Kim Hunter on Love. Part One
Is there freedom—something like happiness—when you feel loved or know that you are loved? Are you confident that you’ve been loved?
A question given to me by Tennessee Williams, which I asked of all the subjects I interviewed: Is there freedom—something like happiness—when you feel loved or know that you are loved? Are you confident that you’ve been loved?
In 1989 I sat in Kim Hunter’s apartment and asked her the question Tennessee felt was the hardest to answer:
Kim Hunter was a kind and straightforward woman. She found the question “terribly personal,” but she agreed to try and answer it. Hunter’s husband, Robert Emmett, came in during this exchange—he had gone out and bought copies of the New York Times for us—and he couldn’t remain silent. “Yes,” he said, “I’d like to hear this.”
Kim Hunter: It’s ironic—fitting—that this question should come to me from Tennessee, because Tennessee altered how I feel about love. The quality of love. It’s durability. Is it real? Do we lie to ourselves to feel loved? I don’t know that I would ever have asked those questions of myself if I hadn’t worked on Tennessee’s plays.
With [A] Streetcar [Named Desire], I wondered if Stella actually felt loved by Stanley, or if she felt rescued. Saved. Is that love? I told myself—in that part—that I had told myself that what I had found was love, but love was security, sexual pleasure, escape from a very painful childhood. Both Gadge [Elia Kazan] and Lee [Strasberg] worked with me on Stella’s childhood. What she had seen and heard and denied. We crafted a painful biography. Stella had to get away from that. She had to abandon Blanche. Stella, I came to see, loves her sister but repeatedly abandons her. I think she has to. So what is that love about? Can we abandon people we claim to love? Do we have to love ourselves more than another to survive? I played Stella with these questions in my head.
Stella, in my mind, does not have the strength to leave on her own, so she’s pulled away from Belle Reve—pulled from that past, that so-called glory and history—by a man strong and unafraid. It feels like a romantic story. I imagined that Stella read romances, thought of romance, sat in movie theatres and imagined herself loved and rescued. So, Stanley was the rescuer, so I loved him. Or did I? What is going on in Stella’s head when she makes that final climb of the stairs away from Stanley? I choose to think that she goes back, because she has no other option. I mean, where does she go? She’s decided the rest of her life. Husband, baby, future. All there. But I do think she’s changed. I think she has realized that what she had wasn’t love. We didn’t have this term then, but I think it was a co-dependency. Need was all. So, is need love? I wish Tennessee were here to answer that question.
Robert Emmett: Isn’t need at the heart of all love? All relationships?
Kim Hunter: Yes, probably, but I need a good director, a good screenplay, a good friend. The love I have for those things is not what I think Tennessee is talking about. When I spent time at that apartment of his in the East Fifties, he was obsessed with having a home, someone to come home to, someone who needed him, but not for money—not that kind of security—but what he called the confirmation of one’s worth. That’s what he called a good relationship. Two people completing each other. I thought he had that with Frank [Merlo]. I really did. I think Frank adored Tennessee. Here we are again. Is to adore to love? Does anybody know the answer to Tennessee’s question?
Robert Emmett: I remember you saying that Tennessee’s concept of love was childish.
Kim Hunter: I did? I don’t think so. No. I think I remember saying that his idea of love was adolescent, which is different. I never knew Tennessee to not judge himself by his attractiveness; his ability to get attention from other men. Well, anybody. I think I said adolescent. Tennessee had to keep looking. What was that great quote you sent me from Mildred Natwick? About good.
Mildred Natwick had once told Tennessee to not pass up what is good looking for something better.
Kim Hunter: That’s it! We all do that. We outgrow it. Or we don’t. I think I stopped looking around to see if things might be better, could be better, when I had a home to get to, children to raise. I mean, really, a part? A movie? At one time I would have been suicidal if something interfered with my work; if I looked bad; if someone said something mean about me or to me.
Robert Emmett: May I utter the name Robert Rossen?
Kim Hunter: Yes, that was bad. I did not respond maturely. He was not kind to me one day. [During the making of the film Lilith.] He was a real bastard. I was stunned. I was still not entirely welcome in the film business after the blacklist, and he just let me have it. And no one said anything!
Robert Emmett: They were scared of him!
Kim Hunter: I know, but I usually had supporters. I came home and cooled off.
Robert Emmett: You came home and yelled at me about it.
Kim Hunter: That’s true. I did. I was hurt. I’m glad I didn’t make a scene on the set. And he did apologize. And when I saw what he was up against, what he was fighting, I recuperated quickly. But where did Tennessee go when he was hurt? He was calling up all these other actresses and asking for advice. He would call me. Licking of wounds. Grudges. Why didn’t he have…Why didn’t he keep the friends around him who could have comforted him? Why did he not see that he was loved? Needed? Why wouldn’t he listen to us when we told him what he meant to us?