193. To Christopher Isherwood, December 1950

They just stood there like a wierd assortment of animals that had fled to the‭ ‬banks of a river from a forest fire‭. And blew smoke in each other’s faces and sang with the juke-box‭. ‬“She’s a nice girl‭, ‬a proper girl‭, ‬but one of the roving kind‭!‬”

“The Roving Kind” by Guy Mitchell reached #4 on the Billboard Top Ten in December of 1950.

 

105. To Audrey Wood, May 21, 1948

HEARTILY APPROVE NEGRO COMPANY MENAGERIE

While Williams was likely talking about a different, touring production, the first all-Black cast of The Glass Menagerie was staged in 1947 at Howard University (view the playbill here). In 2020, 73 years later, news stations were still talking about how “modern” of a choice it was to cast the Wingfield family with Black actors as seen here with this recent, pre-covid production at the University of Alabama Birmingham.

Image: Howard Players acting in “The Glass Menagerie.” Scanned as part of the Howard University Digitization Project by Backstage Library Works. This digital object was funded in part through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. All photographs are copyright protected by the Howard University Archives. Likely William Coleman, Doris Williams or Lelia Roane, and Shauneille Perry.

 

294. To Justin Brooks Atkinson, September 4, 1954

Audrey Wood sent me a clipping from The Times bearing a letter from you to the editor about our recent decline of democratic freedom in the States. Her note said “I am deeply impressed by this”. I am sure many people were. I certainly was.

A few weeks prior, The New York Times Drama Critic Brooks Atkinson wrote the following letter to the editor:

327. To Audrey Wood, March 23, 1945

While in Chicago, during the out-of-town tryout of The Glass Menagerie before its Broadway debut, Williams writes to his agent, Audrey Wood, about a new play he started.