Tennessee Williams's Real Name: Thomas Lanier Williams III

Quick answer: He was known as Tennessee Williams. The Mississippi Encyclopedia says he was baptized Thomas Lanier Williams III, and the Kennedy Center says he was born Thomas Lanier Williams. Both, along with Encyclopaedia Britannica, give March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi. He adopted the name Tennessee as a young writer in New Orleans.

Real name and early life

The Mississippi Encyclopedia says his mother, Edwina Dakin Williams, gave birth in Columbus on March 26, 1911, while her father, the Rev. Walter Dakin, was conducting services at St. Paul's Episcopal Church. A few days later the minister baptized his grandson Thomas Lanier Williams III. His father, Cornelius Coffin Williams, was a traveling salesman from a prominent Knoxville, Tennessee, family who was rarely home.

The family lived with Edwina's parents in Columbus and later Clarksdale, in the Mississippi Delta. In 1918 they moved to St. Louis, where his father had an office job with the International Shoe Company. The Kennedy Center says he enrolled at the University of Missouri in 1929 to study journalism, later worked as a shoe-company clerk, and suffered a breakdown. Britannica says he earned a B.A. from the University of Iowa in 1938.

Career highlights

Britannica says his first recognition came when American Blues (1939), a group of one-act plays, won a Group Theatre award. The Kennedy Center says that prize brought him an agent, Audrey Wood, and a six-month screenwriting job at MGM.

His breakthrough was The Glass Menagerie, which opened on Broadway on March 31, 1945, according to the Kennedy Center. A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) won the Pulitzer Prize. The Mississippi Encyclopedia lists later works including The Rose Tattoo (1951), Camino Real (1953), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and The Night of the Iguana (1961), and says he wrote more than seventy plays. Britannica adds two novels and an autobiography, Memoirs (1975), and says his works won four Drama Critics' awards.

Death

Britannica and the Mississippi Encyclopedia give February 25, 1983, in New York City. One Library of Congress record gives February 24, 1983, at the Hotel Elysee, a minor source conflict. The Mississippi Encyclopedia says he choked in a New York hotel suite.

Name notes for searchers

The Kennedy Center says he changed his name when he moved to New Orleans at 28 and gave several reasons over the years: his early, weaker work had appeared under his real name; Tennessee had been a college nickname; his father came from Tennessee; and the name was unique. People searching for Tom Williams, Thomas Lanier Williams, or Thomas Lanier Williams III are looking for the same playwright.