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A Streetcar Named Desire
infection, Williams became withdrawn. In July of 1918, Williams's father became a branch manager of the shoe company, and the family moved to St. Louis, Missouri. His father taunted him for his reclusion and effeminacy, nicknaming him "Miss Nancy." As Williams grew up, he took refuge from his intense shyness in his creativity. He wrote for his school newspaper, and became a published writer in 1927 at age sixteen with the essay "Can a Good Wife Be a Good Sport?" in Smart Set, for which he received third prize. In September of 1928, Williams entered the University of Missouri. In 1931, his father withdrew him from the university for failing ROTC. He began work as a clerk in the warehouse for the International Shoe Company, and pursued writing at home during the night. In 1935, Williams suffered a breakdown and went to recuperate for a year at his grandparent's home in Memphis. In July of that year was the first production of his play Cairo! Shanghai! Bombay! by the Memphis Garden Players. In 1936 and 1937, Williams Enrolled in Washington University, where he wrote poetry and produced several plays, then transferred to the University of Iowa. In 1938, he received a degree in English from Iowa. From 1939 to 1943 Williams lived briefly in a number of locations in the Midwest, South, and West, including New Orleans, which became his favorite city and where he had his first homosexual experience. During this time, he first used the name "Tennessee" as the author of "The Field of Blue Children." In 1944 and 1945, The Glass Menagerie premiered in Chicago on December 26Th., and opened on Broadway on March 31St. In 1947, A Streetcar Named Desire opened on Broadway, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama and made the longest Broadway run of any of Williams's plays, 885 performances. The next year his parents separated. In the next 13 years, over twenty of Williams's works were published, opened on stage, or made into films, including The Night of the Iguana, his last Broadway success. In 1963, after the death of his intimate friend by cancer, Williams entered what he refers to as his "Stoned Age." In 1969, he was baptized as a Roman Catholic, was awarded an honorary doctor of human letters from the University of Missouri, and entered Barnes Hospital for psychiatric care from September to December of that year. During the next ten years, Williams received more awards, and dealt openly with his homosexuality in Memoirs and Moise and the World of Reason. In the last three years before his death, his mother died, he received the Medal of Freedom from President Carter, and received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University. On February 24Th. or 25Th. of 1983, Williams died at the Hotel Elysee in New York, apparently from choking on a cap from a medicine bottle, and was buried in St. Louis, against his expressed wish to be buried at sea, like one of his favorite poets, Hart Crane. (Adler, xi-xvii)