“Home is where you hang your childhood, and Mississippi to me is the beauty spot of creation, a dark, wide spacious land that you can breathe in.”
Tennessee Williams
“A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.”
Tattoo on Angelina Jolie’s left arm, which is a slightly modified line from Tennessee Williams’ play Stairs to the Roof
He was born on March 26, 1911 and named Thomas Lanier Williams III. But he always thought Thomas Lanier sounded like bad poetry so welcomed being called Tennessee Williams when he was a student at the University of Iowa. According to one report, he was mistakenly nicknamed Tennessee because of this thick southern draw and a frat brother knew he was from southern state with a long name. Williams was actually from Mississippi, but it’s a good thing he got it wrong because Mississippi Williams sounds more like a WWE wrestler than a great Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. (And Williams’ father did have a Tennessee family background.)
Tennessee Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi and lived in the house pictured above for the first three years of his life until his family moved to Clarksdale, Mississippi where they lived until moving to St. Louis where Williams graduated from University City High School. While attending the University of Missouri he saw the Ibsen play Ghosts and decided to become a playwright. His first two plays were produced in St. Louis in 1937 when he would have been 25 or 26 years old. He graduated from the University of Iowa in 1938.
He traveled, and wrote poems and short stories, and worked in a shoe factory before his breakout play The Glass Menagerie found success at Chicago’s Lyric Theater in 1944. For the next fifteen years he had an incredible run in drama which included winning a Pulitzer Prize for his 1947 Broadway play A Streetcar Named Desire, The Rose Tattoo (1951), and in 1955 his play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won both a Tony and a Pulitzer.
He also was nominated for two Oscars including writing the screenplay for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).
That film was directed by Elia Kazan and recieved a total of 12 nominations and produced four Oscar winners. A glance at Williams’ credits on IMDB shows that even decades after his death that more than two dozens of his stories have been made in to films and TV programs.
“Our theater has to cry out loud to be heard at all.”
Tennessee Williams
He died in 1983 and is buried in St. Louis.
P.S. I took the photo of the first house of Tennessee Williams on the same day I toured Graceland this week. Driving from Memphis to Columbus I passed through Tupelo and was surprised to discover that Elvis and Tennessee were born just about an hour away from each other. (Unlikely places, right?) Also, that house was actually part of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church where Williams’ grandfather was the rector from 1905-1913. The house was restored and is now the welcome center for the city of Columbus. In the house they have a cross on display that belonged to Williams’ grandfather and actually warn by Richard Burton as the defrocked clergyman in the film versions of Williams’ The Night of the Iguana.
P.P.S. For the odd connection category— because of that Williams quote/tattoo on Joile’s arm ; Both Tennessee Williams and Brad Pitt attended, but did not graduate, from the University of Missouri in Columbia. And according to biography.com Williams studied journalism which is also what Pitt studied. Where else are you going to find these odd connections?