SOURCE: Palmer, R. Barton. “Hollywood in Crisis: Tennessee Williams and the Evolution of the Adult Film.” In The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams, edited by Matthew C. Roudané, pp. 204-31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Palmer traces the impact and influence of Williams's writing on the development of American theater and film.

Williams on Film: Some Preliminary Thoughts

In the English-speaking world, the two principal performance arts, theatre and film, have developed together in the twentieth century. An important common element of the British and American commercial theatres is that each has enjoyed a cooperative and mutually beneficial relationship with the respective national cinema since the beginning of the sound film era. In the case of Great Britain, this relationship was eased for several decades by the proximity of the commercial film studios, most of which were once located in the Greater London area, to...