Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) in 1965, New York World-Telegram & Sun. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Tennessee Williams
Born	Thomas Lanier Williams March 26, 1911(1911-Template:MONTHNUMBER-26) Columbus, Mississippi
Died	February 25, 1983(1983-Template:MONTHNUMBER-25) (aged 71) New York City, New York
Resting place	Bellefontaine and Calvary Cemeteries
Nationality	American
Partner	Frank Merlo Pancho Rodríguez y González
Parents	Edwina and Cornelius Coffin
Signature
File:Tennessee Williams signature.svg

Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III (March 26, 1911 - February 25, 1983) was an American writer, who worked principally as a playwright in the American theatre.

Life

Overview

Williams also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays, 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.

Theater scholar Charlotte Canning, of the University of Texas at Austin where Williams' 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 Tony Kushner, David Mamet and John Waters, and his plays remain among the most produced in the world."

Youth

Thomas Lanier Williams III was born of English, Welsh, and Huguenot descent, in Columbus, Mississippi, the 2nd child of Edwina and Cornelius Coffin (C.C.) 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 16 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 struggled with an illness (either diphtheria or rheumatic fever) 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. Many theorize that Williams found inspiration in his dysfunctional family for much of his writing. (Citation needed) The biographer Donald Spoto adds “[Williams] work is a series of variations on the great emotional cycles of his own tortured life” (xviii).

Education

When Williams was 8 years old his father was promoted to a job at the home office of the International Shoe Company in St. Louis, Missouri. 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 School, a setting referred to in his work The Glass Menagerie. Later he studied at University City High School. At age 16, Williams won 3rd prize ($5) 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 August 1928 issue of the magazine Weird Tales. At the age of 17 he first visited Europe.

From 1929 to 1931, he attended the University of Missouri (UM) in Columbia, where he enrolled in journalism classes. The university's School of Journalism was well regarded due to its "Missouri Method", through which students learn about journalism in the classroom as well as practicing it in multimedia laboratories and real-world outlets. Despite this Williams found his classes boring and was distracted by his unrequited love for a girl.

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 UM, 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 Company 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 9-to-5 work routine drove him to write even more than before, and he gave himself a goal of writing a 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 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 graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English 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.

Early influences

Williams' writings include mention of some of the poets and writers he most admired in his early years: Hart Crane, Anton Chekhov (from the age of 10), William Shakespeare, 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."

Career

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Tennessee with Elia Kazan, 1967

In the late 1930s, as the young playwright struggled to have his work accepted, Tennessee 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 (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). The Rockefeller grant gained him attention and Williams received a 6-month contract from the Metro Goldwyn Mayer film studio in Hollywood, earning $250 weekly.

During the winter of 1944-1945, 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."

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Williams walking to the service for Dylan Thomas, 1953.

Between 1948 and 1959 7 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 2 Pulitzer Prizes, 3 New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards, and a Tony Award. His plays were produced in New York by Herbert Machiz, who was involved from 1953 until 1969 with the art work dealer John Bernard Myers to engage, at that time, little-known young artists to design the stage sets, e.g. Paul Georges, Neil Peter Jampolis and others.

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 1950s, the next 2 decades 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.

Critics and audiences alike may have failed to acknowledge Williams' new style and novel approach to theater he developed during 1960s and refused to accept daring and different work from the playwright. Williams said, “I’ve been working very hard since 1969 to make an artistic comeback…there is no release short of death”(Spoto 335), and “I want to warn you, Elliot, the critics are out to get me. You’ll see how vicious they are. They make comparisons with my earlier work, but I’m writing differently now” (Spoto 331). Leverich explains that Williams to the end was concerned with "the depths and origin of human feelings and motivations, the difference being that he had gone into a deeper, more obscure realm, which, of course, put the poet in him to the fore, and not the playwright who would bring much concern for audience and critical reaction” (xxiii). Most likely the truth is that to the end of his life Williams was as vibrant, creative and experimental a writer as ever, yet he succumbed to the slow torture of his critics.

Personal life

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A portrait of Tennessee Williams by Juan Fernando Bastos for the Gay & Lesbian Review

Williams remained close to his sister Rose, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia 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 amphetamines and barbiturates.

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 4 years later at 26 delivered another blow.

On a 1945 visit to Taos, New Mexico, Williams met Pancho Rodríguez y González, a hotel clerk of Mexican heritage. Rodríguez 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 Rodríguez left New Mexico to join Williams in his New Orleans apartment and they lived and travelled together until late 1947 when Williams ended the affair. Rodríguez 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 teen-aged Italian boy to whom he provided financial assistance for several years afterwards (a situation which planted the seed of Williams' debut novel The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone). When he returned to New York that spring, he met and fell in love with Frank Merlo(1922–1963), an occasional actor of Sicilian heritage who had served in the U.S. Navy in World War II.

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Frank Merlo in Key West, 1950

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Last will and testament of Tennessee Williams

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.(Citation needed) 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 choked to death on the cap from a bottle of eye drops he frequently used, further indicating that his use of drugs and alcohol may have contributed to his death by suppressing his gag reflex. When he applied the eye drops, he customarily would hold the cap between his teeth. Prescription drugs, including barbiturates, were found in the room. Some people have questioned the official account of Williams's death. Forensic detective and expert Michael Baden reviewed the medical files in regards to Williams's death, and stated that the results showed that Williams died of a drug and alcohol overdose, not from choking. Williams's friend, playwright Larry Myers, said that the autopsy report was later modified to state that Williams actually died of acute seconal intolerance, and his friend Scott Kenan said that someone in the coroner's office invented the bottle cap scenario in the first place.

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 a significant influence.

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.

Writing

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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.

Both A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 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 originally considered the weakest of the 5 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.

Williams wrote The Parade; or Approaching the end of a summer when he was 29 and worked on it sporadically throughout his life. A semi-autobiographical depiction of his 1940 romance with Kip Kiernan in Provincetown, Massachusetts, it was premiered on October 1, 2006 in Provincetown by the Shakespeare on the Cape production company, as part of the First Annual Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival.

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

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. The play went through many drafts as he was trying to reconcile what would be the end of his life. As of 2007, author Gore Vidal was completing the play, and Peter Bogdanovich was slated to direct its Broadway debut. The play finally received its world premiere in New York City in April 2012, directed by David Schweizer and starring Shirley Knight as Babe.

Recognition

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) - Elia Kazan (trailer) BFI

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) trailer Elizabeth Taylor

Williams's star on St. Louis Walk of Fame. Photo by E. Coman. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Williams received virtually all of the top theatrical awards for his works of drama, including several New York Drama Critics' Circle awards, 3 Donaldson Awards, and a Tony Award for best play for The Rose Tattoo (1951)

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 2 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).

In 1980 he was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter.

In late 2009, Williams was inducted into the Poets' 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.

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.

The Tennessee Williams Theater in Key West, Florida, is named for him.

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.

Williams was honored by the U.S. Postal Service on a stamp in 1994 as part of their literary arts series.

Publications

Poetry

• Five Young American Poets: Third series (by Eve Merriam, John Frederick Nims, Jean Garrigue, Tennessee Williams, & Alejandro Carrión). Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1944.
• In the Winter of Cities: Poems. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1956.
• Androgyne, Mon Amour: Poems. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1977.
• The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams (edited by David E. Roessel and Nicholas Rand Moschovakis). New York: New Directions Publishing, 2002.

Plays

• Battle of Angels. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1945.
• The Glass Menagerie. New York: Random House, 1945
  • published as The Glass Menagerie: Play in Two Acts. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1948
  • (edited, with an introduction by Allean Hale). New York: New Directions Publishing, 2000.
• (With Donald Windham) You Touched Me!: A Romantic Comedy in Three Acts. new York: Samuel French, 1947.
• Twenty-seven Wagons Full of Cotton, published in The Best One-Act Plays of 1944. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1945.
• Moony's Kids Don't Cry, published in The Best One-Act Plays of 1940 (edited by Margaret Mayorga). New York: Dodd, 1940.
• Summer and Smoke. New York: New Directions Publishing (New York, NY), 1948
  • published as Summer and Smoke: Play in Two Acts. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1950
  • published as The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, and Summer and Smoke: Two Plays. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1964.
• A Streetcar Named Desire. New York: New Directions Publishing (New York, NY), 1947
  • with preface by Williams, 1951
  • revised as A Streetcar Named Desire: A Play in Three Acts. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1953
  • (with foreword by Jessica Tandy and introduction by Williams). Limited Editions Club, 1982
  • (with introduction by Williams). New York: New American Library, 1984.
• The Rose Tattoo (preface by Williams). New York: New Directions Publishing, 1951.
• Camino Real: A Play (expanded version of Ten Blocks on the Camino Real);with foreword and afterword by Williams). New York: New Directions Publishing, 1953.
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (with preface by Williams). New York: New Directions Publishing, 1955
  • published as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: A Play in Three Acts. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1958.
• Three Players of a Summer Game. London: Secker & Warburg, 1960.
• (Librettist) Raffaello de Banfield, Lord Byron's Love Letter: Opera in One Act. Ricordi, 1955.
• A Perfect Analysis Given by a Parrot: A Comedy in One Act. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1958.
• Suddenly Last Summer. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1958.
• I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix: A Play about D.H. Lawrence (note by Frieda Lawrence). New York: New Directions Publishing, 1951.
• Sweet Bird of Youth (foreword by Williams). New York: New Directions Publishing, 1959
  • revised edition. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1962.
• Period of Adjustment; High Point over a Cavern: A Serious Comedy, first published in Esquire. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1960
  • published as Period of Adjustment; or, High Point Is Built on a Cavern: A Serious Comedy. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1961.
• The Night of the Iguana (based on Williams's short story). New York: New Directions Publishing, 1961.
• The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1964.
• The Mutilated: A Play in One Act. New York: Dramatists Play Service (New York, NY), 1967.
• The Gnaediges Fraulein: A Play in One Act. New York: Dramatists Play Service (New York, NY), 1967
• Kingdom of Earth (The Seven Descents of Myrtle): A Play in Seven Scenes. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1969.
• The Two-Character Play. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1969.
• In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1969.
• Small Craft Warnings. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1972.
• Vieux Carre. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1979
  • (introduction by Robert Bray), 2000.
• A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1980.
• Clothes for a Summer Hotel: A Ghost Play. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1981.
• Steps Must Be Gentle: A Dramatic Reading for Two Performers. Targ Editions, 1980.
• It Happened the Day the Sun Rose,. New York: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1981.
• The Remarkable Rooming-House of Mme. Le Monde, Albondocani Press, 1984.
• The Red Devil Battery Sign. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1988.
• Something Cloudy, Something Clear (introduction by Eve Adamson). New York: New Directions Publishing, 1995.
• Not about Nightingales (edited and with an introduction by Allean Hale, foreword by Vanessa Redgrave). New York: New Directions Publishing, 1998.
• Spring Storm (edited and with an introduction by Dan Isaacs). New York: New Directions Publishing, 1999.
• The Fugitive Kind (edited and with an introduction by Allean Hale). New York: New Directions Publishing, 2001.
• Candles to the Sun. published as Candles to the Sun: A Play in Ten Scenes. New York: New Directions Publishing, 2004.

Play collections

• Twenty-seven Wagons Full of Cotton, and Other One-Act Plays (includes The Long Goodbye, This Property Is Condemned, Portrait of a Madonna, The Last of My Solid Gold Watches, Auto-da-Fe, The Lady of Larkspur Lotion, The Purification, Hello from Bertha, The Strangest Kind of Romance, and Lord Byron's Love Letter). New York: New Directions Publishing, 1946
  • 3rd expanded edition with preface by Williams (contains two new plays, Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen and Something Unspoken, 1953.
• American Blues: Five Short Plays (contains Moony's Kids Don't Cry, The Dark Room, The Case of the Crushed Petunias, The Long Stay Cut Short; or, The Unsatisfactory Supper, and Ten Blocks on the Camino Real). New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1948; reprinted, 1976.
• Four Plays (contains The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, and Camino Real). London: Secker & Warburg, 1956.
• Orpheus Descending, with Battle of Angels: Two Plays (preface by Williams). New York: New Directions Publishing (New York, NY), 1958.
• The Rose Tattoo [and] Camino Real (introduced and edited by E. Martin Browne). New York: Penguin, 1958.
• Garden District: Two Plays; Something Unspoken, and Suddenly Last Summer. London: Secker & Warburg, 1959.
• Five Plays (contains Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Rose Tattoo, Something Unspoken, Suddenly Last Summer, and Orpheus Descending). London: Secker & Warburg, 1962.
• Three Plays: The Rose Tattoo, Camino Real, Sweet Bird of Youth. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1964.
• Baby Doll: The Script for the Film, Something Unspoken, and Suddenly Last Summer. New York: Penguin, 1968.
• The Night of the Iguana [and] Orpheus Descending. New York: Penguin, 1968.
• The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore [and] Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. New York: Penguin, 1969.
• Dragon Country: A Book of Plays. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1970.
• Battle of Angels, The Glass Menagerie [and] A Streetcar Named Desire. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1971.
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending, [and] Suddenly Last Summer. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1971.
• The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, Summer and Smoke, The Rose Tattoo, [and] Camino Real. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1971.
• The Theatre of Tennessee Williams. New York: New Directions Publishing
  • Volume 1, 1971, Volume 2, 1971, Volume 3, 1971, Volume 4, 1972, Volume 5, 1976, Volume 6, 1981, Volume 7, 1981.
• Three by Tennessee Williams. New York: New American Library, 1976.
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, [and] The Night of the Iguana. New York: Penguin, 1976.
• Selected Plays (illustrated by Jerry Pinkney). Franklin Center, PA: Franklin Library, 1977.
• Tennessee Williams: Eight Plays (introduction by Harold Clurman). New York: Doubleday, 1979.
• Selected Plays (illustrated by Herbert Tauss). Franklin Center, PA: Franklin Library, 1980.
• Plays (two volumes). New York: Library of America, 2000.

Novels

• The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1950; reprinted, 1993.
• Moise and the World of Reason. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1975.

Short fiction

• One Arm, and other stories (includes "The Night of the Iguana"). New York: New Directions Publishing, 1948.
• Hard Candy: A book of stories. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1954.
• Man Brings This up Road: A short story. New York: Street & Smith (New York, NY), 1959.
• Three Players of a Summer Game, and other stories. London: Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1960, reprinted, Dent (London, England), 1984.
• Grand. New York: House of Books, 1964.
• The Knightly Quest: A novella and four short stories. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1967.
• Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed: A Book of Stories. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1974.
• Collected Stories (with introduction by Gore Vidal). New York, New Directions Publishing, 1985.

Non-fiction

• (Author of introduction) Carson McCullers, Reflections in a Golden Eye. New York: Bantam, 1961.
• Glass Menagerie [and] A Street Car Named Desire: Notes. Cliffs Notes, 1965.
• Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, 1975.
• Where I Live: Selected essays (edited by Christine R. Day and Bob Woods). New York: New Directions Publishing, 1978.
• Conversations with Tennessee Williams (edited by Albert J. Devlin). Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1986.

Screenplays

• (With Gore Vidal) Senso, Luchino Visconti, c. 1949.
• (With Oscar Saul) The Glass Menagerie, Warner Bros., 1950.
• A Streetcar Named Desire, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1951.
• (With Paul Bowles) The Wanton Countess (English-language version), filmed 1954.
• (With Hal Kanter) The Rose Tattoo, Paramount, 1955.
• Baby Doll (Warner Bros., 1956), published as Baby Doll: The Script for the Film. New York: New American Library (New York, NY), 1956,
  • published as Baby Doll; The Script for the Film, incorporating the Two One-Act Plays Which Suggested It: Twenty-seven Wagons Full of Cotton and The Long Stay Cut Short; or, The Unsatisfactory Supper. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1956.
• (With Gore Vidal) Suddenly Last Summer, Columbia, 1959.
• (With Meade Roberts) The Fugitive Kind (based on Orpheus Descending; United Artists, 1959). New York: Signet, 1960.
• Boom (based on The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore), Universal, 1968.
• Stopped Rocking and other screenplays (contains All Gaul Is Divided, The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, One Arm, and Stopped Rocking), (introduction by Richard Gilman). New York: New Directions Publishing, 1984.
• A Streetcar Named Desire: A Screen Adaptation Directed by Elia Kazan. Irvington, 1989.
• Baby Doll and Tiger Tail. New York: New Directions Publishing (New York, NY), 1991.

Letters and notebooks

• Tennessee Williams's Letters to Donald Windham, 1940-1965 (edited with commentary by Windham). [Verona], 1976; New York: Holt 1977; Athens, GA:University of Georgia Press, 1996.
• Five o'Clock Angel: Letters of Tennessee Williams to Maria St. Just, 1948-1982. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
• The Notebook of Trigorin: A Free Adaptation of Anton Chekhov's "The Sea Gull," (edited and with an introduction by Allean Hale). New York: New Directions Publishing, 1997.
• The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams (edited by Albert J. Devlin and Nancy M. Tischler). New York: New Directions Publishing, 2000.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.

Play productions

• Cairo, Shanghai, Bombay! (comedy, produced in Memphis, TN, by Memphis Garden Players, 1935).
• Headlines (produced in St. Louis, MO, at Wednesday Club Auditorium, 1936).
• Candles to the Sun (produced in St. Louis, MO, at Wednesday Club Auditorium, 1936)
• The Magic Tower (produced in St. Louis, MO, 1936).
• The Fugitive Kind (produced in St. Louis, MO, at Wednesday Club Auditorium, 1937)
• Spring Song (produced in Iowa City, IA, at the University of Iowa, 1938).
• The Long Goodbye (produced in New York, NY, at New School for Social Research, 1940).
• Battle of Angels (produced in Boston, MA, at Wilbur Theatre, 1940).
• Stairs to the Roof (produced in Pasadena, CA, at Playbox, 1944).
• The Glass Menagerie (first produced in Chicago, IL, at Civic Theatre, 1944; produced on Broadway, 1945; revived in New York, NY on March 22, 2005 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater).
• (With Donald Windham) You Touched Me!: A Romantic Comedy in Three Acts (produced on Broadway, 1945).
• Twenty-seven Wagons Full of Cotton (part of triple bill titled All in One; produced on Broadway, 1955)
• This Property Is Condemned (produced Off-Broadway at Hudson Park Theatre, 1946).
• Moony's Kids Don't Cry (produced in Los Angeles, CA, at Actor's Laboratory Theatre, 1946).
• Portrait of a Madonna (produced in Los Angeles, CA, 1946; produced in New York, NY as part of Triple Play, 1959).
• The Last of My Solid Gold Watches (produced in Los Angeles, CA, at Actor's Laboratory Theatre, 1946).
• Lord Byron's Love Letter (produced in New York, NY, 1947; revised version produced in London, England, 1964).
• Auto-da-Fe (produced in New York, NY, 1947).
• The Lady of Larkspur Lotion (produced in New York, NY, 1947; produced in London, England, 1968).
• Summer and Smoke (first produced in Dallas, TX, 1947; produced on Broadway, 1948; revised as Eccentricities of a Nightingale, produced in Washington, DC, 1966).
• A Streetcar Named Desire (first produced on Broadway, 1947)
• The Rose Tattoo (produced in New York, NY, 1951)
• Camino Real: A Play (expanded version of Ten Blocks on the Camino Real; produced in New York, NY, 1953).
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (first produced on Broadway, 1955).
• Three Players of a Summer Game (first produced in Westport, CT, 1955).
• (Librettist) Raffaello de Banfield, Lord Byron's Love Letter: Opera in One Act, Ricordi, 1955.
• The Case of the Crushed Petunias (produced in Cleveland, OH, 1957; produced in New York, NY, 1958).
• Orpheus Descending: A Play in Three Acts (revision of Battle of Angels; produced in New York, NY, 1957; produced Off-Broadway, 1959).
• Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen (first produced in Westport, CT, 1958; produced in New York, NY, 1967).
• I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix: A Play about D.H. Lawrence (first produced Off-Broadway, 1958).
• Sweet Bird of Youth (first produced in New York, NY, 1959)
• Period of Adjustment; High Point over a Cavern: A Serious Comedy (first produced in Miami, FL, 1959; produced on Broadway, 1960).
• The Purification (produced Off-Broadway at Theatre de Lys, 1959).
• The Night of the Iguana (based on Williams's short story; short version first produced in Spoleto, Italy, 1960; expanded version produced on Broadway, 1961).
• Hello from Bertha (produced in Bromley, England, 1961).
• To Heaven in a Golden Coach (produced in Bromley, England, 1961).
• The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (one-act version produced in Spoleto, Italy, 1962; expanded version produced on Broadway, 1963; revision produced on Broadway at Brooks Atkinson Theatre, 1964).
• Slapstick Tragedy (contains The Mutilated and The Gnaediges Fraulein; first produced on Broadway, 1966).
• ,The Gnaediges Fraulein revised as The Latter Days of a Celebrated Soubrette (produced in New York, NY, 1974).
• The Dark Room (produced in London, England, 1966).
• Kingdom of Earth: The Seven Descents of Myrtle (first published in Esquire as one-act Kingdom of Earth, 1967; expanded as The Seven Descents of Myrtle, produced on Broadway at Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 1968; revised as Kingdom of Earth, produced in Princeton, NJ, 1975)
• The Two-Character Play (first produced in London, England, 1967; revision produced as Out Cry in Chicago, IL, 1971; produced on Broadway, 1973).
• In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (first produced Off-Broadway, 1969).
• The Strangest Kind of Romance (produced in London, England, 1969).
• (With others) Oh! Calcutta! (produced Off-Broadway, 1969).
• The Frosted Glass Coffin and A Perfect Analysis Given by a Parrot' (produced in Key West, FL, 1970).
• The Long Stay Cut Short; or, The Unsatisfactory Supper (produced in London, England, 1971).
• I Can't Imagine Tomorrow [and] Confessional (produced in Bar Harbor, ME, 1971).
• Small Craft Warnings (produced Off-Broadway, 1972).
• The Red Devil Battery Sign (produced in Boston, MA, 1975; revised version produced in Vienna, Austria, 1976).
• Demolition Downtown: Count Ten in Arabic (produced in London, England, 1976).
• This Is (An Entertainment) (produced in San Francisco, CA, 1976).
• Vieux Carre (produced on Broadway, 1977).
• A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur (first produced under title Creve Coeur in Charleston, SC, 1978; produced Off-Broadway, 1979).
• Clothes for a Summer Hotel: A Ghost Play (produced on Broadway, 1980).
• Something Cloudy, Something Clear (first produced Off-Off Broadway, 1981).
• Ten by Tennessee (10 one-act plays, produced in New York at Lucille Lortel Theatre, May, 1986).
• Not about Nightingales (first produced in London, England, 1998).
• 8 by Tenn (8 one-act plays, produced in Hartford, CT, 2003).

Except where noted, play information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.

See also

We Have Not Long to Love by Tennessee Williams

Elle Macpherson reading Tennessee Williams

"How calmly does the orange branch" by Tennessee Williams

• List of English-language playwrights
• List of U.S. poets

References

• 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
• Jacobus, Lee. "The Bedford Introduction to Drama". Boston: Bedford, 2009.

Fonds

• Tennessee Williams inventory of his papers at the Harry Ransom Center
• Tennessee Williams Papers at Columbia University archival collections & Rare Book & Manuscript Library

External links

Poems

• Tennessee Williams poem ("The Wine Drinkers") at the Academy of American Poets
• Tennessee Williams 1911-1983 at the Poetry Foundation
• Tennessee Williams at PoemHunter (4 poems)

Audio / video

• Tennessee Williams at YouTube
• Tennessee Williams reads two stirring poems by Hart Crane

Books

• Tennessee Williams at Amazon.com

About

• Tennessee Williams in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Tennessee Williams at Biography.com
• Tennessee Williams in the Encyclopedia of World Biography
• Tennessee Williams at the Internet Movie Database
• Tennessee Williams at the Internet Broadway Database
• Williams, Tennessee at the Open Directory Project
• The Paris Review Interview
• Tennessee Williams at Find a Grave

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