Tom is Lyle Leverich's definitive account based on his exclusive access to letters, diaries, unpublished manuscripts, and family documents of Williams's early life and of the events that shaped this most autobiographical of dramatists. His first real recognition came in 1940 with a Rockefeller fellowship and his first play, Battle of Angels , was produced by the Theatre Guild in Boston. The Glass Menagerie was the initial success which established him as one of the leading American playwrights. Many of his plays have been produced on television and made into movies and ballets A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, Night of the Iguana, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Glass Menagerie , to name a few provided vehicles for Jessica Tandy, Marlon Brando, Katharine Hepburn, Richard Burton, Burl Ives, and many other stars. One of America's greatest playwrights, and certainly the greatest ever from the South, Tennessee Williams wrote fiction and motion picture screenplays, but he is acclaimed primarily for his plays nearly all of which are set in the South, but which at their best rise above regionalism to approach universal themes.
Site includes a biography, list of selected publications, bibliography, filmography, links and more.
Tennessee Williams at MTSU Home of the Tennessee Williams Annual Review and the Tennessee Williams Scholar' Conference . Dr. Robert Bray edits the Tennessee Williams Annual Review and directs the Tennessee Williams Scholars' Conference. His father, Cornelius Coffin Williams, was a shoe salesman who spent a great deal of his time away from the family. Williams had one older sister and one younger brother. They spent much of their childhood in the home of their maternal grandfather who was an Episcopal minister.