Books

New York: New Directions, 1947. First edition of A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams’s first play to win the Pulitzer Prize, signed by the entire original cast, including Jessica Tandy, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden. Produced by Irene Mayer Selznick and directed by Elia Kazan, the original stage production opened in New Haven on October 30, 1947: the program for that first performance is present here, with three ticket stubs from the Shubert Theatre. The show then moved to Boston and Philadelphia before arriving on Broadway, where Tandy would win the Tony for her performance as the fragile, self-deluding Blanche DuBois: “Whoever you are – I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Wolcott Gibbs, in a rave review for The New Yorker, regretted that “there is no way . . . to convey the effect Mr. Williams achieves in his last act of a mind desperately retreating into the beautiful, crazy world it has built for itself.” A wonderful association…