Tennessee Williams, original name Thomas Lanier Williams, (born March 26, 1911, Columbus, Mississippi, U.S.—died February 25, 1983, New York City), was a 2-time Pulitzer Prize winning American dramatist whose plays reveal a world of human frustration in which sex and violence underlie an atmosphere of romantic gentility.

Williams became interested in playwriting while at the University of Missouri (Columbia) and Washington University (St. Louis). Little theatre groups produced some of his work, encouraging him to study dramatic writing at the University of Iowa, where he earned a B.A. in 1938.

On March 31, 1945, his play, The Glass Menagerie, opened on Broadway and two years later A Streetcar Named Desire earned Williams his first Pulitzer Prize. He would another Pulitzer Prize in 1955 for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which is Williams said was his favorite he wrote. 

The play was reworked from one of Williams' short stories "Portrait of a Girl in Glass" (1943; published 1948). Williams had been briefly contracted as a writer to MGM, and he apparently envisioned Ethel Barrymore and Judy Garland for the roles that eventually became Amanda and Laura. 

In 1944, after several reworkings, while touring on the road, the play arrived at the Civic Theatre in Chicago. The producers wanted more changes and were heavily pressuring Williams for a happy ending. The play had not found an audience and production was being considered for closing after the opening night in Chicago. Then the reviews by critics Ashton Stevens in The Chicago Herald-American and Claudia Cassidy in the Chicago Tribune came out. They praised the production, especially the writing and the performance by Laurette Taylor, with Cassidy writing about it several times. 

These reviews drove Chicago audiences to the Civic Theater and the play became a hit, propelling it to Broadway the next year (1945), where it would go on to win the New York Drama Critic's Circle for Best American Play.