Books

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 copy, with related ephemera from the very first performance of A Streetcar Named Desire. Single volume, measuring 9 x 6 inches: 171, [1]. Original pink pictorial paper boards, original unclipped pink pictorial dust jacket designed by Alvin Lustig. Ink signatures of the original cast beside their printed names on page 5; former owner's signature to front free endpaper. Shelfwear to boards, jacket spine panel sunned, restoration and light soiling to jacket. With: original program from the October 30, 1947 premiere at New Haven's Shubert Theatre, with three opening night ticket stubs mounted to upper wrapper. Faint tidemark to rear wrapper of program. Book and program housed together in custom clamshell box.