Tennessee Williams(1911 — 1983)
Tennessee Williams
États-Unis
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Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) was one of the greatest American playwrights of the 20th century. His plays, marked by psychological tension and the decline of the American South, profoundly reshaped modern theatre.
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi, and died on February 25, 1983, in New York
- Achieved his first major success with The Glass Menagerie (1944)
- Received the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for A Streetcar Named Desire (premiered in 1947)
- Won a second Pulitzer Prize in 1955 for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
- Several of his plays were adapted for the screen, notably A Streetcar Named Desire by Elia Kazan (1951) starring Marlon Brando
Works & Achievements
A largely autobiographical “memory” play that launched Williams. It established an intimate, poetic theater blending recollection and illusion.
A masterpiece about the downfall of Blanche DuBois in the face of Stanley Kowalski's brutality. Winner of the 1948 Pulitzer Prize and a landmark of modern theater.
A dramatic comedy about a Sicilian-American widow, sunnier than his other works. It earned Williams a Tony Award.
A family drama about lies (“mendacity”), desire, and money on a Southern plantation. The author's second Pulitzer Prize.
A short, dark play haunted by the specter of lobotomy, echoing the tragedy of his sister Rose.
A tragedy about decline, lost glory, and the ravages of time. One of his last great Broadway successes.
Williams's last major critical success, set on the Mexican coast and adapted for the screen by John Huston.
A remarkably candid autobiography about his life, his addictions, and his homosexuality — rare for the time.
Anecdotes
His real first name was Thomas, but his college classmates nicknamed him “Tennessee” because of his strong Southern accent and his father's roots in that state. He kept the nickname all his life and made it his pen name.
For several years, the young Williams worked in a warehouse for the International Shoe Company in St. Louis, a job he hated. He wrote at night, exhausted, and later turned this experience into dramatic material in *The Glass Menagerie*.
His older sister Rose, mentally fragile, underwent a lobotomy in 1943 from which she never recovered. This family tragedy haunts his entire body of work: its echo can be found in the character of Laura (*The Glass Menagerie*) and Catharine (*Suddenly, Last Summer*).
During the Broadway premiere of *A Streetcar Named Desire* in 1947, an unknown young actor named Marlon Brando played Stanley Kowalski under the direction of Elia Kazan. The role made him famous overnight and left its mark on the history of American theater.
Williams died in 1983 in a room at the Hotel Elysée in New York, choking on the cap of a bottle of eye drops that he is said to have held between his teeth. A strange end for one of the greatest playwrights of the century.
Primary Sources
I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.
Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
Mendacity is a system that we live in.
Expressionism and all other unconventional techniques in drama have only one valid aim, and that is a closer approach to truth.
Key Places
Tennessee Williams's birthplace, in the rectory where his grandfather, a minister, lived. He spent his earliest years there in the Deep South.
The city where the family settled in 1918 and where Williams grew up, studied, and worked in a factory. The contrast with the rural South fed *The Glass Menagerie*.
Home of the University of Iowa, where Williams earned his degree in 1938 and trained in playwriting.
Williams's adopted city, whose sensual, fading atmosphere permeates *A Streetcar Named Desire*. He lived there on several occasions.
The island where Williams owned a house and wrote much of his work, drawn by the light, the sea, and the quiet.
The Manhattan hotel where Tennessee Williams died in 1983. He stayed there regularly in his final years.