Carson McCullers Excerpt #3: Jordan Massee Pt. 1

This is the first of two hours of history from Carson's "cousin" Jordan Massee. In reality, I am related to Reeves McCullers in much the same order as Carson to Jordan, through maternal grandparents. Nonetheless, Jordan had the pleasure of being Carson's close friend and confidant for many years whereas what I have of Reeves are stories, some childhood photos, an obituary he wrote for his best friend in high school and an arrowhead he found as a child.

Without flinching an eyelid or telling a lie, Jordan could namecheck Tennessee Williams, Maureen Stapleton, Donald Windham, Marilyn Monroe and Isak Dinesen and make you feel like you were a fly on the wall to the happenings in his life - and he was recounting the stories only a matter of weeks before he died.

Knowing that he was infirm and fragile, a 120 minute video tape should have sufficed. During our interview - his talking, Carlos Dews and me listening, he only took one break and that was not his suggestion but Carlos had to pee! Jordan kept talking until I ran out of tape and was visibly disappointed that he could not continue - but he did as I was packing up. That was when he brought out the juicy stuff! Not much about Carson but about many noted others. And I have been able to verify his tales in the intervening years.

We had many conversations on the phone over the next month or so and he told me, as he titled it, "the good stuff," things that he would not relate on film. I never asked if I could tape the conversations as that would have changed the timbre of the relationship, but I have the memories. He would talk until his cough and caretaker made him stop.

The Library of America had just published the collected works of Carson McCullers as I started filming interviews. My first edition copy is signed by all the living, at the time, prominent people in Carson and Reeves' lives. Jordan wrote,

"With love and best wishes. Looking forward to your documentary."

The Jordan Massee interviews are important not just for their relation to Carson, but to the era and a sense of upper class life in the forties and fifties and the interlopers at the gates. Enjoy and send me comments. Hopefully there will be a finished film in a year or so. My closest friend the the McCullers circle thinks I should leave Carson alone and just put out the entire Jordan Massee interview - warts and all. As usual with John Z, he may be right.

Dan

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