The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams on March 26, 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. His father, Cornelius, was a traveling shoe salesman and alcoholic; his mother, Edwina, was the daughter of a reverend. Their marriage was unhappy. When Williams was eight, the family relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, where a discontented Williams began writing. He studied journalism at the University of Missouri, during which time he wrote poetry, plays and short stories for competitions. In 1931, he withdrew from college due to financial trouble and began work at the International Shoe Company. He was deeply dissatisfied with the work, and after suffering a nervous breakdown, he left the job. In 1937, the family committed his sister Rose to an asylum; fears of insanity haunted Williams for the rest of his life. He finished his education across two more institutions and in 1938 graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in English. Williams wrote five plays in the 1930s, but finally achieved success with The Glass Menagerie in 1945; the play received rave reviews and several awards, launching Williams to fame. In 1947, A Streetcar Named Desire opened, for which Williams won a Pulitzer Prize. That same year, he met and fell in love with Frank Merlo, his partner for the next 16 years. In the 1950s, Williams saw a series of artistic and commercial successes with the adaptations of his plays for film and with six more hit plays, including Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. However, the 1960s proved tragic for Williams. In 1963, Frank Merlo died of cancer. Williams’s subsequent plays met with little success, and the depressed Williams increasingly abused alcohol and drugs. After his brother hospitalized him in 1969, he wrote several more plays and in 1975 published his Memoirs. At age 71, Williams choked to death alone in a hotel room on February 25, 1983. The author of 28 plays, two novels and nine screenplays, today Williams is remembered as one of America’s greatest playwrights.