Tennessee Williams
Encyclopedia
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983) was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright
in the American theater. He also wrote short stories
, novel
s, poetry
, essay
s, screenplay
s and a volume of memoirs. His professional career lasted from the mid 1930s until his death in 1983, and saw the creation of many plays that are regarded as classics of the American stage. Williams adapted much of his best known work for the cinema
.
Williams received virtually all of the top theatrical awards for his works of drama, including a Tony Award
for best play for The Rose Tattoo
(1951) and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
for A Streetcar Named Desire
(1948) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
(1955). In 1980 he was honoured with the Presidential Medal of Freedom
by President Jimmy Carter
and is today acknowledged as one of the most accomplished playwrights in the history of English speaking theater.
Theater scholar Charlotte Canning, of the University of Texas at Austin where William's archives are located, has said, "There is no more influential 20th-century American playwright than Tennessee Williams... He inspired future generations of writers as diverse as Suzan-Lori Parks
, Tony Kushner
, David Mamet
and John Waters
, and his plays remain among the most produced in the world."
and Huguenot
descent, in Columbus, Mississippi
, the second child of Edwina and Cornelius Williams. His grandfather, Walter Dakin, was the local Episcopal priest, and his maternal grandmother, Rose O. Dakin, was a music teacher. His father was a hard-drinking traveling shoe salesman who spent most of his time away from home. His mother, Edwina, was an archetype of the ‘Southern belle’, whose social aspirations tilted toward snobbery and whose behavior could be neurotic and hysterical. Shortly after his birth, his grandfather Dakin was assigned to a parish in Clarksdale, Mississippi and Williams' early childhood was spent in the parsonage there.
His family included an older sister Rose (1909–1996), and a younger brother, Dakin (1919–2008). ‘Tom’, as he was called in his youth, developed a close bond with his sister. Theater scholar Allean Hale notes that, born only sixteen months apart, they were “as inseparable as twins, sometimes referred to as ‘The Couple’.” Rose and their black nursemaid, Ozzie, were Williams' only companions as a child. Hale speculates that growing up in a female-dominated environment gave Williams empathy for the woman characters he created as a playwright. Shy, fragile and predisposed to emotional disturbances, eventually to the point of mental illness, Rose inspired a host of characters in his fiction.
As a small child Williams suffered a bout of diphtheria
which nearly ended his life and left him weak and virtually confined to his house during a period of recuperation that lasted a year. At least in part as a result of his illness, he was less robust as a child than his father would have wished. Cornelius Williams was a descendant of east Tennessee pioneer stock (hence Williams’ professional name) and a man prone to use his fists. He disdained his son’s effeminacy and his mother Edwina, locked in an unhappy marriage, focused her overbearing attention almost entirely on Tom. Williams would find inspiration in his dysfunctional family for much of his writing.
.
, a setting referred to in his work The Glass Menagerie
. Later he studied at University City High School
. At age 16, Williams won third prize (five dollars) for an essay published in Smart Set entitled, "Can a Good Wife Be a Good Sport?" A year later, his short story "The Vengeance of Nitocris
" was published in the magazine Weird Tales
.
From 1929 to 1931, he attended the University of Missouri
, in Columbia, where he enrolled in journalism classes. While the university's School of Journalism
was regarded one of the world's best, Williams found his classes boring. He was soon entering his poetry, essays, stories, and plays in writing contests, hoping to earn extra income. His first submitted play was Beauty is the Word (1930), followed by Hot Milk at Three in the Morning (1932). As recognition for Beauty, a play about rebellion against religious upbringing, he became the first freshman to receive honorable mention in a contest.
At Mizzou, Williams joined the Alpha Tau Omega
fraternity, but he did not seem to have fit in well with his fraternity brothers. According to Hale, the "brothers found him shy and socially backward, a loner who spent most of his time at the typewriter." After he failed military training in his junior year, his father pulled him out of school and put him to work at the International Shoe factory . Although Williams, then 21, hated the monotony of the blue-collar world, the job "forced him out of the pretentious gentility" of his upbringing, which had, according to Hale, "tinged him with [his mother's] snobbery and detachment from reality." His dislike of the nine-to-five work routine drove him to write even more than before, and he gave himself a goal of writing one story a week, working on Saturday and Sunday, into the night. His mother recalled his intensity:
Overworked, unhappy and lacking any further success with his writing, by his twenty-fourth birthday he had suffered a nervous breakdown and left his job. Memories of this period, and a particular factory co-worker, became part of the character Stanley Kowalski
in A Streetcar Named Desire
. By the mid-1930s his father's increasing alcoholism and abusive temper (he had part of his ear bitten off in a poker game fight) finally led Edwina to separate from him although they never divorced.
In 1936 Williams enrolled at Washington University in St. Louis
where he wrote the play Me Vashya (1937). In 1938 he earned a degree from the University of Iowa
, where he wrote Spring Storm. He later studied at the Dramatic Workshop
of The New School
in New York City
. Speaking of his early days as a playwright and referring to an early collaborative play called Cairo, Shanghai, Bombay!, produced while he was a part of an amateur summer theater group in Memphis, Tennessee, Williams wrote, "The laughter ... enchanted me. Then and there the theatre and I found each other for better and for worse. I know it's the only thing that saved my life." Around 1939, he adopted "Tennessee Williams" as his professional name. Whether it was from, as he once wrote, "a desire to climb the family tree," or that his fraternity brothers nicknamed him for his thick southern drawl, no one seems to know.
Hart Crane
, Anton Chekhov
, D.H. Lawrence, August Strindberg
, William Faulkner
, Thomas Wolfe
, Emily Dickinson
. In later years the list grew to include William Inge
, James Joyce
, and Ernest Hemingway
; of the latter, he said "[his] great quality, aside from his prose style, is this fearless expression of brute nature."
Using the remainder of the Rockefeller funds, Williams moved to New Orleans in 1939 to write for the Works Progress Administration
(WPA), a federally funded program begun by President Franklin D. Roosevelt which was created to put people back to work and helped many artists, musicians and writers survive during the Great Depression
. He lived for a time in the French Quarter
; first at 722 Toulouse Street, the setting of his 1977 play Vieux Carré
. (The building is now part of The Historic New Orleans Collection
).
During the winter of 1944-45, his "memory play" The Glass Menagerie
was successfully produced in Chicago
garnering good reviews. It moved to New York where it became an instant and enormous hit during its long Broadway run. The play tells the story of a young man, Tom, his disabled sister, Laura, and their controlling mother Amanda, who tries to make a match between Laura and a gentleman caller. Williams' use of his own familial relationships as inspiration for the play is impossible to miss. Elia Kazan
(who directed many of Williams' greatest successes) said of Williams: "Everything in his life is in his plays, and everything in his plays is in his life." The Glass Menagerie won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best play of the season.
The huge success of his next play, A Streetcar Named Desire
, in 1947 secured his reputation as a great playwright. Although widely celebrated and increasingly wealthy, he was still restless and insecure in the grip of fears that he would not be able to duplicate his success. During the late 1940s and 1950s Williams began to travel widely with his partner Frank Merlo, often spending summers in Europe. To stimulate his writing he moved often, to various cities including New York, New Orleans, Key West, Rome, Barcelona, and London. Williams wrote, "Only some radical change can divert the downward course of my spirit, some startling new place or people to arrest the drift, the drag."
Between 1948 and 1959 seven of his plays were performed on Broadway: Summer and Smoke
(1948), The Rose Tattoo
(1951), Camino Real
(1953), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
(1955), Orpheus Descending
(1957), Garden District
(1958), and Sweet Bird of Youth
(1959). By 1959 he had earned two Pulitzer Prize
s, three New York Drama Critics' Circle
Awards, three Donaldson Awards, and a Tony Award
.
His work reached world-wide audiences in the early 1950s when The Glass Menagerie
and A Streetcar Named Desire were made into motion pictures. Later plays also adapted for the screen included Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
, The Rose Tattoo
, Orpheus Descending
, The Night of the Iguana
and Summer and Smoke
.
After the extraordinary successes of the 1940s and 50s, the 1960s and 70s brought personal turmoil and theatrical failures. Although he continued to write every day, the quality of his work suffered from his increasing alcohol and drug consumption as well as often poor choices of collaborators. Consumed by depression over the death of his partner Merlo, and in and out of treatment facilities under the control of his mother and brother Dakin, Williams spiraled downward. Kingdom of Earth (1967), In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969), Small Craft Warnings (1973), The Two Character Play (also called Out Cry, 1973), The Red Devil Battery Sign (1976), Vieux Carré (1978), Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980) and others were all box office failures, and the relentlessly negative press notices wore down his spirit. His last play, A House Not Meant To Stand was produced in Chicago in 1982 and, despite largely positive reviews, ran for only 40 performances.
as a young adult and later institutionalized following a lobotomy
, visiting her at the facilities where she spent most of her adult life and paying for her care. The devastating effects of Rose's illness may have contributed to his alcoholism
and his dependence on various combinations of amphetamine
s and barbiturate
s.
After some early attempts at heterosexual relationships, by the late 1930s Williams had accepted his homosexuality. In New York he joined a gay social circle which included fellow writer and close friend Donald Windham
(1920–2010) and his then partner Fred Melton. In the summer of 1940 Williams initiated an affair with Kip Kiernan (1918–1944), a young Canadian dancer he met in Provincetown, Massachusetts
. When Kiernan left him for a woman and marriage he was distraught, and Kiernan's death four years later at 26 delivered another blow.
On a 1945 visit to Taos, New Mexico, Williams met Pancho Rodriguez y Gonzales, a hotel clerk of Mexican heritage. Rodriguez was, by all accounts, loving and loyal but also prone to jealous rages and excessive drinking, so the relationship was a tempestuous one. Nevertheless, in February 1946 Rodriguez left New Mexico to join Williams in his New Orleans apartment and they lived and traveled together until late 1947 when Williams ended the affair. Rodriguez and Williams remained friends, however, and were in contact as late as the 1970s.
Williams spent the spring and summer of 1948 in Rome in the company of a teenaged Italian boy to whom he provided financial assistance for several years afterward (a situation which planted the seed of Williams' first novel The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone). When he returned to New York that fall, he met and fell in love with Frank Phillip Merlo (1922–1963), an occasional actor of Sicilian heritage who had served in the U.S. Navy in World War II.
This one enduring romantic relationship of Williams' life lasted 14 years until infidelities and drug abuse on both sides ended it. Merlo, who became Williams' personal secretary taking on most of the details of their domestic life, provided a period of happiness and stability as well as a balance to the playwright's frequent bouts with depression
and the fear that, like his sister Rose, he would fall into insanity. Their years together, in an apartment in Manhattan and a modest house in Key West, Florida, were Williams' happiest and most productive. Shortly after their breakup, Merlo was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and Williams returned to take care of him until his death on September 21, 1963.
As he had feared, in the years following Merlo's death Williams was plunged into a period of nearly catatonic depression and increasing drug use resulting in several hospitalizations and commitments to mental health facilities. He submitted to injections by Dr. Max Jacobson
– known popularly as Dr. Feelgood – who used increasing amounts of amphetamines to overcome his depression and combined these with prescriptions for the sedative seconal to relieve his insomnia. Williams appeared several times in interviews in a nearly incoherent state, and his reputation both as a playwright and as a public personality suffered. He was never truly able to recoup his earlier success, or to entirely overcome his dependence on prescription drugs.
to death on the cap from a bottle of eyedrops he frequently used, further indicating that his use of drugs and alcohol may have contributed to his death by suppressing his gag reflex. Prescription drugs, including barbiturates, were found in the room.
Contrary to his expressed wishes but at his brother Dakin Williams' insistence, Williams was interred in the Calvary Cemetery
, St. Louis, Missouri
. Williams had long told his friends he wanted to be buried at sea at approximately the same place as Hart Crane
, a poet he considered to be one of his most significant influences.
Williams left his literary rights to The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee
in honor of his grandfather, Walter Dakin, an alumnus of the university. The funds support a creative writing program. When his sister Rose died in 1996 after many years in a mental institution, she bequeathed $7 million from her part of the Williams estate to The University of the South as well.
In late 2009, Williams was inducted into the Poet's Corner at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. Performers who took part in his induction included Vanessa Redgrave
, John Guare
, Eli Wallach
, Sylvia Miles
, Gregory Mosher
, and Ben Griessmeyer.
The Tennessee Williams Theater in Key West, Florida, is named for him.
At the time of his death, Williams had been working on a final play, In Masks Outrageous and Austere
, which attempted to reconcile certain forces and facts of his own life, a theme which ran throughout his work, as Elia Kazan had said. As of September 2007, author Gore Vidal
was in the process of completing the play, and Peter Bogdanovich
was slated to direct its Broadway debut.
The Williams family home in Columbus, Mississippi, was recently renovated and reopened.
Williams's literary legacy is represented by the literary agency headed by Georges Borchardt
.
Major plays
has also directed Williams' plays in addition to creating an edit of In Masks Outrageous and Austere
.
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
in the American theater. He also wrote short stories
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
, novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s, poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s, screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
s and a volume of memoirs. His professional career lasted from the mid 1930s until his death in 1983, and saw the creation of many plays that are regarded as classics of the American stage. Williams adapted much of his best known work for the cinema
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
.
Williams received virtually all of the top theatrical awards for his works of drama, including a Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
for best play for The Rose Tattoo
The Rose Tattoo
- External links :*...
(1951) and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
The Pulitzer Prize for Drama was first awarded in 1918.From 1918 to 2006, the Drama Prize was unlike the majority of the other Pulitzer Prizes: during these years, the eligibility period for the drama prize ran from March 2 to March 1, to reflect the Broadway 'season' rather than the calendar year...
for A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire (play)
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...
(1948) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955...
(1955). In 1980 he was honoured with the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Presidential Medal of Freedom
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with thecomparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States...
by President Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
and is today acknowledged as one of the most accomplished playwrights in the history of English speaking theater.
Theater scholar Charlotte Canning, of the University of Texas at Austin where William's archives are located, has said, "There is no more influential 20th-century American playwright than Tennessee Williams... He inspired future generations of writers as diverse as Suzan-Lori Parks
Suzan-Lori Parks
Suzan-Lori Parks is an African American playwright and screenwriter. She received the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001, and the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play, Topdog/Underdog.-Early years:...
, Tony Kushner
Tony Kushner
Anthony Robert "Tony" Kushner is an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, and co-authored with Eric Roth the screenplay for the 2005 film, Munich.-Life and career:Kushner was born...
, David Mamet
David Mamet
David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...
and John Waters
John Waters (filmmaker)
John Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, writer, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films...
, and his plays remain among the most produced in the world."
Childhood
Thomas Lanier Williams III was born of WelshWales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
and Huguenot
Huguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...
descent, in Columbus, Mississippi
Columbus, Mississippi
Columbus is a city in Lowndes County, Mississippi, United States that lies above the Tombigbee River. It is approximately northeast of Jackson, north of Meridian, south of Tupelo, northwest of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and west of Birmingham, Alabama. The population was 25,944 at the 2000 census...
, the second child of Edwina and Cornelius Williams. His grandfather, Walter Dakin, was the local Episcopal priest, and his maternal grandmother, Rose O. Dakin, was a music teacher. His father was a hard-drinking traveling shoe salesman who spent most of his time away from home. His mother, Edwina, was an archetype of the ‘Southern belle’, whose social aspirations tilted toward snobbery and whose behavior could be neurotic and hysterical. Shortly after his birth, his grandfather Dakin was assigned to a parish in Clarksdale, Mississippi and Williams' early childhood was spent in the parsonage there.
His family included an older sister Rose (1909–1996), and a younger brother, Dakin (1919–2008). ‘Tom’, as he was called in his youth, developed a close bond with his sister. Theater scholar Allean Hale notes that, born only sixteen months apart, they were “as inseparable as twins, sometimes referred to as ‘The Couple’.” Rose and their black nursemaid, Ozzie, were Williams' only companions as a child. Hale speculates that growing up in a female-dominated environment gave Williams empathy for the woman characters he created as a playwright. Shy, fragile and predisposed to emotional disturbances, eventually to the point of mental illness, Rose inspired a host of characters in his fiction.
As a small child Williams suffered a bout of diphtheria
Diphtheria
Diphtheria is an upper respiratory tract illness caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae, a facultative anaerobic, Gram-positive bacterium. It is characterized by sore throat, low fever, and an adherent membrane on the tonsils, pharynx, and/or nasal cavity...
which nearly ended his life and left him weak and virtually confined to his house during a period of recuperation that lasted a year. At least in part as a result of his illness, he was less robust as a child than his father would have wished. Cornelius Williams was a descendant of east Tennessee pioneer stock (hence Williams’ professional name) and a man prone to use his fists. He disdained his son’s effeminacy and his mother Edwina, locked in an unhappy marriage, focused her overbearing attention almost entirely on Tom. Williams would find inspiration in his dysfunctional family for much of his writing.
.
Education
When Williams was seven years old, his father was promoted to a job at the home office of the International Shoe Company in St. Louis. His mother's continual search for what she considered to be an appropriate address, as well as his father's heavy drinking and loudly violent behavior, caused them to move numerous times around the city. He attended Soldan High SchoolSoldan International Studies High School
Soldan International Studies High School is a public magnet high school in the Academy neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri that is part of the St. Louis Public Schools. From its opening in 1909, Soldan was known for its wealthy and predominantly Jewish student population...
, a setting referred to in his work The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie is a four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams. Williams worked on various drafts of the play prior to writing a version of it as a screenplay for MGM, to whom Williams was contracted...
. Later he studied at University City High School
University City High School (St. Louis)
University City High School is located in University City, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. As of 2009, 1,041 students were enrolled at the school.-Football:...
. At age 16, Williams won third prize (five dollars) for an essay published in Smart Set entitled, "Can a Good Wife Be a Good Sport?" A year later, his short story "The Vengeance of Nitocris
The Vengeance of Nitocris
"The Vengeance of Nitocris" is a short story by Tennessee Williams, written when Williams was 16 years old, and published in Weird Tales in its August, 1928 issue. The story is a "surprisingly lurid" tale of loosely historical fiction, based on the account of the semi-legendary female pharaoh...
" was published in the magazine Weird Tales
Weird Tales
Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....
.
From 1929 to 1931, he attended the University of Missouri
University of Missouri
The University of Missouri System is a state university system providing centralized administration for four universities, a health care system, an extension program, five research and technology parks, and a publishing press. More than 64,000 students are currently enrolled at its four campuses...
, in Columbia, where he enrolled in journalism classes. While the university's School of Journalism
Missouri School of Journalism
The Missouri School of Journalism at University of Missouri in Columbia, claims to be the oldest formal journalism school in the world. Founded in 1908, only the Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme de Paris established in 1899 may be older...
was regarded one of the world's best, Williams found his classes boring. He was soon entering his poetry, essays, stories, and plays in writing contests, hoping to earn extra income. His first submitted play was Beauty is the Word (1930), followed by Hot Milk at Three in the Morning (1932). As recognition for Beauty, a play about rebellion against religious upbringing, he became the first freshman to receive honorable mention in a contest.
At Mizzou, Williams joined the Alpha Tau Omega
Alpha Tau Omega
Alpha Tau Omega is a secret American leadership and social fraternity.The Fraternity has more than 250 active and inactive chapters, more than 200,000 initiates, and over 7,000 active undergraduate members. The 200,000th member was initiated in early 2009...
fraternity, but he did not seem to have fit in well with his fraternity brothers. According to Hale, the "brothers found him shy and socially backward, a loner who spent most of his time at the typewriter." After he failed military training in his junior year, his father pulled him out of school and put him to work at the International Shoe factory . Although Williams, then 21, hated the monotony of the blue-collar world, the job "forced him out of the pretentious gentility" of his upbringing, which had, according to Hale, "tinged him with [his mother's] snobbery and detachment from reality." His dislike of the nine-to-five work routine drove him to write even more than before, and he gave himself a goal of writing one story a week, working on Saturday and Sunday, into the night. His mother recalled his intensity:
- "Tom would go to his room with black coffee and cigarettes and I would hear the typewriter clicking away at night in the silent house. Some mornings when I walked in to wake him for work, I would find him sprawled fully dressed across the bed, too tired to remove his clothes."
Overworked, unhappy and lacking any further success with his writing, by his twenty-fourth birthday he had suffered a nervous breakdown and left his job. Memories of this period, and a particular factory co-worker, became part of the character Stanley Kowalski
Stanley Kowalski
Stanley Kowalski is a fictional character in Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire.-In the play:Stanley lives in the working class Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans with his wife, Stella , and is employed as a factory parts salesman. He was an Army engineer in WWII, having...
in A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire (play)
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...
. By the mid-1930s his father's increasing alcoholism and abusive temper (he had part of his ear bitten off in a poker game fight) finally led Edwina to separate from him although they never divorced.
In 1936 Williams enrolled at Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis is a private research university located in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1853, and named for George Washington, the university has students and faculty from all fifty U.S. states and more than 110 nations...
where he wrote the play Me Vashya (1937). In 1938 he earned a degree from the University of Iowa
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
, where he wrote Spring Storm. He later studied at the Dramatic Workshop
Dramatic Workshop
Dramatic Workshop was the name of a drama and acting school associated with the New School for Social Research in New York City. It was launched in 1940 by German expatriate stage director Erwin Piscator. Among the faculty were Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler, among the students Marlon Brando, Tony...
of The New School
The New School
The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Speaking of his early days as a playwright and referring to an early collaborative play called Cairo, Shanghai, Bombay!, produced while he was a part of an amateur summer theater group in Memphis, Tennessee, Williams wrote, "The laughter ... enchanted me. Then and there the theatre and I found each other for better and for worse. I know it's the only thing that saved my life." Around 1939, he adopted "Tennessee Williams" as his professional name. Whether it was from, as he once wrote, "a desire to climb the family tree," or that his fraternity brothers nicknamed him for his thick southern drawl, no one seems to know.
Early influences
Williams' writings include mention of some of the poets and writers he most admired in his early years:Hart Crane
Hart Crane
-Career:Throughout the early 1920s, small but well-respected literary magazines published some of Crane’s lyrics, gaining him, among the avant-garde, a respect that White Buildings , his first volume, ratified and strengthened...
, Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
, D.H. Lawrence, August Strindberg
August Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...
, William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
, Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Clayton Wolfe was a major American novelist of the early 20th century.Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels, plus many short stories, dramatic works and novellas. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing...
, Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...
. In later years the list grew to include William Inge
William Inge
William Motter Inge was an American playwright and novelist, whose works typically feature solitary protagonists encumbered with strained sexual relations. In the early 1950s, he had a string of memorable Broadway productions, and one of these, Picnic, earned him a Pulitzer Prize...
, James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, and Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
; of the latter, he said "[his] great quality, aside from his prose style, is this fearless expression of brute nature."
Career
In the late 1930s, as the young playwright struggled to have his work accepted, he supported himself with a string of menial jobs (including a notably disastrous stint as caretaker on a chicken ranch outside Los Angeles). In 1939, with the help of his agent, Audrey Wood, he was awarded a $1,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in recognition of his play Battle of Angels which was produced in Boston in 1940, but poorly received.Using the remainder of the Rockefeller funds, Williams moved to New Orleans in 1939 to write for the Works Progress Administration
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...
(WPA), a federally funded program begun by President Franklin D. Roosevelt which was created to put people back to work and helped many artists, musicians and writers survive during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. He lived for a time in the French Quarter
French Quarter
The French Quarter, also known as Vieux Carré, is the oldest neighborhood in the city of New Orleans. When New Orleans was founded in 1718 by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, the city was originally centered on the French Quarter, or the Vieux Carré as it was known then...
; first at 722 Toulouse Street, the setting of his 1977 play Vieux Carré
Vieux Carré (play)
Vieux Carré is a play by Tennessee Williams. It is an autobiographical play set in New Orleans. Although he began writing it shortly after moving to New Orleans in 1938, it wasn't completed until nearly forty years later.- Plot synopsis :...
. (The building is now part of The Historic New Orleans Collection
The Historic New Orleans Collection
The Historic New Orleans Collection is a museum, research center, and publisher dedicated to the study and preservation of the history and culture of New Orleans and the Gulf South region of the United States. It is located in New Orleans' French Quarter. The institution was established in 1966...
).
During the winter of 1944-45, his "memory play" The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie is a four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams. Williams worked on various drafts of the play prior to writing a version of it as a screenplay for MGM, to whom Williams was contracted...
was successfully produced in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
garnering good reviews. It moved to New York where it became an instant and enormous hit during its long Broadway run. The play tells the story of a young man, Tom, his disabled sister, Laura, and their controlling mother Amanda, who tries to make a match between Laura and a gentleman caller. Williams' use of his own familial relationships as inspiration for the play is impossible to miss. Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...
(who directed many of Williams' greatest successes) said of Williams: "Everything in his life is in his plays, and everything in his plays is in his life." The Glass Menagerie won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best play of the season.
The huge success of his next play, A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire (play)
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...
, in 1947 secured his reputation as a great playwright. Although widely celebrated and increasingly wealthy, he was still restless and insecure in the grip of fears that he would not be able to duplicate his success. During the late 1940s and 1950s Williams began to travel widely with his partner Frank Merlo, often spending summers in Europe. To stimulate his writing he moved often, to various cities including New York, New Orleans, Key West, Rome, Barcelona, and London. Williams wrote, "Only some radical change can divert the downward course of my spirit, some startling new place or people to arrest the drift, the drag."
Between 1948 and 1959 seven of his plays were performed on Broadway: Summer and Smoke
Summer and Smoke
Summer and Smoke is a two-part, thirteen-scene play by Tennessee Williams, originally titled Chart of Anatomy when Williams began work on it in 1945. In 1964, Williams revised the play as The Eccentricities of a Nightingale...
(1948), The Rose Tattoo
The Rose Tattoo
- External links :*...
(1951), Camino Real
Camino Real (play)
Camino Real is a 1953 play by Tennessee Williams. In the introduction to the Penguin edition of the play, Williams directs the reader to use the Anglicized pronunciation "Cá-mino Réal." The play takes its title from its setting, alluded to El Camino Real, a dead-end place in a Spanish-speaking town...
(1953), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955...
(1955), Orpheus Descending
Orpheus Descending
Orpheus Descending is a play by Tennessee Williams. It was first presented on Broadway in 1957 where it enjoyed a brief run with only modest success. The play is basically a rewrite of an earlier play by Williams called Battle of Angels, which was written in 1940, but had been closed on its opening...
(1957), Garden District
Garden District
-Place names:Canada* Garden District, TorontoUnited Statesby state then city*Garden District , listed on the NRHP in Alabama* Garden District, DeLand, Florida* Garden District, Baton Rouge, Louisiana...
(1958), and Sweet Bird of Youth
Sweet Bird of Youth
Sweet Bird of Youth is a 1959 play by Tennessee Williams which tells the story of a gigolo and drifter, Chance Wayne, who returns to his home town as the accompaniment of a faded movie star, Princess Kosmonopolis , whom he hopes to use to help him break into the movies...
(1959). By 1959 he had earned two Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
s, three New York Drama Critics' Circle
New York Drama Critics' Circle
The New York Drama Critics' Circle is made up of 24 drama critics from daily newspapers, magazines and wire services based in the New York City metropolitan area. The organization was founded in 1935 at the Algonquin Hotel by a group that included Brooks Atkinson, Walter Winchell, and Robert Benchley...
Awards, three Donaldson Awards, and a Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
.
His work reached world-wide audiences in the early 1950s when The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie (1950 film)
The Glass Menagerie is a 1950 American drama film directed by Irving Rapper. The screenplay by Tennessee Williams and Peter Berneis is based on the 1944 Williams play of the same title. It was the first of his plays to be adapted for the screen.-Plot:...
and A Streetcar Named Desire were made into motion pictures. Later plays also adapted for the screen included Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955...
, The Rose Tattoo
The Rose Tattoo
- External links :*...
, Orpheus Descending
Orpheus Descending
Orpheus Descending is a play by Tennessee Williams. It was first presented on Broadway in 1957 where it enjoyed a brief run with only modest success. The play is basically a rewrite of an earlier play by Williams called Battle of Angels, which was written in 1940, but had been closed on its opening...
, The Night of the Iguana
The Night of the Iguana
The Night of the Iguana is a stageplay written by American author Tennessee Williams, based on his 1948 short story. The play premiered on Broadway in 1961. Two film adaptations have been made, including the Academy Award-winning 1964 film of the same name....
and Summer and Smoke
Summer and Smoke
Summer and Smoke is a two-part, thirteen-scene play by Tennessee Williams, originally titled Chart of Anatomy when Williams began work on it in 1945. In 1964, Williams revised the play as The Eccentricities of a Nightingale...
.
After the extraordinary successes of the 1940s and 50s, the 1960s and 70s brought personal turmoil and theatrical failures. Although he continued to write every day, the quality of his work suffered from his increasing alcohol and drug consumption as well as often poor choices of collaborators. Consumed by depression over the death of his partner Merlo, and in and out of treatment facilities under the control of his mother and brother Dakin, Williams spiraled downward. Kingdom of Earth (1967), In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969), Small Craft Warnings (1973), The Two Character Play (also called Out Cry, 1973), The Red Devil Battery Sign (1976), Vieux Carré (1978), Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980) and others were all box office failures, and the relentlessly negative press notices wore down his spirit. His last play, A House Not Meant To Stand was produced in Chicago in 1982 and, despite largely positive reviews, ran for only 40 performances.
Personal life
Williams remained close to his sister Rose, who was diagnosed with schizophreniaSchizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
as a young adult and later institutionalized following a lobotomy
Lobotomy
Lobotomy "; τομή – tomē: "cut/slice") is a neurosurgical procedure, a form of psychosurgery, also known as a leukotomy or leucotomy . It consists of cutting the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex, the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain...
, visiting her at the facilities where she spent most of her adult life and paying for her care. The devastating effects of Rose's illness may have contributed to his alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
and his dependence on various combinations of amphetamine
Amphetamine
Amphetamine or amfetamine is a psychostimulant drug of the phenethylamine class which produces increased wakefulness and focus in association with decreased fatigue and appetite.Brand names of medications that contain, or metabolize into, amphetamine include Adderall, Dexedrine, Dextrostat,...
s and barbiturate
Barbiturate
Barbiturates are drugs that act as central nervous system depressants, and can therefore produce a wide spectrum of effects, from mild sedation to total anesthesia. They are also effective as anxiolytics, as hypnotics, and as anticonvulsants...
s.
After some early attempts at heterosexual relationships, by the late 1930s Williams had accepted his homosexuality. In New York he joined a gay social circle which included fellow writer and close friend Donald Windham
Donald Windham
Donald Windham was an American novelist and memoirist. He is perhaps best known for his close friendships with Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Windham moved with his then-boyfriend Fred Melton, an artist, to New York City in 1939. Windham collaborated with Williams...
(1920–2010) and his then partner Fred Melton. In the summer of 1940 Williams initiated an affair with Kip Kiernan (1918–1944), a young Canadian dancer he met in Provincetown, Massachusetts
Provincetown, Massachusetts
Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 3,431 at the 2000 census, with an estimated 2007 population of 3,174...
. When Kiernan left him for a woman and marriage he was distraught, and Kiernan's death four years later at 26 delivered another blow.
On a 1945 visit to Taos, New Mexico, Williams met Pancho Rodriguez y Gonzales, a hotel clerk of Mexican heritage. Rodriguez was, by all accounts, loving and loyal but also prone to jealous rages and excessive drinking, so the relationship was a tempestuous one. Nevertheless, in February 1946 Rodriguez left New Mexico to join Williams in his New Orleans apartment and they lived and traveled together until late 1947 when Williams ended the affair. Rodriguez and Williams remained friends, however, and were in contact as late as the 1970s.
Williams spent the spring and summer of 1948 in Rome in the company of a teenaged Italian boy to whom he provided financial assistance for several years afterward (a situation which planted the seed of Williams' first novel The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone). When he returned to New York that fall, he met and fell in love with Frank Phillip Merlo (1922–1963), an occasional actor of Sicilian heritage who had served in the U.S. Navy in World War II.
This one enduring romantic relationship of Williams' life lasted 14 years until infidelities and drug abuse on both sides ended it. Merlo, who became Williams' personal secretary taking on most of the details of their domestic life, provided a period of happiness and stability as well as a balance to the playwright's frequent bouts with depression
Depression (mood)
Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless...
and the fear that, like his sister Rose, he would fall into insanity. Their years together, in an apartment in Manhattan and a modest house in Key West, Florida, were Williams' happiest and most productive. Shortly after their breakup, Merlo was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and Williams returned to take care of him until his death on September 21, 1963.
As he had feared, in the years following Merlo's death Williams was plunged into a period of nearly catatonic depression and increasing drug use resulting in several hospitalizations and commitments to mental health facilities. He submitted to injections by Dr. Max Jacobson
Max Jacobson
Max Jacobson was a German-born New York physician, nicknamed "Dr. Feelgood" who administered dangerous levels of amphetamines and other medications to several high profile clients including American President John F...
– known popularly as Dr. Feelgood – who used increasing amounts of amphetamines to overcome his depression and combined these with prescriptions for the sedative seconal to relieve his insomnia. Williams appeared several times in interviews in a nearly incoherent state, and his reputation both as a playwright and as a public personality suffered. He was never truly able to recoup his earlier success, or to entirely overcome his dependence on prescription drugs.
Death
On February 25, 1983, Williams was found dead in his suite at the Elysee Hotel in New York at age 71. The medical examiner's report indicated that he chokedChoking
Choking is the mechanical obstruction of the flow of air from the environment into the lungs. Choking prevents breathing, and can be partial or complete, with partial choking allowing some, although inadequate, flow of air into the lungs. Prolonged or complete choking results in asphyxia which...
to death on the cap from a bottle of eyedrops he frequently used, further indicating that his use of drugs and alcohol may have contributed to his death by suppressing his gag reflex. Prescription drugs, including barbiturates, were found in the room.
Contrary to his expressed wishes but at his brother Dakin Williams' insistence, Williams was interred in the Calvary Cemetery
Bellefontaine and Calvary Cemeteries
Bellefontaine Cemetery and the Roman Catholic Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri are adjacent burial grounds, which have numerous historic and extravagant tombstones and mausoleums. They are the necropolis for a number of prominent local and state politicians, as well as soldiers of the...
, St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
. Williams had long told his friends he wanted to be buried at sea at approximately the same place as Hart Crane
Hart Crane
-Career:Throughout the early 1920s, small but well-respected literary magazines published some of Crane’s lyrics, gaining him, among the avant-garde, a respect that White Buildings , his first volume, ratified and strengthened...
, a poet he considered to be one of his most significant influences.
Williams left his literary rights to The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee
Sewanee, Tennessee
Sewanee is an unincorporated locality in Franklin County, Tennessee, United States, treated by the U.S. Census as a census-designated place . The population was 2,361 at the 2000 census...
in honor of his grandfather, Walter Dakin, an alumnus of the university. The funds support a creative writing program. When his sister Rose died in 1996 after many years in a mental institution, she bequeathed $7 million from her part of the Williams estate to The University of the South as well.
Posthumous recognition
From February 1 to July 21, 2011, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, the home of Williams' archive, exhibited 250 of his personal items. The exhibit, entitled "Becoming Tennessee Williams," included a collection of Williams manuscripts, correspondence, photographs and artwork.In late 2009, Williams was inducted into the Poet's Corner at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. Performers who took part in his induction included Vanessa Redgrave
Vanessa Redgrave
Vanessa Redgrave, CBE is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist.She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning...
, John Guare
John Guare
John Guare is an American playwright. He is best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation, and Landscape of the Body...
, Eli Wallach
Eli Wallach
Eli Herschel Wallach is an American film, television and stage actor, who gained fame in the late 1950s. For his performance in Baby Doll he won a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer and a Golden Globe nomination. One of his most famous roles is that of Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...
, Sylvia Miles
Sylvia Miles
-Early life and career:Miles was born Sylvia Reuben Lee in New York City, the daughter of Belle and Reuben Lee, a furniture maker....
, Gregory Mosher
Gregory Mosher
Gregory Mosher is a long time director and producer of stage productions – at the Lincoln Center and Goodman Theatres, on and off-Broadway, at the Royal National Theatre, and in the West End. He is also a film and television director, producer, and writer...
, and Ben Griessmeyer.
The Tennessee Williams Theater in Key West, Florida, is named for him.
At the time of his death, Williams had been working on a final play, In Masks Outrageous and Austere
In Masks Outrageous and Austere
In Masks Outrageous and Austere is the final, full-length play of Tennessee Williams written between 1978 and the fall of 1982.- Subject :The subject of In Masks Outrageous and Austere according to Gore Vidal is death and also corporate greed...
, which attempted to reconcile certain forces and facts of his own life, a theme which ran throughout his work, as Elia Kazan had said. As of September 2007, author Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
was in the process of completing the play, and Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich is an American film historian, director, writer, actor, producer, and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino, and Francis Ford Coppola...
was slated to direct its Broadway debut.
The Williams family home in Columbus, Mississippi, was recently renovated and reopened.
Williams's literary legacy is represented by the literary agency headed by Georges Borchardt
Georges Borchardt
Georges Borchardt is a well-respected literary agent in America; he has represented figures ranging from General Charles de Gaulle to Jane Fonda.-Early life:...
.
Plays
Apprentice plays- Candles to the Sun (1936)
- Spring StormSpring StormSpring Storm is a 1937 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams. Tennessee Williams wrote Spring Storm when he was twenty-six years old, in 1937, while studying as an apprentice. Spring Storm received poor reviews in Williams’s playwriting course, and it did not receive its first...
(1937) - Me Vaysha (1937)'
- Fugitive KindFugitive KindFugitive Kind is a 1937 play written by Tennessee Williams. The play is evocative of a Clifford Odets Depression era play. The action takes place in a flophouse in Two Rivers, Mississippi during the waning days of 1936, as the New Year 1937 is imminent...
(1937) - Not About NightingalesNot About NightingalesNot About Nightingales is a three act play written by Tennessee Williams in 1938. The play itself focuses on a group of inmates who go on a hunger strike in attempt to better their situation. There is also a soft love story, with the characters Eva, the new secretary at the prison, and Jim, a...
(1938) - I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix (1941)
- Orpheus DescendingOrpheus DescendingOrpheus Descending is a play by Tennessee Williams. It was first presented on Broadway in 1957 where it enjoyed a brief run with only modest success. The play is basically a rewrite of an earlier play by Williams called Battle of Angels, which was written in 1940, but had been closed on its opening...
(1945) - You Touched Me (1945)
- Stairs to the RoofStairs to the RoofStairs to the Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams, the last of his apprentice plays. It was completed in December 1941, and premiered at the Pasadena Playhouse on February 26, 1947....
(1947)
Major plays
- The Glass MenagerieThe Glass MenagerieThe Glass Menagerie is a four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams. Williams worked on various drafts of the play prior to writing a version of it as a screenplay for MGM, to whom Williams was contracted...
(1944) - A Streetcar Named DesireA Streetcar Named Desire (play)A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...
(1947) - Summer and SmokeSummer and SmokeSummer and Smoke is a two-part, thirteen-scene play by Tennessee Williams, originally titled Chart of Anatomy when Williams began work on it in 1945. In 1964, Williams revised the play as The Eccentricities of a Nightingale...
(1948) - The Rose TattooThe Rose Tattoo- External links :*...
(1951) - Camino RealCamino Real (play)Camino Real is a 1953 play by Tennessee Williams. In the introduction to the Penguin edition of the play, Williams directs the reader to use the Anglicized pronunciation "Cá-mino Réal." The play takes its title from its setting, alluded to El Camino Real, a dead-end place in a Spanish-speaking town...
(1953) - Cat on a Hot Tin RoofCat on a Hot Tin RoofCat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955...
(1955) - Orpheus DescendingOrpheus DescendingOrpheus Descending is a play by Tennessee Williams. It was first presented on Broadway in 1957 where it enjoyed a brief run with only modest success. The play is basically a rewrite of an earlier play by Williams called Battle of Angels, which was written in 1940, but had been closed on its opening...
(1957) - Suddenly, Last SummerSuddenly, Last SummerSuddenly, Last Summer is a one-act play by Tennessee Williams. It opened off Broadway on January 7, 1958, as part of a double bill with another of Williams's one-acts, Something Unspoken. The presentation of the two plays was given the overall title Garden District, but Suddenly, Last Summer is...
(1958) - Sweet Bird of YouthSweet Bird of YouthSweet Bird of Youth is a 1959 play by Tennessee Williams which tells the story of a gigolo and drifter, Chance Wayne, who returns to his home town as the accompaniment of a faded movie star, Princess Kosmonopolis , whom he hopes to use to help him break into the movies...
(1959) - Period of AdjustmentPeriod of AdjustmentPeriod of Adjustment is a 1960 play by Tennessee Williams that was adapted for the screen in 1962.Both the stage and film versions are set on Christmas Eve and tell the gentle, light-hearted story of two couples, one newlywed and the other married for five years, both experiencing pains and...
(1960) - The Night of the IguanaThe Night of the IguanaThe Night of the Iguana is a stageplay written by American author Tennessee Williams, based on his 1948 short story. The play premiered on Broadway in 1961. Two film adaptations have been made, including the Academy Award-winning 1964 film of the same name....
(1961) - The Eccentricities of a Nightingale (1962, rewriting of Summer and Smoke)
- The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here AnymoreThe Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here AnymoreThe Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore is a play written by Tennessee Williams.It debuted at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy, in July 1962. Its first American production was in January 1963, but it only ran for 69 performances at the Morosco Theatre in New York. Reviews of the play...
(1963) - The Mutilated (1965)
- The Seven Descents of MyrtleThe Seven Descents of MyrtleThe Seven Descents of Myrtle is a play by Tennessee Williams. Its title character is reminiscent of another Williams' heroine, Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire....
(1968, aka Kingdom of Earth) - In the Bar of a Tokyo HotelIn the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel- Synopsis :Mark is an alcoholic painter on the verge of a nervous breakdown who is trying to boost his sagging career by developing a new style in his Tokyo hotel room...
(1969) - Will Mr. Merriweather Return from Memphis?Will Mr. Merriweather Return from Memphis?Will Mr. Merriweather Return from Memphis? is a play by Tennessee Williams.Although he wrote it in 1969, it wasn't staged until January 1980, when the Tennessee Williams Fine Arts Center, situated on the campus of Florida Keys Community College, presented it as their opening production...
(1969) - Small Craft WarningsSmall Craft WarningsSmall Craft Warnings is a play by Tennessee Williams, an expansion of an earlier one-act play, Confessional, that was included in the Williams Dragon Country compilation of 1970...
(1972) - The Two-Character PlayThe Two-Character PlayThe Two Character Play, also known as Out Cry in one of its alternate versions, is a play by Tennessee Williams written 25 years after his famous A Streetcar Named Desire. It was one of most personal works...
(1973) - Out CryOut CryOut Cry is a play by Tennessee Williams which was one version of The Two-Character Play by Williams. Out Cry premiered at the Ivanhoe Theatre in Chicago on July 8, 1971. It debuted on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre with a preview on February 28, 1973 and then ran from March 1-10...
(1973, rewriting of The Two-Character Play) - The Red Devil Battery SignThe Red Devil Battery SignThe Red Devil Battery Sign is a 1975 drama written by American playwright Tennessee Williams. It was revised substantially before publication....
(1975) - This Is (An Entertainment)This Is (An Entertainment)This Is is a play by Tennessee Williams. Similar in plot to that of Idiot's Delight by Robert E. Sherwood, it focuses on a hedonistic countess, the wife of a wealthy manufacturer of ammunition, who arrives at an elegant resort hotel in the midst of a war-torn Central European country in search of...
(1976) - Vieux CarréVieux Carré (play)Vieux Carré is a play by Tennessee Williams. It is an autobiographical play set in New Orleans. Although he began writing it shortly after moving to New Orleans in 1938, it wasn't completed until nearly forty years later.- Plot synopsis :...
(1977) - A Lovely Sunday for Creve CoeurA Lovely Sunday for Creve CoeurA Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur is a one-act play with two scenes by Tennessee Williams.-Plot synopsis:Set in St. Louis in the mid-1930s, the play focuses on four women struggling for a sense of identity and independence. Dorothea, a deluded Blanche DuBois-like middle-aged civics teacher at the...
(1979) - Clothes for a Summer HotelClothes for a Summer HotelClothes for a Summer Hotel is a 1980 play by Tennessee Williams about the relationship between novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. A critical and commercial failure, it was Williams' last play to debut on Broadway during his lifetime...
(1980) - The Notebook of TrigorinThe Notebook of TrigorinThe Notebook of Trigorin is a play by American playwright Tennessee Williams. It is an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull.The play was first produced in 1981 by the Vancouver Playhouse in Vancouver, British Columbia...
(1980) - Something Cloudy, Something ClearSomething Cloudy, Something ClearSomething Cloudy, Something Clear is an autobiographical play by Tennessee Williams that was originally written in 1941 as a short play titled The Parade, or Approaching the End of a Summer, which was produced posthumously in Provincetown in 2006. In 1962, Williams retitled and expanded The Parade...
(1981) - A House Not Meant to StandA House Not Meant to StandA House Not Meant to Stand is the last play written by Tennessee Williams. It was produced during the 1981–82 season at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago by Gregory Mosher and published for the first time in 2008 by New Directions...
(1982) - In Masks Outrageous and AustereIn Masks Outrageous and AustereIn Masks Outrageous and Austere is the final, full-length play of Tennessee Williams written between 1978 and the fall of 1982.- Subject :The subject of In Masks Outrageous and Austere according to Gore Vidal is death and also corporate greed...
(1983)
Novels
- The Roman Spring of Mrs. StoneThe Roman Spring of Mrs. StoneThe Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is a 1961 British film made by Seven Arts-Warner Bros. It was directed by José Quintero and produced by Louis De Rochemont with Lothar Wolff as associate producer. The screenplay was written by Gavin Lambert and Jan Read and based on the novel by Tennessee Williams...
(1950, adapted into a film in 1961) - Moise and the World of Reason (1975)
Screenplays and teleplays
- The Glass MenagerieThe Glass Menagerie (1950 film)The Glass Menagerie is a 1950 American drama film directed by Irving Rapper. The screenplay by Tennessee Williams and Peter Berneis is based on the 1944 Williams play of the same title. It was the first of his plays to be adapted for the screen.-Plot:...
(1950) - A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
- The Rose Tattoo (1955)
- Baby DollBaby DollBaby Doll is a 1956 black comedy /drama film directed by Elia Kazan. It was produced by Kazan and Tennessee Williams, and adapted by Williams from his own one-act play 27 Wagons Full of Cotton...
(1956) - Cat on a Hot Tin RoofCat on a Hot Tin Roof (film)Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a 1958 American drama film directed by Richard Brooks. It is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name by Tennessee Williams adapted by Richard Brooks and James Poe...
(1958) - Suddenly, Last SummerSuddenly, Last Summer (film)Suddenly, Last Summer is a 1959 American Southern Gothic mystery film based on the play of the same title by Tennessee Williams. The film was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and produced by Sam Spiegel from a screenplay by Gore Vidal and Williams. The music score was by Buxton Orr using themes by...
(1959) - The Fugitive KindThe Fugitive KindThe Fugitive Kind is a 1959 American drama film directed by Sidney Lumet. The screenplay by Meade Roberts and Tennessee Williams was based on the latter's 1957 play Orpheus Descending, itself a revision of his unproduced 1939 work Battle of Angels....
(1959) - Ten Blocks on the Camino Real (1966)
- Boom!Boom! (1968 film)Boom! is a 1968 British drama film starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Noël Coward. It was directed by Joseph Losey and adapted from Tennessee Williams' play The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore.-Plot:...
(1968) - The Loss of a Teardrop DiamondThe Loss of a Teardrop DiamondThe Loss of a Teardrop Diamond is a 2009 film by director Jodie Markell. The film is based on Tennessee Williams's long-forgotten 1957 screenplay. The film stars Bryce Dallas Howard in the leading role of Fisher Willow.- Plot :...
(2009; screenplay from 1957)
Short stories
- The Vengeance of NitocrisThe Vengeance of Nitocris"The Vengeance of Nitocris" is a short story by Tennessee Williams, written when Williams was 16 years old, and published in Weird Tales in its August, 1928 issue. The story is a "surprisingly lurid" tale of loosely historical fiction, based on the account of the semi-legendary female pharaoh...
(1928) - The Field of Blue Children (1939)
- The Resemblance Between a Violin Case and a Coffin (1951)
- Hard Candy: A Book of StoriesHard Candy: A Book of StoriesHard Candy: A Book of Stories is a 1954 collection of short stories by American playwright and writer Tennessee Williams.The 1967 New Directions paperback edition, dedicated to Jane and Paul Bowles, notes that "Hard Candy" is a later version of "Mysteries of the Joy Rio", but even though on the...
(1954) - Three Players of a Summer Game and Other Stories (1960)
- The Knightly Quest: a Novella and Four Short Stories (1966)
- One Arm and Other Stories (1967)
- One Arm
- The Malediction
- The Poet
- Chronicle of a Demise
- Desire and the Black Masseur
- Portrait of a Girl in Glass
- The Important Thing
- The Angel in the Alcove
- The Field of Blue Children
- The Night of the IguanaThe Night of the IguanaThe Night of the Iguana is a stageplay written by American author Tennessee Williams, based on his 1948 short story. The play premiered on Broadway in 1961. Two film adaptations have been made, including the Academy Award-winning 1964 film of the same name....
- The Yellow Bird
- Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed: a Book of Stories (1974)
- Tent Worms (1980)
- It Happened the day the Sun Rose, and Other Stories (1981)
One-act plays
Tennessee Williams wrote over 70 one-act plays during his lifetime. The one-acts explored many of the same themes that dominated his longer works. Williams' major collections are published by New Directions in New York City.- American BluesAmerican BluesAmerican Blues were a 1960s Texas-based garage band who played a psychedelic style of blues rock music influenced by the 13th Floor Elevators. They are most famous for including two future members of the band ZZ Top in their ranks, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard...
(1948) - Mister Paradise and Other One-Act Plays
- Dragon Country: a book of one-act plays (1970)
- The Traveling Companion and Other PlaysThe Traveling Companion and Other PlaysThe Traveling Companion and Other Plays is a collection of experimental plays written by American playwright Tennessee Williams and published by New Directions in New York City in 2008. It is edited by Williams scholar Annette Saddik, who provides the introduction...
- 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays (1946 and 1953)
- «Something wild...» (introduction) (1953)
- 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946 and 1953)
- The Purification (1946 and 1953)
- The Lady of Larkspur Lotion (1946 and 1953)
- The Last of My Solid Gold Watches (1946 and 1953)
- Portrait of a Madonna (1946 and 1953)
- Auto-da-Fé (1946 and 1953)
- Lord Byron's Love Letter (1946 and 1953)
- The Strangest Kind of Romance (1946 and 1953)
- The Long Goodbye (1946 and 1953)
- At Liberty (1946)
- Moony's Kid Don't Cry (1946)
- Hello from Bertha (1946 and 1953)
- This Property Is Condemned (1946 and 1953)
- Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen... (1953)
- Something Unspoken (1953)
- The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Volume VI
- The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Volume VII
Selected works
- Gussow, Mel and Holditch, Kenneth, eds. Tennessee Williams, Plays 1937-1955 (Library of AmericaLibrary of AmericaThe Library of America is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.- Overview and history :Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip...
, 2000) ISBN 978-1-883011-86-4.- Spring Storm
- Not About Nightingales
- Battle of Angels
- I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix
- from 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946)
- 27 Wagons Full of Cotton
- The Lady of Larkspur Lotion
- The Last of My Solid Gold Watches
- Portrait of a Madonna
- Auto-da-Fé
- Lord Byron's Love Letter
- This Property Is Condemned
- The Glass Menagerie
- A Streetcar Named Desire
- Summer and Smoke
- The Rose Tattoo
- Camino Real
- from 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1953)
- "Something Wild"
- Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen
- Something Unspoken
- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
- Gussow, Mel and Holditch, Kenneth, eds. Tennessee Williams, Plays 1957-1980 (Library of AmericaLibrary of AmericaThe Library of America is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.- Overview and history :Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip...
, 2000) ISBN 978-1-883011-87-1.- Orpheus DescendingOrpheus DescendingOrpheus Descending is a play by Tennessee Williams. It was first presented on Broadway in 1957 where it enjoyed a brief run with only modest success. The play is basically a rewrite of an earlier play by Williams called Battle of Angels, which was written in 1940, but had been closed on its opening...
- Suddenly Last Summer
- Sweet Bird of Youth
- Period of Adjustment
- The Night of the Iguana
- The Eccentricities of a Nightingale
- The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here AnymoreThe Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here AnymoreThe Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore is a play written by Tennessee Williams.It debuted at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy, in July 1962. Its first American production was in January 1963, but it only ran for 69 performances at the Morosco Theatre in New York. Reviews of the play...
- The Mutilated
- Kingdom of Earth (The Seven Descents of Myrtle)
- Small Craft Warnings
- Out Cry
- Vieux Carré
- A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur
- Orpheus Descending
Related works
A book is coming out soon by a former assistant, Scott. John UeckerJohn Uecker
John Uecker is a producer, director, actor, and editor whose work may be considered to occur in the genre and forms of magic realism, metarealism, poetic realism or heightened realism...
has also directed Williams' plays in addition to creating an edit of In Masks Outrageous and Austere
In Masks Outrageous and Austere
In Masks Outrageous and Austere is the final, full-length play of Tennessee Williams written between 1978 and the fall of 1982.- Subject :The subject of In Masks Outrageous and Austere according to Gore Vidal is death and also corporate greed...
.
See also
- Lanier family treeLanier family treeThe Lanier family tree contains a number of musicians in the British royal court. This tree is not complete but is focused on showing the relationship of the well-known members of the family.-Sources:***...
- Virginia Spencer CarrVirginia Spencer CarrVirginia Spencer Carr is an award-winning biographer of Carson McCullers, John Dos Passos and Paul Bowles....
, friend and biographer of Williams - Tennessee Williams/ New Orleans Literary FestivalTennessee Williams/ New Orleans Literary FestivalThe Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival is an annual five-day literary festival in the city of New Orleans. The festival is dedicated to the Pulitzer prize-winning American playwright Tennessee Williams...
External links
- The Paris Review Interview
- Tennessee Williams at 100: Tribute - slideshow by Life magazine
- New Directions Publishing Corporation
- Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
- Monologues by Tennessee Williams at Monologue Search
- A Streetcar Named Desire: Study Guide
- Portrait of Tennessee Williams by Margaret Holland SargentMargaret Holland SargentMargaret Holland Sargent also known as Meg Sargent is a portrait artist based in Los Angeles, California. She has painted over three hundred oil portraits, including portraits of Tennessee Williams, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Margaret Thatcher.Sargent has frequently painted portraits of...
- Booksfactory article.
- A photograph of Tennessee Williams by Yousuf KarshYousuf KarshYousuf Karsh, CC was a Canadian photographer of Armenian heritage, and one of the most famous and accomplished portrait photographers of all time.-Biography:...
on the website of the National Gallery of AustraliaNational Gallery of AustraliaThe National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...
. - Williams' Entry on the St. Louis Walk of Fame
- Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival
- Tennessee Williams biography
- Berkeley Repertory Theatre: Suddenly Last Summer
- Interpreting Tennessee Williams - Working in the Theatre Seminar video at American Theatre Wing.orgAmerican Theatre WingThe American Theatre Wing is a New York City-based organization "dedicated to supporting excellence and education in theatre," according to its mission statement...
, April 2005 - American Experience on PBS. Tennessee Williams is featured in this documentary about New Orleans first aired February 12, 2007.
- Tennessee Williams Annual Review Journal published both electronically and in print by The Historic New Orleans Collection
- Tennessee and The Roman Muse: Tennessee Williams, his Time in Rome and his Friendship with Anna Magnani
- FamilySearch: Samuel Taylor Geer's Pedigree Resource File - Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams
- Tennessee Williams Collection (MUM00482) owned by the University of Mississippi Department of Archives and Special Collections.
- Tennessee Williams' Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin
- A celebration of Tennessee Williams
- 1980 Recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
- Tennessee Williams audio resources at TheEnglishCollection.com