Tennesse Wiliams Life

Thomas Lanier Williams III is a well known American playwright. Famous as Tennesse Williams, a majority of the influence for his plays is believed by many to come from his problematic family. With ten major plays and countless others as well as short stories, most drawing off his personal life, Tennesse Williams is one of the most interesting playwrights of the twentieth century. Born in Columbus Mississippi on march 26th 1911 Tennessee Williams lived for 71 years accomplishing many great works such as street car and the glass menagerie. his life went from everything from losing a sister to insanity, drug use, homosexuality, and depression for being born in missisipi to dieing in new York new York .

Williams followed up his first major critical success with several other Broadway hits including such plays as A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, 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 in 1950 and 1951 when The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire were made into major motion pictures. Later plays which were also made into motion pictures include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (for which he earned a second Pulitzer Prize in 1955), Orpheus Descending, and Night of the Iguana.

Tennessee Williams met and fell in love with Frank Merlo in 1947 while living in New Orleans. Merlo, a second generation Sicilian American who had served in the U.S. Navy in World War II, was a steadying influence in Williams’ chaotic life. But in 1961, Merlo died of Lung Cancer and the playwright went into a deep depression that lasted for ten years. In fact, Williams struggled with depression throughout most of his life and lived with the constant fear that he would go insane as did his sister Rose. For much of this period, he battled addictions to prescription drugs and alcohol.

On February 24, 1983,

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