Between the Covers

Softcover. Carbon typescript. Quarto. (1), 19pp. Sheets bradbound in the blue "Liebling-Wood" folder of Williams's agent, Audrey Wood. A touch of wear along the spine with a minute bit of sunning at the extremities, and a couple of tiny splash marks on the bottom edges, near fine with clean white interior pages. This is a copy of the original film proposal for *The Glass Menagerie* submitted for consideration at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer under its original title, *The Gentleman Caller*, and prepared shortly before the first stage production in Chicago on December 26, 1944.

Williams started working on *The Gentleman Caller* just before signing a six-month contract as a screenwriter with MGM in May 1943, and alternated between it and other studio work. He wrote several drafts, eventually resulting in this story treatment which his agent agreed was worth offering to MGM, who showed no interest. Williams was not deterred the least by this rejection because he had preferred to produce the work as a play anyway.

The treatment differs from the play in that it is divided into three acts with the first two detailing the back story of the matriarch Amanda, including her elopement and the resultant disastrous marriage, the trauma that created her sheepish daughter, and her husband's departure, all information that is background to the main action of the play. The treatment also includes two additional pages of suggestions by Williams for making the sad ending more palpable to film audiences. They include: Amanda returning home with Laura who has finally become "a woman of strength and character" with a "regiment of young soldiers" calling on her, and the return of the father who reunites with the family, healing all wounds.

After *The Glass Menagerie*’s Chicago debut, it was brought to New York where it ran for more than a year on Broadway and was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play of 1945. It became Williams's first commercially published play, and eventually a film, though not at MGM but rather Warner Brothers in 1950. The movie, co-written by Williams with director Irving Rapper, starred Kirk Douglas, Jane Wyman, Gertrude Lawrence, and Arthur Kennedy. This play was Williams's first great success and remained his most personal and biographical work of his long and successful career. An extraordinary piece of both theater and film history.

Item #343738