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Williams, Tennessee

With the exception perhaps of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams was the greatest American playwright of the mid twentieth century. He rose, however, from inauspicious beginnings. Born as Thomas Williams in Mississippi in 1911, he was a sickly child, suffering periodically from diphtheria and provoking the ire of his father, a violent alcoholic who despised what he considered to be his son’s weakness. Owing to the fact that his father was a travelling salesman, Williams’ childhood was further disrupted by the frequent relocations undergone by his family. This sad and troubled upbringing was, many believe, the foundation for the tragic family dramas contained throughout his work.

While at college in Missouri as a young man, Williams saw a production of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts and decided that his calling was as a playwright. He was later forced to drop out of college by his father to help support the family by working in a shoe factory; although Williams hated the factory work, he met a fellow worker there who became the basis for perhaps his most famous literary creation, Stanley Kowalski.

After a decade of struggling in menial jobs and battling nervous breakdowns, Williams enrolled in the University of Washington, St Louis, and later the University of Iowa, where he would finally complete his undergraduate English degree in 1938. Throughout this time, he had continued to pursue his dream of becoming a writer, and in 1939, using funds from a grant given to him by the Rockefeller Foundation to develop his talent, he moved to New Orleans, where he worked as a copyist for Franklin D Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration programme that had been designed to help people still suffering from the effects of the Great Depression. It was at this time that he changed his name to Tennessee, the reasoning for which, strangely enough, was that his father had been born there. Five years later, Williams’ first major play, The Glass Menagerie (1944), opened in Chicago to positive reviews. The play features a mentally ill character called Rose, who was based on the tragic life of his own sister, who had been subjected to a lobotomy the year before and would subsequently never escape mental institutions for the rest of her life. This decision of Williams’ parents to lobotomise Rose prompted Williams to sever all ties with them.

Over the next 10 years, Williams wrote a string of successful plays, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955). Set in New Orleans, Streetcar is perhaps Williams’ most well-known play, due in no small part to the titanic struggle between the characters of Blanche DuBois and her terrifying misogynistic nemesis, Stanley Kowalski. These two plays were particularly significant because of their adaptation into films directed by the renowned Elia Kazan. This development meant that Williams’ work reached a wide audience for the first time and established him as one of the foremost literary figures in the American twentieth century. During this period he was also in a homosexual relationship with a man called Frank Merlo, who accompanied Williams on his many travels around the world. Splitting their time between Manhattan and Florida, Williams would later remark that these years with Merlo were the happiest of his life.

In 1963 the pair separated and, a few short months later, Merlo died of lung cancer. This trauma, coupled with Williams’ failure to reach the stratospheric heights of his work during the 1940s and 1950s, caused him to relapse into the bouts of depression and anxiety that had plagued him as a young man. In a tragically ironic turn, Williams became addicted to the very amphetamines that been prescribed to treat his depression, and his literary output steadily diminished in quality. The plays that he did produce, such as In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969), Small Craft Warnings (1973) and The Red Devil Battery Sign (1976), were all critical and box office failures that exacerbated his weakened mental state.

At the age of 71, Williams was found dead in his New York hotel room having accidentally inhaled and choked on the cap of a bottle of nasal spray. In the decades following his death, Williams has posthumously received a string of awards and honours, including a plaque in the American Poets’ Corner at the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine in New York. Despite Williams’ wish to be buried at sea, his family chose to lay him to rest in the Calvary Cemetery of St Louis, Missouri, determining and shaping the trajectory of his death just as they had his life.
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1911

Born

Tennessee Williams was born on 26th March 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi.
1916

Contracted diphtheria

At five years of age, Williams contracted diphtheria, an illness that would plague him throughout his childhood.
1929

Began college education

Began attending the University of Missouri. While there, he was inspired to become a playwright after seeing a production of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts.
1943

Sister’s lobotomy

Williams’ parents allow their daughter Rose to be lobotomised. She never fully recovered, and Williams never forgave his parents.
1944

First play opened

The Glass Menagerie, Williams’ first major play, premiered in Chicago.
1947

Met partner

Fell in love with Frank Merlo.
1947

Opening of Streetcar

A Streetcar Named Desire, the play for which Williams would become most renowned, opened on Broadway.
1948

Won his first Pulitzer Prize

Won the Pulitzer Prize after the success of A Streetcar Named Desire.
1951

Streetcar adapted for film

A film version of A Streetcar Named Desire starring Marlon Brando was released. It succeeded in bringing Williams’ work to a wider audience, and secured his fame.
1955

Won his second Pulitzer Prize

Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof earned him his second Pulitzer. He became only the fourth dramatist to win two Pulitzers.
1956

Wrote the screenplay for Baby Doll

Adapted from one of his earlier plays, Williams’ screenplay caused public controversy over its depiction of sex but was widely lauded by critics.
1963

Death of Frank Merlo

Williams’ lover died, sending him into a decade-long spell of depression. They had broken up only months before.
1970s

Williams spiralled into addiction and depression

After Merlo’s death, Williams became addicted to amphetamines prescribed to treat his depression.
1979

Inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame

Amid his depression and drug dependency, Williams received recognition for his services to American drama by being inducted into the Hall of Fame.
1980

Williams’ Broadway career was fading

Clothes for a Summer Hotel, the last in a string of box office failures, closed on Broadway, leaving Williams disconsolate.
1983

Died

Williams dies after accidentally inhaling a cap from a bottle of nasal spray. At the request of his family, he was buried in the Calvary Cemetery of St Louis, Missouri.
2009

Inducted into the American Poets’ Corner

Inducted into the American Poets’ Corner at the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine in New York City.