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Tennessee Williams was born Thomas
Lanier Williams in Columbus,
Mississippi in 1911. Williams' first
essay, "Can a Wife Be a Good Sport?"
was published in Smart Set magazine
when he was only 16. Influenced by
Anton Chekhov and Henrik Ibsen,
Williams began writing plays. In 1935
his play Cairo! Shanghai! Bombay! was
produced by the Memphis Garden Players.
Several more of Williams' plays were
produced in St. Louis the following
year. In 1938 inspired by a newspaper
article that described rioting and
prisoner torture in a Philadelphia
County prison, Williams wrote his
fourth full-length play: Not About
Nightingales. At the end of 1938
Williams moved to the French Quarter
section of New Orleans. This would
prove to be a decisive move in his
literary career and, indeed, his life.
In the Vieux Carre, a rooming house at
722 Toulouse Street, Williams'
underwent a personal and artistic
transformation from "Tom"
to "Tennessee," a change he would
chronicle decades later in a play,
Vieux Carre, first produced in 1977.
After the 1940 opening of his Battle of
Angels in Boston (later reworked as
Orpheus Descending), Williams tried his
hand in Hollywood writing a screenplay
for Lana Turner. He returned to the
theatre with The Glass Menagerie (1945)
and A Streetcar Named Desire(1947),
which was awarded, among others, the
Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Success
followed upon success with Summer and
Smoke (1948), The Rose Tattoo (1951),
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955, Pulitzer
Prize), Orpheus Descending (1957),
Sweet Bird of Youth (1959) and Night of
the Iguana (1961). Williams' place in
the American theatre was evident as
early as 1947, with the immense
Broadway success of A Streetcar Named
Desire. Having garnered two Pulitzer
Prizes, four New York Critics Circle
awards, the National Arts Club Medal of
Honor for Literature and countless
others, Williams died in 1983 at the
age of 71, leaving behind living
shadows of himself: characters with
immortality that continue to entertain,
enlighten and question. With the
rediscovery and premiere of Tennessee
Williams' unproduced 1938 play, Not
About Nightingales, audiences and
scholars gain a valuable new
perspective into Williams' artistic
development. Not About Nightingales
received Tony, Outer Critics Circle
Award and a Drama Desk Award nomination
as Best Play for 1999.
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WON