Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) was an American playwright whose works frequently revolved around fragile Southern women and their dying dreams of social success. Many of his plays have entered the canon of American theater, including The Glass Menagerie (1944), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), among others. Williams won two Pulitzer Prizes and saw several of his plays turned into critically acclaimed movies that introduced his poignant, lyrical creations to a nationwide audience.
Thomas Lanier Williams III was born in Mississippi and endured a chaotic childhood. Williams’s parents, and especially his neurotic mother, would provide inspiration for many of his plays.
Williams enrolled at the University of Missouri in 1929, where he acquired the nickname Tennessee because of his accent. Finding the unusual moniker distinctive, he adopted it as his legal name at twenty-eight, the same year he moved to New Orleans, came out as a homosexual, and began writing professionally.
His first play, Battle of Angels, debuted in 1940. During World War II, Williams moved west to work at MGM Studios in Hollywood, where he honed his writing skills and began working on the script for The Glass Menagerie.
The Broadway opening of The Glass Menagerie in 1945 marked Williams’s arrival as a major playwright. The play’s main character is Amanda Wingfield, an older woman modeled after Williams’s mother. She lives with her son and daughter in the smothering confines of the family’s St. Louis apartment, surrounded by sentimental glass figurines. Obsessed with social propriety, Amanda hopes to find a “gentleman caller” to marry her shy daughter, despite the family’s obviously reduced circumstances.
A Streetcar Named Desire was an even bigger success and spawned the 1951 film version starring Marlon Brando (1924–2004). The play introduced one of Williams’s most memorable characters, Blanche DuBois, another impoverished Southern belle whose conflict with Stanley is the driving force of the play.
Williams’s career faded after the 1950s as his own drug and alcohol problems intensified. He choked to death at a New York City hotel in 1983 after accidentally swallowing a bottle cap.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- Williams won two Pulitzer Prizes—one for A Streetcar Named Desire (1948) and the second for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955).
- The publication of Williams’s revealing memoirs in 1972 caused a minor sensation; a crowd at a book-signing event in Manhattan grew so large it was dubbed the Great Fifth Avenue Bookstore Riot.
- Williams was featured on a US postage stamp in 1994.
