How did tennessee williams die

Tennessee Williams is considered one of the greatest American playwrights of the 20th century. A master tragedian with a strong sense of the poeticism of the Southern Gothic, Williams' work has been widely performed on stage for decades and many of his plays were turned into critically acclaimed films. Williams was born in in Columbus, Mississippi.

His birth name was Thomas Lanier Williams, and he described his childhood as happy until the family moved to St. Louis, Missouri, at which point his parents' marriage began to fall apart. It was at this time that he began writing, a hobby that would turn into a vocation, stalled at various points by Williams' disapproving father. When his father brought Tennessee home to work as a sales clerk, pulling him out of journalism school, the young writer suffered a nervous breakdown.

After recovery, Williams eventually returned to college at the University of Iowa, before moving to New Orleans, where he was inspired to begin writing plays. His first play, Battle of Angels , was a flop, but he followed up with Orpheus Descending , which was turned into a film starring Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani. In the s, Williams faced some professional and artistic failures, and he descended into dependency on drugs and alcohol.

When his partner, Frank Merlo, died in , his depression and substance abuse became worse.

Tennessee williams education

In his will, he wrote, "I wish to be buried at sea at as close a possible point as the American poet Hart Crane died by choice in the sea; this would be ascrnatible [sic], this geographic point, by the various books biographical upon his life and death. I wish to be sewn up in a canvas sack and dropped overboard, as stated above, as close as possible to where Hart Crane was given by himself to the great mother of life which is the sea: the Caribbean, specifically, if that fits the geography of his death.

Otherwise—whereever fits it [sic]. A Streetcar Named Desire , Williams' most famous play and the one that catapulted him to success, changed the American theater and won Williams his first Pulitzer prize. Following this smash hit, however, the playwright staged a series of