Tennessee
Williams,
the son of a travelling salesman, was born in Columbus,
Mississippi, in 1911. After graduating from the University of Iowa
in 1938, Williams did a variety of menial jobs. Determined to be a
writer, Williams's first plays were one-act pieces.
Williams first came to the notice of critics with his play Battle
of Angels
(1940) and as a result received a Rockefeller
Fellowship. Williams was also given a contract by MGM but this was
cancelled when he submitted his first script, The
Glass Menagerie. Rewritten, it was performed on Broadway
in 1945 and won the New York Drama Critics Award.
In 1947 Williams joined up with the director, Elia
Kazan. Their first production together, A
Streetcar Named Desire
won the Pulitzer Prize. William followed
this with the novel, The
Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
(1950), and two more plays, Rose
Tattoo
(1951) and Camino
Red
(1953).
In 1955 Williams, again working with Elia
Kazan, won his second Pulitzer
Prize for Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof.
Other work by Williams include the film script for Kazan's Baby
Doll
(1956),
and the plays, Suddenly
Last Summer
(1958), Sweet
Bird of Youth
(1959) and The
Night of the Iguana
(1961).
Williams spent the 1960s struggling with his addiction to alcohol.
He returned to writing but his later plays, Vieux
Carré
(1977),
A
Lovely Sunday for Crève Coeur
(1978) and Clothes
for a Summer Hotel
(1980) were box-office failures. Tennessee
Williams
died in New York City on 25th February,
1983.
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