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Born March 26, 1911, in Colombus, Mississippi, as Thomas Lanier Williams III. He was the second child of three. His father was a salesman who was drunk and often away from home, and his mother was a music teacher. He lived with his grandparents for most of his childhood. -
When he was five, Williams almost died from a case of diphtheria (a contagious bacterial disease, it effect the throat causing issues with eating, breathing, and swallowing). This illness left him weak and stuck in his house during a year of recovery. Becuase of his frail health state, he was considered weak by his father.
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Williams attended Soldan High School.
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At age 16, Williams won third prize for an essay titled "Can a Good Wife Be a Good Sport?" A year later, his short story "The Vengeance of Nitocris" was published in the August 1928 issue of the magazine Weird Tales.
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Enrolled in journalism classes, but he was bored by them. In his junior year, his father pulled him out of school and put him to work at the International Shoe Company factory.
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Joined the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, but he did not fit in well with his fraternity brothers. -
His first submitted play was "Beauty Is the Word." He became the first freshman to receive an honorable mention in a writing competition. -
The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations President Franklin D. Roosevelt enacted in the United States between 1933 and 1938.
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By his 24th birthday, Williams had a nervous breakdown and left his job at the shoe factory. -
Williams enrolled at Washington University in St. Louis where he wrote the play Me, Vashya (1937). After not winning the school's poetry prize, he decided to drop out. -
In the autumn of 1937, he transferred to the University of Iowa in Iowa City, where he graduated with a B.A. in English in August 1938. -
He proved to be a good writer which landed him an agent, Audrey Wood, who would become his friend and adviser. -
Williams was awarded a $1,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation for this play. It was produced in Boston, Massachusetts, 1940 and was poorly received. -
He changed his name (Tennessee) and changed his lifestyle, taking on city life. -
He moved to New Orleans to write for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a federally funded program of the New Deal era. -
World War II was the biggest and deadliest war in history, involving more than 30 countries. Sparked by the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland, the war dragged on for six bloody years until the Allies defeated the Axis powers of Nazi Germany, Japan and Italy in 1945.
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The Rockefeller grant brought him to the attention of the Hollywood film industry, and Williams received a six-month contract as a writer, earning $250 weekly. -
The Glass Menagerie won the best play of the season, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. -
The Glass Menagerie, a play he'd been working for some years, opened on Broadway. Originally produced in Chicago, it garnered good reviews. It moved to New York, where it became an instant hit and enjoyed a long Broadway run. -
The massive success of his next play, cemented his reputation as a great playwright in 1947. -
He moved often to stimulate his writing, living in New York, New Orleans, Key West, Rome, Barcelona, and London. Williams wrote, "Only some radical change can divert the downward course of my spirit, some startling new place or people to arrest the drift, the drag."
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A Streetcar Named Desire opened, surpassing his previous success and cementing his status as one of the country's best playwrights. The play also earned Williams a Drama Critics' Award and his first Pulitzer Prize. -
Williams had seven of his plays produced on Broadway: Summer and Smoke (1948), The Rose Tattoo (1951), Camino Real (1953), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Orpheus Descending (1957), Garden District (1958), and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959).
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Williams's work reached wider audiences in the early 1950s when The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire were adapted into motion pictures. Later plays also adapted for the screen included Cat on a Hot Tin Roof', The Rose Tattoo, Orpheus Descending, The Night of the Iguana, Sweet Bird of Youth, and Summer and Smoke. -
By 1959, he had earned two Pulitzer Prizes, three New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards, three Donaldson Awards, and a Tony Award. -
In the 1960s and 1970s. Although he continued to write every day, the quality of his work suffered from his increasing alcohol and drug consumption.
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Williams was consumed by depression over the loss of his long-term boyfriend and collaborator, Frank Merlo. He was in and out of treatment facilities while under the control of his mother and brother Dakin, and Williams spiraled downward. -
From 1967 to 1980, his plays did not meet Hollywood standards. Kingdom of Earth (1967), In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969), Small Craft Warnings (1973), The Two Character Play (also called Out Cry, 1973), The Red Devil Battery Sign (1976), Vieux Carré (1978), Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980), and others were all box office failures.
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In 1974, Williams received the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates. -
In 1979, four years before his death, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. -
His last play, A House Not Meant to Stand, was produced in Chicago in 1982. Despite largely positive reviews, it ran for only 40 performances. -
On February 25, 1983, Williams was found dead at age 71 in his suite at the Hotel Elysée in New York City. -