ON MARCH 26TH, 2011- TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
woud be 100 years old!
Tennessee Williams, March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983) was an American writer who primarily worked in American theater writing plays. He also wrote short stories, novels, essays and occasional screenplays. His professional career lasted from the mid 1930s to his death in 1983; during this time he wrote many plays that have become regarded as classics of the American stage.
According to theater scholar Charlotte Canning, of the University of Texas at Austin, "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."
Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams III, of Welsh descent, in Columbus, Mississippi to Edwina and Cornelius Williams.
His grandfather was Walter Dakin, the local Episcopal priest, and his maternal grandmother was a music teacher. His father was a hard-drinking traveling salesman who spent most of his time away, while his mother, Edwina, was considered a "Southern belle," with beauty and social inclinations, often performing as a singer.
He had one brother, Dakin, and a sister, Rose. He became closest to his sister, their ages only sixteen months apart. Theater scholar Allean Hale notes that they were "as inseparable as twins, sometimes referred to as 'The Couple.' She adds that they were so close that "when one was ill, the other developed symptoms;" she would become his "only companion" as a child. Hale speculates that his growing up in a female-dominated environment gave Williams the "empathy" for his woman characters as a playwright. Rose would become a prominent feature in much of his fiction.
Tennessee was less robust as a child and his father thought him effeminate. 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 he moved with his family to St. Louis. He was reported to have lived in 29 different homes while growing up in St. Louis.
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.
When the Great Depression affected St. Louis in 1932, his father found him a job at a 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 weekly schedule of writing one story a week, working on Saturday and Sundays, into the night. His mother recalls 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."
A STREET CAR NAMED DESIRE
As a result, by his twenty-fourth birthday, he suffered a nervous breakdown and left his job. But he later used his memories of this period when he developed the character of Stanley Kowalski, from a factory co-worker, in A Streetcar Named Desire.
His first Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for A Streetcar Named Desire. He reached larger world-wide audiences in 1950 and 1951 when The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire were adapted as major motion pictures. Later plays adapted as motion pictures include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (for which he had earned a second Pulitzer Prize in 1955), Orpheus Descending, The Night of the Iguana and Summer and Smoke.
A STREET CAR NAMED DESIRE
Although his plays were now winning major awards and others being made into movies, his "prodigious output" took a toll on Williams, writes author Margaret Bradham Thornton. She notes that "Williams was losing his way." He wrote in his journals that "the best way to have new days is to travel or be sexually promiscuous or work with intensity on a long creation."
However, Thornton adds that while "sex was a diversion, . . . it was work Williams needed in order to live." In 1953, Williams notes in his personal journal, "What fearful admission do I have to make that after 'Streetcar' I haven't been able to write anymore except by a terrible wrenching of the brain and nerves?"
Tennessee was close to his sister Rose, a slim beauty who was diagnosed with schizophrenia at a young age and later institutionalized, where she spent most of her adult life in mental hospitals. Her illness, along with her having a lobotomy, may have contributed to his alcoholism and his dependence on various combinations of amphetamines and barbiturates.
His first sexual affair with a man was at Provincetown, Massachusetts with a dancer named Kip Kiernan. He carried a photo of Kip in his wallet for many years. Having struggled with his sexuality throughout his youth, he came out as a gay man in private. When Kip left him for a woman and marriage, Williams was devastated. Williams was outed as gay by Louis Kronenberger in Time magazine in the 1950s.
THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED
While living 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. This was his only enduring relationship. Williams' relationship with Frank Merlo lasted from 1947 until 1962. With that stability, Williams created his most enduring works. Merlo provided balance to many of Williams' frequent bouts with depression and the fear that, like his sister Rose, he would go insane.
BABY DOLL
Williams died on February 25, 1983 at the age of 71.
Reports at the time indicated he choked on an eyedrop bottle cap in his room at the Hotel Elysee in New York. The reports said he would routinely place the cap in his mouth, lean back, and place his eyedrops in each eye.
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.
SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER
Williams' body was taken to Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel and Williams' funeral took place on March 3, 1983 at Saint 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. 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 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.
The former home of Tennessee Williams was recently renovated and reopened in downtown Columbus, Mississippi.
on a personal note- i consider TENNESSE WILLIAMS the best american writer/playwright thus far.
his short stories- ONE ARM- (1948) and DESIRE AND A BLACK MASSEUR , (1949) have been huge influences on me as an artist.
THE ROMAN SRPING OF MRS. STONE
