An analysis of the cultural impact of Tennessee Williams' most enduring character--Blanche Dubois from "A Streetcar Named Desire"--explores how she helped define themes of womanhood, sexuality, mental illness, and the idealized South.

"An expansive yet intimate story of desire, artistic ambition, and fidelity, set in the glamorous literary and film circles of 1950s Italy in July of 1953, at a glittering party thrown by Truman Capote in Portofino, Italy, Tennessee Williams and his longtime lover Frank Merlo meet Anja Blomgren, a mysteriously taciturn young Swedish beauty and aspiring actress. Their encounter will go on to alter all of their lives. Ten years later, Frank revisits...

When Memoirs was first published in 1975, it created quite a bit of turbulence in the media-though long self-identified as a gay man, Williams's candor about his love life, sexual encounters, and drug use was found shocking in and of itself. As it turns out, Williams's look back at his life is not quite so scandalous as it once seemed; he recalls his childhood in Mississippi and St. Louis, his prolonged struggle as a "starving artist," the "overnight"...

From the towering genius of Tennessee Williams comes a story of passions lost and found. **Academy Award** winner Geraldine Page stars as the spinster Alma. Laurence Harvey is Doctor John Buchanan, the handsome young man Alma has loved since childhood. But when a sultry vamp appears (Rita Moreno), the doctor falls hard, descending into a seamy nightlife and leaving Alma's dreams behind like forgotten embers. Set against a steamy southern backdrop...

A collection of critical essays on Williams and his works arranged in chronological order of publication.

A smoldering, snakeskin-jacketed Val Xavier is a guitar-strumming drifter trying to go straight. He finds work and solace in a Southern small-town variety store run by Lady Torrance, who's lonely, sexually frustrated, and abused by her vile, deathly ill husband, and who proves as much a temptation for Val as local wild child Carol, who tries to seduce him.

Exhaustively researched and almost flirtatiously opinionated, When Blanche Met Brando is everything a fan needs to know about the ground-breaking New York and London stage productions of Williams' "Streetcar" as well as the classic Brando/Leigh film. Sam Staggs' interviews with all the living cast members of each production will enhance what's known about the play and movie, and help make this book satisfying as both a pop culture read and as a deeper...