Tennessee Williams

• Born: 26 March 1911
• Birthplace: Columbus, Mississippi
• Died: 25 February 1983 (choked on bottlecap)
• Best Known As: Pulitzer-winning author of A Streetcar Named Desire

Name at birth: Thomas Lanier Williams

Tennessee Williams wrote smoldering, passionate, conflicted dramas that attracted top actors and gave 20th-century American theater and film some of its most complex and enduring material. Reared in Mississippi and Missouri, Williams experienced the beauty of the South and the warmth of family as well as turmoil--including his father's emotional volatility and his own and his sister's depression--that later showed up in his plays. His greatest hit, the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), featured Marlon Brando's Stanley Kowalski bellowing for his wife, "Stellaaaaah," and Jessica Tandy's Blanche DuBois declaring, "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." Original productions and revivals of Williams' work on stage, screen and TV drew the likes of Karl Malden and Anthony Quinn (Streetcar), Christopher Walken (Sweet Bird of Youth), Katharine Hepburn (The Glass Menagerie), Burl Ives and Ben Gazzara (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), and Bette Davis (Night of the Iguana). Troubled by anxiety, alcohol and drugs throughout his adult life, Williams choked to death in his New York City apartment when the cap of a medicine bottle, which he apparently used as a spoon for pills, got caught in his throat.

Among Williams' numerous honors were another Pulitzer (Cat, 1955) and a Tony Award for best play (The Rose Tattoo, 1950)... He first used the pen name "Tennessee" in 1939. According to his Memoirs (Doubleday, 1972), he chose it because his ancestors had lived there. Reportedly, he also sometimes claimed to have gotten it from college classmates who couldn't remember which Southern state he was from... He began writing poems, stories and plays as a student at the University of Missouri, Washington University in St. Louis, and the State University of Iowa, where he finally graduated in 1938 at age 27... Never married, he had long-term companionships with two men: Pancho Rodriguez y Gonzalez and Frank Merlo.

For more information on Tennessee Williams, visit Britannica.com.

Williams, Tennessee [né Thomas Lanier Williams] (1911–83), playwright. Considered by many to be the leading dramatist of his age, he was born in Columbus, Mississippi. His father was a violent, aggressive traveling salesman; his mother, the high‐minded, puritanical daughter of a clergyman; his elder sister, a young woman beset by mental problems that eventually led to her being institutionalized. His family thus provided him with the seeds for characters who would people so many of his plays. He attended several universities before graduating from the State University of Iowa. During this time some of his early works were produced at regional and collegiate playhouses while he held numerous odd jobs. Williams's first play to receive a major production was Battle of Angels (1940), which folded on the road. Success came with his The Glass Menagerie (1945), followed by such popular dramas as A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Summer and Smoke (1948), The Rose Tattoo (1951), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), Period of Adjustment (1960), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). During these years he had a number of failures, including You Touched Me! (1945), Camino Real (1953), and Orpheus Descending (1957), but in later years they would be re‐examined, and some would find favor. Although he continued to write and be produced, the plays that followed The Night of the Iguana were neither critical nor commercial successes. His preoccupation with social degeneracy and homosexuality, which had heretofore been contained by his sense of theatre and poetic dialogue, overcame these saving restraints and lost him a public for the newer works. Among these later works were In the Bar in a Tokyo Hotel (1969), Small Craft Warnings (1972), Outcry (1973), Vieux Carré (1978), and Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980). Fifteen years after his death, an early work titled Not about Nightingales was uncovered and, when it was produced on Broadway in 1999, proved to be a critical success. Williams's strengths in playwriting were in his vivid characterizations and glistening dialogue. His subject matter was sometimes crude or brutal, but his writing remained elegant and poetic. Biography: The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams, Donald Spoto, 1985.

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), dramatist and fiction writer, was one of America's major mid-20th-century playwrights.

Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in Columbus, Mississippi, on March 26, 1914. His father was a traveling salesman, and for many years the family lived with his mother's parents. When Williams was about 13, they moved to a crowded tenement in St. Louis, Missouri. At the age of 16 he published his first story. The next year he entered the University of Missouri but left before taking a degree. He worked for two years for a shoe company, spent a year at Washington University (where he had his first plays produced), and earned a bachelor of arts degree from the State University of Iowa in 1938, the year he published his first short story under his literary name.

In 1940 the Theatre Guild produced Williams' Battle of Angels in Boston. The play was a total failure and was withdrawn after Boston's Watch and Ward Society banned it. Between 1940 and 1945 he lived on grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, on income derived from an attempt to write film scripts in Hollywood, and on wages as a waiter-entertainer in Greenwich Village.

With the production of The Glass Menagerie Williams' fortunes changed. The play opened in Chicago in December 1944 and in New York in March; it received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Sidney Howard Memorial Award. You Touched Me!, written in collaboration with Donald Windham, opened on Broadway in 1945. It was followed by publication of 11 one-act plays, 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946), and two California productions. When A Streetcar Named Desire opened in 1947, New York audiences knew a major playwright had arrived. It won a Pulitzer Prize. The play combines sensuality, melodrama, and lyrical symbolism. A film version was directed by Elia Kazan; their partnership lasted for more than a decade.

Although the plays that followed Streetcar never repeated its phenomenal success, they kept Williams's name on theater marquees and films. His novel The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950) and three volumes of short stories brought him an even wider audience. Some writers consider Summer and Smoke (1948) Williams's most sensitive play. The Rose Tattoo (1951) played to appreciative audiences, Camino Real (1953) to confused ones. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize.

Baby Doll (an original Williams-Kazan film script, 1956) was followed by the dramas Orpheus Descending (1957), Garden District (1958; two one-act plays, Something Unspoken and Suddenly Last Summer), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), Period of Adjustment (1960), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). With these plays, critics charged Williams with public exorcism of private neuroses, confused symbolism, sexual obsessions, thin characterizations, and violence and corruption for their own sake. The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963), The Seven Descents of Myrtle (1963; also called Kingdom of Earth), and In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969) neither exonerated him of these charges nor proved that Williams's remarkable talent had vanished.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, Williams continued to write for the theater, though he was unable to repeat the success of most of his early years. One of his last plays was Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980), based on the American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda.

Two collections of Williams's many one-act plays were published: 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946) and American Blues (1948). Williams also wrote fiction, including two novels, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950) and Moise and the World of Reason (1975). Four volumes of short stories were also published. One Arm and Other Stories (1948), Hard Candy (1954), The Knightly Quest (1969), and Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed (1974). Nine of his plays were made into films, and he wrote one original screenplay, Baby Doll (1956). In his 1975 tell-all novel, Memoirs, Williams described his own problems with alcohol and drugs and his homosexuality.

Williams died in New York City, February 25, 1983. In 1995, the United States Post Office commemorated Williams by issuing a special edition stamp in his name as part of their Literary Arts Series.

For several years, literary aficionados have gathered to celebrate the man and his work at The Tennessee Williams Scholars Conference. The annual event, held in conjunction with the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, features educational, theatrical and literary programs.

Further Reading

There is no uniform edition or omnibus collection of Williams's plays. His mother's reminiscences, Edwina Dakin Williams, Remember Me to Tom (1963), and the account of a friend, Gilbert Maxwell, Tennessee Williams and Friends (1965), provide biographical data. Taped interviews with various artists who worked with Williams give a multifaceted view in Mike Steen, A Look at Tennessee Williams (1969). Accounts of Williams' words were gathered to put together Memoirs (1975); Tennessee Williams' Letters to Donald Windham 1940-65 (1977); Albert J. Devlin, Conversations with Tennessee Williams (1986); and Five O'Clock Angel: Letters of Tennessee Williams to Maris St. Just 1948-1982 (1990).

The best critical studies are Signi Lenea Falk, Tennessee Williams (1961); Benjamin Nelson, Tennessee Williams: The Man and His Work (1961); Louis Broussard, American Drama: Contemporary Allegory from Eugene O'Neill to Tennessee Williams (1962); Francis Donahue, The Dramatic World of Tennessee Williams (1964); Gerald Weales, Tennessee Williams (1965); and Louis Broussard, American Drama: Contemporary Allegory from Eugene O'Neill to Tennessee Williams.

(1911-1983), playwright. Considered by some to be America's premier dramatist, Williams achieved popular and critical success with plays about fragile individuals trapped in desperate circumstances. His best-known works--among them The Glass Menagerie (1945), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Summer and Smoke (1948), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959)--are characterized by decadent southern settings, beautifully cadenced dialogue, expressive stage pictures, bizarre humor, and an aura of sexuality. His greatest legacy is a set of legendary characters, including Blanche DuBois and Big Daddy. Their eccentric personalities and larger-than-life dimensions have appealed to star performers--Laurette Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Marlon Brando, and Vivien Leigh, to name a few--who have found them ideal acting vehicles.

Williams was himself a colorful and complex figure. Like his characters, he was restless and driven by contradictory impulses: he was both gentle and fiery, lonely and gregarious, optimistic and fatalistic. His homosexuality, detailed in Memoirs (1975), contributed certain values and sympathies to his plays. But of more significance was the influence of his sister Rose. His devoted companion during their childhood in Mississippi and St. Louis, she later became mentally unstable and withdrew from the world. Williams believed her condition was not helped by their parents' unhappy marriage and his own insensitivity to her. In 1937, Rose underwent a prefrontal lobotomy, then considered therapeutic, which necessitated lifelong care in an institution. So deeply did Williams empathize with her trauma that it shaped his master theme--the confining nature of human existence.

A prolific author, Williams wrote more than seventy plays, but his reputation rests largely on his first two Broadway hits. The Glass Menagerie, set in a cramped apartment, focuses poignantly on the escapist dreams of a destitute family. It features the unforgettable Amanda Wingfield, who avoids the hopeless present by living in her southern-belle past, when she was courted by "gentleman callers." Amanda's daughter seems modeled on Rose Williams: the fragile Laura who retreats from reality to play with glass figurines. In his next play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams created two now-famous characters, Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski. The playwright's beloved French Quarter in New Orleans provides the setting for a tenacious struggle between high-strung, guilt-ridden Blanche and brutal Stanley. He crushes her spirit, and as Blanche leaves for a mental institution, she speaks movingly of her dependence on "the kindness of strangers." Streetcar earned Williams the first of his two Pulitzer Prizes.

After The Night of the Iguana (1961), Williams suffered a creative crisis and abandoned many of his techniques. Critics disliked the change. Although his later plays lack the memorable characters and rich, suggestive atmospheres of his earlier ones, several are noteworthy. Out Cry (1971), also called The Two-Character Play, is a nonrealistic drama about a brother and sister locked in a theater. The autobiographical Vieux Carré (1978) presents his initial stay in New Orleans during the 1930s from the perspective of his older self, who laments the waning of his imaginative powers.

An artist of international renown, Williams deserves to be ranked with Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller among American playwrights. At his best, he outshines both. His lyrical plays have also made a lasting impact on the work of a generation of younger dramatists, including Lanford Wilson and Beth Henley.

Bibliography:

Donald Spoto, The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams (1985); Tennessee Williams, Memoirs (1975).

Author:

Bruce J. Mann

See also Theater.

Quotes:

"A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace."

"All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness."

"All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent."

"We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress."

"The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!"

"We're all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!"

See more famous quotes by Tennessee Williams

• Born: Mar 26, 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi
• Died: Feb 25, 1983 in New York, New York
• Occupation: Writer
• Active: '50s-'80s, 2000s
• Major Genres: Drama
• Career Highlights: A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sweet Bird of Youth
• First Major Screen Credit: The Glass Menagerie (1950)

Biography

Tennessee Williams
Williams in 1965
Born March 26, 1911(1911-03-26) Columbus, Mississippi, U.S.A. Died February 25, 1983 (aged 71) New York City, New York, U.S.A. Occupation Playwright
Information
Period	1930-1983
Genre	Southern Gothic
Influences	Anton Chekhov D. H. Lawrence August Strindberg Hart Crane

Tennessee Williams (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), born Thomas Lanier Williams, was an American playwright who received many of the top theatrical awards for his works of drama. He moved to New Orleans in 1939 and changed his name to "Tennessee", the state of his father's birth.

He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948 and for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955. In addition, The Glass Menagerie (1945) and The Night of the Iguana (1961) received New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards. His 1952 play The Rose Tattoo received the Tony Award for best play. In 1980 he was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Childhood and education 1.2 Writer 2 Death 3 Works 3.1 Plays 3.2 Novels 3.3 Screenplays 3.4 Short stories 3.5 One-act collections 3.6 Selected works 3.7 Related Works 4 See also 5 Footnotes 6 References 7 External links

Biography

Childhood and education

Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi, in the home of his maternal grandfather, the local Episcopal priest. He was of Welsh descent. His father, Cornelius Williams, a hard drinking traveling salesman, favored Tennessee's younger brother Dakin, perhaps because of Tennessee's weakness and effeminacy as a child. His mother, Edwina, was a borderline hysteric. Tennessee Williams would find inspiration in his problematic family for much of his writing.

In 1918, when Williams was seven, the family moved to the University City neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri, where he first attended Soldan High School, used in his work The Glass Menagerie and later University City High School.^[1] In 1927, 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, he published "The Vengeance of Nitocris" in Weird Tales.

In the early 1930s Williams attended the University of Missouri, where he joined Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. In the late 1930s, Williams transferred to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri for a year, and finally earned a degree in 1938 from the University of Iowa, where he wrote "Spring Storm." By then, Williams had written Cairo, Shanghai, Bombay!. This work was first produced in 1935 by a community theater in Memphis, Tennessee. He later studied at The New School in New York City.

Writer

Williams lived for a time in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. He moved there in 1939 to write for the WPA. He first lived at 722 Toulouse Street, the setting of his 1977 play Vieux Carré. The building is part of The Historic New Orleans Collection. He began writing A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) while living at 632 St. Peter Street. He finished it later in Key West, Florida, where he moved in the 1940s. While in New Orleans, Williams met and fell in love with Frank Merlo, a second generation Sicilian American who had served in the U.S. Navy in World War II.

Tennessee was close to his sister Rose, a slim beauty who was diagnosed with schizophrenia at a young age. As was common then, Rose was institutionalized and spent most of her adult life in mental hospitals. When therapies were unsuccessful, she showed more paranoid tendencies. In an effort to treat her, Rose's parents authorized a prefrontal lobotomy, a drastic treatment that was thought to help some mental patients who suffered extreme agitation.^{[citation needed]} Performed in 1937 in Knoxville, Tennessee, the operation incapacitated Rose for the rest of her life. Her surgery may have contributed to his alcoholism and his dependence on various combinations of amphetamines and barbiturates often prescribed by Dr. Max (Feelgood) Jacobson.^[2]

Williams worked extremely briefly in the renowned Gotham Book Mart in Manhattan, lasting less than a day.

Williams' relationship with Frank Merlo lasted from 1947 until Merlo's death from cancer in 1963. With that stability, Williams created his most enduring works. Merlo provided balance to many of Williams' frequent bouts with depression^[3] and the fear that, like his sister Rose, he would go insane.

Death

Williams died on February 24, 1983, by choking on an eyedrop bottle cap in his room at the Hotel Elysee in New York. He would routinely place the cap in his mouth, lean back, and place his eyedrops in each eye.^[4] The police report, however, suggested his use of drugs and alcohol contributed to his death. Prescription drugs, including barbiturates, were found in the room, and Williams' gag response may have been diminished by the effects of drugs and alcohol.

Williams' funeral took place on March 3, 1983 at St. Malachy's Roman Catholic Church in New York City. At his brother Dakin's insistence, Williams' body was interred in the Calvary Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri, a city he detested. 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 honor of his grandfather, Walter Dakin, an alumnus of the university, which is located in Sewanee, Tennessee. 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 ^[5] from her part of the Williams estate to The University of the South as well.

In 1989, the University City Loop (in a suburb of St. Louis) inducted Tennessee Williams into its St. Louis Walk of Fame.

Works

The "mad heroine" theme that appeared in many of his plays seemed clearly influenced by the life of Williams' sister Rose.^{[citation needed]}

Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Characters in his plays are often seen as representations of his family members. Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie was understood to be modeled on Rose. Some biographers believed that the character of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire is also based on her.

Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie was generally seen to represent Williams' mother, Edwina. Characters such as Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie and Sebastian in Suddenly, Last Summer were understood to represent Williams himself. In addition, he used a lobotomy operation as a motif in Suddenly, Last Summer.

The Pulitzer Prize for Drama was awarded to A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948 and to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955. These two plays were later filmed, with great success, by noted directors Elia Kazan (Streetcar) with whom Williams developed a very close artistic relationship, and Richard Brooks (Cat). Both plays included references to elements of Williams' life such as homosexuality, mental instability, and alcoholism. Although The Flowering Peach by Clifford Odets was the preferred choice of the Pulitzer Prize jury in 1955 and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was at first considered the weakest of the five shortlisted nominees, Joseph Pulitzer Jr., chairman of the Board, had seen Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and thought it worthy of the drama prize. The Board went along with him after considerable discussion.^[6]

Williams wrote The Parade, or Approaching the End of a Summer when he was 29 and worked on it through his life. It seemed an autobiographical depiction of an early romance in Provincetown, Massachusetts. This play was produced for the first time on October 1, 2006 in Provincetown by the Shakespeare on the Cape production company, as part of the First Annual Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival.

The Parade, or Approaching the End of a Summer was among several works published by New Directions in the spring of 2008, edited and introduced by Williams scholar Annette J. Saddik. This collection of experimental plays was titled The Traveling Companion and Other Plays.usc

Williams' last play A House Not Meant to Stand is a gothic comedy published in 2008 by New Directions with a foreword by Gregory Mosher and an introduction by Thomas Keith. Williams called his last play a "Southern gothic spook sonata."

Other works by Williams include Camino Real and Sweet Bird of Youth.

Plays

Apprentice plays

• Candles to the Sun (1936)
• Spring Storm (1937)
• Fugitive Kind (1937)
• Not About Nightingales (1938)
• I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix (1941)
• Orpheus Descending (1945)
• You Touched Me (1945)
• Stairs to the Roof (1947)

Major plays

• The Glass Menagerie (1944)
• A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)
• Summer and Smoke (1948)
• The Rose Tattoo (1951)
• Camino Real (1953)
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)
• Baby Doll (1956)
• Orpheus Descending (1957)
• Suddenly, Last Summer (1958)
• Sweet Bird of Youth (1959)
• Period of Adjustment (1960)
• The Night of the Iguana (1961)
• The Eccentricities of a Nightingale (1962, rewriting of Summer and Smoke)
• The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963)
• The Mutilated (1965)
• The Seven Descents of Myrtle (1968, aka Kingdom of Earth)
• In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969)
• Will Mr. Merriweather Return from Memphis? (1969)
• Small Craft Warnings (1972)
• The Two-Character Play (1973)
• Out Cry (1973, rewriting of The Two-Character Play)
• The Red Devil Battery Sign (1975)
• This Is (An Entertainment) (1976)
• Vieux Carré (1977)
• A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur (1979)
• Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980)
• The Notebook of Trigorin (1980)
• Something Cloudy, Something Clear (1981)
• A House Not Meant to Stand (1982)
• In Masks Outrageous and Austere (1983)

Novels

• The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950, filmed 1961)
• Moise and the World of Reason (1975)

Screenplays

• The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond (1957, filmed 2009)

Short stories

• The Vengeance of Nitocris (1928)
• The Field of Blue Children (1939)
• The Resemblance Between a Violin Case and a Coffin (1951)
• Hard Candy: A Book of Stories (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 Iguana
  • 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 collections

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 Blues (1948)
• Mister Paradise and Other One-Act Plays
• Dragon Country: a book of one-act plays (1970)
• The Traveling Companion and Other Plays
• 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 America, 2000) ISBN 978-1-88301186-4.
  • 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 America, 2000) ISBN 978-1-88301187-1.
  • Orpheus Descending
  • 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 Anymore
  • The Mutilated
  • Kingdom of Earth (The Seven Descents of Myrtle)
  • Small Craft Warnings
  • Out Cry
  • Vieux Carré
  • A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur

Related Works

A book is coming out soon by a former assistant, Scott. John Uecker is also has directed Williams' plays in addition to creating an edit of In Masks Outrageous and Austere.

See also

• Lanier family tree
• Virginia Spencer Carr, friend and biographer of Williams
• List of unusual deaths

Footnotes

1. ^ Tennessee Williams and John Waters (2006) Memoirs, New Directions Publishing, 274 pages ISBN 0811216691
2. ^ "The Kindess of Strangers", Spoto
3. ^ Jeste ND, Palmer BW, Jeste DV. Tennessee Williams. Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2004 Jul-Aug;12(4):370-5. PMID: 15249274 [1]
4. ^ Suzanne Daley (27.2.1983). Williams Choked on a Bottle Cap. The New York Times (engl.; abgerufen 27. Mai 2007)
5. ^ New York Times obituary, September 7, 1996
6. ^ Fischer, Heinz-Dietrich & Erika J. Fischer. The Pulitzer Prize Archive: A History and Anthology of Award-Winning Materials in Journalism, Letters, and Arts München: K.G. Saur, 2008. ISBN 3598301707 ISBN 9783598301704 p. 246

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Tennessee Williams

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Tennessee Williams

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Tennessee Williams

File:Tennessee Williams NYWTS.jpg

• Gross, Robert F., ed. Tennessee Williams: A Casebook. Routledge (2002). ISBN 0-8153-3174-6.
• Leverich, Lyle. Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams. W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (1997). ISBN 0-393-31663-7.
• Saddik, Annette. The Politics of Reputation: The Critical Reception of Tennessee Williams' Later Plays (London: Associated University Presses, 1999).
• Spoto, Donald. The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams. Da Capo Press (Reprint, 1997). ISBN 0-306-80805-6.
• Williams, Tennessee. Memoirs. Doubleday (1975). ISBN 0-385-00573-3.
• Williams, Dakin. His Brother's Keeper: The Life and Murder of Tennessee Williams.
• Sewanee, The University of the South

External links

• Tennessee Williams at the Internet Movie Database
• Tennessee Williams at the Internet Broadway Database
• Tennessee Williams at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• 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 Sargent
• Booksfactory article.
• A photograph of Tennessee Williams by Yousuf Karsh on the website of the National Gallery of Australia.
• 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.org, 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
• Tennessee Williams at Find a Grave
• A celebration of Tenessee Williams
• 1980 Recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom

v • d • e Pulitzer Prize for Drama George Kelly (1926) · Paul Green (1927) · Eugene O'Neill (1928) · Elmer Rice (1929) · Marc Connelly (1930) · Susan Glaspell (1931) · George S. Kaufman / Morrie Ryskind / Ira Gershwin (1932) · Maxwell Anderson (1933) · Sidney Kingsley (1934) · Zoe Akins (1935) · Robert E. Sherwood (1936) · Moss Hart / George S. Kaufman (1937) · Thornton Wilder (1938) · Robert E. Sherwood (1939) · William Saroyan (1940) · Robert E. Sherwood (1941) · Thornton Wilder (1943) · Mary Chase (1945) · Russel Crouse / Howard Lindsay (1946) · Tennessee Williams (1948) · Arthur Miller (1949) · Richard Rodgers / Oscar Hammerstein II / Joshua Logan (1950) Complete list: (1918-1925) · (1926-1950) · (1951-1975) · (1976-2000) · (2001-present)

v • d • e Pulitzer Prize for Drama Joseph Kramm (1952) · William Inge (1953) · John Patrick (1954) · Tennessee Williams (1955) · Albert Hackett / Frances Goodrich (1956) · Eugene O'Neill (1957) · Ketti Frings (1958) · Archibald MacLeish (1959) · Jerome Weidman / George Abbott / Jerry Bock / Sheldon Harnick (1960) · Tad Mosel (1961) · Frank Loesser / Abe Burrows (1962) · Frank D. Gilroy (1965) · Edward Albee (1967) · Howard Sackler (1969) · Charles Gordone (1970) · Paul Zindel (1971) · Jason Miller (1973) · Edward Albee (1975) Complete list: (1918-1925) · (1926-1950) · (1951-1975) · (1976-2000) · (2001-present)

v • d • e Works by Tennessee Williams Apprentice plays Candles to the Sun (1936) · Spring Storm (1937) · Fugitive Kind (1937) · Not About Nightingales (1938) · Battle of Angels (1940) · You Touched Me (1945) · Stairs to the Roof (1947) Major plays The Glass Menagerie (1944) · A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) · Summer and Smoke (1948) · The Rose Tattoo (1951) · Camino Real (1953) · Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) · Orpheus Descending (1957) · Suddenly, Last Summer (1958) · Sweet Bird of Youth (1959) · Period of Adjustment (1960) · The Night of the Iguana (1961) · The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963) · The Seven Descents of Myrtle (1968) · In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969) · Will Mr. Merriweather Return from Memphis? (1969) · Out Cry (1971) · Small Craft Warnings (1972) · The Two-Character Play (1973) · The Red Devil Battery Sign (1975) · This Is (An Entertainment) (1976) · Vieux Carré (1977) · A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur (1979) · Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980) · The Notebook of Trigorin (1980) · Something Cloudy, Something Clear (1981) · A House Not Meant to Stand (1982) Short stories The Vengeance of Nitocris (1928) · The Field of Blue Children (1939) · The Resemblance Between a Violin Case and a Coffin (1951) · Hard Candy: A Book of Stories (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) Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed: a Book of Stories (1974) · Tent Worms (1980) · It Happened the day the Sun Rose, and Other Stories (1981) Related articles List of one-act plays by Tennessee Williams Screenplays Baby Doll (1956) · The Fugitive Kind (co-author, 1959) · Suddenly, Last Summer (co-author, 1959) · The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond (1957, filmed 2009) Unfinished manuscripts In Masks Outrageous and Austere (1983)

v • d • e 1979 Kennedy Center Honorees Aaron Copland · Ella Fitzgerald · Henry Fonda · Martha Graham · Tennessee Williams

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