![]() Maybe one explanation is that Williams is a deeply misunderstood, or perhaps I should say only partially understood, writer. Yet my reaction to that reaction can only be one of puzzlement. ![]() “I wouldn’t have guessed that,” one person said to me not long ago. When I’ve told people that I consider Tennessee Williams perhaps the single most profound influence on me as a writer, the reaction I’ve generally gotten has been one of puzzlement. ![]() As it turned out she died just three days shy of Williams’ 100 th birthday-which is today. She also appeared, with Richard Burton, in another Williams film, the unfortunately-titled Boom! of 1968 (called by John Waters “the greatest failed art film of all time”).Įlizabeth Taylor was possibly the last of the old-time studio-made movie stars, and she owed at least a small part of her success to Tennessee Williams. Every piece about the actress made extensive mention of her star turn opposite Paul Newman in another Williams drama, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof-a film that had precious little to do with its source material, but which has still become one of the iconic movies of the ’50s. Seemingly half of all the articles published on Taylor’s career led with the famous photo of her in that shocking-for-the-1950s white bathing suit from the movie version of Suddenly, Last Summer, one of Williams’ finest plays. The Taylor connection to Williams was impossible not to notice this week as the media obituaries rolled in. The death of Elizabeth Taylor this past Wednesday has had the effect of casting my mind back to a place it often revisits: the world of Tennessee Williams, arguably America’s greatest playwright.
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