Born Thomas Lanier Williams III, Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) took naturalistic drama into Southern Gothic territory. Born to a doting mother and a father who beat him regularly for his effeminacy, Williams drew on his personal experience to write many of his best-known plays. He toiled in obscurity until his 1944 play The Glass Menagerie raised his profile. During an astonishingly productive period in the 1950s, he won two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama and a Tony Award.