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NOW, forty-five years after the production of The Skin of Our Teeth and my adventures with it, perhaps I see who and what I was—and am—more clearly. For instance, now I can freely acknowledge that I’ve always wanted a secure domestic life and, at the same time, the freedom of the bachelor’s existen…

Constance had one sure defense; she’d “see” (that all-purpose girl word) another man. Don’t forget, I told myself, how quickly she found Capa when you were on the road with Golden Boy. And just now, a weekend with Jack Houseman. And some others for sure. The back seat of a Pontiac, for chris-sake! …

In the morning she asked me to put her car in the barn; it looked as if it was going to rain. Looking through her bag for the car keys, I found a little notebook. Across the cover, she’d written “Mr. and Mrs. Elia Kazan.” It contained her plans for the decoration of the house we’d bought. On one …

BACK at the Belvedere by midnight, I wrote in my diary:

Constance was not at the restaurant at eight when I said. I should have understood this because I’d given her only a few hours notice and she might have left home before my wire arrived. I then called her home; no one answered. I had anot…

In a few days she wanted a divorce. This was a relief, a kind of solution. Then she changed her mind, apparently after a conversation with a close friend, another wife, the gist of which, as I heard it later, was: “If you want him, you’ll have to take him as he is. What’s happened to you happens to…