Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier Williams III arrived in Columbus, Mississippi on the 26th of March 1911. He was the second child born to Edwina Dakin and Cornelius Coffin Williams. His father worked as a traveling shoe salesman who frequently left home due to his job. The family lived in various locations around St. Louis after his father received a promotion at the International Shoe Company headquarters. Young Thomas suffered from diphtheria which nearly killed him when he was only five years old. This illness left him frail and confined to his house for an entire year during recuperation. His father viewed this physical weakness with disdain and often used violence against his son. Edwina focused her attention almost entirely on her sickly young boy while locked in an unhappy marriage herself. Critics later agreed that Williams drew heavily from these dysfunctional family dynamics in much of his writing.
Williams attended University City High School before enrolling at the University of Missouri in Columbia during 1929. He joined the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity but did not fit well with his brothers there. A military training course failure led his father to pull him out of school in 1931. He then began working at the International Shoe Company factory where he hated the monotony of daily life. The job forced him to write prodigiously despite his exhaustion. His mother recalled hearing the typewriter clicking away late into the night inside their silent house. Some mornings she found him sprawled fully dressed across his bed too tired to remove his clothes. By his twenty-fourth birthday Williams had suffered a nervous breakdown and quit his job. Memories of this period contributed directly to the character Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire.
The Glass Menagerie developed from his 1943 short story Portrait of a Girl in Glass premiered in Chicago during the winter of 1944-45. It moved to New York where it became an instant hit and enjoyed a long Broadway run. Elia Kazan directed many of Williams's greatest successes including this production. The play won the award for best play of the season from the New York Drama Critics' Circle. A Streetcar Named Desire cemented his reputation as a great playwright in 1947. Between 1948 and 1959 seven of his plays were produced on Broadway including Summer and Smoke and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. By 1959 he had earned two Pulitzer Prizes along with three New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards. The huge success of these works established him among the foremost American playwrights of the twentieth century.
Williams spent the spring and summer of 1948 in Rome with a young man named Rafaello who received financial assistance for several years afterward. He returned to New York City where he met Frank Merlo in 1940. This relationship lasted fourteen years until infidelities and drug abuse ended it. Merlo served as Williams's personal secretary and took on most details of their domestic life. They lived together in an apartment in Manhattan and later a modest house in Key West Florida. These years represented Williams's happiest and most productive period before his decline. Shortly after their breakup Merlo was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. Williams cared for him until his death on the 20th of September 1963. After Merlo died Williams descended into nearly catatonic depression and increasing drug use.
During the 1960s and 1970s Williams experienced personal turmoil and theatrical failures despite continuing to write every day. His plays Kingdom of Earth and Small Craft Warnings were all box office failures that wore down his spirit. Negative press notices contributed to his downward spiral while he remained under the control of his mother and brother Dakin. He submitted to injections by Dr. Max Jacobson known popularly as Dr. Feelgood. Jacobson used increasing amounts of amphetamines to overcome Williams's depression combined with prescriptions for Seconal to relieve insomnia. The quality of his work suffered from this increasing alcohol and drug consumption along with occasional poor choices of collaborators. By 1982 his last play A House Not Meant to Stand ran for only forty performances despite largely positive reviews.
On the 25th of February 1983 Williams was found dead at age seventy-one in his suite at the Hotel Elysée in New York City. Chief Medical Examiner Elliot M. Gross initially reported he had choked on a plastic cap but corrected the report on the 14th of August 1983. The final determination stated Williams died from a toxic level of secobarbital which he had been using to ingest barbiturates. Most of his estate went to the University of the South in Sewanee Tennessee with the bulk remaining in trust for his sister Rose during her lifetime. Since 1986 the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival has been held annually in commemoration of the playwright. In 2014 Williams became one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor Walk noting LGBTQ people who made significant contributions in their fields. His literary legacy continues through numerous festivals awards and adaptations worldwide.
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Common questions
When and where was Thomas Lanier Williams III born?
Thomas Lanier Williams III arrived in Columbus, Mississippi on the 26th of March 1911. He was the second child born to Edwina Dakin and Cornelius Coffin Williams.
What caused Thomas Williams's nervous breakdown at age twenty-four?
A military training course failure led his father to pull him out of school in 1931. The job forced him to write prodigiously despite his exhaustion which contributed directly to a nervous breakdown by his twenty-fourth birthday.
Which play won the award for best play of the season from the New York Drama Critics' Circle in 1945?
The Glass Menagerie premiered in Chicago during the winter of 1944-45 and moved to New York where it became an instant hit. It won the award for best play of the season from the New York Drama Critics' Circle.
Who was Frank Merlo and how long did their relationship last?
Frank Merlo served as Thomas Williams's personal secretary and took on most details of their domestic life. This relationship lasted fourteen years until infidelities and drug abuse ended it before Merlo died on the 20th of September 1963.
How did Thomas Williams die according to the final medical determination?
Thomas Williams was found dead at age seventy-one in his suite at the Hotel Elysée in New York City on the 25th of February 1983. The final determination stated he died from a toxic level of secobarbital which he had been using to ingest barbiturates.