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Tennessee Williams is a name many moviegoers do not recognize. Unfortunately, the names of many screenwriters are not well known. But a look at the roster of stars that appeared in the movies that were made from his plays will show many familiar and famous names, such as:
. . . to name a few.
It was early in his career that he began going by the name “Tennessee.” The origin of this nickname has been clouded by Williams himself, as he gave several reasons for his choice. These included a nickname from his college days and homage to his ancestors from that state. However, the most likely explanation is that early in his career, desperate for money and recognition, he mailed an entry to a playwriting contest from his grandparents’ home in Memphis, using the name “Tennessee Williams.” Tenn, as his friends called him, discovered early on that prose was not his favorite form of writing. He found that dialogue came naturally, and his life as a playwright began soon thereafter. However, Tenn would often say that he was not writing plays, but that he was a poet. If you listen to the lyrical dialogue in his plays/movies, you’ll understand why he said that.
Not so unexpectedly, Tenn’s most successful movies had been his most successful plays. His passion for life, including all of his neuroses, was evident in his works, making them all the more human and appealing to movie audiences. But he found no subject taboo—even if he had to hide it in clever and heartfelt dialogue. A Streetcar Named Desire dealt with different kinds of lust, even though the rape scene was downplayed in the movie. Marlon Brando reprised his Broadway role as Stanley. However, fresh from her success with Gone with the Wind, Vivien Leigh played a very different Southern lady in the movie Streetcar—Blanche--who had very unladylike urges.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was a study in, as Big Daddy liked to call it, “mendacity.” Tenn believed that Cat was his “best long play because of its classic unities of time and place and the kingly [Oedipal] magnitude of Big Daddy.” This was very evident in the movie—the past, present, and future all becoming very clear, as the action centers around Big Daddy and his youngest son, Brick, played by Paul Newman. But again, Hollywood glossed over a main theme—homosexuality.
When asked, “What is it like being a writer?” Tenn answered “I would say that it is like being free . . . to be free is to have achieved your life. It means the freedom of being yourself.” But it’s difficult to say whether Tenn ever really knew that freedom. In the mid-60s, he became a patient of “Dr. Feel Good,” receiving injections of Dr. Feel Good’s “special” medicine—varying combinations of amphetamines and other addictive drugs. His daily routine was soon built around his medication schedule: Injections in the morning, barbiturates following the injections, a day filled with alcohol consumption, and then his nightly sedation of several strong sleeping pills. His love life was a succession of one-night stands and a few longtime lovers. Finally, his life as a Hollywood screenwriter and Broadway playwright a thing of the past, he died in 1983. Despite his
personal demons and disappointments, the depth of his genius cannot be denied.
From Broadway to Hollywood, Tennessee Williams left a legacy of incomparable
plays and movies. Perhaps, in this legacy, he finally found his freedom. Williams,
Tennessee. Memoirs. Anchor Press/Doubleday, New York, 1972. |
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Born Thomas
Lanier Williams III in 1911, Tom found writing to be a world into which he could
immerse himself to avoid the mundane reality that surrounded him. His father
never really liked him or supported him, his mother was strong-willed and
critical, and the cities where they lived were not bustling centers for the
arts. The lack of parental support was evident when his parents came to the
opening of an early play, and following the play, his mother said to him, “Tom,
it’s time for you to find another occupation now.”
Of course,
success on the stage took quite a few years, but with the production of The
Glass Menagerie, his career began to take flight. Plays that followed
included Suddenly, Last Summer; A Streetcar Named Desire; and Cat on a
Hot Tin Roof. Soon Hollywood was knocking on his door, wanting to take
these successful productions to moviegoers around the globe.
The
Glass Menagerie explored disabilities—both physical
and emotional. But this play—his first big success on Broadway—didn’t make a
great transition to the silver screen, despite its financial success. Perhaps
the delicacy of the emotions of the main characters (Amanda, the mother, played
by Geraldine Page, and Laura, the crippled
daughter, played by Jane Wyman in the 1950 production) couldn’t
make that leap from stage to screen. However, television remakes in 1973 with Katharine Hepburn and another in 1987 with Joanne Woodward received higher acclaim.
But perhaps in
Suddenly, Last Summer, Tenn took his greatest risk, as the thrust of its
theme of people using other people turned ghastly with the revelation of an
ultimate, terrible use—cannibalism. Unfortunately, SLS was not
financially successful, despite the casting of Elizabeth Taylor, Katherine Hepburn, and Montgomery Clift. But Tenn was satisfied with
the movie, saying that there was “something about the way the scenes were
overlapped and narrated that gave it a quality not possible to achieve in a
play.”