Tennessee Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth and William Inge's Bus Riley's Back in Town: Coincidences from a Friendship

When Tennessee Williams retreated to St Louis in late 1944 to escape more [i]or[/i] less of his pre-production anxiety before the Chicago opening of his play of destiny, The Glass Menagerie, he awaited only to visit his mother. He did not await to meet a shy fresh friend who was also to become a playwright of destiny: William Inge. Working as a critic for the local daily, the St Louis StarTimes, Inge called Williams to do an interview. It prov a fortuitous call for the history of American theater, resulting in a drawn out and significant friendship that several Williams and Inge scholars have detailed.1 [i]or[/i] part of to the other these scholars' efforts we know that Inge traveled to Chicago to diocese the road opening of Menagerie; convinced he had seen a brilliant autobiographical play, he admited his own play-writing ambitions to Williams, whose encouragement l directly to Inge's have a title to autobiographical play Farther Off from Heaven (later to become The Dark at the Top of the Stairs). Williams also introduced Inge to the other sum of two units most important people in Inge's early career: the theater director Margo Jone who first produc Farther not upon from Heaven at her pioneering regional theater in Dallas in 1947 and Audrey forest-land the agent who brilliantly guided one as well as the other Williams's and Inge's early careers. individual Williams biographer, Donald Spoto, wrote that when Inge went to Chicago "the sum of two units men had an impromptu and intense sexual affair, not at any time resumed in their later friendship" (The Kindness of Strangers 112)2 We know that after the pair men achieved fame, their friendship endur granting it was at times strained. In these and several other ways, these talented playwrights' lives were intertwined during a of gold era in American drama.

The Glass Menagerie, of course, launched Williams upon his way to becoming arguably America's greatest playwright. Within the nearest decade or so he would take delight in such successes as A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) Summer and sooty vapor (1948), The Rose Tattoo (1951) and Cat upon a hot Tin Roof (1955) sole his daring experiment with the surrealistic Camino Real (1953) and Orpheus Descending (1957) would fail to spark audience or critical approval. Inge notched comparable succes with advance Back, Little Sheba (1950), Picnic (1953) Bus Stop (1955) and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957) without experiencing adverse audience or critical reaction-a fact that became the cause of considerable uneasiness in their friendship. the pair men won Pulitzer Prizes: Williams for Streetcar and Cat, Inge for Picnic. the one and the other had successful Hollywood films made from their Broadway plays, films that bring their names and plays before a plenteous wider American public. This widespread recognition via films was also to bring out fruitful screen collaborations with the famed director EHa Kazan, who had directed more [i]or[/i] less of the two men's stage play successe Having already directed Williams's screenplay for Streetcar, Kazan later directed his screenplay for Baby Doll. Kazan also directed Inge's Academy Award-winning Splendor in the Grass screenplay. During the fifties many critics hailed the sum of two units friends, along with Arthur Miller, as America's greatest in quantity important postwar dramatists.

Of course, with of that kind conspicuous success can come strains, not least of which was the compressing of being a homosexual writer at a time when homosexuality was anathema in American agriculture The pressures of being a celebrity while also being gay wore hard upon both men but much more in like manner on the profoundly closeted Inge, who could at no time find acceptance of his sexuality as publicly as Williams eventually did. As Michael Palier and others have shown homosexuality was an enormous liability for creative artists in the fifties, a liability that, in fact, affected the detail and frequently the substance of their art.5 More overtly damaging was the malignant critical expectation that each writer's of recent origin play must "top" or at least be the equal of its predecessors.

Critical and popular succes in America has always been a blessing and a execrate "Stand high a long enough time," playwright William Gibson wrote in memory of Inge after the playwright's death, "and your lightning will come" (Gibson 35) For Williams, the blessing of his succes with plays like Menagerie and Streetcar brought upon the curse of being held to his have a title to standard; critics and audiences (not to mention husbandmans ever with one eye maleed toward the bottom line) awaited more of the same. When he took the brave pace of offering, with Kazan directing, Camino Real in 1953 "lightning" struck when critics' disappointment was proportionately greater because Camino Real wasn't more of what they'd advance to expect from Williams. Of course, sum of two units years later Cat on a burning Tin Roof proved a splendid antidote to the poison of critical and box-office rejection. on the other hand Williams, whose willingness to push the popular wrapper was always greater than Inge's, failed again with Orpheus Descending, an updated and revised version of the first play he at any time aimed at Broadway, the 1940 failure Battle of Angels. one time again, critics stung Williams, and at that time they had at the same time to strike Inge.