Connie Bernardin: Research
Tennessee Williams
1911 - 1983
Playwright Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams III on the 26th of March, 1911,
in Columbus, Mississippi. He was the second of three children to parents, Cornelius and Edwina
and was raised predominantly by his mother. Williams described his childhood as pleasant and
happy however had a complicated relationship with his father, a demanding salesman who preferred
work over parenting. Tennessee was himself a rather delicate child who was plagued with several
serious childhood diseases which kept him from attending regular school. Instead, he read profusely
in his grandfather's library
However life changed for Williams when his family moved to St. Louis, Missouri. The carefree
nature of his childhood was stripped in his new urban home. Unfortunately the household became a
very tense place to live as a strain grew on his parents marriage. The family situation, however, did
offer fuel for the playwright's art and as a result Williams turned inward and started to write. His
mother became the model for the foolish but strong Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie,
while his father represented the aggressive, driving Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Furthermore, It was here in St. Louis that Williams' slightly older sister, Rose, began to cease to
develop as a person and failed to cross over the barrier from childhood to adulthood. She, like Laura
in The Glass Menagerie, began to live in her own world of glass ornaments. Eventually, she had to
be placed in an institution. She became the model for Laura Wingfield. The description of Laura's
room, just across the alley from the Paradise Dance Club, is also a description of his sister's room.
Laura's desire to lose herself from the world was a characteristic of his own sister. And both were
seen by Williams as being shy, quiet, but lovely girls who were not able to cope with the modern
world.
In 1929, Williams enrolled at the University of Missouri to study journalism. But he was soon
withdrawn from the school by his father, who became incensed when he learned that his son's
girlfriend was also attending the university. Eight years later, in 1937 Williams enrolled at the
University of Iowa. He made his dramatic debut with the production of Cairo, Shanghai, Bombay in
Memphis. Then followed that up with the plays Candles to the Sun and The Fugitive Kind, both
produced by the Mummers of St. Louis. However this year, William's older sister Rose was also
hospitalized for schizophrenia. Two years later, aged 28, after graduating from the university of
Iowa with a Bachelor of Arts degree, Williams moved to New Orleans, where he changed his name
(he landed on Tennessee because his father hailed from there) and revamped his lifestyle, soaking
up the city life that would inspire his work, most notably the later play, A Streetcar Named Desire.
This shift in location and identity allowed him to reinvent himself and his work. He soaked in life in
New Orleans, which he described as the last frontier of Bohemia," and the city became a heartbeat
for his work. In the same year of 1939, Williams received a $100 prize grant from the group theatre
and a $1000 Rockefeller grant to support his playwriting. He spent his time writing until the money
was exhausted and then he worked again at odd jobs until his first great success with The Glass
Menagerie in 1944-45.
Williams has used his early life in most of his plays. His favourite setting is southern, with southern
characters. For example, in Stanley Kowalski, we see many of the rough, poker-playing, manly
qualities that his own father possessed.
Williams went on to write hundreds more famous works including plays, novels, poetry, one-act
plays, screenplays and short stories. Some of his most famous/major plays included:
The Glass Menagerie (1944)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)
Summer and Smoke (1948)
The Rose Tattoo (1951)
Camino Real (1953)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)
Orpheus Descending (1957)
Suddenly, Last Summer (1958)
Sweet Bird of Youth (1959)
Period of Adjustment (1960)
The Night of the Iguana (1961)
The Eccentricities of a Nightingale (1962, rewriting of Summer and Smoke)
The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963)
The Mutilated (1965)
The Seven Descents of Myrtle (1968, aka Kingdom of Earth)
In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969)
Will Mr. Merriweather Return from Memphis? (1969)
Small Craft Warnings (1972)
The Two-Character Play (1973)
Out Cry (1973, rewriting of The Two-Character Play)
The Red Devil Battery Sign (1975)
This Is (An Entertainment) (1976)
Vieux Carr (1977)
A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur (1979)
Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980)
The Notebook of Trigorin (1980)
Something Cloudy, Something Clear (1981)
A House Not Meant to Stand (1982)
In Masks Outrageous and Austere (1983)
The 1960s were a difficult time for Williams. His work received poor reviews and increasingly the
playwright turned to alcohol and drugs as coping mechanisms. In 1969 his brother hospitalized him.
Upon his release, Williams got right back to work. He churned out several new plays as well as
Memoirs in 1975, which told the story of his life and his afflictions. But he never fully escaped his
demons. Surrounded by bottles of wine and pills, Williams died in a New York City hotel room on
February 25, 1983.
