Tenesse williams biography

Tennessee Williams

At Writers Theatre:A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams was one of the preeminent American dramatists of the 20th century. His major plays include The Glass Menagerie (New York Drama Critics' Circle Award), A Streetcar Named Desire (Pulitzer Proize and New ork Drama Critics' Circle Award), Summer and Smoke, The Rose Tattoo (Tony Award), Camino Real, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award), Orpheus Descending, Suddenly, Last Summer, Sweet Bird of Youth, The Night of the Iguana (Tony Award), The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore and Vieux Carre. He also wrote the screenplay for the film Baby Doll, a novel titled The RomanSpring of Mrs. Stone and over seventy one-act plays. Born Thomas Lanier Williams in to a shoe salesman and a southern belle, Williams grew up in Mississippi and later St. Louis, Missouri. He attended university in Missouri and became interested in theatre, adopting the name Tennessee. Williams died in at the age of

[Bio as of August ]

American playwright (–)

Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, – February 25, ), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama.

At age 33, after years of obscurity, Williams suddenly became famous with the success of The Glass Menagerie () in New York City. It was the first of a string of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire (), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (), Sweet Bird of Youth (), and The Night of the Iguana (). With his later work, Williams attempted a new style that did not appeal as widely to audiences. His drama A Streetcar Named Desire is often numbered on short lists of the finest American plays of the 20th century alongside Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.

Much of Williams's most acclaimed work has been adapted for the cinema. He also wrote short stories, poetry, essays, and a volume of memoirs. In , four years before his death, Williams was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Early life

Thomas Lanier Williams III was born in Columbus, Mississippi, of English, Welsh, and Huguenot ancestry, the second child of Edwina Dakin (August 9, – June 1, ) and Cornelius Coffin "C. C." Williams (August 21, – March 27, ). His father was a traveling shoe salesman who became an alcoholic and was frequently away from home. His mother, Edwina, was the daughter of Rose O. Dakin, a music teacher, and the Reverend Walter Dakin, an Episcopal priest from Illinois who was assigned to a parish in Clarksdale, Mississippi, shortly after Williams's birth. Williams lived in his grandfather's Episcopal rectory with his family for much of his early childhood and was close to his grandparents. Among his ancestors was musician and

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Who Was Tennessee Williams?

After college, Tennessee Williams moved to New Orleans, a city that would inspire much of his writing. On March 31, , his play, The Glass Menagerie, opened on Broadway and two years later A Streetcar Named Desire earned Williams his first Pulitzer Prize. Many of Williams' plays have been adapted to film starring screen greats like Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor.

Early Years

Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams on March 26, , in Columbus, Mississippi, the second of Cornelius and Edwina Williams' three children. Raised predominantly by his mother, Williams had a complicated relationship with his father, a demanding salesman who preferred work instead of parenting.

Williams described his childhood in Mississippi as pleasant and happy. But life changed for him when his family moved to St. Louis, Missouri. The carefree nature of his boyhood was stripped in his new urban home, and as a result, Williams turned inward and started to write.

His parent's marriage certainly didn't help. Often strained, the Williams home could be a tense place to live. "It was just a wrong marriage," Williams later wrote. The family situation, however, did offer fuel for the playwright's art. 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.

In , 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.

Deeply despondent, Williams retreated home, and at his father's urging took a job as a sales clerk with a shoe company. The future playwright hated the position, and again he turned to his writing, crafting poems and stories after work. Eventually, however, the depression took its toll and Williams suffered a n