Tennessee Williams: 1911-2011

If these notables were alive today, they'd be celebrating their birthday:
I'm not often prone to making such broad, hyperbolic statements as this, but I'll state that no American playwright, living or dead, has ever written more sensitively complex plays, or such vividly memorable characters than Tennessee Williams, who is today's centenary honoree:  He was born in Columbia, Mississippi, 100 years ago today.
 
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof...Sweet Bird of Youth...The Glass Menagerie...arguably, his greatest work, A Streetcar Named Desire...and so many others.  His body of work almost single-handedly evolved American drama into an entirely new and different realm.  He was a remarkably prolific writer, and there are a number of his works that are still "yet-to-be-produced," something that Williams' legions of fans, worldwide, have to look forward to discovering.  Here's a brief clip from Streetcar.  Do yourself a favor and watch the entire film (again) sometime soon and simply marvel at its brilliance.  And though it's perfectly understandable to be distracted by the stellar acting in this 1951 classic, try, if you will, to concentrate on what he does with the human language...listen to the words.  I'd say the word "genius" would not be misplaced in this context:




                             Robert Frost:  Through the years....


Robert Frost would be 137.  Some call him "America's Poet Laureate Emeritus".  I certainly would.  His works, today, remain as vivid and fresh as the day they were written. He's most associated with his odes to rural New England life.  My personal favorite of his poems (and I believe it was JFK's favorite as well--Frost was his hero, whom he chose to speak at his 1961 inauguration), "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening":

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

Hubba-hubba he-man movie star, Sterling Hayden would be 95 today.  The 6'5, blond and muscular leading man worked hard to try to shuck off the pretty-boy mantel they tried to hang on him in Hollywood by playing gritty, not-so-nice guys.  Off-screen, he was married to the equally gorgeous Madeleine Carroll (whom we saluted here on March 18).  He was a hard-drinking, hard-living man's-man who seemed to have disappeared for a few decades before making a late-life comeback in The Godfather, playing the corrupt Captain McCluskey, who gets whacked by Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in the restaurant scene:  
[Warning: Very graphic and violent]



Okay, here:  Have some gratuitous, shirtless beefcake pics of a young Sterling Hayden, so that we can leave this party on a happier note, alright?  Now go rent Streetcar right this minute! (do people stilll rent movies?).

Joseph Campbell 107