A biopic about Tennessee Williams in the works
THE WRITER Tennessee Williams, who became famous for his plays and movie adaptations, has attracted the attention of Hollywood, which will soon be making a fi lm about him, according to production company Broad Green Pictures.
This young company, formed in 2014, has obtained the rights to John Lahr’s biography “Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh,” which will be used to tell the story of the author’s life on the big screen. The project is only in the early stages as it does not yet have a screenwriter or a director.
After an unhappy childhood, with an alcoholic and often absent father and a schizophrenic sister who was institutionalised, Williams became successful in the mid-1940s with his fi rst play, “The Glass Menagerie,” a semi- autobiographical account that had been rejected by Metro Goldwyn Mayer.
In 1947, the author’s success continued with “A Streetcar Named Desire,” for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Other triumphs on Broadway followed, including “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Suddenly Last Summer,” “Orpheus Descending” and “The Night of the Iguana.”
Williams’ work
has
also remained in the collective memory because of its many movie adaptations featuring all the big Hollywood stars of the 1950s and 1960s.
Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Vivian Leigh, Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift, Kirk Douglas, Nathalie Wood and Warren Beatty all played roles in productions of his work, directed by such luminaries as Elia Kazan, Sidney Lumet and Richard Brooks.— Relaxnews