Reflections in a Golden Eye

The title image, as in a play by Tennessee Williams, recurs uncomfortably often. I guess that’s how gay Southerners wrote way back then. Williams’ plays were made into films, however bastardized, when he was young and hot. Carson McCullers’ novel was made into a film in 1967, the year she died. And its stars were dimming: the Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor brands meant less and less as Lyndon Johnson sent more and more troops into Vietnam. And who could ever believe again in Maggie the Cat after seeing the untamed Katharina the shrew and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?