“TO CHERYL WITH MY HEART’S TRUE LOVE”: THE ROSE TATTOO, INSCRIBED BY TENNESSEE WILLIAMS TO THE PLAY’S PRODUCER, CHERYL CRAWFORD

WILLIAMS, Tennessee. The Rose Tattoo. (New York): New Directions, (1951). Octavo, original rose cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box.    $9200.

First edition of Williams’ “celebration of the inebriate god,” inscribed by the playwright to Cheryl Crawford, who produced the play’s first run: “To Cheryl with my heart’s true love—Tennessee.” Laid in is a flyer for Crawford’s 1977 memoir, One Naked Individual: My Fifty Years in the Theatre, with notes on the verso in Crawford’s hand about Camino Real and a prop list for Rose Tattoo.

Williams wrote of his play, “The Rose Tattoo is the Dionysian element in human life… the lyric as well as the Bacchantic impulse… the transcendence of life over the instruments it uses… a celebration of the inebriate god” (Spoto, The Kindness of Strangers, 170). In his Memoirs he called it “my love-play to the world.” He wrote the play following his 1948 trip to Italy. It opened in New York on February 3, 1951 and ran for 306 performances, starring Eli Wallach, Don Murray and Maureen Stapleton. Crawford was the producer for the play’s 1950 Chicago premiere and for the play’s 1951 Broadway run. Crawford was one of the founders of The Group Theatre in 1931; in 1947, she was a co-founder of The Actor’s Studio. Her first successful production was Clifford Odet’s 1937 play Golden Boy; Crawford produced Odet’s Awake and Sing! two years later. In 1959, she produced Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth. Binding A, priority undetermined. Crandell A10.I.a. With calculations in Crawford’s hand on the rear free endpaper.

Book fine. Some splitting along folds and one tape repair to verso of bright dust jacket with light toning to spine. A near-fine copy with excellent provenance.