Please conduct some research on Tennessee Williams, the author of The Glass Menagerie. Share some interesting facts that you learned about him, and please share the source(s) for your findings. Your response should be at least three sentences long (+ source).
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Born Thomas Lanier Williams III, Tennessee Williams was most notably recognized for his playwrights. I learned that his works vaguely resembled his personal life- particularly his characters. For instance, he modeled Laura Wingfield in “The Glass Menagerie”, after his sister, Rose Williams: a passive and fragile woman, diagnosed with schizophrenia (Gussow). Similarly, his parents’ unhappy marriage is reflected in the way he displays a dysfunctional family in his works. Although heavy criticisms from the press during the 1960s contributed to Williams’ dependency on alcohol and drugs, he was honest about it all in his 1970 memoir (PBS).
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/07/arts/rose-williams-86-sister-and-the-muse-of-playwright.html
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/tennessee-williams-about-tennessee-williams/737/
One interesting fact when I found when looking up who Tennessee Williams was that he is actually the author for many well known books that most kids in high school read such as a A streetcar named desire and Orephus descending. Another interest fact about Tennessee Williams is that Tennessee Williams isn’t his real name, it’s a stage name. Thomas Lanier Williams III is his real name. One last fact would be that Williams has a festival named after him called,Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival. It takes place in New Orleans, where he lived most his life, during the week of his birthday.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/93570/12-facts-tennessee-williamss-birthday
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tennessee-Williams
According to the Tennessee Williams Festival St.Louis organization Williams struggled with drugs and depression which is why his characters often deal with depression, alcoholism and madness. Williams work went on to Broadway and had film adaptions. He was very open and honest about adressing topics like depression. This led people to admire but also critize his work for being too raw according to the PBS organization’s American Masters biography on Tennessee Williams.
Based on my findings on Tennessee Williams, he came from a family where his parents had a lot of issues with their relationship. The household was usual very tense since he described his mother as “foolish/strong” and his father as the “aggressor”. Throughout Williams life he often dealt with depression to the point where he suffered many breakdowns. Williams went to college to study journalism but his father took him out.
According to the Britannica, Tennessee Williams whose original name was Thomas Lanier Williams, was an American dramatist who focused on human frustration. He was employed at a St. Louis shoe factory during the depression and studies dramatic writing in the University of Iowa. His first recognition was for the American Blues, but it wasn’t until the Glass Menagerie that he got his success. During the 60’s, his health deteriorated because of his addiction to sleeping pills and liquor and unfortunately his other plays were unsuccessful.
According to the state historical society of Missouri, Tennessee Williams is often regarded as one of the best playwrights in America. He wrote several award-winning plays like A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Glass Menagerie. His troubled life at home was the source of emotional and mental problems, which is also where his characters are inspired from. Later on in life, he continued to struggle with depression, and some of it was caused by his increasing reliance on alcohol and drugs.
According to PBS, Tennessee Williams comfort/happiness was in Mississippi but when moving to St. Louis, Missouri that was disrupted. He found life unsatisfactory there and began to really start writing there. In the 1940s-1950s his career was at its peak, but during the 1960s he started receiving criticism. He talked about taboo topics and from then on started heavily relying on alcohol and drugs. Soon after he was hospitalized but when released, his writing described his addictions and the honesty of it.
According to the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis website, Williams often based his characters on people in his life. He suffered from drug abuse and depression which can explain why there are alcoholism, drugs, and other themes in his stories. He does not shy away from writing about topics that others may have a hard time talking about.
Tennessee Williams came from a very troubled background. Multiple website, such as Tennessee Williams St. Louis Festival and Historic Missourians discuss the multitude of family problems he had. His parents fought a ton and he even got paralyzed at one point for two years. Family problems weren’t his only issue though. He also did not perform well in school. He had to go live with his grandparents for a bit due to how much he struggled. I see that Tennessee Williams had a hard life and most of his pain is reflected in the many works he’s done.
According to the Tennessee Williams Festival St Louis website, Thomas Lanier Williams III (aka Tennessee Williams) was a Pulitzer winning playwright. Some of his most notable works include “A streetcar named Desire” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”. One fact about Tennessee is that he became heavily reliant on alcohol and pills, and his own brother had him hospitalized due to his drug use. He had increasingly negative reviews in the 1970’s and turned to more alcohol and drugs to cope which ultimately led to his death. I find it fascinating that a man that was considered a success had let reviews and the outside world impact him that much, and it goes to show that even successful people are just people at the end of the day.
According to Britannica, Tennessee Williams’ real name is Thomas Lanier Williams. Thomas Lanier Williams went to three universities: the University of Missouri, Washington University, and the University of Iowa, where he earned his B.A. He became interested in playwriting while studying at the first two universities. According to IMDb, Williams had a partner named Frank Merlo, who acted as his personal manager/secretary. They worked together for 15 years until Merlo passed due to lung cancer in 1963.
Additionally, the trivia section of IMDb states that “when his body was discovered in his hotel room, a bottle cap was found lodged in his throat. The most likely cause of death was from choking while intoxicated.”
Tennessee Williams’ birth name was Thomas Lanier Williams, and he was born in Columbus, Mississippi in 1911. His work was both praised and criticized for being extremely raw and often addressing scandalous subject matter. “The Glass Menagerie” was his breakout show, and it won both the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and the New York Film Critics’ Circle Award. However, in the 1960s he began receiving more and more criticism. Simultaneously, his close companion named Frank Merlo died of cancer, prompting him to rely more on drugs and alcohol. While he was still writing, his personal life was crumbling. This was no secret, though, as he made a point to publish memoirs detailing his struggles with addiction and accepting his homosexuality. In 1983 he was found dead in a hotel in NYC, surrounded by bottles of wine and pills.
(Source: http://www.pbs.org)
Tennessee Williams whose original name was Thomas Lanier Williams, was born on March 26, 1911, Columbus, Mississippi and died Feb. 25, 1983, New York City.Tennessee Williams is widely regarded as one of the greatest playwrights in American history. His magnum opus being the Glass Menagerie. His other works were also very popular .They included: A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). Williams was in ill health frequently during the 1960s, compounded by years of addiction to sleeping pills and liquor, problems that he struggled to overcome after a severe mental and physical breakdown in 1969.
Tennessee Williams began writing after moving to St. Louis when “his boyhood was stripped in his new urban home” (biography). Interestingly, he was taken out of school upon his father’s knowledge of his girlfriend also attending the same university. upon arrival at home, he began to work as a salesman but continued to do what he loved: crafting poems, writing stories, and writing when he was permitted. As time went on, matters became worse, falling into a dependency on liquor to combat his challenges.
https://www.biography.com/writer/tennessee-williams
Tennessee Williams was born in Columbus, MIssissippi he was the second out of 3 children and he had a better relationship with his mother than his father. He was a carefree child before he moved to St. Louis, Missouri then after he became closed off and started to write along with the strained marriage of his parents didn’t help the situation, while he did go on to later say that the marriage was wrong this family situation help him model character. His mother inspired the foolish but strong Amanda Wingfield in THe Glass Menagerie and his father represented the aggressive, driving Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
https://www.biography.com/writer/tennessee-williams
Tennessee Williams is a pulitzer prize winner. Many of Williams’ characters in his plays express loneliness, depression and uncertainty of parts of his personal life. His personal experiences and relationships greatly impacted his play-writing. His mother and sister inspired the characters, Amanda and Laura of “The Glass Menagerie.” His abusive father represented the Big Daddy in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
Reference
https://www.twstl.org/biography
After researching more about Tennessee Willams, I discovered that he was christened with the name Thomas Lanier Williams III. Another fact that I discovered was that his book characters often resemble people in his own life for example his real-life mother and sister resembled Laura and Amanda in the “Glass Menagerie”. He moved to New Orleans in the year 1939 and took on the name Tennessee which was a nickname he got during college. His partner was Frank Merlo who tragically died about 20 years before Tennesse did. Themes often found in Tennesse’s work reflected his own living situation as he struggled with depression and drug addiction.
Source
https://www.twstl.org/biography
The original name of Tennessee Williams was Thomas Lanier Williams. His works reveal the helplessness of human beings towards sex and violence. He went to the University of Missouri and the University of Washington, and worked in the St. Louis shoe factory. Later, he studied dramatic writing for his B.A. at the University of Iowa. Following that, he became extremely ill as a result of his addiction to sleeping pills and liquor, as well as other issues that he struggled to resolve following a serious mental and physical breakdown in 1969, which caused his upcoming plays to be ineffective.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tennessee-Williams
Tennessee Williams is a well known writer who sold his first story, Weird Tales, to Pulp Magazines at only the age of 16 for the $500. One fact I did not know is that he was an author of a play I read back in my freshman year of high school, A Street Car Named Desire. One odd unfortunate fact I read about Tennessee Williams was, he was found dead in a hotel in New York which was believed to be caused by choking on a bottle cap.
https://www.factinate.com/people/42-larger-than-life-facts-about-tennessee-williams-the-southern-scribe/
Tennessee Williams was one of the greatest playwrights ever. He wrote a popular play called, A Streetcar Named desire, the play’s characters had many similarities to Williams himself such as their addictions to drugs and alcohol, this was a prevalent theme throughout his plays. Throughout his writing career he had many ups and downs, from his famous play The Glass Menagerie to his less famous play The Night Of The Iguana, he declined significantly in popularity as time went on.
Source: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/tennessee-williams-about-tennessee-williams/737/
Tennessee Williams was born March 26, 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. After graduating college in Iowa he moved to New Orleans where he would write prominent plays such as: The Glass Menagerie (1945) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), that secured his spot as one of the most influential American play writers. Williams pushed drama to new levels in his plays which set him apart from others. Later in life “A Streetcar Named Desire” earned him a Pulitzer Prize.
Source:https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/tennessee-williams
Tennessee Williams’ own life is reflected in many ways in his works. In The Glass Menagerie specifically, we see a family dynamic similar to his own: a mother and an older sister who he lived with and a father who was often absent (in the case of the play, completely absent). A culmination of suffering in his life, from addiction to alienation, can also be seen in his characters, ones that the Poetry Foundation describes as “the fugitive kind”. These characters don’t always fit into the social norm and are sometimes excluded, shown by Tom and even his sister in The Glass Menagerie.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/tennessee-williams
Tennessee Williams was a playwright who was one of the major playwrights of the twentieth century. Many of the themes of his work are defending Southern attitudes, and a romantic approach to life. His “Tennessee Williams South（1973）” is not a deliberate portrayal of social reality, but is written lyrically through the emotions he feels, and one can sense from his writing that it is a man of romantic sensibilities. I admire the fact that he could hold on to the play for so long, and despite all the criticism and unpopularity, he continued to create the classic and famous historical stage. And Williams wrote content that had a story and deeper meaning to the work.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/tennessee-williams