Thomas Lanier Williams III, known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama.
The Rose Tattoo is a three-act play written by Tennessee Williams in 1949 and 1950; after its Chicago premiere on December 29, 1950, he made further revisions to the play for its Broadway premiere on February 2, 1951, and its publication by New Directions the following month. A film adaptation was released in 1955. The Rose Tattoo tells the story of an Italian-American widow in Mississippi who has withdrawn from the world after her husband's death and expects her daughter to do the same.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a 1955 American three-act play written by Tennessee Williams. The play, an adaptation of his 1952 short story "Three Players of a Summer Game", was written between 1953 and 1955. One of Williams's more famous works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955. Set in the "plantation home in the Mississippi Delta" of Big Daddy Pollitt, a wealthy cotton tycoon, the play examines the relationships among members of Big Daddy's family, primarily between his son Brick and Maggie the "Cat", Brick's wife.
Sir Alan Arthur Bates was an English actor who came to prominence in the 1960s, when he appeared in films ranging from the popular crime drama Whistle Down the Wind to the "kitchen sink" drama A Kind of Loving.
Muriel Teresa Wright was an American actress. She was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress: in 1941 for her debut work in The Little Foxes, and in 1942 for Mrs. Miniver, winning for the latter. That same year, she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Pride of the Yankees, opposite Gary Cooper. She is also known for her performances in Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).
Summer and Smoke is a two-part, thirteen-scene play by Tennessee Williams, completed in 1948. He began working on the play in 1945 as Chart of Anatomy, derived from his short stories "Oriflamme" and the then-work-in-progress "Yellow Bird". The phrase "summer and smoke" probably comes from the Hart Crane poem "Emblems of Conduct" in the 1926 collection White Buildings. After a disappointing Broadway run in 1948, the play was a hit Off-Broadway in 1952. Williams continued to revise Summer and Smoke in the 1950s, and in 1964 he rewrote the play as The Eccentricities of a Nightingale.
Alley Theatre is a Tony Award-winning theatre company in Houston, Texas. It is the oldest professional theatre company in Texas and the third oldest resident theatre in the United States. Alley Theatre productions have played on Broadway at Lincoln Center, toured more than 40 American cities, and played internationally in Berlin, Paris, and St. Petersburg.
The Night of the Iguana is a stage play written by American author Tennessee Williams. It is based on his 1948 short story. In 1959, Williams staged it as a one-act play, and over the next two years he developed it into a full-length play, producing two different versions in 1959 and 1960, and then arriving at the three-act version that premiered on Broadway in 1961. Two film adaptations have been made: The Oscar-winning 1964 film directed by John Huston and starring Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, and Deborah Kerr, and a 2000 Croatian production.
Joseph "Jo" Mielziner was an American theatrical scenic, and lighting designer born in Paris, France. He was described as "the most successful set designer of the Golden era of Broadway", and worked on both stage plays and musicals.
Clothes for a Summer Hotel is a two-act play written in 1979–80 by Tennessee Williams concerning the relationship between novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. A critical and commercial failure, it was Williams' last play to debut on Broadway during his lifetime. The play takes place over a one-day visit Scott pays the institutionalized Zelda at Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, with a series of flashbacks to their marriage in the twenties. Williams began work in 1976 on what he envisioned as a "long play" about the Fitzgeralds, and had Geraldine Page in mind to play Zelda from the start.
Margo Jones, nicknamed the "Texas Tornado", was an American stage director and producer, best known for launching the American regional theater movement and for introducing the theater-in-the-round concept in Dallas, Texas. In 1947, she established the first regional professional company when she opened Theatre '47 in Dallas. Of the 85 plays Jones staged during her Dallas career, 57 were new, and one-third of those new plays had a continued life on stage, television, and radio. Jones played an important role in the early careers of a range of playwrights, such as Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Joseph Hayes, Jerome Lawrence, and Robert E. Lee.
Irene Worth, CBE, born Harriett Elizabeth Abrams, was an American stage and screen actress who became one of the leading stars of the British and American theatre. She pronounced her given name with three syllables: "I-REE-nee".
The Morosco Theatre was a Broadway theatre near Times Square in New York City from 1917 to 1982. It housed many notable productions and its demolition, along with four adjacent theaters, was controversial.
Peter Glenville was an English theatre and film director, and actor. He was a prominent director of stage plays on the West End and Broadway in the 1950's, where he was nominated for four Tony Awards, who later transitioned into films in the following decade. His first film, The Prisoner (1955), was nominated for Best Film and Best British Film at the 9th British Academy Film Awards.
Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune is a two-character play by Terrence McNally that was first performed off-Broadway in 1987.
The Fulton Theatre was a Broadway theatre located at 210 West 46th Street in Manhattan, New York City, that was opened in 1911. It was renamed the Helen Hayes Theatre in 1955. The theatre was demolished in 1982. After the former Little Theatre on 44th Street became the current Helen Hayes Theatre, the Fulton Theatre was sometimes referred to as the First Helen Hayes Theatre.
Platonov is the name in English given to an early, untitled play in four acts written by Anton Chekhov in 1878. It was the first large-scale drama by Chekhov, written specifically for Maria Yermolova, rising star of Maly Theatre. Yermolova rejected the play and it was not published until 1923.
A House Not Meant to Stand is the last play written by Tennessee Williams. It was produced during the 1981–82 season at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago by Gregory Mosher and published for the first time in 2008 by New Directions. with a foreword by Gregory Mosher and an Introduction by Thomas Keith.
Period of Adjustment is a 1962 American comedy-drama film directed by George Roy Hill from a screenplay written by Isobel Lennart, based on Tennessee Williams' 1960 play of the same name. The film stars Tony Franciosa, Jane Fonda, Jim Hutton and Lois Nettleton.
