Williams, Thomas Lanier (Tennessee)

(1911-1983)

   Playwright Tennessee Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi. He received the nickname “Tennessee” while in college because of his drawl. The family later moved to Missouri, and in 1929 Williams went to the University of Missouri at Columbia but withdrew to work in a shoe company. He later attended Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and Iowa University in Iowa City, where he graduated in 1938. By then, he had already published stories and essays and staged his first play, Candle to the Sun, in 1936. It was not until the 1940s, however, that he had major success with plays, exploring the sexual and social tensions of southern society in The Glass Menagerie (1944), A Street Car Named Desire (1947), Camino Real (1953), and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955). Both Street Car and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won Pulitzer Prizes, and several of Williams’s plays were made into movies. His later work included Suddenly Last Summer (1958), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). He also wrote three novels, various short stories, poetry, and his Memoirs (1975). He was still writing plays in the 1970s and 1980s but did not repeat his earlier successes. However, along with Arthur Miller, Williams was one of the leading dramatists of the 20th century.

   See also Cinema; Literature and theater.