magnani dies, far away from me, silent and weak.

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.

Tennessee Williams/1982

© 2014 James Grissom

This quartet of photographs was taken by Richard Avedon.