Around the time my dear friend Geoffrey Borny announced he was to direct a season of the Canberra Rep’s The Glass Menagerie, I chanced upon a copy of the 1978 book The World of Tennessee Williams, edited by Richard E. Leavitt. In it was a photograph of Williams at a typewriter I hadn’t seen before - and that was unusual. In his exhaustive list of writers and their typewriters on his ‘Classic Typewriter Page’, the great Cincinnati typewriter historian Richard Polt says of Williams, “This man loved to have himself photographed with his writing machines!” And between the two of us (that is, Richard and myself) we have published images of Williams using at least a dozen different typewriters. All except for this one.
Anyway, in his planning for the Canberra Rep production of The Glass Menagerie, Geoffrey decided to incorporate a portable typewriter in the set design. So of course he approached me to provide a machine for Jamie Johnston, who was to play Laura Wingfield, a character who had, unbeknown to her mother Amanda, opted out of a secretarial course but was still practising typing at home. (Geoffrey, by the way has been a “typewriter spotter” for me for many years.)
Although it is not one of the typewriters Williams was photographed using, Geoffrey’s choice of a 1938 Underwood Universal was spot-on, given when The Glass Menagerie was written and when it was set.
We attended the final night of the Canberra Rep’s The Glass Menagerie last night, and it was superb. Well done all, but most especially Geoffrey Borny.
