1953

1953 stands as a significant, if difficult, year in the career of Tennessee Williams, occurring six years after the landmark premiere of A Streetcar Named Desire. The year is defined by the Broadway production of Williams's play Camino Real, which opened on March 19, 1953. Unlike the rapturous reception and Pulitzer Prize that greeted Streetcar in 1947, Camino Real met with a harsh critical reception and closed within two months of its opening. This failure marked a stark contrast to the earlier play's success and signaled a shift in Williams's theatrical fortunes during the early 1950s.

The Legacy of A Streetcar Named Desire

By 1953, A Streetcar Named Desire had already established itself as a landmark of American theater. Its original Broadway production, which opened at the Barrymore Theatre on December 3, 1947, was directed by Elia Kazan and featured a cast including Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski, Jessica Tandy as Blanche DuBois, Kim Hunter as Stella Kowalski, and Karl Malden as Harold Mitchell (Mitch). The play's copyright, held by the University of the South, was originally issued in 1947 and renewed in 1957. The play's production credits, including scenery and lighting by Jo Mielziner and costumes by Lucinda Ballard, were already established as part of its theatrical legacy. The play's enduring power was such that, as Arthur Miller later recalled, the audience's identification with Blanche was so complete that when she exited on the arm of the Doctor, "everyone went with her."

The Social and Theatrical Context

The late 1940s, the period of Streetcar's birth, was a time when theater was seen by some as bearing a "prophetic ambience" for illuminating society's fate. Williams's play, in Miller's view, echoed the fate of the outsider in American society and raised the question of justice, doing so "from the inside out." The play's setting in the French Quarter of New Orleans, a cosmopolitan city where there was a "relatively warm and easy intermingling of races," was integral to its atmosphere. The play's dialogue, which Miller described as "language flowing from the soul," was a departure from the flat realism of standard Broadway fare. The play's success also demonstrated that a Broadway audience, allegedly addicted to "plain sidewalk speech," could be passionately grateful for a Southern and literary sensibility.

Thematic and Structural Elements

Streetcar's structure, with its "tangible, realistic story-telling line," was not innovative in itself, but the writing was. The play's language, as Miller noted, was "packed with imagery" and continuously pressed the story forward. The play's themes of class conflict, embodied in the antagonism between the DuBois family and the Kowalskis, were central. The Napoleonic code, a Louisiana law that Stanley invokes to assert his claim over his wife's property, becomes a symbol of his worldview. The play's exploration of desire, memory, and the clash between illusion and reality is encapsulated in Blanche's famous line, "I don't want realism. I want magic!" The play's ending, with Blanche being led away by a Doctor and a Matron, is an unmitigated tragedy, a quality that Miller identified as approaching tragedy itself.

The Significance of 1953

In the broader context of Williams's career, 1953 represents a moment of artistic risk and commercial disappointment. The failure of Camino Real stands in sharp relief to the triumph of Streetcar, a play that had, in Miller's words, "planted the flag of beauty on the shores of commercial theater." The year also falls within a period when Williams's work was increasingly characterized by what he himself described as "developing tension and anger and violence," a reflection of the world he lived in. This tension, which he acknowledged as a reflection of a condition in himself, would continue to define his work in the years to come. The year 1953, therefore, is not merely a date on a chronology but a marker of the volatile trajectory of Williams's artistic journey, a year of failure that followed a period of unparalleled success.