![]() ![]() Recognition as a major playwright came with The Glass Menagerie, a tender work inspired by the tragic life of his sister, a schizophrenic. Williams tried his hand at fiction and poetry before turning to drama in the late 1930s, winning a Theatre Guild prize for the four one-act plays entitled American Blues in 1939. ![]() The playwright revealed his homosexuality in his Memoirs (1975), having previously explored the subject in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly Last Summer. Many of his early frustrations, which are reflected in his plays, arose from the prudery of his mother and the coarseness of his womanizing father, who, as his son's homosexuality became apparent, invariably referred to him as 'Miss Nancy'. The son of a shoe salesman, Williams grew up in some poverty in Mississippi and Missouri. ![]() Amongst serious playwrights, only Eugene O'Neill equalled his achievements on the Broadway stage several of Williams's plays were also made into successful films. Williams was the most popular playwright in America between 19, winning the Pulitzer Prize twice and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award four times. Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier Williams 1911-83) was a US playwright, whose controversial plays dealt with themes of repressed sexuality and family conflict. ![]()
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