Williams, Tennessee

views updated Jun 27 2018

Tennessee Williams

Born: March 26, 1914
Columbus, Mississippi
Died: February 25, 1983
New York, New York

American dramatist, playwright, and writer

Tennessee Williams, dramatist and fiction writer, was one of America's major mid-twentieth-century playwrights. He is best known for his powerful plays, A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Becoming Tennessee

Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in Columbus, Mississippi, on March 26, 1914, the second of three children of Cornelius and Edwina Williams. His father, a traveling salesman, was rarely home and for many years the family lived with his mother's parents. As a result, the young boy developed a close relationship with his grandfather, and also his older sister, Rose. William's family life was never a happy one. His parents were resentful of each other, his mother once describing her husband as "a man's man" who loved to gamble and drink. When his father obtained a position at a shoe factory, the family moved to a crowded, low-rent apartment in St. Louis, Missouri.

About this time, young Thomas adopted the name Tennessee (presumably because many of his descendants hailed from that state). Williams grew to hate St. Louis. He and his sisters were often ridiculed by other students because of their Southern accent. He also skipped school regularly and did poorly in his studies, preferring instead to escape into the world of reading and writing.

At the age of sixteen Williams published his first story. The next year he entered the University of Missouri but left before taking a degree. He worked for two years for a shoe company, spent a year at Washington University (where he had his first plays produced), and earned a bachelor of arts degree from the State University of Iowa in 1938, the year he published his first short story under his literary name, Tennessee Williams.

In 1940 the Theatre Guild produced Williams's Battle of Angels in Boston, Massachusetts. The play was a total failure and was withdrawn after Boston's Watch and Ward Society banned it. Between 1940 and 1945 he lived on grants (donated money) from the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, on income scraped together from an attempt to write film scripts in Hollywood, and on wages as a waiter-entertainer in Greenwich Village in New York City.

Accomplished playwright

With the production of The Glass Menagerie Williams's fortunes changed. The play opened in Chicago, Illinois, in December 1944 and in New York City in March; it received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Sidney Howard Memorial Award. You Touched Me!, written with Donald Windham, opened on Broadway in 1945. It was followed by publication of eleven one-act plays, 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946), and two California productions. When A Streetcar Named Desire opened in 1947, New York audiences knew a major playwright had arrived. A Streetcar Named Desire won a Pulitzer Prize. The play combines sensuality, melodrama, and lyrical symbolism (a poetic representation of significant things). A film version was directed by Elia Kazan (1909) and their partnership lasted for more than a decade.

Although the plays that followed Streetcar never repeated its overwhelming success, they kept Williams's name on theater marquees and in films. His novel The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950) and three volumes of short stories brought him an even wider audience. Some writers consider Summer and Smoke (1948) Williams's most sensitive play. While The RoseTattoo (1951) played to appreciative audiences, Camino Real (1953) played to confused ones. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) was a smashing success and won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize.

Baby Doll (an original Williams-Kazan film script, 1956) was followed by the dramas Orpheus Descending (1957), Garden District (1958; two one-act plays, Something Unspoken and Suddenly Last Summer ), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), Period of Adjustment (1960), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). With these plays, critics charged Williams with publicly trying to solve personal problems, while including confused symbolism, sexual obsessions, thin characterizations, and violence and corruption for their own sake. The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963), The Seven Descents of Myrtle (1963; also called Kingdom of Earth ), and In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969) neither helped Williams's standing with the critics nor proved that Williams's remarkable talent had vanished. Published after his death, Not about Nightingales (1998) had been written in 1938 and was Williams's first full-length play.

Later career

Through the 1970s and 1980s, Williams continued to write for the theater, though he was unable to repeat the success of most of his early years. One of his last plays was Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980), based on passionate love affair between the American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (18961940) and his wife, Zelda.

Two collections of Williams's many oneact plays were published: 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946) and American Blues (1948). Williams also wrote fiction, including two novels, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950) and Moise and the World of Reason (1975). Four volumes of short stories were also published. One Arm and Other Stories (1948), Hard Candy (1954), The Knightly Quest (1969), and Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed (1974). Nine of his plays were made into films, and he wrote one original screenplay, Baby Doll (1956). In his 1975 tell-all novel, Memoirs, Williams described his own problems with alcohol and drugs and his homosexuality (the attraction to members of the same sex).

Williams died in New York City on February 25, 1983. In 1995, the United States Post Office commemorated Williams by issuing a special edition stamp in his name as part of their Literary Arts Series. For several years, literary enthusiasts have gathered to celebrate the man and his work at the Tennessee Williams Scholars Conference. The annual event, held along with the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, features educational, theatrical and literary programs.

For More Information

Hayman, Ronald. Tennessee Williams: Everyone Else Is an Audience. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993.

Holditch, W. Kenneth. Tennessee Williams and the South. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002.

Leverich, Lyle. Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams. New York: Crown Publishers, 1995.

Rasky, Harry. Tennessee Williams: A Portrait in Laughter and Lamentation. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986.

Spoto, Donald. The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams. Boston: Little, Brown, 1985.

Tennessee Williams

views updated May 23 2018

Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams (1914-1983), dramatist and fiction writer, was one of America's major mid-20th-century playwrights.

Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in Columbus, Mississippi, on March 26, 1914. His father was a traveling salesman, and for many years the family lived with his mother's parents. When Williams was about 13, they moved to a crowded tenement in St. Louis, Missouri. At the age of 16 he published his first story. The next year he entered the University of Missouri but left before taking a degree. He worked for two years for a shoe company, spent a year at Washington University (where he had his first plays produced), and earned a bachelor of arts degree from the State University of Iowa in 1938, the year he published his first short story under his literary name.

In 1940 the Theatre Guild produced Williams' Battle of Angels in Boston. The play was a total failure and was withdrawn after Boston's Watch and Ward Society banned it. Between 1940 and 1945 he lived on grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, on income derived from an attempt to write film scripts in Hollywood, and on wages as a waiter-entertainer in Greenwich Village.

With the production of The Glass Menagerie Williams' fortunes changed. The play opened in Chicago in December 1944 and in New York in March; it received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Sidney Howard Memorial Award. You Touched Me!, written in collaboration with Donald Windham, opened on Broadway in 1945. It was followed by publication of 11 one-act plays, 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946), and two California productions. When A Streetcar Named Desire opened in 1947, New York audiences knew a major playwright had arrived. It won a Pulitzer Prize. The play combines sensuality, melodrama, and lyrical symbolism. A film version was directed by Elia Kazan; their partnership lasted for more than a decade.

Although the plays that followed Streetcar never repeated its phenomenal success, they kept Williams's name on theater marquees and films. His novel The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950) and three volumes of short stories brought him an even wider audience. Some writers consider Summer and Smoke (1948) Williams's most sensitive play. The Rose Tattoo (1951) played to appreciative audiences, Camino Real (1953) to confused ones. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize.

Baby Doll (an original Williams-Kazan film script, 1956) was followed by the dramas Orpheus Descending (1957), Garden District (1958; two one-act plays, Something Unspoken and Suddenly Last Summer), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), Period of Adjustment (1960), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). With these plays, critics charged Williams with public exorcism of private neuroses, confused symbolism, sexual obsessions, thin characterizations, and violence and corruption for their own sake. The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963), The Seven Descents of Myrtle (1963; also called Kingdom of Earth), and In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969) neither exonerated him of these charges nor proved that Williams's remarkable talent had vanished.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, Williams continued to write for the theater, though he was unable to repeat the success of most of his early years. One of his last plays was Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980), based on the American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda.

Two collections of Williams's many one-act plays were published: 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946) and American Blues (1948). Williams also wrote fiction, including two novels, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950) and Moise and the World of Reason (1975). Four volumes of short stories were also published. One Arm and Other Stories (1948), Hard Candy (1954), The Knightly Quest (1969), and Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed (1974). Nine of his plays were made into films, and he wrote one original screenplay, Baby Doll (1956). In his 1975 tell-all novel, Memoirs, Williams described his own problems with alcohol and drugs and his homosexuality.

Williams died in New York City, February 25, 1983. In 1995, the United States Post Office commemorated Williams by issuing a special edition stamp in his name as part of their Literary Arts Series.

For several years, literary aficionados have gathered to celebrate the man and his work at The Tennessee Williams Scholars Conference. The annual event, held in conjunction with the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, features educational, theatrical and literary programs.

Further Reading

There is no uniform edition or omnibus collection of Williams's plays. His mother's reminiscences, Edwina Dakin Williams, Remember Me to Tom (1963), and the account of a friend, Gilbert Maxwell, Tennessee Williams and Friends (1965), provide biographical data. Taped interviews with various artists who worked with Williams give a multifaceted view in Mike Steen, A Look at Tennessee Williams (1969). Accounts of Williams' words were gathered to put together Memoirs (1975); Tennessee Williams' Letters to Donald Windham 1940-65 (1977); Albert J. Devlin, Conversations with Tennessee Williams (1986); and Five O'Clock Angel: Letters of Tennessee Williams to Maris St. Just 1948-1982 (1990).

The best critical studies are Signi Lenea Falk, Tennessee Williams (1961); Benjamin Nelson, Tennessee Williams: The Man and His Work (1961); Louis Broussard, American Drama: Contemporary Allegory from Eugene O'Neill to Tennessee Williams (1962); Francis Donahue, The Dramatic World of Tennessee Williams (1964); Gerald Weales, Tennessee Williams (1965); and Louis Broussard, American Drama: Contemporary Allegory from Eugene O'Neill to Tennessee Williams.

Williams, Tennessee

views updated May 18 2018

Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) is recognized as one of America's greatest dramatists, and is well known for the originality of his approach. The material for his plays came almost exclusively from his inner life, showing little influence from other playwrights or even contemporary events.

Because his work is semi-autobiographical, critics often use Williams's family background as a means of analyzing his plays. His father, Cornelius, was a businessman from a prominent Tennessee family who traveled constantly. He was often abusive toward his son, calling him “Miss Nancy” because the child preferred books to sports. Williams's mother, Edwina, was a southern belle and the daughter of a clergyman. She was the inspiration for the domineering and possessive mother figures in Williams's plays. Williams was very close to his older sister, Rose, who was institutionalized for schizophrenia (an emotional disorder that entails depression and losing touch with reality) for much of her life.

Publishes at the age of twelve

Williams was born on March 26, 1911, and began writing early in life. His first works were published in a magazine when he was just twelve. A lonely and sickly child, writing was an escape for Williams. By the time he was twenty, he knew he was going to become a playwright. He went away to college but had to leave when he ran out of money. Eventually he received his degree from the University of Iowa with money he earned writing.

Tennessee Williams had been born Thomas Lanier Williams. Where he acquired the name Tennessee is uncertain, but most biographers agree that he was taking on a new persona (character or identity) after leaving his family's home. After college, he returned to the South—to his beloved New Orleans, where he once lived and felt at home. But he left behind a turbulent family situation. His parents had decided that his sister Rose was to have a prefrontal lobotomy— surgery severing nerves in the brain, which at one time was used as a method of reducing severe emotional disturbances, but with serious, personality-changing side effects.

Establishes himself as an important playwright

In 1944 Williams captured the public's attention with his first major play, The Glass Menagerie. Tom, the narrator of the play, dreams of being a writer and is said to represent Williams. Tom's sister, Laura (based on Rose), is physically and socially challenged. His mother, Amanda, is a fading southern belle who lives in the past. In the play Amanda persuades Tom to bring home a “gentleman caller” (or suitor) whom she hopes will marry Laura and provide for her future. Tom brings a man who is already engaged, upsetting his mother and causing Laura to retreat more deeply into her fantasy world of records and her glass animal collection. Tom then leaves his family, as his father had before him, to pursue his own destiny.

In 1947 Williams established an international reputation with A Streetcar Named Desire, which many critics consider his best work. The play begins with the arrival of Blanche DuBois at the home of her sister, Stella, and her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, a strong, crude, working-class man. Blanche has presided over the decay and loss of her family's Southern estate and has witnessed the suicide of her young husband. She comes to Stella seeking comfort and security but clashes with Stanley. While Stella is in the hospital giving birth, Stanley rapes Blanche, causing her to lose what little is left of her sanity. At the end, Blanche is committed to a hospital for the mentally ill.

Later works

Although none of Williams's later plays were as popular as A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie, several works from the 1950s and 1960s are considered significant achievements in American drama. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), which is set on a Mississippi plantation, is about the lies and self-deception of a southern family. This play has some of Williams's most memorable characters: Brick, a homosexual, who drinks to forget his guilt over the death of a lover; Maggie, his wife, who struggles “like a cat on a hot tin roof” to save their marriage; and Big Daddy, whose impending death from cancer prompts his family to compete for the inheritance. The Night of the Iguana (1961) was Williams's last play to win a major prize and gain critical and popular favor.

Williams saw himself as a shy, sensitive, gifted man trapped in a world where “mendacity,” or lies, replaced communication, brute violence replaced love, and loneliness was the standard human condition. His homosexuality isolated him from the comforts of Southern society as did his sense of being a romantic in an unromantic, postwar world. He was at a low point in his own life when he wrote such plays as Suddenly Last Summer (1958) and Sweet Bird of Youth (1956), which are dark and violent stories. In his Memoirs (1975), Williams referred to the 1960s as his “Stoned Age,” a time he needed drugs, caffeine, and alcohol for the energy to work.

Despite increasingly unfavorable criticism, Williams continued his work for two more decades. In the course of his career he produced three volumes of short stories, many of them studies for later dramas; two novels, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone and Moise and the World of Reason; two volumes of poetry; his memoirs; and essays on his life and craft. His dramas made that rare transition from stage to movies and television with great success. Before his death in 1983, Williams had become the best-known living dramatist; his plays had been translated and performed in many foreign countries, and his name and work had become known even to people who had never seen a production of any of his plays.

Williams, Tennessee

views updated Jun 08 2018

Williams, Tennessee ( Thomas Lanier) (1911–83) US playwright. His first Broadway play, The Glass Menagerie (1945), received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. He received Pulitzer Prizes for A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955). His other plays include Suddenly Last Summer (1958), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). Many of his plays were set in the South, in a cloying and repressive environment that reflected the plight of the characters.

About this article

Tennessee Williams

All Sources -
Updated Aug 18 2018 About encyclopedia.com content Print Topic