Tennessee Williams was an American playwright and author of many stage classics, and although a man named Williams was responsible for Sal Mineo’s death, another man named Williams was responsible for the launch of his career: Tennessee Williams.The Rose Tattoo provided Mineo with his first role on stage. (Natalie Wood was no stranger to Williams, either. She starred with Robert Redford in This Property Is Condemned, a Williams adaptation from 1966, as well as in a TV version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with her husband Robert Wagner in 1976. Of course, appearing in a Tennessee Williams play in the latter half of the 20th Century was certainly not unusual. Williams dominated the theater scene of the period, and he remains one of the most popular and respected playwrights in American letters, 30 years after his death. Active as a writer from the ‘30s until the ‘80s, he produced dozens of plays, two of which won the Pulitzer Prize, and many of which were made into successful Hollywood films: The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Sweet Bird of Youth, and The Night of the Iguana among them. Despite often controversial themes, the films made from Williams’ plays were popular hits and featured some of the biggest stars of the day, including Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, and Elizabeth Taylor. Despite his success, Williams’ life was troubled and unstable. After the death of his long-time partner Frank Merlo in 1963, Williams became dependent on prescription drugs and sleeping pills. Alcohol abuse added to his woes, and his mental health declined. Inevitably Williams was discovered dead in his New York hotel suite. Drugs were involved, to no one’s surprise, but the actual cause of death was asphyxiation. One theory is that Williams was attempting to swallow some barbiturates, and he accidentally dropped a cap from an eye drops bottle that he was using as a pill holder down his throat. Another is that Williams was holding the cap in his mouth as he put in eye drops and somehow swallowed it. Whatever happened, Williams could not have scripted a more absurd or hapless end for one of his own characters. He died Fubruary 25, 1983 at the age of 71.
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