Tennessee Williams :: Essays Papers

Tennessee Williamsdoubting Thomas (Tennessee) Lanier Williams born March 26, 1911 in Columbus,Mississippi. The second of three kids. His don a shoe salesman and his mother thedaughter of a preacher. Williams lived a family life of turmoil. His family ofttimesengaged in violent arguments during his youth. Williams got his first taste of fame in1929 when he took third place in a national essay contest. Williams started college atthe University of Missouri until his father forced him to quit and go to work for hisfathers shoe factory. Later Williams returned to college in 1937 and where heresumed the writing of plays. Williams had devil of his plays, Candles to the Sun and The Fugitive Kind,produced by Mummers of St. Louis, and in 1938. Williams graduated from theUniversity of Iowa. Williams then went to wampum in search of work, failing, he thenmoved to New siege of Orleans and changed his name from Tom to Tennessee which was thestate of his fathers birth. In 1939, the you ng playwright get a $1,000Rockefeller Grant. In 1944, what many consider to be his best play, The shabuMenagerie, had a very winnerful run in Chicago, and a family later worked its way ontoBroadway. People think that Williams used his own family relationships as plots forthe play. The glaze over Menagerie won the New York Drama Critics Circle introduce for bestplay of the season. Williams followed up his first major critical success with severalother Broadway hits including such plays as A Streetcar Named Desire, pass andSmoke, A Rose Tattoo, and Camino Real. He received his first Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for A Streetcar Named Desire, and reached an even larger world-wide audience in1950 and 1951 when The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire were madeinto major interrogation pictures. Later plays which were also made into motion picturesinclude Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , which he earned a second Pulitzer Prize in 1955.Williams struggled with depression throughout most of his life. For oft ofhis life, he battled addictions to prescription drugs and alcohol. February 24, 1983,Tennessee Williams choked to death on a nursing bottle cap at his New York City residenceat the Hotel Elysee. He is buried in St. Louis, Missouri.Williams play, The Glass Menagerie, is about the Wingfeild family, themother Amanda and here deuce children Tom and Laura. Amanda has a life that iscentered around finding a gentleman friend for her daughter Laura, a husband.