Miriam Hopkins: Creamy Lightning

Miriam Hopkins in a publicity photograph for Tenn's Battle of Angels in 1940/Florence Vandamm.

Interview with Tennessee Williams

Conducted by James Grissom

New Orleans

1982

Oh, she was some creamy lightning! So beautiful, smelling of  twelve fields of flowers, but do not ignore or slight or bore her--if you do, expect Medea in haute couture to pay you a visit. We fought a lot, but we spoke and loved and laughed far more often. I could not--even with a younger brain--recount for you all the kindnesses she delivered to me, and the nuisances were almost always in defense of a talent that was not fully used or appreciated. It depresses me that she is not remembered as well as she should be, and with my mother gone, I have no one left to call to mention that one of her films will be on television or in some rococo roach house.

I miss her. She was a friend, and a friend of extremity, in every sense of the world. 

© 2014  James Grissom