The Rose Tattoo (Author Biography)

Author Biography

Tennessee Williams, a major twentieth-century U.S. playwright, was born Thomas Lanier Williams on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi. Williams began writing as a child, publishing in junior high and high school publications. He continued publishing as he pursued his bachelor's degree, which he did leisurely, attending three different undergraduate institutions between 1929 and 1938. He decided to focus his creative energies primarily on drama during this period, although he wrote poetry, short stories, and novels throughout his life.

In 1939, Williams sent a set of one-act plays as a competition entry to the Group Theatre in New York, which was run by prominent members of the New York drama scene. They were impressed, awarded him prize money, and invited him to move to New York with the promise that they would help him further his career. The experience and contacts Williams gained in New York proved to be invaluable, and with the Broadway premiere of The Glass Menagerie in 1944, Williams's career was launched. This phenomenal critical and box-office success was soon followed by another, A Streetcar Named Desire. Both plays won New York Drama Critics Circle Awards and A Streetcar Named Desire won a Pulitzer Prize.

The Rose Tattoo, which premiered on Broadway in 1951, was Williams's third great box-office success. While certain prominent critics did not enjoy it as much as the public did, it nevertheless consolidated his position as a leading dramatist of the time and won a Tony Award. Indeed, Williams's popularity was such that many of his plays were adapted into films. These movies, most of them made in the 1950s and 1960s, helped define the cinematic era, even if Williams was never quite pleased with most of them.

Williams was a major force in drama internationally for many years, and he lived an active life. He traveled constantly within the United States and to Europe and had many loves. Despite his ongoing travel, he also stayed close to his family. He was particularly fond of his grandfather and particularly protective of his sister Rose, who was incapable of working.

By 1970, Williams's popularity with the public and critics had waned. Nonetheless, he wrote until his death, and many of his plays were produced, though not on the scale and to the acclaim of his earlier plays. His major plays continue to be regularly performed. Williams died in New York City in 1983.