Leverich, Lyle 1920(?)-1999
LEVERICH, Lyle 1920(?)-1999
PERSONAL: Born c. 1920; died of a heart seizure December 21, 1999, in San Rafael, CA.
CAREER: Theater director and producer.
AWARDS, HONORS: George Freedley Award, and Lambda Award for Best Theater Book of the Year, both 1995, both for Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams.
WRITINGS:
Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams, Crown (New York, NY), 1995.
SIDELIGHTS: Lyle Leverich was not an author by trade, yet American playwright Tennessee Williams chose Leverich to write the only authorized biography of his life. Leverich was a theater director and producer; he met Williams in San Francisco in 1976, during a staging of one of the playwright's lesser-known works, The Two-Character Play. The two men became friends, and in 1980, Williams sent a letter to Leverich authorizing him to use all of his papers in writing a biography. Williams died in 1983, but Leverich still faced a formidable obstacle in the person of Maria St. Just, an old friend of Williams who was also a trustee of the fund established by the playwright for his lobotomized sister, Rose. St. Just refused to cooperate with Leverich, and she threatened legal action against any publisher that would issue his biography. Her death in 1994 cleared the way for Leverich to proceed.
Leverich conceived his biography as a two-volume work, but he died before completing the second volume. Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams covers Williams's childhood years and his adult life up until the time of his great success with The Glass Menagerie, which opened in New York in 1945. Williams grew up in a family fraught with conflict, a situation that would become central to his dramatic work. Alcoholism, domestic violence, and mental illness were the overwhelming features of the Williams family's home life. The playwright's use of the name "Tennessee" came about when he entered a writing contest and wanted a name that would stand out. Leverich suggests that the new name became a flamboyant persona as well, allowing the passive, repressed Tom Williams to say and do things he could not otherwise have done, making great drama out of his painful life experiences. "The struggle between Tom and Tennessee … is one of the more salient themes of Mr. Leverich's portrait," stated Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in the New York Times. Wendy Smith, writing in the Washington Post Book World, found the biographer's emphasis on the duality between Tom and Tennessee to be "less important and interesting than his careful delineation of how Tennessee achieved the truthfulness and ruthlessness required to write honestly and with universal implications about Tom's experiences." Tom was strongly endorsed by John Lahr, a writer for the New Yorker, who stated that Leverich's biography is "a tremendous accomplishment, and Leverich is an appealing biographer: modest, thorough, balanced, and passionate. In prose that is clear if not scintillating he bushwhacks a path through a morass of gossip and myth, and prepares the way for a more subtle interpretation of the man and his plays. This is the first major reassessment of the life of America's greatest playwright."
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:
PERIODICALS
America, April 13, 1996, W. Kenneth Holditch, review of Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams, p. 26.
American Theatre, December, 1995, Foster Hirsch, review of Tom, p. 30.
Antioch Review, spring, 1996, Melinda Kanner, review of Tom, p. 247.
Booklist, October 1, 1995, Jack Helbig, review of Tom, p. 210.
Entertainment Weekly, November 24, 1995, Megan Harlan, review of Tom, p. 98.
Gay & Lesbian Review, spring, 2000, Martha E. Stone, "In Memoriam, 1999," p. 6.
Humanities, March-April, 2001, review of Tom, p. 31.
Library Journal, October 1, 1995, Robert L. Kelly, review of Tom, pp. 82-83.
Los Angeles Times, October 30, 2000, Allan M. Jalon, review of Tom, p. E1.
Mississippi Quarterly, fall, 1998, Nancy M. Tischler, "Where I Live," p. 649.
New Leader, December 18, 1995, David Evanier, review of Tom, p. 29.
New Yorker, December 18, 1995, John Lahr, review of Tom, p. 113.
New York Times, January 4, 1995, p. C14; December 18, 1995, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of Tom, p. C14.
New York Times Book Review, November 19, 1995, Benedict Nightingale, review of Tom, p. 15.
Publishers Weekly, September 11, 1995, review of Tom, p. 68.
Washington Post Book World, November 12, 1995, Wendy Smith, review of Tom, pp. 4, 6.
World Literature Today, summer, 1996, Stephen Grecco, review of Tom, p. 703.
OBITUARIES:
PERIODICALS
Los Angeles Times, December 25, 1999, Elaine Woo, "Tennessee Williams Fan Became the Playwright's Biographer," p. 32.
New York Times, December 21, 1999, Mel Gussow, "Tennessee Williams Expert," p. C22.