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Tennessee Williams: Selected Items from the Fred W. Todd Tennessee Williams Collection
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s the centennial of Tennessee Williams’s birth (March L26) approaches, his body of work increasingly garners interest and critical analysis, while productions of his plays and readings of his poems continue to enthrall audiences. For 25 years the annual Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival has been heralding the playwright's literary legacy.
To coincide with this year’s festival, The Historic New Orleans Collection is presenting two exhibitions at the Williams Research Center (410 Chartres Street). Drawn to Life: Al Hirschfeld and the Theater of Tennessee Williams (profiled in the fall Quarterly) is on view in the Boyd Cruise Room through April 3. And a selection of items from the Fred W. Todd Collection will be on display in the Reading Room through the late spring.
Acquired by The Collection in 2001 and supplemented with donations and acquisitions over the years, the Todd Collection includes a broad assemblage of manuscripts, poetry, newspapers, posters, correspondence, and a diverse selection of photographs from plays, movies, and Williams’s personal life. The selected items on view in the Reading Room this winter provide an overview of Willliams’s entry into the field of writing and his many achievements during his more-than-50-year career.
Williams’s love of poetry and drama bloomed in his childhood. His mother, Edwina, gave him a typewriter when he was 12. While traveling in his late teens with his maternal grandfather, Reverend Walter Dakin, Williams produced several travel articles for his high school newspaper. These were some of his earliest published works.
Undated photographs of Tennessee Williams (2001-10-L.48, .49, .65), the Fred W. Todd Tennessee Williams Collection
Williams’s travels brought him to New Orleans regularly throughout his career, and in 1968 he purchased a townhouse at 1014 Dumaine Street. He spoke of the city as a refuge filled with artistic inspiration. Many of his plays, even those set in other locales, evoke the spirit of New Orleans. The French Quarter’s bohemian lifestyle is explored in Vieux Carre. Summer and Smoke and Twenty-Seven Wagons Full of Cotton both take place in Mississippi, but the settings are reminiscent of New Orleans. Published versions of all three works will be on display in the Reading Room.
Williams was honored frequently throughout his life for his work in the arts. With a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1939, he produced his first professional stage play, Battle of Angels. In 1944 Williams received a grant in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The academy recognized him again in 1969 with the Gold Medal for Drama, the organization’s highest honor. Tennessee Williams: Selected Items from the Fred W. Todd Tennessee Williams Collection includes programs from these award ceremonies, as well as
the first issue of the Tennessee Williams Newsletter, the first publication examining Williams’s works, published by the University of Michigan’s humanities department from 1979 through 1983.
—Jennifer Navarre
Tennessee WiUiams: Selected Items from the Fred W Todd Tennessee WiUiams Collection
On view in the Reading Room Williams Research Center 410 Chartres Street
Through late spring 2011
Tuesday-Saturday 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Free and open to the public
The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly 9