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60 free Tennessee Williams trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Tennessee Williams turned his own troubled family into some of the greatest plays in American theatre, and this trivia quiz covers all of it. The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Summer and Smoke, The Rose Tattoo, Camino Real, Orpheus Descending, Suddenly Last Summer, Sweet Bird of Youth and The Night of the Iguana are all here, with questions on characters, settings, first productions, Pulitzer Prizes and the film versions with Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman and Anna Magnani. The life questions are just as rich: the Mississippi birth and St. Louis shoe factory, the sister whose lobotomy haunted him, the pen name he took around 1939, the Rockefeller grant, the New Orleans apartment near the Desire streetcar line, the 14 years with Frank Merlo, the Dr. Feelgood injections and the strange death at the Hotel Elysée. Difficulty runs from easy to expert. Every answer was verified against Wikipedia's articles on Williams and his individual plays and films, and each question links to its source. Try our Arthur Miller and Broadway quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Tennessee Williams's real first name?
Thomas
He was Thomas Lanier Williams III; the pen name came around 1939, a nod to his Southern accent and roots.
Q 02In which state was Tennessee Williams born?
Mississippi
He was born in Columbus and spent his early childhood in his grandfather's Episcopal rectory in Clarksdale.
Q 03What was Williams's father's job?
Traveling shoe salesman
C. C. Williams was an alcoholic with a violent temper who scorned what he saw as his son's effeminacy.
Q 04Which childhood illness nearly killed Williams and left him frail and housebound for a year?
Diphtheria
His mother Edwina, trapped in an unhappy marriage, focused almost all her attention on her frail son.
Q 05Tennessee Williams's family moved to which city when he was eight?
St. Louis
He later attended Soldan High School there, a setting he refers to in The Glass Menagerie.
Q 06Williams's short story "The Vengeance of Nitocris" appeared in 1928 in which pulp magazine?
Weird Tales
He was 17; a year earlier he had won third prize in an essay contest with "Can a Good Wife Be a Good Sport?"
Q 07Why did Tennessee Williams's father pull him out of university to work in a shoe factory?
He failed a military training course
He hated the 9-to-5 grind and set himself a goal of writing one story a week.
Q 08Where did Williams finally graduate with a B.A. in English in 1938?
The University of Iowa
He had dropped out of Washington University after failing to win its poetry prize.
Q 09Which body gave Williams a $1,000 grant in 1939 in recognition of his first produced play?
The Rockefeller Foundation
The play was produced in Boston in 1940 and flopped, but the grant got him a six-month MGM contract at $250 a week.
Q 10Williams's Vieux Carré is set at 722 Toulouse Street, where he lived while writing for which New Deal agency?
The Works Progress Administration
He moved to the city in 1939 with some of his Rockefeller grant money.
Q 11The Glass Menagerie premiered on 26 December 1944 in which city before moving to Broadway?
Chicago
Critics Ashton Stevens and Claudia Cassidy championed it after a shaky start.
Q 12Which actress's Amanda Wingfield in the original Glass Menagerie set the standard for the role?
Laurette Taylor
Broadway veterans in a 2004 documentary ranked it the most memorable performance of their lives.
Q 13In The Glass Menagerie, what nickname does Jim give Laura after mishearing 'pleurosis'?
Blue Roses
The unicorn in her glass collection is often read as a symbol of Laura herself.
Q 21Why did Warner Bros. cut several scenes from the 1951 Streetcar film after shooting?
To satisfy the Hays Code and the Legion of Decency
The censored footage was rediscovered in a 1993 archive inventory and restored.
Q 22Who starred as Stanley and Blanche in the acclaimed 1992 Broadway revival of Streetcar?
Alec Baldwin and Jessica Lange
James Gandolfini was the understudy for Mitch in that production.
Q 23Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was adapted from which of Williams's own short stories?
Q 14Which short story did Williams expand into his 1944 memory play?
"Portrait of a Girl in Glass"
He had also written a screenplay version called The Gentleman Caller.
Q 15On what date did A Streetcar Named Desire open on Broadway?
December 3, 1947
It played at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre after tryouts in New Haven and Philadelphia.
Q 16From which town does Blanche DuBois travel in A Streetcar Named Desire?
Laurel
She arrives with no money after losing the family plantation to creditors.
Q 17What is the name of the DuBois family plantation lost before A Streetcar Named Desire begins?
Belle Reve
Stanley invokes the Napoleonic Code to claim a husband's share of his wife's property.
Q 18Who originated the role of Blanche DuBois on Broadway?
Jessica Tandy
Producer Irene Mayer Selznick had wanted Margaret Sullavan and John Garfield before settling on Tandy and a virtual unknown as Stanley.
Q 19Which of Williams's factory co-workers helped inspire a character in Streetcar?
The model for Stanley Kowalski
Williams suffered a nervous breakdown by his 24th birthday and quit the shoe factory.
Q 20The 1951 film of Streetcar was the first to win three acting Oscars. Which star was nominated but lost?
Marlon Brando
Leigh, Malden and Hunter all won; Leigh had played Blanche in the London stage production.
"Three Players of a Summer Game"
He called the play his personal favourite.
Q 24What is Big Daddy Pollitt's business in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?
Cotton planting
He is "the Delta's biggest cotton-planter", celebrating his birthday with a false clean bill of health.
Q 25What word does Brick use in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for the lies and liars around him?
Mendacity
Big Daddy says Brick's disgust is really with himself for rejecting Skipper before his suicide.
Q 26Who played Big Daddy in both the 1955 Broadway and 1958 film versions of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?
Burl Ives
Barbara Bel Geddes and Ben Gazzara were the stage Maggie and Brick; Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman took the film roles.
Q 27Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won the 1955 Pulitzer over the jury's preferred choice, which was what?
Clifford Odets's The Flowering Peach
Board chairman Joseph Pulitzer Jr. had seen Cat and pushed it through after considerable discussion.
Q 28The 1958 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof producer told Variety the biggest problem was finding a substitute for what?
"The homosexual angle"
Richard Brooks directed and co-wrote the screenplay with James Poe.
Q 29Summer and Smoke centres on Alma Winemiller, whose first name Williams points out means what in Spanish?
Soul
Geraldine Page's 1952 Off-Broadway revival at Circle in the Square rescued the play after a disappointing Broadway run.
Q 30Who won an Academy Award for the 1955 film of The Rose Tattoo?
Anna Magnani
An Italian critic in 2016 traced the play's inspiration to Eduardo De Filippo's Filumena Marturano.