Williams Choked on a Bottle Cap Williams Choked on a Bottle Cap By SUZANNE DALEY ennessee Williams choked to death on a plastic cap of the type used on bottles of nasal spray or eye solution, New York City's Chief Medical Examiner said yesterday. The 71-year-old playwright, whose body was found Friday morning on the floor of his Manhattan hotel suite, was first thought to have died of natural causes. But an autopsy yesterday found the bottle cap blocking the larynx -''swallowed or inhaled or some combination,'' said the Medical Examiner, Dr. Elliot M. Gross. Dr. Gross said that there was no suspicion of foul play and that ''deaths of this type are usually classified as accidental.'' He said, however, that he would not make that determination until the results of all the chemical tests were complete. He said they would take several weeks. The Medical Examiner's initial findings left many questions unanswered about the death of the playwright, who had moved between illness and hypochondria, often relying on alcohol and drugs to keep going. An empty bottle of wine and several types of medication were found in Mr. Williams's room, the police said. But Dr.

Gross would not say whether they had been a factor in the death. The Medical Examiner also would not speculate on how the bottle cap might have got into Mr. Williams's throat. He did say there were a number of medical dispensers in Mr. Williams's two-room suite at the Hotel Elysee at 60 East 54th Street. He would not say whether any was missing a cap like the one that caused the playwright's death. Dr. Gross said he had discussed his findings with Mr. Williams's personal physician, whom he would not name. Alcohol and drugs, along with strong coffee and cigarettes, became a regular part of Mr. Williams's life in the mid-1950's after ''Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'' brought him a second Pulitzer Prize. As the playwright saw it, that great success was a turning point, and a long decline began. Though Mr. Williams continued to write prolifically, he never again achieved the success or the greatness of his earlier works, ''The Glass Menagerie'' and his first Pulitzer Prize play, ''A Streetcar Named Desire.'' At his best, Mr.

Williams was a master of dramatic moments who created lost, tortured characters struggling for dignity and hope in a world that often denied both. Suffered From Several Ailments Obsessed with sickness, failure and death, he constantly thought his heart would stop beating. He had suffered from several ailments, including cataracts, arthritis and heart disease. ''I've had every disorder known to man,'' he once said. Several weeks ago, when Mr. Williams returned to New York from his house in Key West, Fla., he told close friends that he was exhausted, overworked and suffering from a shoulder condition. Mr. Williams's body was found Friday morning by his secretary, John Uecker, who shared the playwright's two-room suite. Mr. Uecker said he had heard a noise in Mr. Williams's room at about 11 P.M on Thursday, but did not investigate. At about 10:45 A.M. Friday, Mr. Uecker entered the room and found Mr. Williams lying next to his bed. Dr. Gross said Mr. Williams had died sometime in the late evening on Thursday or the early morning of Friday.

According to doctors, normal nerve reflexes at the back of the throat would ordinarily force a person to gag and therefore eject any object that was caught in the opening of the larynx, called the glottis. No Test for Alcohol Yesterday, Dr. Gross said that, while ''a number of reasons'' could have impaired the gag reponse, ''it frequently happens when a person is under the influence of alcohol or drugs.'' He said that Mr. Williams's blood had not been tested for alcohol, a procedure that often takes less than an hour to complete, but that testing would start tomorrow. Dr. Gross issued a brief statement yesterday at a 2:30 P.M. news conference in the lobby of the Medical Examiner's headquarters at 520 First Avenue. The statement, which refers to Mr. Williams by the name he was given at birth, said: ''An autopsy was performed this morning on the body of Thomas L. Williams. The cause of death is asphyxia due to obstruction of the glottis (the opening to the larynx or upper airway) by a plastic over-cap (of the type used to cover the opening of nasal spray or ophthalmic solution dispenser).

Further studies, including chemical tests, will be performed.'' The police were unable to say what the bottle cap might have belonged to. ''All the medication was taken from the apartment by the Medical Examiner's office,'' said Captain Gene Burke of the Manhattan detective squad. ''We don't have any information on it.'' Plans for funeral services for Mr. Williams remained incomplete yesterday. A memorial service was scheduled for Wednesday at the Tennessee Williams Fine Arts Center in Key West and a viewing, open to the public, was set for Sunday through Tuesday from 10 A.M. to 8 P.M. at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home, 1076 Madison Avenue. Death By Swallowing: 11 People Who Died After Eating Something Weird | Mental Floss Death By Swallowing: 11 People Who Died After Eating Something Weird Getty Images Like us on Facebook One hundred and sixty-three years ago, on July 9, 1850, Millard Fillmore was inaugurated as the President of the United States following Zachary Taylor’s rather odd death.

Taylor was particularly warm after participating in Independence Day activities at the Washington Monument, so he did what many of us do: He came home and raided the fridge (or ice box, in his case) for something cool to snack on. After enjoying some iced milk and cherries, Taylor fell sick almost immediately. He was dead five days later. Some historians believe the milk carried deadly bacteria; others suspected the massive quantities of acidic cherries mixed with the milk was too much for Taylor’s delicate stomach. Still others wonder if Taylor was poisoned. Whatever the reason was, Taylor is hardly the first person—or the last—to meet his or her demise from eating or swallowing something suspicious. Here are 11 others. 1. Tennessee Williams You’ve probably heard about poor Tennessee Williams (above), but the story bears repeating ... and maybe updating. The playwright was hanging out in his room at the Hotel Elysee in New York in 1983 when he apparently popped a cap into his mouth—the type that you typically find on eye drops or nose spray—and then accidentally choked on it.

Rumor spread that Williams had choked to death on an eye drop cap, but a medical examiner later found the presence of the barbiturate secobarbital (“dolls”) in his system. The theory of one CUNY professor is that his death may really have been the result of mixing the Seconal with other substances, “kind of a Michael Jackson situation,” but Williams’ companion managed to talk the medical examiner into putting the bottle cap reason down on the death certificate. 2. Steve Peregrin Took, Musician Cherries, man, they’re such a menace. In 1980, Steve Peregrin Took (not his birth name) of the band Tyrannosaurus Rex was pretty excited when the band’s manager managed to get the guys some back royalties they were owed. Took, who was no longer a member of the band, was so excited that he basically blew the money on a huge bash that included magic mushrooms, morphine, and booze. After taking a magical mixture of all of those things, Took’s mouth went numb, making conditions just right for a cocktail cherry to slip into his throat unnoticed. He was 31. 3.

Adolf Frederick, King of Sweden Wikimedia Commons On February 12, 1771, the King of Sweden gorged himself on a feast that could have fed a whole crew of men: lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, herring and champagne. To cap off his meal, King Adolf Frederick enjoyed 14 servings of semla served in hot milk. He died the same day, apparently of digestion problems. Too bad—makes you wonder how he would have celebrated Valentine’s Day. Semla, by the way, is a flour bun filled with almond paste and topped with whipped cream. Not sure I blame him for eating 14 of them. If you’d like to try to best the King’s feat, here’s a recipe ... but don’t say we didn’t warn you. 4. Sherwood Anderson, Novelist Wikimedia Commons Novelist and short story writer Sherwood Anderson was on a cruise with his wife in 1941 when he started to experience severe stomach cramps. He died a few days later at a hospital in Panama, where a doctor discovered that he had swallowed a whole toothpick that had likely speared an olive in a martini glass.

The toothpick damaged Anderson’s internal organs, which then became infected. See? Too many martinis will kill you. 5. George M. Prior, Navy Lieutenant In other “don’t put things in your mouth that don’t belong there” news, we have the surprising demise of Navy Lieutenant George M. Prior. Prior had a few days’ leave from work and decided to spend every day playing golf at the Army Navy Country Club in Arlington, VA. He felt nauseated by the end of the first day. By the end of the third day, he had a rash and a fever of 104.5 and admitted himself to the hospital. Blisters the size of baseballs cropped up shortly thereafter, and a week and a half later, he was dead, with 80 percent of his skin burned and blistered. It was later determined that the golf tee he habitually stuck in his mouth after every hole had been covered in the fungicide the golf course used to keep their grounds beautiful. Prior’s allergic reaction to a chemical in the fungicide burned his skin from the inside out and caused the failure of several of his major organs. 6.

Bando Mitsugoro VIII, Kabuki Actor Wikimedia Commons If you’re like me, you’re most familiar with the fugu fish thanks to that episode of The Simpsons (“One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish”) where Homer thinks he accidentally ate some and will likely die by the time the sun rises. Spoiler alert: He’s OK. In real life, certain parts of the fugu fish are extremely toxic, especially the liver. Ingesting too much of it will render the victim completely paralyzed but totally conscious, and eventually the paralysis even hits major organs. The victim ends up asphyxiating. This is exactly what happened to Japanese “Living National Treasure” Bando Mitsugoro VIII, a Kabuki actor. In 1975, the actor insisted that he was strong enough to survive the toxin, and ordered a large—and illegal—number of fugu livers. Spoiler alert #2: Mitsugoro wasn’t strong enough to survive the toxin. 7. Basil Brown, Health Nut As the saying goes, “all things in moderation.” That includes health food, believe it or not, which health nut Basil Brown learned the hard way in 1974.

He drank a gallon of carrot juice every day, and took excessive amounts of vitamin A whenever he couldn’t muster up the tastebuds to get a gallon of the “healthy” stuff down his gullet. He ended up dying from “hypervitaminosis A,” a massive overdose of vitamin A that essentially shut down his liver. 8. Edward Archbold Any way you can imagine it, death by roaches sounds pretty horrific. In the case of Edward Archbold, it wasn’t a weird Kafkaesque situation that did him in, but in fact actually ingesting cockroaches. Wait, maybe that is a Kafkaesque situation. Along with about 30 other people, Archbold was consuming insects for the chance to win a free python. You can see the contest hook now, right? “Eat like a python, win a python.” After eating a large number of roaches, two ounces of mealworms and 35 horn worms, Archbold collapsed, his airway obstructed by roach body parts . He was pronounced dead at the hospital. 9. Henry Hall, Lighthouse Keeper Being a lighthouse keeper certainly has its hazards, but I bet you never thought ingesting molten lead was one of them.

I’m sure Henry Hall didn’t, either. Hall was the lighthouse keeper for the Eddystone Lighthouse in Devon, England, when it caught on fire in 1755. As he looked up at the burning tower of the lighthouse, some melted lead from the reflector dripped onto his face and down his throat. The 94-year-old man lasted 12 days before succumbing to his injuries; upon his death, his doctor removed a chunk of lead from his stomach that weighed nearly half a pound. 10. Vladimir Likhonos, Chemistry Student Exploding bubble gum may sound like one of those crappy tricks a clown may pull on you, but to chemistry student Vladimir Likhonos, it was no joke. Likhonos, who was studying at the Kyiv Polytechnical Institute in Ukraine, had developed a penchant for dunking his gum in citric acid before chewing to give it a sour pop. Sadly, a “pop” is what he got when he accidentally dipped his gum in an explosive substance he had been working with instead of the citric acid. The combination of his saliva with the powder was powerful enough to blow off most of his lower face.

Paramedics were unable to save him. 11. Maude D'Lean, Sword Swallower I know this is going to come as a surprise, but sometimes sticking a sharp sword down your throat results in injuries, even fatalities. Maude D’Lean was a famous sword swallower in the early 1900s. Though she had performed her act successfully for decades, it was an audience member that did her in. Before a performance, Maude passed the sword through the audience so they could see that it was the real deal. On this particular occasion in 1920, one of the audience members who handled the sword managed to chip the blade. The chip damaged her internal organs and she died soon after at the age of 42 . Someone who didn’t die from eating something weird: Mama Cass. She didn’t choke on a ham sandwich. She had a heart attack. More from mental_floss...

Drugs Linked to Death Of Tennessee Williams - NYTimes.com Drugs Linked to Death Of Tennessee Williams Published: August 14, 1983 New York City's Chief Medical Examiner said yesterday that the playwright Tennessee Williams was apparently trying to ingest barbiturates when he choked to death on a plastic bottle cap last February. The Medical Examiner, Dr. Elliot M. Gross, said that chemical tests of tissue samples taken from the 71-year-old playwright's body disclosed the presence of the barbiturate secobarbital in his system when he died. ''The cause of death was asphyxia,'' said Dr. Gross. ''But apparently the overcap was being used to take the barbiturates.'' Mr. Williams's body was discovered in his two-room suite at the Hotel Elysee at 60 East 54th Street last Feb. 25, by his secretary, John Uecker. An autopsy performed the next day showed that the writer had choked to death on a bottle cap - of the type used on nasal spray or eye solution - that he had swallowed or inhaled. The chemical tests were taken later. Dr.

Gross said the recent amendment to the autopsy report concluded his offfice's inquiry into the causes of Mr. Williams's death. Mr. Williams, who won Pulitzer Prizes for his plays ''A Streetcar Named Desire,'' in 1947, and ''Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,'' in 1954, struggled with depression and a variety of illnesses, some of which were caused by his increasing reliance on alcohol and drugs. Famous People Who Choked to Death | Celebrities Who Died by Choking Famous People Who Choked to Death By Notable Famous Deaths 27k views 8 items tags f t p @ List Criteria: Only famous people who choked to death List of famous people who choked to death. Choking is a blockage of the upper airway by food or other objects, which prevents a person from breathing effectively. Choking can cause a simple coughing fit, but complete blockage of the airway may lead to death. When someone is choking with a completely blocked airway, no oxygen can enter the lungs. The brain is extremely sensitive to this lack of oxygen and begins to die within four to six minutes. It is during this time that first aid must take place.

Irreversible brain death occurs in as little as 10 minutes. Tennessee Williams famously choked to death on the cap from a bottle of eye drops he frequently used. Rock star Jimi Hendrix is another famous person to choke to death. The iconic guitar player died when he famously choked to death on his vomit. Even one of the most famous military leaders of all time, like the feared Attila the Hun died from choking. The same goes for Hall of Fame baseball star Jimmie Foxx. Wondering what other famous people have died by choking? You can reference the items on this list to find out.

Z G Options B Comments & Embed 1 Age: Died at 54 (1892-1946) Birthplace: Moscow, Russia Age: Died at 47 (406-453) Birthplace: Hajdúböszörmény, Hungary Age: Died at 51 (1905-1956) Birthplace: Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, United States of America Profession: Bandleader, Trumpeter, Composer, Trombonist Credits: The Fabulous Dorseys, A Song Is Born, Presenting Lily Mars, Upbeat in Music, Stage Show, + more Age: Died at 60 (1907-1967) Birthplace: Sudlersville, Maryland, United States of America Profession: Baseball player Age: Died at 72 (1911-1983) Birthplace: Columbus, Mississippi, United States of America Profession: Screenwriter, Writer, Playwright Credits: A Streetcar Named Desire, Suddenly, Last Summer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Rose Tattoo Age: Died at 49 (1911-1960) Birthplace: Kolkata, India

 Age: Died at 49 (1932-1981) Birthplace: Crumlin, Dublin, Republic of Ireland Profession: Painter, Writer more ABOUT Age: Died at 28 (1942-1970) Birthplace: Washington, Area code 206, Western United States, Northwestern United States, United States of America, + more Profession: Record producer, Guitarist, Songwriter, Entrepreneur, Musician, + more Credits: Almost Famous, Wayne's World, Point Break, Minions 1000+ images about Tennessee Williams on Pinterest | Tennessee williams, The glass menagerie and Memoirs One of the plays in our 50th Season, it's always a good time to brush up on Tennesee Williams' classic THE GLASS MENAGERIE See More 15 Fascinating Facts From Famous Death Records – Ancestry Blog GIVE ME ACCESS 2.

Jane Austen died of Addison’s Disease three decades before it was discovered. Austen remains one of the most famous authors of the last 200 years. When she died in 1817, no one knew what strange disease had caused her to suffer for years. Now, many believe she succumbed to Addison’s disease, which, among other ills, causes darkening of the skin and extreme gastrointestinal irritation. The disease wasn’t even named until more than 30 years after her death. However, because she took such detailed notes of her symptoms, doctors in 1964 identified Addison’s as a likely cause of death according to Extraordinary Endings of Practically Everything & Everybody by Charles Panati. 3. Three of the Founding Fathers died on the Fourth of July. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both signed the Declaration of Independence, and they also died on the exact same day: July 4, 1826. Five years later, James Monroe died on Independence Day as well. James A Garfield assassination. Illustration by A. Berghaus and C. Upham. 4. President James A. Garfield was shot by an assassin, but killed by his doctors.

Garfield served a mere 200 days as the 20th president of the United States before he died. In July 1881, he was shot by Charles Guiteau. One bullet grazed his arm, while another went into his back. However, the autopsy revealed it wasn’t the two gunshots that killed him — it was medical malpractice. Doctors poked unwashed fingers and unsterilized medical instruments into the wound trying to find the bullet lodged in his body. One doctor punctured Garfield’s liver while hunting for the slug. In the end, intervention by Garfield’s 16 doctors turned a relatively harmless, three-inch hole into a 20-inch infected passageway stretching from his ribs to his groin. According to Extraordinary Endings, the autopsy also revealed doctors were dead wrong about the bullet’s location to begin with, as it sat four inches to the right of the spinal cord in a bed of tissue. Garfield went from 210 pounds to 130 within a month, as doctors bickered for 80 days about the lost bullet’s location. He died in September of blood poisoning and widespread infection.

At least the government refused to pay the doctors’ $85,000 bill. 5. A lot of famous people died of syphilis. Syphilis is a deadly sexually transmitted disease. But after the discovery of penicillin in the 1940s, it was easily treated and no longer a fatal diagnosis. Before then, many famous people died of the disease, including gangster Al Capone; painters Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gaugin, and Edouard Manet ; writers Oscar Wilde and Guy de Maupassant ; and poet Charles Baudelaire. Mark Twain. Photo by A. F. Bradley. (Public domain image courtesy Library of Congress) 6. Mark Twain was born when Halley’s Comet came and died when it returned. Halley’s Comet only reaches Earth once every 75 years. So it’s remarkable that it was visible the day Twain was born in 1835 and again right after his death in 1910. Twain was quoted as saying he was born with the comet and “would go out with it, too.” 7. The jockey who died and then won the race.

Jockey Frank Hayes died of a massive heart attack during a race at Belmont, New York, in 1923. His horse finished first despite this, making Hayes the only jockey to win a race posthumously. 8. Novelist Sherwood Anderson was done in by the toothpick in a martini olive. Anderson’s literary career was at its height in the 1920s thanks to celebrated books like Winesburg, Ohio. Although, he is most remembered for his influence on the next generation of writers, including helping William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway their first works published. In 1941, he suffered from abdominal illness on a South American cruise and died in a Panamanian hospital. It wasn’t until the autopsy that the true cause of death was discovered: He had swallowed the toothpick that an olive was speared on, which damaged his internal organs and gave him the infection that killed him. 9. C. S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley, and John F. Kennedy all died on the same day. Lewis is most famous for writing The Chronicles of Narnia, while Huxley is best known as the author of Brave New World.

Both writers died the same day as the 35th President of the United States: November 22, 1963. 10. The only known space deaths all happened on the same mission. In 1971, Soviet cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev all died when their Soyuz-11 spacecraft depressurized during re-entry. No other deaths outside the Earth’s atmosphere have been recorded. 11. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, and many other artists all died at 27. Many have morbidly dubbed celebrities who die at 27 year old “The 27 Club” because so many well-known musicians and artists have died at that tender age. Sadly, many of the deaths have been drug related. Tennessee Williams. Photo by Orlando Fernandez. (Public domain image courtesy Library of Congress) 12. The medical examiner’s report says playwright Tennessee Williams died from choking on a plastic bottle cap. He didn’t.

As the author of A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Glass Menagerie, Williams is possibly the most well-known American playwright. When he died on February 25, 1983, the medical examiner’s report claimed he choked to death on the cap from a bottle of eye drops. Later it was revealed that the medical examiner was influenced by Williams’s assistant and that the true cause of death was related to barbiturate use, which an autopsy confirmed. 13. Marvin Gaye was killed the day before his birthday. Tragically, the legendary singer was shot by his father and died hours shy of his 45th birthday. 14. John Lennon, Selena, and Rebecca Schaeffer were all murdered by obsessed fans. Celebrity stalkers are not uncommon. However, for the famous Beatle, the Latin music sensation, and up-and-coming actress, fan obsession escalated to violence, and they were all gunned down by mentally unstable stalkers. 15. Comedian Dick Shawn died on stage and the audience thought it was part of the act.

Shawn was a stand-up comedian who was featured in popular films including The Producers and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. In 1987, when he collapsed on stage due to a heart attack, the audience assumed it was part of the act because he had just joked, “If elected, I will not lay down on the job.” 15 | November | 2013 | Guy Portman's Blog Browse archives for November 15 , 2013 Spread the love This, the first instalment of my latest series about authors, is dedicated to two bizarre author deaths. I chose this rather macabre subject matter as death is one of the themes in my second novel, Necropolis, a humorous work of dark fiction, due for release early next year (date to be confirmed soon). Virginia Woolf (January 25th 1882 – March 28th 1941) Notable works: To The Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway, Orlando: A Biography, A Room of One’s Own.

Novelist, essayist, publisher and critic Virginia Woolf was an influential interwar writer and an important member of the prominent Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. Regarded today as a foremost modernist and one of the major English language lyrical novelists, Virginia Woolf was an experimental writer, who achieved considerable popular and critical success during her lifetime. Her notable works include the experimental parodic biography, Orlando: A Biography, in which the hero’s life spans three centuries and both genders. Woolf’s existence was not without its tribulations however. The talented writer suffered from depression throughout her life, several episodes in her younger years being so severe that she was sent to a mental institution. It was the onset of World War II and the destruction of Woolf’s London home in The Blitz, alongside the poor reception of her biography of late friend Roger Fry that were to send matters spiralling out of control. Shortly after finishing the manuscript of her last novel, Between the Acts (posthumously published), Woolf entered a deep depression. On the 28th March 1941 the author put on her overcoat, filled the pockets with stones and walked out into the River Ouse near her home in Sussex.

After her body was finally discovered on the 18th April, Woolf’s husband, political theorist and author Leonard Woolf, had her cremated remains buried under an elm tree in the garden of their home in Rodmell. Tennessee Williams (March 26th 1911 – February 25th 1983) Notable works: The Glass Menagerie, A Street Car Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. American playwright Tennessee Williams found fame with his play The Glass Menagerie (1944), a big hit on Broadway in New York. More success followed and by 1959 Williams had two Pulitzer Prizes, three New York Drama Critics Awards, three Donaldson Awards and a Tony Award to his name. However the glory was not to last and the 1960s’ and 70s’ saw the talented playwright facing professional failures and personal problems. These may in part have been due to his increasing alcohol and drug consumption, as well as the death of former partner Frank Merlo in 1963.

Beloved sister Rose being diagnosed with schizophrenia and his own dysfunctional upbringing, Williams’s father was a heavy drinker with a violent temper and his mother overbearing, could also have been factors in the playwright’s descent into depression, drugs and commitments to mental health facilities. On the morning of February 26th 1983, Williams was found dead in his suite at the Elysee Hotel in New York. The medical examiner’s report indicated that the cause of death was Williams having choked to death on a cap from a bottle of eye drops. It was noted that alcohol and drugs might have contributed to his demise, as they may have suppressed the gag reflex. The bizarre nature of the playwright’s death was to be the subject of much scrutiny over the forthcoming years. A forensic detective who reviewed the file stated that it was an overdose that killed Williams, whilst friend Scott Kenan claimed someone in the coroner’s office invented the bottle cap scenario.

Share this: A Streetcar Named Desire | 60second Recap® A Streetcar Named Desire A Streetcar Named Desire was last modified: June 6th, 2014 by Jenny Sawyer Author: Tennessee Williams Main character: Faded, inebriated Blanche DuBois The scoop: But A Streetcar Named Desire isn’t all denial and despair. This play was actually Tennessee Williams’ call for change. See, Williams thought there was something wrong with a world in which a single woman’s only recourse was either a man, or a complete departure from reality. That’s no longer the reality, for the most part. Perhaps we can thank Williams—and A Streetcar Named Desire. Streetcar : Context and Resources Tennessee Williams in 1947, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. “Write what you know.” Legend has it that this was Mark Twain’s recipe for literary success. Tennessee Williams knew depression, alcoholism, failure, loneliness, and insanity. He wrote what he knew. And he became one of the most influential playwrights of the 20th century.

Williams tore characters and events from the pages of his own life, sealed them into pressure-cooker plots, and set the result to explode on stage. Audiences, accustomed to more polite fare, had never seen anything quite like it—except, perhaps, in the private dramas of their personal lives. American theater would never be the same. A Streetcar Named Desire whetted the public’s appetite for drama that examined life’s realities without blurring its harshest truths. Its influence extended to movies and television, where Williams’ taboo-smashing realism was adopted so widely that it came to be the new normal. Today, nearly every storyteller in Hollywood and just about everyplace else in the English-speaking world is, knowingly or not, a disciple of Tennessee Williams. Here’s an interview with Pulitzer Prize-and-Tony Award-winning playwright Tony Kushner about the impact of Tennesee Williams’ life and work on his own career. Here’s The New York Times review of A Streetcar Named Desire’s original stage production , in 1947. Tennessee Williams: Life imitates art Happier times: Thomas Lanier Williams III (right), who would later adopt the name Tennessee Williams, with his mother Edwina and his sister Rose.

Tennessee Williams died wealthy, famous, and alone in a suite at New York’s Elysee Hotel. The medical examiner’s report indicated that he choked to death on the cap from a bottle of eye drops; drugs and alcohol may have contributed to his death by suppressing his gag reflex. Williams was 71 years old. It was the tragic coda to a life of stage-ready triumph and pathos. Here’s The New York Times obituary from February 26, 1983 , the day after Williams’ death. As the writer drily notes: “Just as his work reflected his life, his life reflected his work.” Here’s a hair-raising look at Williams’ family . His father, a hard-drinking traveling shoe salesman, called him “Miss Nancy.” His mother, a socially-ambitious “Southern belle,” was also prone to fits of hysteria. His sister would be diagnosed with schizophrenia and lobotomized. As for the future playwright, when he failed a military training course in college, his father put him to work at a shoe factory. He responded in what would become his signature fashion : writing between shifts with ferocious drive, then suffering a nervous breakdown that left his legs temporarily paralyzed.

Here’s a riveting 1981 interview with Williams , published in the Paris Review, in which he claims that his plays are not autobiographical. “My work is emotionally autobiographical,” he says. “It has no relationship to the actual events of my life, but it reflects the emotional currents of my life.” But as this examination reveals, Williams embedded numerous elements from his own life into his plays. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche Dubois’ threadbare pretensions and chronic hysteria appear to be modeled after his mother. Williams found inspiration for Stanley Kowalski’s loutishness in his father’s personality. A Streetcar Named Desire: The meta-play Missing in Action: In the 1951 film adaptation, homosexuality. Blanche was more than just an echo of Williams’ mother. Her hyperventilating personality reflected the sensibility of a once-dominant theatrical archetype: melodrama. This article sets out the history of stage melodrama, loosely defined as a theatrical work that uses exaggerated jeopardy to engage the audience’s emotions. By the time A Streetcar Named Desire opened at Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre, melodrama was on the way out.

On the way in: dramatic naturalism , which sought to create the illusion of reality with characters that more or less resembled those one would encounter in real life. Here’s a comprehensive bibliographic survey of literary criticism of A Streetcar Named Desire . It points out that Stanley Kowalski’s bare-knuckled brio was, in fact, a personification of dramatic naturalism. Stanley was the personification of something else: The sort of bullying alpha male who not only dominated Williams’ early life, but made the era in which he lived so hostile to homosexuality. This review of Tennessee Williams’s Memoirs discusses the playwright’s decision to confront the taboos of his time head on and, by the late 1930s, publicly acknowledge his homosexuality. “I never considered my homosexuality as anything to be disguised,” Williams said. “Neither did I consider it a matter to be over-emphasized. I consider it an accident of nature.” Others however, did not. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams pushed the limits of social acceptability when he depicted Blanche’s husband as homosexual: Hollywood censors removed that particular detail from the play’s 1951 film adaptation.

Recaps for this Book 1000+ images about Tennessee Williams on Pinterest | My birthday, Streetcar named desire and Literature Forward TENNESSEE WILLIAMS. “There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.” See More Literature/ Tennessee Williams term paper 19409 Literature/ Tennessee Williams term paper 19409 Literature term papers Disclaimer: Free essays on Literature posted on this site were donated by anonymous users and are provided for informational use only. The free Literature research paper (Tennessee Williams essay) presented on this page should not be viewed as a sample of our on-line writing service . If you need fresh and competent research / writing on Literature, use the professional writing service offered by our company. View / hide essay Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams on March26, 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. He was the second of three children of Cornelius Coffin and Edwina Dakin Williams. His early childhood was troubled with illnesses that left Tennessee a terminal hypochondriac throughout the rest of his life.

He turned to writing as a method of escaping the unhappiness that surrounded him. His first published work was a response to an essay question that appeared in Smart Set magazine in 1927. In 1929, Tennessee began college at the University of Missouri. During this time he wrote poetry, pledged a fraternity, and began a life-long dependency with alcohol. Upon failing ROTC in his junior year, his father sent him to work in the International Shoe Company warehouse. This experience was one of boredom and endless repetition that launched Tennessee into depression and eventually into a nervous breakdown. Only after many years could he use this horrifying ordeal to be portrayed through the partially autobiographical character of Tom in The Glass Menagerie. Tennessee spent time recovering from the breakdown with his grandparents in Memphis. It is during this time that he was introduced to drama. His first attempt as a playwright was through a farce entitled Cairo, Shanghai, Bombay. The play was performed by the Memphis Garden Players on July 12, 1935. He was so captivated with theatre that he decided to enroll in Washington University and pursue writing as a career. In 1937, Tennessee's sister, Rose, was institutionalized as a schizophrenic.

He was extremely close to his sister, and her hospitalization had a great affect on him. He transferred to the University of Iowa and completed his Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1938. After graduation, Tennessee worked in sseveral places while continuing to write short stories, poetry, and plays. The decade of the 40's brought much recognition to the budding playwright of the era. The Glass Menagerie is perhaps one of his most successful plays written in the 1940's. The Battlefield of Angels and 27 Wagons Full of Cotton are only two more of the plays from this prolific time for Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire came out in 1947 and earned Tennessee his first Pulitzer Prize. Finally successful and Monetarily secure, Tennessee had a difficult time adapting to his good fortune. He became more and more dependent on alcohol to help him cope. The 1950's saw Tennessee attempt to write longer fiction as well as continuing to write plays and poetry. A short novel, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone was published in 1950. Not only did this period bring changes in Tennessee's writing style, but it also was the beginning of a new lifestyle.

This lifestyle was the modrately quite and basically monogamous relationship with his friend, Frank Merlo. The relationship lasted until Frank's death from lung cancer in 1963. Some of his plays that evolved in the 50's were The Rose Tatoo, Camino Real, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which won Tennessee his second and last Pulitzer Prize. In 1957 after his play, Orpheus Descending, failed to become a hit, Tennessee went into psychoananlysis. His dependency on alcohol was growing as rapidly as his claustrophobia, depression, and his fear of suffocation. His concern for his schizophrenic sister never subsided during this troubled time. The era of the 60's found Tennessee's writing more startling and more personal than in the previous years. His works were intensely emotional and not as critically well received as his earlier plays. The Night of the Iguana, which was Tennessee's last award winning play, appeared in 1961. Although he did not win any more awards. Tennessee did not stop creating plays. In 1969 Tennessee's after poorly received play In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel closed, he had a nervous collapse.

It was during this time of recovery that he broke his drup and alcohol dependency. During the 1970's, Tennessee continued to write plays with none of them being critically applauded. The only fruitful work of this era was the publication of his memoirs. On Februaury 25, 1983, in a New York hotel, Tennessee Williams choked to death on the cap of a bottle of eye drops, thus permanently extinguishing the life of one of the respected playwrights of the twentieth century. Bibliography

Question: In February 1983 which US writer choked to death on the cap from a bottle of eye drops?
Answer: Tennessee Williams