Blow Out Your Candles, Tennessee

Archives, Museums, and Literary Festivals Celebrate Williams Centennial.

By Nancy Mattoon

Tennessee Williams At
The 20th Anniversary Production
of The Glass Menagerie.
(Image Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.)

Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be ! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger -anything that can blow your candles out !

- for nowadays the world is lit by lightning ! Blow out your candles, Laura - and so good-bye.

--Last lines of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.

Had he not choked to death on the plastic cap from a bottle of baby aspirin, Thomas Lanier Williams would have celebrated his 100th birthday in 2011. His accidental death was the end of a decades-long slide into depression, alcoholism, and addiction, for one of America's three great playwrights of the 20th century. (The others being Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller.) But Williams's legacy is secure, with his best plays constantly revived, and even his lesser-known, late works inspiring new productions as their Gothic, black comic sensibility is discovered to be oddly well-suited for the 21st century stage. And along with theater companies around the globe, archives, libraries, and literary societies with ties to Williams are also pulling out all the stops to mark what has been called "The Tennenniel."

Williams Signs The Author's Door
During A 1973 Visit to The Ransom Center.
(Photo By Franks Armstrong, Courtesy of Harry Ransom Center.)

The Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin is presenting Becoming Tennessee Williams from February 1, 2011 - July 31, 2011. This centenary exhibition draws on the Ransom Center's extensive collection of Tennessee Williams manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, and artwork to illuminate the process by which Thomas Lanier Williams became Tennessee Williams. "There is no more influential 20th-century American playwright than Tennessee Williams," said Charlotte Canning, curator of the exhibition and professor in the Department of Theater and Dance at Austin. "He inspired future generations of writers as diverse as Suzan-Lori Parks, Tony Kushner, David Mamet and John Waters, and his plays remain among the most produced in the world."

1994 United States Postal Service Stamp Honoring Williams.

(Image Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.)

The exhibition is drawn from the Ransom Center's collection of Williams material, which is one of the primary archives of his works. The Center acquired Williams's own papers between 1962 and 1969. That collection documents his career thoroughly, especially his plays The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, and includes more than 1,000 separately titled plays, short stories and poems, correspondence, and newspaper clippings. The collection expanded in 1964 when the Ransom Center purchased the correspondence between Williams and his longtime literary agent, Audrey Wood.

1974 Window Card For
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.
(Image Courtesy of THNOC.)

In 1965, the Center also acquired the Williams family papers from his mother, Edwina Estelle Dakin Williams, along with other important manuscripts from then-Gotham Book Mart owner Andreas Brown. The Center continues to build the Williams collection and recently purchased an extensively revised first-draft screenplay of A Streetcar Named Desire."These rich holdings at the Ransom Center allow us to better understand how these extraordinary works came into being," said Canning. "Glass Menagerie, Streetcar and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof are just a few of the masterpieces the exhibit follows from early drafts to full-fledged productions. We believe visitors will find themselves as much in awe of Williams as we are."

Desire Streetcar Sign Box, ca. 1935.
(Image Courtesy of THNOC.)

Meanwhile, Williams's adopted hometown of New Orleans, setting for perhaps his greatest work, A Streetcar Named Desire, celebrates his 100th birthday with both an art exhibit and a literary festival. The Historic New Orleans Collection(THNOC) and the Al Hirschfeld Foundation have collaborated to present Drawn to Life: Al Hirschfeld and the Theater of Tennessee Williams. The exhibition and its companion catalog bring together highlights from the collection’s permanent holdings and dozens of drawings by the legendary artist.

Streetcar A La Hirschfeld.
(Image Courtesy of THNOC.)

Hirschfeld was the foremost artistic chronicler of Williams’s productions on and off Broadway for six decades. His drawings create a virtual archive of the playwright’s career, effectively capturing the essence of the superb performances of the magnificent actors who portrayed his characters on stage and screen. From Marlon Brando, to Elizabeth Ashley, to Richard Burton, to Katharine Hepburn, to Bette Davis, to Uta Hagen, to Jessica Tandy, all are instantly recognizable here, demonstrating their own brilliance through Williams's immense gallery of great theatrical roles.

Poster For NOLA's
Williams Literary Festival.

The Big Easy will also be celebrating its favorite adopted son at the 25th Annual Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival. This five-day fete, March 23-27, truly covers the waterfront, honoring Williams with acting master classes, panel discussions, a scholars' conference, comedy improv, a poetry slam, an erotica reading, writing competitions, a breakfast book club, French Quarter literary walking tours, a book fair, and even a "Stanley and Stella Shouting Contest." Theatrical and literary luminaries scheduled to appear include Carroll Baker, Shirley Knight, Grace Zabriskie, Zoe Caldwell, Armistead Maupin, Robert Olen Butler, John Waters, Rex Reed, Winston Groom, and Dorothy Allison.

Souvenir program for
A Streetcar Named Desire, 1948.
(Image Courtesy of THNOC.)

The many celebrations and theatrical revivals marking the centennial of Tennessee Williams are a reminder of the timelessness of his writings. As Williams once remarked to his literary agent: "I have only one major theme for my work which is the destructive impact of society on the non-conformist individual." That theme resonates more and more as technology continues to make the world less personal. As they steadfastly cling to their defining idiosyncrasies, Williams' characters are standard-bearers for the artistic temperament. Perhaps his greatest creation, Blanche DuBois, says it best "I don't want realism. I want magic. I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth."
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Ransom Center Exhibit Proves Costume Creates Character

Percy Anderson (1851-1928)
Costume design for A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1911.
Margery Maude as Titania.
(All Images Courtesy Of The Harry Ransom Center.)

Though most actors would be loathe to admit it, an essential ingredient for creating a believable character on stage or screen is a costume. Could Charlie Chaplin convince us he was The Little Tramp without his derby hat, baggy pants, and big shoes? Or to use a more recent example, would anyone buy Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw if she didn't sport her "J'adore Dior" t-shirt, Jimmy Choo stilettos, and Hermes Birkin bag? A new online exhibition from The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin shows virtual visitors that the costume designer was already the actor's best friend as far back as the Victorian era, and that one firm in particular helped hundreds of British thespians get into character whether they trod the boards or made magic on the silver screen.

Costumier's copy, after Aubrey Hammond (1893-1940)
Costume design for The Circle of Chalk, 1929.
Anna May Wong as Chang-Hi-Tang.

The exhibition, entitled A Tonic To The Imagination: Costume Designs for Stage and Screen by B.J. Simmons & Co., spotlights the work of the British company which remained London's premier preparer of costumes for operas, operettas, plays, pageants, pantomimes, musicals, movies, and revues for over 100 years, from 1857 to 1964. This sartorial showcase is divided into 10 distinct types of costume design, illustrated by 228 images taken from 60 historic theatre and film productions.

Percy Macquoid (1852-1925)
Costume design for The Merchant of Venice, 1908.
Alfred Brydone as the Prince of Morocco.

The Ransom Center acquired the B.J. Simmons archive, one of the largest of its kind in the world, in two installments in 1983 and 1987. This vast collection is comprised of 34,000 original costume designs and costumier's copies of the originals, as well as almost 30,000 related items such as production timetables, research materials, selected articles and reviews, touring dates, rental arrangements, and photographs of individual costumed actors as well as ensembles. Altogether the Simmons materials fills more than 500 standard-sized archive boxes.

Costumier's copy, after Doris Zinkeisen (1898-1990)
Costume design for The Way of the World, 1924.
Edith Evans as Mrs. Millamant.

Artists employed by B.J. Simmons often copied a set of designs for use in the studio, these "costumier's copies" allowed the designer of record to retain the originals. Some costumier's copies are simple tracings, but most are freehand drawings, and those from the late 19th century are often incredibly exact watercolor renderings. The skilled artists hired by Simmons could not only recreate every minute detail of a designer's work, but also add construction notes, fabric swatches, and even incorporate the actor's face and body type to more accurately portray the finished product. Because stage plays from this era were rarely photographed, costume designs are often the only surviving visual record of these early productions.

Gordon Conway (1894-1956)
Costume design for Aunt Sally, 1933.
Directed by Tim Whelan for Gainsborough Pictures / Gaumont British Picture Corporation, Ltd.

In 2002, the Ransom Center was awarded a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for the preservation, arrangement, description, cataloging, and selected digitization of the B.J. Simmons costume design collection. The Simmons collection was in dire need of conservation work. While stored in London, all paper materials in the collection, regardless of size, were folded into letter-size packets, placed between acidic pieces of cardboard, and then bound with cloth ribbons. Papers on the exterior of these packets were often coated with soot from the coal-burning fires of the British metropolis. Many items showed a great deal of wear and tear, and all were full of folds and creases from decades of disuse.

Percy Anderson (1851-1928)
Costume design for Trial by Jury, 1920.
A Lady in the Box.

All papers in the Simmons collection were surface-cleaned to reduce the soot, humidified in a water chamber to soften folds, and then gently blotted and pressed until flat. Any attached fabric swatches were removed during the process, and then replaced using non-rusting stainless steel pins. Materials were then placed in acid-free folders large enough for them to be stored flat within archive boxes. Drawings in need of more extensive conservation were noted for further work. The Ransom Center's paper conservation department completed work on approximately 12,500 drawings and other documents over a two year period. Associate Curator for Performing Arts at the Ransom Center, Helen Adair, stressed the importance of the government grant: "The Ransom Center is fortunate to have had the support of the NEH for this cataloging and preservation project. The NEH recognized that the collection as a whole is more valuable than the sum of its parts, and we never would have been able to tackle a project of this size without its generous support."

Percy Anderson (1851-1928).
Costume design for Chu Chin Chow, 1916.
Courtice Pounds as Ali Baba.

The results of this painstaking work are now available to anyone who visits the Harry Ransom Center's website. The images selected for A Tonic To The Imagination: Costume Designs for Stage and Screen by B.J. Simmons & Co. represent the major strengths of the collection. Preliminary sketches and final renderings of costumes for the grand opera, patriotic pageants, Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, classic plays by Shakespeare and Shaw, and British cinema are all part of the online exhibition. Two complete costume portfolios for the play Trelawny of the "Wells", one for the 1898 premiere and one for the 1926 revival, are also included. This allows viewers to compare each designer's unique conception of the same material, and to see the progression of stagecraft through the years.

Unknown Designer
Costume design for The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1928.
Julia Neilson as Lady Blakeney.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, costume designers were rarely credited in theatre programs by name. Many did not sign their sketches and renderings, so the creators of these pieces, which were so essential to the effectiveness of stage and screen productions, remain anonymous. But after gazing at the intricate and thoughtful creations on view in this exhibition, there can be little doubt that without the costume designer, even the actor with top billing might wind up being an unknown.

$100 Million Photo Archive Goes To Lone Star Library

The Ultimate Hipsters of 1965: Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, and Chuck Wein.

(Photo by Burt Glinn. All Images From Magnum Photo.)

The Magnum Photo Collection, 185,000 photographic prints insured for $100 million, is a treasure trove of images the likes of which will never be seen again. Purchased by billionaire computer company chairman Michael Dell on February 2, 2010, the photos preserve many of the most memorable moments of the 20th century. From the Allied forces landing on the beaches of Normandy, to Martin Luther King delivering his "I Have A Dream" speech, to touchstone pop culture images of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, the finest photos by the premiere shutterbugs of the last 80 years are contained in this incomparable collection. And thanks to Michael Dell's connection to the University of Texas, these visual gems will be available to scholars for research and study for at least the next five years.

D-Day, The Allied Landing At Normandy, 1944.
(Photo by Robert Capa.)

Michael Dell dropped out of the University of Texas, but remains a proud Austin resident and son of the Lone Star State. He was well aware that one of the premiere photo archives in the world, the Harry Ransom Center, was right in his own backyard. Who better to manage the preservation, conservation, storage, and accessibility of these irreplaceable images? Dell put it this way: "I am so pleased to be able to entrust this significant body of work to the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas for research, study and exhibition. The Ransom Center has a well-known record of excellence...having this incredible collection in Austin is especially exciting to me." The collection is on loan to the University until at least 2015.

Martin Luther King Delivers His Historic Speech At the Lincoln Memorial, 1963.
(Photo by Bob Adelman.)

The Magnum Collection was named for the biggest bottle of the finest champagne. It was founded as a co-operative by four of the greatest men of photojournalism's heyday: Robert Capa, David “Chim” Seymour, George Rodger and Henri Cartier-Bresson. At a time when magazines such as Life and Look were insatiable consumers of still images, the Magnum group was formed so that photographers could operate as free agents, producing and copyrighting their own work. This left the men behind the lens at liberty to sell the right of first publication to the highest bidder, and still maintain control over any future use of their images.

James Dean In Times Square, 1955.
(Photo by Dennis Stock.)

Recent developments in photography, especially digitization of images, have made the prints contained in the Magnum Collection all the more valuable. A body of work like this can simply never be duplicated. The visual creme de la creme of 103 photographers, dating from the 1930's to 1998, comprised of both solid journalism and fine art, was the result of great lensmen (and women) having an unprecedented power over the production and distribution of their work. Magnum's structure allowed them to cut out editorial middlemen and maintain a never-before-seen level of creative control. New York photography dealer Howard Greenberg maintains it is no exaggeration to say the co-operative structure fed the flowering of an art form: "Out of the history of Magnum, so much of the greatest work in photojournalism was created."

Marilyn Monroe, 1955.
(Photo by Eve Arnold.)

The Magnum co-operative was an unprecedented artistic success, and until now, financial gain was always relegated to the background. "Magnum is not in business to make a lot of money. Its goal was to help photographers achieve the visual authorship they seek." said Mark Lubell, the current director who initiated the sale. Now that the co-op is rolling in dough, what does Lubell see as the next step? "I told the photographers, 'We should all have a glass of champagne and get back to work.'"

Posted by Nancy Mattoon

Edgar Allan Poe Lights Up the Ransom Center

Break out a cask of amontillado and let the pale sherry flow. Fans of Edgar Allan Poe are in for a treat this year, the bicentennial of the American poet, critic and inventor of the detective story’s birth.

The Harry Ransom Center, the humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, is commemorating the two-hundreth birthday of Poe with the exhibition From Out That Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe.

The exhibition is based upon the extensive holdings of the Ransom Center and the Harrison Institute/ Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia, and includes additional materials from the Free Library of Philadelphia and other museums.

The exhibition is on display at the Ransom Center Sept. 8, 2009, through Jan. 4, 2010.

As noted on the Ransom Center’s website, the exhibit features “manuscripts, books, art and personal effects, many of them displayed for the first time, documenting Poe's career as a writer, his romantic relationships and mysterious death, the decline and rehabilitation of his literary reputation and his profound influence on mystery and detective fiction and other genres.”

For the weak and weary on midnights dreary, this exhibit should strengthen, energize, and part the clouds of doom. It might even bring a smile to Poe's ghost and make that tell-tale heart of his swell with pride. But let's not push it; the man was seriously depressed. It'd be like asking Schopenhauer to be optimistic; it ain't goin' to happen.

Question: if Poe were alive today would he take Prozac? I suspect he'd pass on the prescription, afraid it might blunt the edge of death, knife of gloom attitude his work depended upon.
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