1911 |
March 26 |
Thomas Lanier Williams is born in Columbus, Mississippi. |
1927 |
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Williams gets his first taste of literary fame, placing third in a national essay contest sponsored by The Smart Set magazine. |
1929 |
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He is admitted to the University of Missouri where he sees a production of Henrik Ibsen‘s Ghosts and decides to become a playwright. |
1931 |
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His father forces him to withdraw from school and work in a St. Louis shoe factory where he meets a young man named Stanley Kowalski who will later resurface as a character in A Streetcar Named Desire. |
1937 |
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Two of his plays, Candles to the Sun and The Fugitive Kind, are produced by Mummers of St. Louis. |
1938 |
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Williams graduates from the University of Iowa with a bachelor of arts degree. |
1939 |
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He moves to New Orleans and changes his name from “Tom” to “Tennessee” which was the state of his father’s birth. |
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He receives a $1,000 Rockefeller Grant. |
1943 |
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A prefrontal lobotomy is performed on Williams’ sister Rose who had long suffered from mental illness. The operation, however, is a failure and leaves Rose incapacitated for the remainder of her life. Tennessee never forgives his parents for allowing the operation. |
1944 |
December 26 |
The Glass Menagerie premieres at the Lyric Theatre in Chicago and enjoys a successful run. |
1945 |
March 31 |
The Glass Menagerie moves to the Playhouse Theatre on Broadway, earning Williams the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for best play of the season. |
1947 |
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Williams meets and falls in love with Frank Merlo. |
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December 3 |
A Streetcar Named Desire opens at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway, earning Williams his first Pulitzer Prize and establishing him as one of the top dramatists of the American theatre. |