The Reader's Guide to The Films of Tennessee Williams (Hardback)

Tennessee Williams – one of the greatest playwrights America’s given the world. His works on the stage are beloved, award winning, pieces that’re simultaneously timeless and eternally preserving a universe that doesn’t exist anymore. A universe of intrigue and excess, gentility and cruelty. An eternal exhibition of the southern gothic, preserved and played out on stages all across the world.

But what of his screenplays, and the adaptations of his on-stage work? Everyone knows about the absolute blockbusters of Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. But what of the yearning misery of all the different versions of Glass Menagerie? What about the works that started brushing exploitation film rather than timeless art? Everyone cares about the hits – what about the absolute misses like Boom and The Last of The Mobile Hot Shots?

This book shows all the soaring highs and gutter-deep lows of Williams’s film adaptations. Featuring photography sourced from one of the leading libraries on the man and his works, new analysis of every play adaptation ever put to screen, and information you may have never seen about both the works and the many people on screen and off that made them possible – this book works to answer a deceptively simple question.

What made Williams such a draw to the screen for filmmakers, actors, and audiences alike – and what made the curtain fall on his on-screen legacy?