Tennessee Williams at Iowa: Iowa Time Machine September 27, 1937

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On September 27, 1937, Tom Williams had his first day of class at the State University of Iowa. Within a few years, he would become Tennessee Williams, author of The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Born Thomas Lanier Williams III in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1911, he had studied at the University of Missouri and later at Washington University in St. Louis. By 1937, he had completed much of the coursework needed for a degree but had not yet found the artistic confidence or professional path that would make him famous. Iowa offered both a practical opportunity to finish his education and a growing creative setting. The Iowa Writers’ Workshop had begun only a year earlier, in 1936, and the university’s theater and writing programs drew ambitious students from far beyond the state’s borders.

Williams attended the University of Iowa from fall 1937 until August 5, 1938, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. He studied with E. C. Mabie, the head of the university’s theater department, and became involved in campus theater. In April 1938, Williams performed in the university production of Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 1. He also wrote Spring Storm, a play set along the Mississippi River whose themes and emotional tensions anticipated parts of his later dramatic world. Mabie initially rejected the script, but Iowa eventually staged Spring Storm in 1938.

The University of Iowa gave the young writer a Midwestern academic home at a decisive moment. Today, his presence remains part of Iowa City’s literary identity, alongside the university’s long record of writers, playwrights, and students who have used the city to study, experiment, revise, and begin again. #Iowa #OTD #History #TennesseeWilliams #Playwright