Desolate Victories

In the foreword that Tennessee Williams wrote for the published edition of Sweet Bird of Youth, first performed on Broadway in 1959, now produced for MGM by Pandro S. Berman, the playwright recalls: “All my life I have been haunted by the obsession that to desire a thing or to love a thing intensely is to place yourself in a vulnerable position, to be a possible, if not a probable, loser of what you most want.”

This passage certainly defines the anguish in Williams’ character, and in none of his plays has he dramatized this anguish more explicitly than in this one. His problem is an old favorite with writers and the human race: the desire to grow up and a dread of the consequences.

MC

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Morton Cronin

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In the foreword that Tennessee Williams wrote for the published edition of Sweet Bird of Youth, first performed on Broadway in 1959, now produced for MGM by Pandro S. Berman, the playwright recalls: “All my life I have been haunted by the obsession that to desire a thing or to love a thing intensely is to place yourself in a vulnerable position, to be a possible, if not a probable, loser of what you most want.”

This passage certainly defines the anguish in Williams’ character, and in none of his plays has he dramatized this anguish more explicitly than in this one. His problem is an old favorite with writers and the human race: the desire to grow up and a dread of the consequences.