# FACTS ABOUT ME

## by Tennessee Williams

I was born in the Episcopal rectory of Columbus, Miss., an old town on the Tombigbee river which was so dignified and reserved that there was a saying, only slightly exaggerated, that you had to live there a whole year before a neighbor would smile at you on the street. As my grandfather, with whom we lived, was the Episcopal clergyman, we were accepted without probation. My father, a man with the formidable name of Cornelius Coffin Williams, was a man of ancestry that came on one side, the Williams, from pioneer Tennessee stock and on the other from early settlers of Nantucket Island in New England. My mother was descended from Quakers. Roughly there was a combination of Puritan and Cavalier strains in my blood which may be accountable for the conflicting impulses I often represent in the people I write about.

I was christened Thomas Lanier Williams. It is a nice enough name, perhaps a little too nice. It sounds like it might belong to the sort of writer who turns out sonnet sequences to spring. As a matter of fact, my first literary award was $25.00 from a woman's club for doing exactly that, three sonnets dedicated to Spring. I hasten to add that I was still pretty young. Under that name I published a good deal of lyric poetry which was a bad imitation of Edna Millay. When I grew up I realized this poetry wasn't much good and I felt the name had been compromised so I changed it to Tennessee Williams, the justification being mainly that the Williamses had fought the Indians for Tennessee and I had already discovered that the life of a young writer was going to be something similar to the defense of a stockade against a band of savages.

When I was about 12, my father, a traveling salesman, was appointed to an office position in St. Louis and so we left the rectory and moved north. It was a tragic move. Neither my sister nor I could adjust ourselves to life in a mid-western city. The school-children made fun of our southern speech and manners. I remember gangs of kids following me home yelling "Sissy!", and home was not a very pleasant refuge. It was a perpetually dim little apartment in a wilderness of identical brick and concrete structures with no grass and no trees nearer than the park. In the South we had never been conscious of the fact that we were economically less fortunate than others. We lived as well as anyone else. But in St. Louis we suddenly discovered there were two kinds of people, the rich and the poor and that we belonged more to the latter. If we walked far enough west we came into a region of fine residences set in beautiful lawns. But where we lived, to which we must always return, were ugly rows of apartment buildings the color of dried blood and mustard. If I had been born to this situation I might not have resented

The house on the left is where the author lived in New Orleans.

The producer, director, author and the leading ladies meet on the first day of rehearsal.

it deeply. But it was forced upon my consciousness at the most sensitive age of childhood. It produced a shock and a rebellion that has grown into an inherent part of my work. It was the beginning of the social-consciousness which I think has marked most of my writing. I am glad that I received this bitter education for I don't think any writer has much purpose back of him unless he feels bitterly the inequities of the society he lives in. I have no acquaintance with political and social dialectics. If you ask what my politics are, I am a Humanitarian.

That is the social background of my life!

I entered college during the great American depression and after a couple of years I couldn't afford to continue but had to drop out and take a clerical job in the shoe company that employed my father. The two years I spent in that corporation were indescribable torment to me as an individual but of immense value to me as a writer for they gave me first-hand knowledge of what it means to be a small wage-earner in a hopelessly routine job. I had been writing since childhood and I continued writing while I was employed by the shoe company. When I came home from work I would tank up on black coffee so I could remain awake most of the night, writing short-stories which I could not sell. Gradually my health broke down. One day coming home from work, I collapsed and was removed to the hospital. The doctor said I couldn't go back to the shoe-company. As soon as that was settled I recovered and went back South to live with my grandparents in Memphis where they had moved since my grandfather's retirement from the Ministry. Then I began to have a little success with my writing. I became self-sufficient. I put myself through two more years of college and got a B.A. degree at the University of Iowa in 1938. Before then and for a couple of years afterwards I did a good deal of travelling around and I held a great number of part-time jobs of great diversity. It is hard to put the story in correct chronology for the last ten years of my life are a dizzy kaleidoscope. I don't quite believe all that has happened to me, it seems it must have happened to five or ten other people.

My first real recognition came in 1940 when I received a Rockefeller fellowship and wrote "Battle of Angels" which was produced by the Theatre Guild at the end of that year with Miriam Hopkins in the leading role. It closed in Boston during the try-out run but I have re-written it a couple of times since then and still have faith in it. My health was so impaired that I landed in 4F after a medical examination of about five minutes duration. My jobs in this period included running an all-night elevator in a big apartment-hotel, waiting on tables and reciting verse in the Village, working as a teletype operator for the U. S. Engineers in Jacksonville, Fla., waiter and cashier for a small restaurant in New Orleans, ushering at the Strand Theatre on Broadway. All the while I kept on writing, not with any hope of making a living at it but because I found no other means of expressing things that seemed to demand expression. There was never a moment when I did not find life to be immeasurably exciting to experience and to witness, however difficult it was to sustain.

From a $17.00 a week job as a movie usher I was suddenly shipped off to Hollywood where MGM paid me $250.00 a week. I saved enough money out of my six months there to keep me while I wrote "The Glass Menagerie." I don't think the story, from that point on, requires any detailed consideration.

I have written the following plays: "Candles to the Sun" (1937), "Fugitive Kind" (1937), "Spring Storm" (1938), "Not About Nightingales" (1938), "Battle of Angels" (1940), "Stairs to the Roof" (1941), "You Touched Me" in collaboration with Donald Windham (1942-43), "The Glass Menagerie" (1943-44), "Summer and Smoke" (1945-47), "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1945-47).

I have also written a dozen or more short plays covering a corresponding period and collected in a volume called "Twenty-Seven Wagons Full of Cotton," published by New Directions; a volume of verse by the same publisher, called "The Summer Belvedere," and am going to bring out soon a volume of stories in a private edition.

If I can be said to have a home, it is in New Orleans where I've lived off and on since 1938 and which has provided me with more material than any other part of the country. I live near the main street of the Quarter which is named Royal. Down this street, running on the same tracks, are two street-cars, one named DESIRE and the other named CEMETERY. Their indiscourageable progress up and down Royal struck me as having some symbolic bearing of a broad nature on the life in the Vieux Carré—and everywhere else for that matter . . . that's how I got my latest title.

A photograph of the actual streetcar named Desire which inspired the title of the play.

JESSICA TANDY

FROM having played leading lady to Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud at the Old Vic in London in such plays as "Henry V," "Hamlet," "King Lear" and "The Tempest," Jessica Tandy came to this country in 1938 to score in "Jupiter Laughs" and "The White Steed" and promptly get nabbed by Hollywood. After five years' absence from the stage she returned to Broadway to assume what many believe to be the acting plum of the year, the role of Blanche in "A Streetcar Named Desire."

Miss Tandy's career as an actress began in London with her apprenticeship at the Ben Greet Academy of Acting. She made her professional debut in 1927 in "The Manderson Girls," for which she received two pounds sterling weekly and had to provide her own stage wardrobe of five dresses. She also made the dresses.

It was Constance Collier who first brought her to America in 1930 in her company of "The Matriarch." She stayed on to appear in "The Last Enemy" following which a Hollywood studio offered her a screen test. Before she could take it she accepted an offer to play with Francis Lederer in London in "Autumn Crocus." Shortly after that, at the age of 23, she played 13-year-old Manuela in the stage version of "Maedchen in Uniform," establishing herself indisputably as one of the finest young actresses in London. The cream of the leading roles were hers from that point on.

She returned here in 1938 for "Time and the Conways" and stayed on to appear in "Jupiter Laughs" and "The White Steed." The critical encomiums she won for her performance in the latter play led her directly to Hollywood.

In 1942, London-born Miss Tandy married London, Ontario-born Hume Cronyn, well known stage and screen actor. She played his wife in the movie, "The Seventh Cross" in 1944, and his daughter two years later in "The Green Years." Other motion pictures she appeared in were "The Valley of Decision," "Dragonwyck," "Forever Amber," and "A Woman's Vengeance."

There is a legitimate theatre group in Hollywood which goes under the name of the Actors' Lab which has proved a God-send to camera weary actors who seem to hunger for

the rapport with an audience they can never enjoy as screen actors. To Jessica, it not only served that purpose but was directly responsible for bringing her back to Broadway.

She was deep in the shooting of "Forever Amber," when her husband who was selected by the Actors' Lab to direct a one-act play by Tennessee Williams entitled "Portrait of a Madonna," prevailed upon her to play the lead in it. She leaped at the opportunity to use her spare time for a change of pace even though it meant risking the displeasure of the studio which frowned on extra-curricular activities.

The role offered superb acting opportunities and Miss Tandy took full advantage of them. Hollywood was to talk of her performance for many months to come. They were still talking about it when Irene M. Selznick, Elia Kazan and Tennessee came to the west coast last June seeking a leading lady for "Streetcar." Miss Tandy gave a magnificent first reading of the role of Blanche for them and the matter was settled almost immediately. For good measure, another showing of "Portrait of a Madonna," was arranged by the Actors' Lab with Jessica playing the title role again. It only served to confirm the first impression.

*Uta Hagen is appearing in the role of Blanche during Jessica Tandy's vacation. Miss Hagen has been engaged for the same role in the Chicago company of "A Streetcar Named Desire" now in preparation for an early fall production.*

UTA
HAGEN*

UTA HAGEN's theatrical activities began auspiciously this year when she appeared as Mrs. Manningham in the excellent City Center production of "Angel Street." Following the limited engagement of that melodrama, she engaged in a series of stimulating appearances with Albert Basserman, the great German actor, in German-language productions of "Faust" and Ibsen's "The Master Builder" at the Barbizon-Plaza Theatre. She also took time out to direct Tolstoy's "Power of Darkness" for a co-operative group at the Ethnologic Theatre.

These manifold activities, plus a tour of the summer theatres last year in "Dark Eyes" and her richly comic portrayal of a Russian student torn between love and duty in "The Whole World Over," earlier that year, account for most of Miss Hagen's time since she joined the roster of the great Desdemonas in Paul Robeson's "Othello" which made theatrical history several seasons ago.

Apparent to anyone who speaks to Miss Hagen for five minutes is her intense devotion to the theatre. It is this intensity which accounts for what many believe to be the "lucky breaks" which launched her on her career. It accounts for the fervency of the letter she wrote to Eva Le Gallienne when she was just starting out with no more experience than schooling at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in England,

and which won her an audition and the coveted role of Ophelia to Miss Le Gallienne's "Hamlet" at Dennis, Mass.

When, after this initial break-in out of town, she decided to try Broadway, she sought and obtained an interview with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne who were about to do "The Sea Gull" for the Theatre Guild. An audition led to her being selected for the role of Nina, her first on Broadway and one which won her critical encomiums and established her immediately as an actress of great promise.

Uta, who comes of a family of professional musicians, had her heart set on the theatre as far back as she can remember. Her mother was Thyra Leisner, the German opera singer and her father, Oskar Hagen, was a composer and conductor, known especially for his production of the yearly Handel festivals in Gottingen, Germany. Her parents gave up their careers and came to America in 1926 because they felt America was a better place for bringing up their children—Uta was then six years old. Since then, Professor Hagen has headed the History of Art Department at the University of Wisconsin.

Formerly married to actor Jose Ferrer, Miss Hagen has appeared with him in such plays as "Key Largo," "Vickie," and "Othello," among others.

MARLON
BRANDO

METEORIC, trite as it is, is the only word that aptly describes Marlon Brando's theatrical career since he made his Broadway debut as Nels in "I Remember Mama." With each succeeding appearance in "Truckline Cafe," "Candida" with Katharine Cornell, Ben Hecht's "A Flag is Born," he has won more and more recognition from the critics until with his performance as Stanley in "A Streetcar Named Desire," they reached into the top drawer for their choicest superlatives.

Marlon is not certain whether he had a theatrical career in mind when he came to New York in 1942. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, he had moved around with his family, attending school in Minnesota and California and working at odd jobs. After four years of military school and still uncertain as to what he wanted most to do he prevailed upon his father to let him come to New York where he hoped to be able to crystalize certain nebulous creative urges he felt but could not define.

After a period of indecision during which he earned his way by running an elevator in a department store, he decided to try his hand at acting. This may have been precipitated by his father's ultimatum that he learn a profession and stick to it or else.

He attended a dramatic school for one year and then spent a summer season of stock at Sayville, L. I. It was there that

an actor's agent saw him and prevailed upon the producers of "I Remember Mama" to give him a trial. That was in 1944, and his debut caused little stir. But in 1946, he knocked Broadway for a loop in Maxwell Anderson's "Truckline Cafe." Impressed also was Guthrie McClintic who came back-stage to offer him the role of Marchbanks opposite Cornell in "Candida." He next faced the critics in "A Flag is Born," a series of roles so dissimilar as to establish once and for all his versatility.

Typical of the minimum of conventionality which has characterized Marlon's on and off-stage experience, was the way he was engaged for the role of Stanley. When he was thought of, Tennessee Williams was summering at Cape Cod. Since the playwright was unfamiliar with his work, Marlon volunteered to make the trip to the Cape to read for him. He hitch-hiked there and presented himself at Tennessee's cottage at 1 A. M. The cottage was in an uproar over simultaneous electrical and plumbing failures. Brando repaired both, kicked off his shoes and sat down to read.

He began, according to Williams, with as much assurance and with as sound an interpretation as if he'd been playing the part for two years. After 30 minutes he was in. He returned to New York by bus the next day, went directly to the producer's office and was signed to a contract without fuss or involved negotiations.

IN 1942 when she was the ingenue in a stock company at Coral Gables, Fla., Kim Hunter dreamed of Broadway. It looked so formidable though that she acquired what must be a record for the longest way round to get there. In "Streetcar" she made her first appearance in New York, after sorties in stock in North Carolina and Baltimore, a year with the Pasadena Playhouse in California, a spell in Hollywood and a trip to England to play the leading role in the British film, "Stairway to Heaven" which starred David Niven.

Born in Detroit, Mich., Kim spent most of her early life in
Miami Beach, Fla. As a growing youngster, she revealed a talent
for acting and while attending school studied dramatics, singing
and dancing privately.

Kim began acting professionally immediately after being gradu-
ated from high school. Her first job was with the Coral Gables
stock company where she was assigned to ingenue roles. When this
company closed down because of the war, she continued her
career in stock in Baltimore and North Carolina. A young stage
director from the west coast saw her in Baltimore and urged her
to make the jump to California. He assured her that after a season
at the Pasadena Playhouse she would be in pictures. This was one
of the rare instances of such an assurance actually working out.
She was appearing there in "Arsenic and Old Lace" when movie
scouts saw her and arranged for her to have tests made which led
to a contract with David O. Selznick.

She appeared in several Hollywood films before going to London to make "Stairway to Heaven," among which were "The Seventh Victim" and "Tender Comrade." Last summer she made a tour of summer theatres in the east in "Claudia" and "Wuthering Heights."

KIM HUNTER

EVER since he came to New York from Chicago some seven years
ago with a letter of introduction from Robert Ardrey, the
playwright, to Harold Clurman and Elia Kazan, then of the Group
Theatre, Karl Malden has steadily forged his way into the con-
sciousness of more and more stage directors, producers, critics and
theatregoers. It has been an unspectacular penetration, unmarked
by overnight sensations, sudden acclaim or publicity puffs.

Fate cast Malden as a milk truck driver, a steel-mill worker and a basketball player before it did as an actor. He was born in Chicago, but lived most of his early life in Gary, Indiana, where he went to school and earned his first money driving for a milk company. Gary being a steel town and Karl being a strapping young man, he eventually wound up as a cinder-snapper at an open hearth at the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Co. This was after a brief sojourn at Arkansas State Teachers' College where, because of his prowess at sports, he had been given an athletic scholarship. He became a basketball champ quickly but chucked it all when the authorities refused to permit him to join the dramatic society on the grounds that he was supposed to devote all his non-academic time to athletics.

Karl finally tried for and won a scholarship at the Goodman
Theatre school in Chicago. It was there that Robert Ardrey met
him and recommended him to Clurman and Kazan. He has since
appeared here in fourteen plays among which were "All My Sons,"
"Truckline Cafe," "The Assassins," "Winged Victory," "Sons and
Soldiers," "Uncle Harry," "Flight to the West," "Key Largo,"
and "Missouri Legend." He has also been seen in the following
motion pictures: "They Knew What They Wanted," "13 Rue
Madeleine," "Boomerang" and "Kiss of Death."

KARL MALDEN

IRENE M. SELZNICK

SINCE Irene Mayer Selznick has been closely allied through-
out her lifetime with the motion picture business, it was
hardly to be expected that her interests and talents would
lead her to Broadway rather than to Hollywood. No satis-
factory explanation of this has yet evolved beyond the over-
simplification that "this is what I really wanted to do."

A producer is, ideally, responsible for the orderly collabo-
ration of all the elements that make a play come alive on the
stage. If any of these elements clash, it is bound to have a
disturbing effect on the play. To attain this harmony requires
an enormous expenditure of energy and constant attention
to a disconcerting accumulation of minutiae as well as the
major problems, ranging from financial and executive to
artistic and emotional. Ironically, in the theatre the same
mountainous labors may bring forth a mouse as well as a
lion.

In the brief period of two years that covers the career
of Mrs. Selznick as a Broadway producer, she has experi-

enced, alternately, the sharpest pain and elation that the
theatre can bestow. In two tries, her first, "Heartsong," closed
after a month out of town and her second, Tennessee
Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire" not only is a smash
hit but has won the Pulitzer Prize and the N. Y. Drama
Critics' Circle Award for the best play of the year.

It might have appeared that a terrific amount of time and
energy had been squandered on Mrs. Selznick's first venture.
However, the nature and extent of these efforts had attracted
the sharp interest of Audrey Wood, who has represented
Tennessee Williams since long before his emergence on
Broadway and who is noted for her perception in picking
and sponsoring new blood in the theatre. Mrs. Selznick
learned that the theatre has an economy of its own for it
was to her that Miss Wood brought "A Streetcar Named
Desire."

From that point on the elements began to fuse with spec-
tacular smoothness.

JO MIELZINER

It was as a stage manager for the Theatre Guild that Jo Mielziner made his first contact with the theatre. It was for the Guild, too, that he auspiciously began his career as an artist in decor with his designs for Molnar's "The Guardsman" in 1924. Since then his output has been little short of phenomenal and he now ranks as one of the top scenic designers in the country.

He arrived in this country at the age of 12 from Paris, his birthplace. The son of an artist, he took easily to his future profession when he began studying scenic designing at 18.

This season he is represented, among others, by three of Broadway's out-
standing hits, "A Streetcar Named Desire," "Command Decision," and "Mr.
Roberts." An idea of his versatility and his imaginative powers may be gained
by recalling that he also did the sets for such widely varying recent productions
as "Annie Get Your Gun," "Dream Girl," "Carousel," and "The Glass
Menagerie." Others of his contributions to the theatre that have been of great
value have been the designs for "The Wild Duck," "Winterset," "The Bar-
retts of Wimpole Street," "Street Scene," "Of Thee I Sing," and "The Em-
peror Jones."

LUCINDA BALLARD

Equally adept at creating costume ideas for spectacular musicals as she is for straight comedies and dramas, Lucinda Ballard may be said to be among the most versatile and imaginative of our present day costume designers. Attesting to this are the facts that she won the Donaldson Award for her costumes for "I Remember Mama" in 1945 and the Antoinette Perry Award for her work on "Annie Get Your Gun" in 1947.

Born in New Orleans, the locale, incidentally, of "Streetcar," Miss Ballard came to New York to begin her art studies. She continued studying fine arts in Paris and at the famous school in Fontainebleau. Her first efforts in the theatre in this country were as assistant to Claude Bragdon, designer for the Walter Hampden-Ethel Barrymore repertory company. Her first production on her own was Dwight Deere Wiman's production of "As You Like It" in 1937, for which she not only designed but made the costumes herself.

Since then she has forged steadily ahead, her busy pen and brush in
evidence with such productions as "Show Boat," "The Chocolate Soldier,"
"Higher and Higher," "Street Scene," "Another Part of the Forest," "John
Loves Mary," "Happy Birthday" and "Allegro."

DIALOGUE (Continued)

EUNICE:

No, honey, no, no, honey. Stay here. Don't go back in there. Stay with me and don't look.

STELLA:

What have I done to my sister? Oh, God, what have I done to my sister?

EUNICE:

You done the right thing, the only thing you could do. She couldn't stay here; there wasn't no other place for her to go.

[While Stella and Eunice are speaking on the porch the voices of the men in the kitchen overlap them.]

STANLEY [running in from the bedroom]:

Hey! Hey! Doctor! Doctor, you better go in!

DOCTOR:

Too bad, too bad. I always like to avoid it.

PABLO:

This is a very bad thing.

STEVE:

This is no way to do it. She should've been told.

PABLO:

Madre de Dios! Cosa mala, muy, muy mala!

[Mitch has started toward the bedroom. Stanley crosses to block him.]

MITCH [wildly]:

You! You done this, all o' your God damn rutting with things you—
STANLEY:

Quit the blubber! [He pushes him aside.]

MITCH:

I'll kill you! [He lunges and strikes at Stanley.]

STANLEY:

Hold this bone-headed cry-baby!

STEVE [grasping Mitch]:

PABLO:

Yeah, yeah, take it easy!

[Mitch collapses at the table, sobbing.]

[During the preceding scenes, the Matron catches hold of Blanche's arm and prevents her flight. Blanche turns wildly and scratches at the Matron. The heavy woman pinions her arms. Blanche cries out hoarsely and slips to her knees.

MATRON:

These fingernails have to be trimmed. [The Doctor comes into the room and she looks at him.] Jacket, Doctor?

DOCTOR:

Not unless necessary.

[He takes off his hat and now he becomes personalized. The human quality goes. His voice is gentle and reassuring as he crosses to Blanche and crouches in front of her. As he speaks her name, her terror subsides a little. The lurid reflections fade from the walls, the inhuman cries and noises die out and her own hoarse crying is calmed.]

DOCTOR:

Miss DuBois.

[She turns her face to him and stares at him with desperate pleading. He smiles; then he speaks to the Matron.]

It won't be necessary.

BLANCHE [faintly]:

Ask her to let go of me.

DOCTOR [to the Matron]:

Let go.

[The Matron releases her. Blanche extends her hands toward the Doctor. He draws her up gently and supports her with his arm and leads her through the portielas.]

BLANCHE [holding tight to his arm]:

Whoever you are — I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

[The poker players stand back as Blanche and the Doctor cross the kitchen to the front door. She allows him to lead her as if she were blind. As they go out on the porch, Stella cries out her sister's name from where she is crouched a few steps up on the stairs.]

STELLA:

Blanche! Blanche, Blanche!

[Blanche walks on without turning followed by the Doctor and the Matron. They go around the corner of the building.]

[Eunice descends to Stella and places the child in her arms. It is wrapped in a pale blue blanket. Stella accepts the child, sobbingly. Eunice continues downstairs and enters the kitchen where the men, except for Stanley, are returning silently to their places about the table. Stanley has gone out on the porch and stands at the foot of the steps looking at Stella.]

STANLEY [a bit uncertainly]:

ELIA KAZAN (Continued)

Clifford Odets piece, Golden Boy. But he still has his directorial yearnings. He started modestly with the staging of *Cafe Crown*, a failure, but his work impressed Thornton Wilder, and Kazan was hired to put on *The Skin of Our Teeth*. He had endless battles with Tallulah Bankhead but *The Skin* became a huge success—it remained so until the stars began getting out of it—and won the Pulitzer Prize. And Kazan was on his way. Since that time he has staged a flock of his own—*One Touch of Venus*, *Harriet*, *Jacobowsky* and the Colonel, *Deep Are the Roots*, and All My Sons. And now he has brought his insight and extraordinary skill to Tennessee Williams’ *A Streetcar Named Desire*. The magic of a fine director’s hand is in evidence in every scene.

Talk with “Gadge” Kazan at his house in Manhattan’s East 70s, and you’ll get sharp, racy speech from a man who never says “Don’t quote me,” or “Don’t print that.” He just chatters on and let’s you use your judgment.

“I speak Turkish,” he said, “and I have a grandmother who speaks nothing but Turkish, but I tell you in Turkish or English that Clifford Odets, now writing in Hollywood, should get on a train tomorrow and go back to New York. He should come back for his own sake because he needs the theatre worse than the theatre needs him. He’s wasting his time out there; he is essentially a theatre writer.”

A pause. Another shot of Scotch and he went on:

“I’m not old. I want to start some kind of theatre that has elements of the Group Theatre in it. I’d like to create more plays that reflect the living issues of today. I want to act again. Sure I do. All I was ever put into were snarly, gangster parts. . . . I like pictures, Darryl Zanuck and everybody in Hollywood have treated me fine and I want to continue in pictures, but my real interest is living in New York and being in the stream of life. I’m going to be in the theatre forever.”

Kazan feels that there are great things to come from such young dramatists as Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, who wrote All My Sons. And he believes that such able and established dramatists as Robert E. Sherwood, Maxwell Anderson, Moss Hart, George S. Kaufman, and S. N. Behrman will all get to writing again, and in a sudden burst of productivity.

“They’ll all be back,” he said quietly. “The theatre is still there. It takes longer to make a playwright than it does a screen writer. Playwrights develop through trial and error. That’s why when the theatre loses a good one to pictures it comes as a real loss. . . . Me? I’m not a Hollywood refugee. I’ve done three pictures and I hope to do a great many more, but whenever I go out there I don’t even unpack. I have children and a wife and property in New York City. I love to go to Sardi’s and to the Ritz bar and to Hamburger Heaven and to the ball games. Hell, I’m a lousy New Yorker!”

Stella?

[She sobs with inhuman abandon. There is something luxurious in her complete surrender to crying now that her sister is gone.] STANLEY [voluptuously, soothingly]:

Now, honey. Now, love. Now, now, love. [He kneels beside her and his fingers find the opening of her blouse] Now, now, love. Now, love. . .

[The luxurious sobbing, the sensual murmur fade away under the swelling music of the “blue piano” and the muted trumpet.]

STEVE:

This game is seven-card stud.

CURTAIN

The Press Reviews

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE

"Tennesee Williams has brought us a superb drama . . . Jessica Tandy gives a superb performance . . . One of the most perfect marriages of acting and playwrighting . . . It reveals Williams as a genuinely poetic playwright whose knowledge of people is honest and thorough and whose sympathy is profoundly human."

—Brooks Atkinson, N. Y. Times

"Savagely arresting . . . a work of rare discernment and craftsmanship, crowded with the understanding, tenderness and humor of an artist achieving maturity . . . A superlative production. Tennessee Williams is certainly the Eugene O'Neill of the present period on the stage."

—Howard Barnes, N. Y. Herald-Tribune

"An extraordinary exciting evening in the theatre . . . Irene M. Selznick's producing proudly planned, expertly executed."

—Robert Garland, N. Y. Journal-American

" . . . At once absorbing and appalling; poignant and amoral; drab and magical . . . Mr. Kazan's direction throughout is brilliantly creative . . . an achievement of unusual and exciting distinction."

—John Mason Brown, Saturday Review of Literature

"Season's high in acting, writing . . . throbbingly alive, compassionate, heart-wrenchingly human . . . Marlon Brando is magnificent as the forthright husband. Admirable is Kim Hunter as Blanche's easy-going sister and Karl Malden is splendid as the shy admirer."

—John Chapman, N. Y. Daily News

"A playwrighting joy of enormous gusto and vitality and poignance and Irene M. Selznick has given it the advantages of Kazan's extraordinary knowing direction, Lucinda Ballard's costumes and Jo Mielziner's scenery."

—Ward Morehouse, N. Y. Sun

"Season's best new play."

—Life Magazine

"A fine and deeply disturbing play . . . brilliant."

—Wolcott Gibbs, New Yorker

"It is a fresh, vivid drama, revealing that the author of 'The Glass Menagerie' is not only much more of a poet than most of his fellow playwrights, but much more of a realist as well."

—Time Magazine

"... One of the outstanding offerings of the year . . . fascinating theatre."

—Newsweek Magazine

"A smash hit."

—Irving Hoffman, Hollywood Reporter

"The most distinguished new play of the season and the one containing the most impressive amount of creative brilliance."

—Richard Watts, N. Y. Post

"You will be struck by the liveliness of the dialogue . . . a liveliness which the American theatre has heard from only two or three native playwrights."

—Eric Bentley, Harper's Magazine

"... Has depth, tremendous theatrical excitement and a lurid beauty."

—Town and Country

"Among our playwrights none has a keener sense of those dramaturgic elements that go to make 'good theatre' than Tennessee Williams . . . His views are fresh and his methods daringly original."

—Robert Sensenderfer, Philadelphia Bulletin

"Tennessee Williams, winner of all manner of prizes for his play of two years ago, 'The Glass Menagerie' is with us again presenting the most haunting new drama. . . Evocative and brilliant."

—Elinor Hughes, Boston Herald

Comments on the Published Play

"One of the most remarkable American plays of our time. It is native tragedy written by one who is both a poet and a first-rate dramatist. On re-reading, it reveals increasing richness of connotation."

—William Rose Benet

"... An example of refined and calculated artistry rare in the realistic theatre."

—Walter Pritchard Eaton

"Tennessee Williams helps Thespis to rise from his winter of discontent and soar once again."

—C. V. Terry, N. Y. Times Book Review

All players involved in the photographs in this book—which were taken prior to the New York opening on December 3, 1947—are members of the original cast of “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

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