Tennessee Williams - (1911-1983)
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Houston High School
Houston, MS
Read another essay on Tennessee Williams written by Missouri students
Sarah Littlejohn, William Hunter, and Jill Hawanchak.I. Biography
Tennessee Williams was born on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi. His real name was Thomas Lanier Williams, the second child of three. He was known as "Tom" for most of his life, until a college roommate jokingly nicknamed him "Tennessee," because of Williams' heritage as a Tennessee pioneer.
Tennessee Williams' family life was depressing and nerve-wracking. Cornelius Williams was a serious businessman who owned a shoe warehouse. Cornelius had drinking and gambling habits, and later Williams also adopted these habits. Both Williams and his siblings were really close to their mother, Edwina, and they encouraged her to leave her abusive husband.
Williams enrolled in a journalism program at the University of Missouri until his father forced him to leave college and work in a shoe company. Williams finally graduated from the University of Iowa, where he had already produced many plays. His first professional play, The Mummers, was in St. Louis. He could not find work in Chicago, so he moved to New Orleans and changed his name from Tom to Tennessee.
Among the writers influencing Williams were the following: Frederico Garcia Lorca, Arthur Rimbaud, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hart Crane, and D. H. Lawrence. As a matter of fact, he wrote, one of his plays, I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix, as a tribute to honor D. H. Lawrence.
In 1945, Tennessee Williams released his first big success with The Glass Menagerie, which won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award as the best play of the season. In 1955, both The Glass Menagerie and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won the Pulitzer Prize in drama. Williams traveled to Florida in 1979 where he served as Artist-In-Residence at the Hippodrome State Theatre in Gainesville. Two years before he died, Tennessee Williams told his friend, writer Dotson Rader, "You should write a book about me." Tragedy occurred on February 25, 1983, when Williams died after choking on a plastic top of his eye medicine, mistaking it as a sleeping pill. In April 1985, Rader published Tennessee: Cry of the Heart, which was a book about Williams' abusive lifestyle.
II. Summary of Mama's Old Stucco House
In Mama's Old Stucco House a black woman named Brinda works in place of her mother for an odd, drunk white man, named Mr. Jimmy Krenning. Brinda serves meals to Mr. Krenning, but he hardly ever eats anything. She stores all the food in the ice box until he and or his company come and eat all of the food and leave a mess behind.
Mr. Krenning's mother dies and he is happy because he says that when his mother was alive, she owned everything he had, including himself. Brinda's mother struggles out of her bed to make it to Mr. Krenning's house as the undertaker's assistants come to remove his mother's body. That night Mr. Krenning takes Brinda and her mother home. When they get there, Brinda's mother locks her out and tells her to go back to Mr. Krenning's house to clean up. As Mr. Krenning guides her to the car, Brinda feels that his touch, which is gentle and soothing.
III. List of Works
One Arm (1948)
The Glass Menagerie (1954)
The Kingdom of Earth (1954)
Bring This Man up Road (1959)
Grand (1964)
Mama's Old Stucco House (1964)
The Knightly Quest (1966)
IV. Tennessee Williams on the Web
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/williams_tennessee
V. Sources Hackett, George, March 25, 1985 Newsweek "Exit Lines for the Playwright" Pages 60-61
Encyclopedia Americana 1995 Book 28 Pages 792-793
http://library.thinkquest.org/2847/authors/williams.htm