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Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier Williams III was born on the 26th of March 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi, into a family that would become the blueprint for his greatest tragedies. He was the second child of Edwina Dakin and Cornelius Coffin Williams, a traveling shoe salesman whose alcoholism and violent temper created a household of fear and instability. As a young child, Williams nearly died from diphtheria, an illness that left him frail, short, and virtually confined to his house for a year of recuperation. This physical weakness became a source of deep shame for his father, who regarded his son's effeminacy with disdain and frequently used his fists to enforce a rigid, masculine ideal. While his father raged, his mother Edwina locked her attention almost entirely on her frail son, creating a suffocating bond that would haunt Williams for the rest of his life. The dysfunction of this family, the puritanical upbringing, and the desire to break free from it propelled him toward writing, transforming his personal pain into the universal language of the American stage.
The Factory And The Typewriter
By the time Williams was sixteen, he had already begun to carve out a space for himself through words, winning third prize for an essay published in Smart Set and seeing his short story The Vengeance of Nitocris appear in Weird Tales. Yet the path to recognition was long and fraught with struggle. From 1929 to 1931, he attended the University of Missouri, where he enrolled in journalism classes but found himself bored and distracted by unrequited love. He began entering his poetry, essays, stories, and plays in writing contests, hoping to earn extra income, and his first submitted play, Beauty Is the Word, earned him honorable mention as the first freshman to do so in a writing competition. When his father pulled him out of school after he failed a military training course, Williams was forced to work at the International Shoe Company factory. He hated the monotony of the nine-to-five routine, but the job forced him out of the gentility of his upbringing and drove him to write prodigiously. He set a goal of writing one story a week, often working on weekends and late into the night. His mother recalled his intensity, describing how he would go to his room with black coffee and cigarettes, the typewriter clicking away in the silent house, only to be found sprawled fully dressed across the bed, too tired to remove his clothes. Overworked, unhappy, and lacking further success, by his 24th birthday Williams had suffered a nervous breakdown and left his job, memories of this period and of a particular factory co-worker contributing to the character of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire.
When was Thomas Lanier Williams III born and where?
Thomas Lanier Williams III was born on the 26th of March 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. He was the second child of Edwina Dakin and Cornelius Coffin Williams.
What caused the death of Tennessee Williams on the 25th of February 1983?
Tennessee Williams died from a toxic level of secobarbital after using a plastic cap to ingest the drug. The initial report stated he choked on the cap, but the corrected report on the 14th of August 1983 confirmed the drug overdose.
Who was the sister of Tennessee Williams and what happened to her?
Rose Isabel Williams was the sister of Tennessee Williams who was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young woman. She underwent a lobotomy in 1943 and was institutionalized for the rest of her life.
When did Tennessee Williams achieve fame with The Glass Menagerie?
The Glass Menagerie was produced in Chicago on the 26th of May 1944 and became an instant hit in New York. This production marked the end of years of obscurity for the playwright at age 33.
Who was Frank Merlo and how long was his relationship with Tennessee Williams?
Frank Merlo was an occasional actor of Sicilian ancestry who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Their relationship lasted 14 years until infidelities and drug abuse ended it, and Merlo died on the 20th of September 1963.
The turning point of Williams's life arrived on the 26th of May 1944, when his memory play The Glass Menagerie, developed from his 1943 short story Portrait of a Girl in Glass, was produced in Chicago and garnered good reviews. It moved to New York where it became an instant hit and enjoyed a long Broadway run, marking the end of years of obscurity. At age 33, Williams suddenly became famous, launching a string of successes that included A Streetcar Named Desire in 1947, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955, Sweet Bird of Youth in 1959, and The Night of the Iguana in 1961. The huge success of A Streetcar Named Desire cemented his reputation as a great playwright, and during the late 1940s and 1950s, Williams began to travel widely with his partner Frank Merlo, often spending summers in Europe. He moved often to stimulate his writing, living in New York, New Orleans, Key West, Rome, Barcelona, and London. Williams wrote that only some radical change could divert the downward course of his spirit, some startling new place or people to arrest the drift. Between 1948 and 1959, he had seven of his plays produced on Broadway, earning two Pulitzer Prizes, three New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards, three Donaldson Awards, and a Tony Award. His work reached wider audiences when The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire were adapted into motion pictures, and later plays were also adapted for the screen, including Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Rose Tattoo.
The Shadow Of Sister Rose
Throughout his life, Williams remained close to his sister, Rose Isabel Williams, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young woman. In 1943, as her behavior became increasingly disturbing, she was subjected to a lobotomy, requiring her to be institutionalized for the rest of her life. As soon as he was financially able, Williams moved Rose to a private institution just north of New York City, where he often visited her. He gave her a percentage interest in several of his most successful plays, the royalties of which were applied toward her care. The devastating effects of Rose's treatment may have contributed to Williams's alcoholism and his dependence on various combinations of amphetamines and barbiturates. Characters in his plays were often seen as representations of his family members; Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie was thought to be modeled on his sister, and some biographers believed that the character of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire was also based on her, with the mental deterioration of Blanche's character inspired by Rose's mental health struggles. The lobotomy became a motif in Suddenly, Last Summer, and the psychological scars of his sister's fate haunted Williams's work and his personal life, creating a cycle of guilt and artistic expression that defined much of his career.
The Love That Saved And Destroyed
In the late 1930s, Williams began exploring his homosexuality, joining a gay social circle in New York City that included fellow writer and close friend Donald Windham and Windham's then-boyfriend Fred Melton. He initiated a relationship with Kip Kiernan in 1940, a young dancer he met in Provincetown, Massachusetts, but when Kiernan left him to marry a woman, Williams was distraught. Kiernan's death four years later at age 26 was another heavy blow. On a 1945 visit to Taos, New Mexico, Williams met Pancho Rodríguez y González, a hotel clerk of Mexican heritage, and they lived and traveled together until late 1947, when Williams ended the relationship. The enduring romantic relationship of Williams's life, however, was with Frank Merlo, an occasional actor of Sicilian ancestry who had served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. This relationship lasted 14 years until infidelities and drug abuse on both sides ended it. Merlo, who had become Williams's personal secretary, took on most of the details of their domestic life and provided a period of happiness and stability, acting as a balance to the playwright's frequent bouts with depression. Williams feared that, like his sister Rose, he would fall into insanity. His years with Merlo, in an apartment in Manhattan and a modest house in Key West, Florida, were Williams's happiest and most productive. Shortly after their breakup, Merlo was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. Williams returned to him and cared for him until his death on the 20th of September 1963, after which Williams descended into a period of nearly catatonic depression and increasing drug use.
The Descent Into Darkness
In the years following Merlo's death, Williams descended into a period of nearly catatonic depression and increasing drug use, which resulted in several hospitalizations and commitments to mental health facilities. He submitted to injections by Dr. Max Jacobson, known popularly as Dr. Feelgood, who used increasing amounts of amphetamines to overcome Williams's depression. Jacobson combined these with prescriptions for the sedative Seconal to relieve Williams's insomnia. During this time, influenced by his brother, a Roman Catholic convert, Williams joined the Catholic Church, though he never attributed much significance to religion in his personal life. He was never truly able to recoup his earlier success, or to entirely overcome his dependence on prescription drugs. As Williams grew older, he felt increasingly alone, fearing old age and losing his sexual appeal to younger gay men. In the 1970s, when he was in his 60s, Williams had a lengthy relationship with Robert Carroll, a Vietnam War veteran and aspiring writer in his 20s. Williams had deep affection for Carroll and respect for what he saw as the younger man's talents, but Carroll had a drug problem, as did Williams, and friends including Maria Britneva saw the relationship as destructive. Williams wrote that Carroll played on his acute loneliness as an aging gay man. When the two men broke up in 1979, Williams called Carroll a twerp, but they remained friends until Williams died four years later. His plays Kingdom of Earth, In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, Small Craft Warnings, The Two Character Play, The Red Devil Battery Sign, Vieux Carré, and Clothes for a Summer Hotel were all box office failures, and negative press notices wore down his spirit.
The Final Curtain And The Legacy
On the 25th of February 1983, Williams was found dead at age 71 in his suite at the Hotel Elysée in New York City. Chief Medical Examiner of New York City Elliot M. Gross reported that Williams had choked to death from inhaling the plastic cap of the type used on bottles of nasal spray or eye solution, but the report was corrected on the 14th of August 1983 to state that Williams had been using the plastic cap found in his mouth to ingest barbiturates and had actually died from a toxic level of secobarbital. He wrote in his will in 1972 that most of his estate was left to the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, with the bulk of it to remain in trust for his sister during her lifetime. His brother Dakin Williams arranged for him to be buried at Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri, where his mother is buried. Since his death, Williams has been honored with a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame, inducted into the Poets' Corner at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York, and recognized with the Tennessee Williams Theatre in Key West, Florida. The Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival has been held annually since 1986, and the U.S. Postal Service honored him on a stamp issued on the 13th of October 1995. His literary legacy is represented by the literary agency headed by Georges Borchardt, and his archive is housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2014, Williams was one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood noting LGBTQ people who have made significant contributions in their fields.