60 Fun Facts About Tennessee Williams

What was Tennessee Williams's real first name?

He was Thomas Lanier Williams III; the pen name came around 1939, a nod to his Southern accent and roots.

In which state was Tennessee Williams born?

He was born in Columbus and spent his early childhood in his grandfather's Episcopal rectory in Clarksdale.

What was Williams's father's job?

C. C. Williams was an alcoholic with a violent temper who scorned what he saw as his son's effeminacy.

Which childhood illness nearly killed Williams and left him frail and housebound for a year?

His mother Edwina, trapped in an unhappy marriage, focused almost all her attention on her frail son.

Tennessee Williams's family moved to which city when he was eight?

He later attended Soldan High School there, a setting he refers to in The Glass Menagerie.

Williams's short story "The Vengeance of Nitocris" appeared in 1928 in which pulp magazine?

He was 17; a year earlier he had won third prize in an essay contest with "Can a Good Wife Be a Good Sport?"

Why did Tennessee Williams's father pull him out of university to work in a shoe factory?

He hated the 9-to-5 grind and set himself a goal of writing one story a week.

Where did Williams finally graduate with a B.A. in English in 1938?

He had dropped out of Washington University after failing to win its poetry prize.

Which body gave Williams a $1,000 grant in 1939 in recognition of his first produced play?

The play was produced in Boston in 1940 and flopped, but the grant got him a six-month MGM contract at $250 a week.

Williams's Vieux Carré is set at 722 Toulouse Street, where he lived while writing for which New Deal agency?

He moved to the city in 1939 with some of his Rockefeller grant money.

The Glass Menagerie premiered on 26 December 1944 in which city before moving to Broadway?

Critics Ashton Stevens and Claudia Cassidy championed it after a shaky start.

Which actress's Amanda Wingfield in the original Glass Menagerie set the standard for the role?

Broadway veterans in a 2004 documentary ranked it the most memorable performance of their lives.

In The Glass Menagerie, what nickname does Jim give Laura after mishearing 'pleurosis'?

The unicorn in her glass collection is often read as a symbol of Laura herself.

Which short story did Williams expand into his 1944 memory play?

He had also written a screenplay version called The Gentleman Caller.

On what date did A Streetcar Named Desire open on Broadway?

It played at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre after tryouts in New Haven and Philadelphia.

From which town does Blanche DuBois travel in A Streetcar Named Desire?

She arrives with no money after losing the family plantation to creditors.

What is the name of the DuBois family plantation lost before A Streetcar Named Desire begins?

Stanley invokes the Napoleonic Code to claim a husband's share of his wife's property.

Who originated the role of Blanche DuBois on Broadway?

Producer Irene Mayer Selznick had wanted Margaret Sullavan and John Garfield before settling on Tandy and a virtual unknown as Stanley.

Which of Williams's factory co-workers helped inspire a character in Streetcar?

Williams suffered a nervous breakdown by his 24th birthday and quit the shoe factory.

The 1951 film of Streetcar was the first to win three acting Oscars. Which star was nominated but lost?

Leigh, Malden and Hunter all won; Leigh had played Blanche in the London stage production.

Why did Warner Bros. cut several scenes from the 1951 Streetcar film after shooting?

The censored footage was rediscovered in a 1993 archive inventory and restored.

Who starred as Stanley and Blanche in the acclaimed 1992 Broadway revival of Streetcar?

James Gandolfini was the understudy for Mitch in that production.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was adapted from which of Williams's own short stories?

He called the play his personal favourite.

What is Big Daddy Pollitt's business in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

He is "the Delta's biggest cotton-planter", celebrating his birthday with a false clean bill of health.

What word does Brick use in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for the lies and liars around him?

Big Daddy says Brick's disgust is really with himself for rejecting Skipper before his suicide.

Who played Big Daddy in both the 1955 Broadway and 1958 film versions of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

Barbara Bel Geddes and Ben Gazzara were the stage Maggie and Brick; Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman took the film roles.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won the 1955 Pulitzer over the jury's preferred choice, which was what?

Board chairman Joseph Pulitzer Jr. had seen Cat and pushed it through after considerable discussion.

The 1958 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof producer told Variety the biggest problem was finding a substitute for what?

Richard Brooks directed and co-wrote the screenplay with James Poe.

Summer and Smoke centres on Alma Winemiller, whose first name Williams points out means what in Spanish?

Geraldine Page's 1952 Off-Broadway revival at Circle in the Square rescued the play after a disappointing Broadway run.

Who won an Academy Award for the 1955 film of The Rose Tattoo?

An Italian critic in 2016 traced the play's inspiration to Eduardo De Filippo's Filumena Marturano.

In Camino Real, which literary hero's dream becomes the play after his squire abandons him?

Kilroy, a dispirited American ex-boxer, is drafted to replace Sancho Panza.

Orpheus Descending (1957) is a rewrite of which earlier Williams play?

Tallulah Bankhead turned down the original, saying "The play is impossible, darling, but sit down and have a drink with me."

What distinctive garment does the drifter Val leave behind at the end of Orpheus Descending?

Carol trades a gold ring for it and delivers a soliloquy on "the fugitive kind".

Baby Doll (1956) was adapted by Williams from which of his one-act plays?

The National Legion of Decency condemned the film, and Kazan later claimed he wrote most of the script himself.

Which actress had Williams considered for the title role in Baby Doll before Carroll Baker was cast?

Kazan filled the cast with Actors Studio alumni; Eli Wallach won a BAFTA as most promising newcomer.

Suddenly Last Summer opened Off-Broadway in 1958 on a double bill under what overall title?

Its companion piece was the one-act Something Unspoken.

In Suddenly Last Summer, what does Mrs. Venable want done to Catharine to silence her?

Williams used the lobotomy motif after his own sister Rose underwent the operation in 1943.

On which fictional island does Sebastian die in Suddenly Last Summer?

It is often assumed to be in South America, but the text has Catharine returning "from Europe" on the liner Berengaria.

In Sweet Bird of Youth, the faded film star travelling with Chance Wayne uses what alias?

Her real name is Alexandra del Lago and the town is St. Cloud.

The Night of the Iguana follows a disgraced clergyman working as a tour guide in which country?

The Reverend Shannon was partly based on Williams's cousin, the Reverend Sidney Lanier.

Who directed the 1964 film of The Night of the Iguana starring Richard Burton and Ava Gardner?

Williams had developed the play from a 1948 short story through one-act and full-length versions.

Williams's 1950 novel The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone drew on his time in Rome with which young man?

Vivien Leigh and Warren Beatty starred in the 1961 film.

Frank Merlo, the enduring love of Williams's life, was of what ancestry?

Their 14 years together, in Manhattan and Key West, were Williams's happiest and most productive.

Which physician, nicknamed Dr. Feelgood, gave Tennessee Williams amphetamine injections?

He paired them with prescriptions for the sedative Seconal.

Where was Williams found dead in February 1983?

The medical examiner first blamed a plastic bottle cap, then corrected the cause to a toxic level of secobarbital.

Williams's will asked for burial at sea near where which poet had drowned himself?

His brother Dakin ignored the wish and buried him in Calvary Cemetery beside their mother.

Most of Williams's estate went to which institution, in trust for his sister Rose during her lifetime?

After Rose died in 1996 the university received about $7 million for a creative writing programme.

Which director said of Williams, 'Everything in his life is in his plays, and everything in his plays is in his life'?

He directed both the stage and film versions of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Williams served as president of the jury of which film festival in 1976?

Three years later he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

What was Williams's last produced play, staged in 1982 the year before he died?

Despite largely positive reviews it ran only 40 performances.

Which city has held an annual literary festival honouring Williams since 1986?

The US Postal Service put him on a stamp in 1995.

In which Mississippi town was Tennessee Williams born in 1911?

The Episcopal church where his grandfather was rector was later moved and renovated as the town's Tennessee Williams Welcome Center.

Williams's grandfather Walter Dakin, with whom he lived as a child, held what profession?

Williams spent much of his early childhood in his grandfather's rectory in Clarksdale and first visited Europe with him in 1928.

Where did Williams first enroll in 1929, taking journalism classes?

He joined the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity there but did not fit in with his fraternity brothers.

Around which year did Williams adopt 'Tennessee' as his professional name?

He chose it in acknowledgement of his Southern accent and roots, the same year he received a Rockefeller Foundation grant for Battle of Angels.

Who was Williams's long-time literary agent?

Her papers, like his earliest manuscripts, are held at the Ransom Center in Texas.

Which prize did The Glass Menagerie win as best play of its season?

By 1959 Williams had collected two Pulitzers, three Drama Critics' Circle Awards, three Donaldson Awards and a Tony.

Where did Williams meet the young dancer Kip Kiernan in the summer of 1940?

The romance inspired a semi-autobiographical play first produced in Provincetown in 2006, and Something Cloudy, Something Clear also draws on those memories.

Of what did Frank Merlo, Williams's partner, die in 1963?

Though the couple had broken up shortly before the diagnosis, Williams returned to care for him until his death that September.

What did a corrected 1983 report conclude was the true cause of Williams's death?

The first report said he choked on a plastic cap from a nasal-spray bottle; the correction found he had been using the cap to take barbiturates.