This is the
thirteenth in a series highlighting the best gay and lesbian authors from the 20th
century (with a few before and after that period) who have recorded in fiction,
and nonfiction, the history of gay people telling what life is, and was, during
an important time of history

Thanks to my mother belonging to some sort of Play of the Month Club I saw 2 of the most memorable theatre events in New York theatre
history. I remember one as if I just saw it today while I have very dim
memories of the first one. The first one was Laurette Taylor in the
production of Tennessee Williams's "The Glass Menagerie", giving  a performance that is still spoken of in
awed terms. The second play was "A Streetcar Named Desire", also by
Tennessee Williams that brought Marlon Brando super stardom and turned
acting on its head.

I
won't say it is because of Williams that I became a writer, and always
wanted to write, but he certainly set a standard that I have always
tried to reach. Whether writing a book or a play he had a natural poetry
that flowed through his words.

A couple of years ago I sold my collection of Tennessee Wiliams books consisting of all his plays, memoirs, short stories and novels
except for one that I had bought in 1964, a book of his poetry, called
"In The Winter Of Cities" and contains my favorite poem entitled, "Life
Story".

There
is not a day that goes by without a production of one, if not more, of
his plays somewhere in the world and they are often revived on Broadway.
Many of his plays have been made into money making films that are often
on 'best' lists. He has had more successful plays than any other
playwright.



Tennessee Williams (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983) born Thomas
Lanier Williams, was an American playwright who received many of the top
theatrical awards for his works of drama. He moved to New Orleans in 1939 and
changed his name to "Tennessee", the Southeastern U.S. state, his father's birthplace.
He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for A Streetcar Named Desire in
1948 and for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955. In
addition, The
Glass MenagerieThe Night of the Iguana (1961)
received New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards. His 1952 play The Rose Tattoo received the Tony Award for best play. In 1980
he was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by
President Jimmy Carter. (1945) and

Career

Biography

[ Childhood and
education

Personal life

Plays

• Candles
  to the Sun (1936)


• Spring Storm (1937)


• Fugitive Kind (1937)


• Not
  About Nightingales (1938)


• I Rise in Flame, Cried the
  Phoenix (1941)


• Orpheus
  Descending (1945)


• You
  Touched Me (1945)


• Stairs to
  the Roof (1947)

• The Glass
  Menagerie (1944)


• A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)


• Summer and
  Smoke (1948)


• The Rose
  Tattoo (1951)


• Camino Real (1953)


• Cat
  on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)


• Orpheus
  Descending (1957)


• Suddenly, Last Summer (1958)


• Sweet
  Bird of Youth (1959)


• Period
  of Adjustment (1960)


• The Night of the Iguana (1961)


• The
  Eccentricities of a Nightingale (1962, rewriting of Summer and
  Smoke)


• The Milk Train Doesn't
  Stop Here Anymore (1963)


• The Mutilated (1965)


• The Seven Descents of Myrtle (1968, aka Kingdom of Earth)


• In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969)


• Will Mr. Merriweather Return from Memphis? (1969)


• Small
  Craft Warnings (1972)


• The
  Two-Character Play (1973)


• Out Cry (1973, rewriting
  of The Two-Character Play)


• The Red Devil Battery Sign (1975)


• This Is (An Entertainment) (1976)


• Vieux Carré (1977)


• A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur (1979)


• Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980)


• The Notebook of Trigorin (1980)


• Something Cloudy, Something
  Clear (1981)


• A House Not Meant to Stand (1982)


• In Masks Outrageous and
  Austere (1983)

[edit] Novels

• The Roman Spring of Mrs.
  Stone (1950, filmed 1961)


• Moise
  and the World of Reason (1975)

[edit] Screenplays

• Baby Doll (1956)


• The Loss of a Teardrop
  Diamond (1957, filmed 2009)

[edit] Short stories

• The Vengeance of Nitocris (1928)


• The
  Field of Blue Children (1939)


• The
  Resemblance Between a Violin Case and a Coffin (1951)


• Hard Candy: A Book of Stories (1954)


• Three
  Players of a Summer Game and Other Stories (1960)


• The
  Knightly Quest: a Novella and Four Short Stories (1966)


• One
  Arm and Other Stories (1967)
  
  
  
  • One Arm
  
  
  • The Malediction
  
  
  • The Poet
  
  
  • Chronicle of a Demise
  
  
  • Desire and the Black Masseur
  
  
  • Portrait of a Girl in Glass
  
  
  • The Important Thing
  
  
  • The Angel in the Alcove
  
  
  • The Field of Blue Children
  
  
  • The Night of the Iguana
  
  
  • The Yellow Bird
  
  
  
  


• Eight
  Mortal Ladies Possessed: a Book of Stories (1974)


• Tent
  Worms (1980)


• It
  Happened the day the Sun Rose, and Other Stories (1981)

[edit] One-act plays

• American
  Blues (1948)


• Mister Paradise and Other
  One-Act Plays


• Dragon Country: a book of one-act plays (1970)


• The Traveling Companion and
  Other Plays


• 27 Wagons Full of Cotton
  and Other Plays (1946 and 1953)
  
  
  
  • «Something wild...» (introduction) (1953)
  
  
  • 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946 and 1953)
  
  
  • The Purification (1946 and 1953)
  
  
  • The Lady of Larkspur Lotion (1946 and 1953)
  
  
  • The Last of My Solid Gold Watches (1946 and 1953)
  
  
  • Portrait of a Madonna (1946 and 1953)
  
  
  • Auto-da-Fé (1946 and 1953)
  
  
  • Lord Byron's Love Letter (1946 and 1953)
  
  
  • The Strangest Kind of Romance (1946 and 1953)
  
  
  • The Long Goodbye (1946 and 1953)
  
  
  • At Liberty (1946)
  
  
  • Moony's Kid Don't Cry (1946)
  
  
  • Hello from Bertha (1946 and 1953)
  
  
  • This Property Is Condemned (1946 and 1953)
  
  
  • Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen... (1953)
  
  
  • Something Unspoken (1953)
  
  
  
  


• The Theatre of
  Tennessee Williams, Volume VI


• The Theatre of
  Tennessee Williams, Volume VII