“Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.”
Tennessee Williams
It was Sunday, October 26, 1975, and I was at the reception of my Father’s marriage to his second and current wife, Lois, at the historic Hotel Elysée on East 54th Street in Manhattan. My date was a delightfully sweet and very pretty fifteen-year-old girl, Kathy Moyer from New Castle, Delaware.
I met Kathy earlier that summer while camping at the North Lake campsites in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. After forty-plus years, we recently got reacquainted through a couple of long and wonderful phone conversations. All these years later, I still found her to be an amiable and lovely woman.
The wedding reception was a splendid affair, and it was great to see all my family together in one place to celebrate my Father’s marriage (my Father remained married to Lois for over forty-three years, until he passed away at ninety-two on November 16, 2018).
I was sitting with Kathy at our table when I noticed a somewhat short man prance right in to the reception as if he owned the place. He headed straight up to the bar on the far end of the room. I had the feeling I knew who this man was, but I couldn’t place him right away. Truman Capote came to mind, but I said no. So, I kept asking myself, who was this man? Then I had an insight, he looked similar to the great playwright, Tennessee Williams, but I still wasn’t sure.
I had to know, so I excused myself from Kathy and the others at the table and walked up to him at the bar. By the time I reached him, he already had a drink in his hand, and it was almost finished. I said hello, my name is Mark, and this is my Father’s wedding celebration. I then audaciously and bluntly asked him, are you a wedding crasher? In a Southern drawl accentuated by alcohol and mixed with a more than a bit of defiant indignation at my bold assertion, he retorted, I lived at the Hotel Elysée.
I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure who he was, so I asked him. What do you do? He told me that he was a playwright. Then, for some unknown reason, I proceeded to goad him a little more when I asked. Have you written anything that I would know?
With quite a conspicuously condescending tone to his voice, he answered me. Perhaps you may have heard of A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. A Streetcar Named Desire won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955. Yes, I told him, I have heard of both of these famous plays.
It was, of course, Tennessee Williams. I then altered my tack and said that I was only joking around about being a wedding crasher, and that it was an extreme honor for me to be talking with the greatest playwright in American history.
His demeanor toward me instantly changed. He looked at me straight in the eyes, and with a big smile on his face, very politely said. Thank you for such a gracious compliment, young man. He then turned to the bartender and asked for another drink.
I told him to have a creative evening and keep up your superb writing. He replied and told me to have a wonderful evening, and please congratulate your Father and his wife on their wedding. I then went back to Kathy and the rest of the party at my table and told them with some astonishment in my voice that the wedding crasher was none other than the distinguished playwright, Tennessee Williams.
“Time doesn’t take away from friendship, nor does separation.”
Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose works include, A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
https://www.biography.com/people/tennessee-williams-9532952
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier “Tennessee” Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983) was an American playwright. Along with Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama. On February 25, 1983, Tennessee Williams was found dead of apparently natural causes in his suite at the Hotel Elysée at 60 East 54th Street in Manhattan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Williams
Tennessee Williams
Plays, Novels, Screenplays, One-act plays, Poetry and Selected works
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Williams#Works
71 Things You Didn’t Know About Tennessee Williams
The American playwright did more to transform 20th-century theater than anyone else.
by Paul Hiebert
https://flavorwire.com/161476/71-things-you-didnt-know-about-tennessee-williams
Tennessee Williams Talks About His Life As A Writer (June 22, 1979) (10:08)
Dick Cavett is joined by playwright and screenwriter Tennessee Williams
to talk about his incredible life and career.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGQlQFCRqnk
Tennessee Williams: No Refuge But Writing (3:44)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMoLch0GRcQ
Tennessee Williams: “The Donsinger Women and Their Handyman Jack” (8:28)
Tennessee Williams before his sudden and tragic death intercut with his public reading in Key West of one of the last short stories he wrote. with Jeanne Wolf.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-AmwS9Kre8
Tennessee Williams Interview with Bill Boggs (9:41)
It’s an honor to have this great American Playwright in my archives.
by Bill Boggs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FScWlr5qZUY
Tennessee Williams – Amazing 7-Minute Interview (1981) (6:29)
Revelatory interview with Tennessee Williams in one of his final interviews, a year before his death in 1982. Considered one of the three foremost American playwrights of the 20th century, Tennessee talks about his major early plays A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie and how life in New Orleans influenced his sexuality, Brilliant insight into Tennessee Williams, American literary giant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p74dfCILTvw
“Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition. All such distortions within our own egos, condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That’s how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other’s naked hearts.”
Tennessee Williams
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