Pendergast T., Pendergast S. St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. Volume 5: U-Z
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Smith, Eric Lidell. Bert Williams: A Biography of the Pioneer Black
Comedian. Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland, 1992.
Williams, Hank, Jr. (1949—)
Perhaps no one has ever been simultaneously such a major star
and so much in the shadow of his father as Hank Williams, Jr. As an
eight-year-old, Williams began his career as an imitator of his
deceased father, then still the biggest name in country music. Ulti-
mately trading on the fact that his name made it impossible for the
country establishment to reject him, he was to become perhaps the
most significant force in bringing rock music into country.
In an industry that has never been ashamed of exploitation,
young Williams was shamelessly exploited. Between the ages of
eight and fourteen, he played fifty shows a year, singing his father’s
songs. By the time he was in his mid-teens, he was signed to MGM
Records, his father’s old label, and he was recording overdubbed
duets with his father; he even overdubbed the singing for George
Hamilton in Your Cheatin’ Heart, a movie biography of Hank, Sr.
By the time he was in his late teens, Williams was drinking
heavily; he felt utterly trapped inside a musical world that was making
less and less sense to him. He was listening to the rock and roll of his
generation—Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Elvis Presley—and
thinking about the kind of music he really wanted to play. At 23, with
his first marriage breaking up, Williams attempted suicide.
Hank Williams, Jr.
As part of his recovery, he left Nashville and moved to Alabama.
He began to work seriously on developing his own music. In August
1975, after finishing work on what was to be a landmark country rock
album, Hank Williams, Jr. and Friends, he took a vacation in
Montana, and suffered a devastating accident: a near-fatal fall down a
mountain virtually tore his face off.
After extensive physical therapy and plastic surgery to recon-
struct his face, Williams returned to music with an absolute determi-
nation to create his own, rock-oriented kind of sound. A new country
audience—one that had opened up to the ‘‘outlaw’’ sounds of Willie
Nelson and Waylon Jennings—was ready for him. After a few modest
successes, the highest-charting being his cover version of Bobby
Fuller’s ‘‘I Fought the Law,’’ he reached his stride in 1979 with a
song that looked back at the past at the same time it snarled with the
beat and attitude of rock. The song was ‘‘Family Tradition,’’ and it
was highly autobiographical. In it Williams was asked, ‘‘Why do you
drink, and why do you roll smoke, and why do you live out the songs
that Hank wrote?’’ Williams responded that he was simply carrying
on a family tradition.
This proved to be a winning formula for Williams. Many of his
subsequent hits were autobiographical. In one, he asks an operator to
put him through to Cloud Number Nine so he can talk to his father. In
‘‘All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down,’’ he remembers the
wildness of Nashville in the 1970s. Established as a major star in his
own right by the mid-1980s, he was able to use his preoccupation with
his father and his family history to successful record Hank Williams,
Sr., hits like ‘‘Honky Tonkin’.’’ In 1987, he even performed a duet
with his father on a newly discovered, never released recording of a
song called ‘‘There’s a Tear in My Beer.’’ Williams also released a
video duet, in which his image is inserted into an old kinescope of his
father. Since Williams, Sr. had never performed ‘‘There’s a Tear in
My Beer’’ for the cameras, a film was used in which he sings ‘‘Hey,
Good Lookin’’’ with his mouth electronically doctored to lip-synch
the words of the other song.
At the same time, Williams continued to be a major force in
bringing rock into country, and making it an important part of the new
country sound. In his semi-anthemic 1988 hit, ‘‘Young Country,’’ he
reminds his listeners that ‘‘We [the new generation of country
performers] like old Waylon, and we like Van Halen.’’ At the time,
this was still a significant statement, and one that it took a child of
traditional country like Williams to make. A few years later, the
rockers themselves had become the country music establishment,
with megastars like Garth Brooks modeling himself on arena rockers
like Journey.
As Williams himself settled into the role of middle-aged country
establishment figure in the 1990s, he remained solidly in the public
eye with his theme song for Monday Night Football.
—Tad Richards
F
URTHER READING:
Williams, Hank, Jr., with Michael Bane. Living Proof: An Autobiog-
raphy. New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979.
Williams, Hank, Sr. (1923-1953)
Widely acknowledged as the father of contemporary country
music, Hank Williams, Sr., was a superstar at the age of 25 and dead at
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142
Hank Williams, Sr.
29. Like Jimmie Rodgers, Williams had a short but highly influential
career in country music. Though he never learned to read or write
music, during his years of greatest commercial success, Williams
wrote and recorded over 100 polished, unique, and lasting songs,
releasing at least half a dozen hit records every year from 1949 until
1953. His direct, sincere, and emotional lyrics (‘‘Your cheatin’ heart /
Will make you weep / You’ll cry and cry / And try to sleep’’) set the
stage for much of the country music that followed, and many of his
songs, including ‘‘Cold, Cold Heart’’ and ‘‘Your Cheatin’ Heart,’’
have become classics.
His ability to transfix his audiences is the stuff of legend. Chet
Hagan’s Grand Ole Opry offers the following assessments: Little
Jimmy Dickens said that ‘‘You could hear a pin drop when Hank was
working. He just seemed to hypnotize those people. It was simplicity I
guess. He brought his people with him. He put himself on their level.’’
Minnie Pearl said, ‘‘He had a real animal magnetism. He destroyed
the women in the audience. And he was just as authentic as rain.’’ And
according to Mitch Miller (a Columbia Records executive), ‘‘He had
a way of reaching your guts and your head at the same time.’’
Williams had the unique ability to connect with his audiences,
comprised primarily of poor, white Southerners like himself, and,
particularly in the early days, fist-fights often broke out among his
female fans.
Born and raised in Alabama, Williams got a guitar at the age of
eight and learned to play and sing from a local blues street performer
known as ‘‘Tee Tot.’’ This early exposure to African-American blues
styles shaped his own musical character, forming a key element of
Williams’s trademark honky-tonk, country-blues sound. When he
was 12 years old, Williams won 15 dollars in a songwriting contest
with his ‘‘WPA Blues.’’ At the age of 14, Williams had organized his
own band and had begun playing locally for hoedowns, square
dances, and the like. In 1941, Williams and his band, the Drifting
Cowboys, began performing at a local radio station, most often
covering the songs of other country artists, including Williams’s hero,
Roy Acuff. Despite attempts to make a name for himself and his band,
Williams’s musical career stayed in a holding pattern for several years.
In 1946, Williams went to Nashville with his wife and manager,
Audrey, where a music publishing executive for Acuff-Rose Publish-
ing set up a recording session for Williams with Sterling Records. The
two singles he recorded then, ‘‘Never Again’’ (released in late 1946)
and ‘‘Honky Tonkin’’’ (released in early 1947) were quite successful,
rising to the top of the country music charts and breaking Williams’s
career out of its holding pattern. Williams signed the first exclusive
songwriter’s contract issued by Acuff-Rose Publishing, and he began
a long and productive songwriting partnership with Fred Rose, with
Williams writing the songs and Rose editing them.
In 1947, Williams won a contract with Metro Goldwyn Mayer
(MGM) Records. ‘‘Move It On Over,’’ Williams’s first MGM single,
was a big hit, and Williams and the Drifting Cowboys began appear-
ing regularly on KWKH Louisiana Hayride, a popular radio program.
Several other releases followed, and Williams became a huge country
music star. Already earning a reputation as a hard-drinking, womanizing
man, he had trouble being accepted by the country music establish-
ment, and Ernest Tubb’s attempts to get the Grand Ole Opry to sign
him on were initially rebuffed for fear that he would be too much
trouble. He was finally asked to join the Opry in 1949, and earned an
unprecedented six encores after singing the old country-blues stand-
ard ‘‘Lovesick Blues’’ at a 1949 Opry performance. Strings of hit
singles in 1949 and 1950 (including ‘‘Lovesick Blues,’’ ‘‘Mind Your
Own Business,’’ and ‘‘Wedding Bells’’ in 1949, and ‘‘Long Gone
Lonesome Blues,’’ ‘‘Moaning the Blues,’’ and ‘‘Why Don’t You
Love Me’’ in 1950) led to sell-out shows for Williams and the
reorganized Drifting Cowboys, earning Williams and the band over
$1,000 per performance. From 1949 through 1953, Williams scored
27 top ten hits. During this period, Williams began recording religious
material (both music and recitations) under the name Luke the Drifter,
and he managed to keep his drinking and womanizing in check.
In 1951, Tony Bennett had a hit single with a cover of Williams’
‘‘Cold, Cold Heart,’’ and other singers began recording (and having
hits) with Williams’s songs: Jo Stafford recorded ‘‘Jambalaya,’’
Rosemary Clooney sang ‘‘Half As Much,’’ and both Frankie Laine
and Jo Stafford covered ‘‘Hey Good Lookin’.’’ As a result, Williams
began to enjoy crossover success on the popular music charts,
appearing on the Perry Como television show, and touring as part of a
package group that included Bob Hope, Jack Benny, and Minnie
Pearl. Though not all of his hit records were his own compositions,
many of his best known works are ones he wrote, and many of them
seem to have an autobiographical bent.
Williams’s professional success, however, began to take a toll
on his private life. His long-time tendency to drink to excess became
full-blown alcoholism. Williams began showing up at concerts drunk
and abusive. As a result, he was fired from the Grand Ole Opry and
told to return when he was sober. Rather than taking the Opry’s action
as a wake-up call, Williams drank even more heavily. An accident
reinflamed an old back injury, and Williams began abusing the
morphine he was prescribed to deal with back pain. His marriage fell
apart, in part due to his drinking and drug abuse, and in part due to his
increasingly frequent dalliances with other women. In 1952, after
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143
divorcing his first wife, Audrey, he quickly married a 19-year-old
divorcee named Billie Jean, selling tickets to what was billed as a
matinee ‘‘wedding rehearsal’’ and ‘‘actual wedding’’ that evening
(both were frauds; Billie Jean and Williams had been legally married
the previous day). Williams also came under the spell of a man calling
himself ‘‘Doctor’’ Toby Marshall (actually a paroled forger), who
often supplied him with prescriptions and shots for the sedative
chloral hydrate, which Marshall claimed was a pain reliever.
In December of 1952, Williams suffered a heart attack brought
on by ‘‘alcoholic cardiomyopathy’’ (heart disease due to excessive
drinking); found in the back seat of his car, he was rushed to the
hospital but was pronounced dead on January 1, 1953. His funeral,
held at a city auditorium in Montgomery, Alabama, was attended by
over 25,000 weeping fans. After his death, his record company
continued to issue a number of singles he had previously recorded,
including what is probably his most famous song, ‘‘Your Cheatin’
Heart.’’ These singles earned a great deal of money for his record
company and his estate, and artists as diverse as Johnny Cash and
Elvis Costello have made their own recordings of Williams’ songs in
recent years. Many of those associated with Williams attempted to
trade on his reputation after his death. Both of his wives went on tour,
performing as ‘‘Mrs. Hank Williams.’’ A supposedly biographical
film, Your Cheatin’ Heart, also exploited Williams’ fame and untime-
ly death. Williams’ children, Jett and Hank, Jr., went into country
music and have enjoyed some success (particularly Hank ‘‘Bocephus’’
Williams, Jr.). But it is Hank, Sr., who left his mark on country music.
Along with Jimmie Rodgers and Fred Rose, he was one of the first
inductees into Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame, elect-
ed in 1961.
—Deborah M. Mix
F
URTHER READING:
Hagan, Chet. Grand Ole Opry: The Complete Story of a Great
American Institution and Its Stars. New York, Holt, 1989.
Williams, Hank, Sr. The Complete Hank Williams. Polygram Rec-
ords, 1998.
Williams, Roger M. Sing a Sad Song: The Life of Hank Williams.
Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1981.
Williams, Robin (1952—)
With his manic versatility, comedic genius Robin Williams has
defined comedy for the last three decades of the twentieth century.
Whether expressing himself as a stand-up comic or an animated genie
or a cross-dressing nanny, he is without equal in the field of American
comedy. Much more than a comedian, however, some of his finest
work has been in dramatic film roles to which he has brought
humanity and warmth to a cast of characters ranging from a crazed
widower in The Fisher King (1991) to a sad but optimistic psychiatrist
in 1997’s Good Will Hunting, which garnered an Academy Award for
Best Supporting Actor.
Williams was born July 21, 1952, in Chicago, Illinois, to a father
who was a Ford company executive and a mother who was a former
model engaged in charity work. While both parents had sons by
previous marriages, Williams essentially grew up as an only child. In
interviews, he has described his childhood as lonely and himself as
Robin Williams
shy and chubby. His father was stern and distant, and his mother was
charming and busy. While Williams was close to his mother, she was
often absent, leaving him to roam their forty-room home for diver-
sion. He turned to humor as a way to attract attention. His interest in
comedy was aroused by hours spent in front of the television, and he
was particularly enthralled by late-night shows where he discovered
his idol, Jonathan Winters, another comic who consistently pushes
the envelope.
In 1967 Williams’s family moved to Tiburon, an affluent suburb
of San Francisco. In the less inhibited atmosphere in California,
Williams blossomed. When his father steered him toward a career in
business, Williams rebelled. His innate comedic skills were honed in
college, but he chose to leave two schools without finishing. He then
entered the prestigious Juilliard School in New York on a scholarship,
where he roomed with actor Christopher Reeve, who remains a close
friend. While the other students found Williams’s off-the-wall antics
hilarious, his professors were unsure of how to handle such frenetic
humor. Leaving Juilliard without graduating, Williams returned to
California and appeared in comedy clubs such as the Improv and the
Comedy Store.
By the mid-1970s, Williams had guest-starred on several televi-
sion shows including Saturday Night Live, Laugh-In, and The Rich-
ard Pryor Show. In 1977, a guest appearance on Happy Days as the
alien Mork from the planet Ork propelled him to stardom. Williams
reportedly won the role of Mork by showing up at his audition in
rainbow suspenders and standing on his head when asked to sit like an
alien. The appearance was so successful that the character of Mork
was given his own show, Mork and Mindy (1978-1982), which
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144
costarred Pam Dawber as the earthling who took in the stranded alien.
In retrospect, it is inconceivable that anyone else could have played
Mork with his zany innocence. Each week, the television audience
discovered their own planet through Mork’s reports to Ork leader
Orson at show’s end. Even though the characters of Mork and Mindy
predictably fell in love and married, the birth of their first child was
anything but predictable: Jonathan Winters as Mearth, who aged
backward, was the surprising result of this intergalactic coupling.
Even though Williams had so much control over the content of the
show that it became known informally as ‘‘The Robin Williams
Show,’’ he often felt stifled by the confines of network television as a
medium. Williams said in a 1998 TV Guide interview that he found
salvation in his HBO specials that aired without censorship, giving
him freedom to expand as a comic and solidify his position as a top-
notch performer.
In 1980 Williams lent his talent to the big screen with Popeye,
based on the heavily muscled, spinach-eating sailor from the comic
strip of the same name. It was a disappointing debut. His performance
in The World According to Garp in 1982 was better received, but it
was evident that Williams’s vast talents were not being properly
utilized outside of television. He managed to hit his stride with
Moscow on the Hudson in 1984, playing a Russian defector. Perhaps
the character who came closest to his own personality was that of an
outrageous disc jockey in 1987’s Good Morning, Vietnam, a role
which earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Drawing on his cross-generational appeal, Williams has ap-
peared in a series of films aimed at family audiences, such as the role
of Peter Pan in Hook in 1991. Although it was criticized by certain
reviewers, the role allowed Williams to display his own split person-
ality—that of the child who never quite grew up in the body of an
adult burdened by the everyday cares of his world. Williams followed
Hook with a delightful performance as the voice of Batty Koda in the
animated environmental film FernGully . . . The Last Rain Forest, but
nowhere was the enormity of Williams’s comedic range more evident
than in Disney’s Aladdin in 1992. As Genie, he managed to steal the
show. Refusing to be confined by his large-chested blue blob of a
body, Williams’s Genie metamorphosed by turns into a Scotsman, a
dog, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ed Sullivan, Groucho Marx, a waiter, a
rabbit, a dinosaur, William F. Buckley Jr., Robert De Niro, a
stewardess, a sheep, Pinocchio, Sebastian from The Little Mermaid,
Arsenio Hall, Walter Brennan, Ethel Merman, Rodney Dangerfield,
Jack Nicholson, and a one-man band. There was talk of an unheard-of
Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for the portrayal of an
animated character. Williams did, in fact, win a special Golden Globe
award for his vocal work in Aladdin.
Even though Toys (1992) received little attention, Williams
followed it up with the blockbuster Mrs. Doubtfire, in which he
played the estranged husband of Sally Field and cross-dressed as a
nanny in order to remain close to his three children. Jumanji (1995), a
saga of characters trapped inside a board game, demonstrated a darker
side to Williams. He finally came to terms with Disney and reprised
the role of the genie in the straight-to-video Aladdin and the King of
Thieves in 1996. Williams’s zany side was again much in evidence in
1997’s Flubber, a remake of the Disney classic The Absent Minded
Professor. Before Flubber, Williams had returned to adult comedy
with his uproarious portrayal of a gay father whose son is about to be
married in The Birdcage (1996).
While comedy is the milieu in which Williams excels, his
dramatic abilities have also won critical acclaim. He was nominated
for an Academy Award for his portrayal of John Keating, a teacher at
a conservative prep school who attempts to open the eyes of his
students to the world of poetry and dreams in Dead Poet’s Society in
1989. The role of Parry in The Fisher King (1991) introduced a side to
Williams that stunned audiences and critics alike. After Parry’s wife
is murdered in a random shooting at a restaurant, he descends into
insanity from which he only occasionally emerges to search for his
personal holy grail with the help of co-star Jeff Bridges. The role of
Dr. Malcolm Sayer, a dedicated physician who temporarily restores
life to catatonic patients, in Awakenings again demonstrated Wil-
liams’s enormous versatility. In 1997, Williams won his Academy
Award for Best Supporting Actor in the Matt Damon/Ben Affleck
film Good Will Hunting, leading Damon’s Will Hunting to awkward
acceptance of his own reality and mathematical genius. Williams
followed that success with back-to-back roles in What Dreams May
Come and Patch Adams in 1998. Afterward, he expressed a desire to
modify his busy schedule and perhaps return to a weekly series.
Personally, Williams has had highs and lows. As a young
performer, he was well-known for his heavy consumption of drugs
and alcohol. He was forced to reexamine his life when his friend and
fellow comic John Belushi died after spending an evening with
Williams in the pursuit of nirvana. Another setback occurred when his
first marriage fell apart amid tabloid reports that he had left his wife
for his son Zachery’s nanny. Williams insisted that the marriage was
over before he became involved with Marsha Gracos, whom he
subsequently married. Their wedding rings are engraved with wolves
to signify their intention to mate for life; they have two children:
Zelda and Cody. Along with friends Billy Crystal and Whoopi
Goldberg, Williams has labored diligently for ‘‘Comic Relief,’’ an
annual benefit for the homeless.
—Elizabeth Purdy
F
URTHER READING:
Corliss, Richard. ‘‘Aladdin’s Magic.’’ Time. November 9, 1992, 74.
David, Jay. The Life and Humor of Robin Williams: A Biography.
New York, William Morrow, 1999.
Dougan, Andy Y. Robin Williams. New York, Thunder’s Mouth
Press, 1998.
Weeks, Janet. ‘‘Face to Face with Robin Williams.’’ TV Guide.
November 14-20, 1998.
Williams, Ted (1918—)
Ted Williams, ‘‘The Splendid Splinter,’’ was one of the best
hitters of all time and is the last baseball player to hit over .400. His
scientific view of hitting changed the dynamics of the game forever.
But he was also probably the least celebrated modern-day baseball
hero. While he had the makings of stardom, he was unable to cultivate
the followings enjoyed by less talented but more amiable players,
such as his contemporary Joe DiMaggio.
On August 30, 1918, Theodore Samuel Williams was born in
San Diego, California, into a lower-middle class family. His parents
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Ted Williams
worked constantly, leaving him plenty of time to play baseball. When
he was seventeen he signed with the hometown San Diego Padres.
But after only one year, he was sold to the Boston Red Sox.
Ted Williams proved himself immediately when he started for
the Red Sox in 1939. He led the league with 143 RBIs, the first rookie
to do so. In 1941, his batting average topped .400. Going into the last
day of the season, Williams’ average had been .39955, which in
baseball terms is a .400 batting average. Manager Joe Cronin gave his
star the option to sit out of the doubleheader, but he decided to play
and went six-for-eight, raising his batting average to an incredible
.406. His 1942 campaign earned him his first Triple Crown by hitting
.356, 137 RBIs, and 36 home runs. But even though he won the Triple
Crown, Williams did not win the MVP.
Williams interrupted his baseball career in 1943 to join World
War II, and he spent the next three years stateside as a pilot. When he
returned to baseball in 1946, the Red Sox had a talented postwar team
and Williams had another outstanding season, winning his first MVP.
Baseball also encountered ‘‘The Williams Shift’’ in 1946.
Cleveland manager Lou Boudreau pushed the infielders to the right
side of the field, trying to force the left-handed Williams to hit the ball
the opposite way, which he refused to do. That year Williams also led
Boston to their only World Series during his career, but the Red Sox
lost and Williams’ hitting was criticized by the media.
Williams’ relationship with the media, always tumultuous, turned
ugly after the 1946 season. The Boston press and many fans often felt
disenchanted with the temperamental superstar. Williams often went
public with his anger, liked to spit, never tipped his cap to the fans or
came out for curtain calls after home runs, and was candid about his
dislike of the Boston sports writers, who in turn criticized him in print.
Williams rebounded after the World Series, and in 1947 he won
his second Triple Crown but lost the MVP to Joe DiMaggio. He
closed the decade by winning the batting title in 1948 and winning his
second MVP in 1949, while leading the league in runs, walks, RBIs,
and hitting.
The 1950s were less kind to Williams. In 1950, he missed half
the season with a broken arm. In 1952 Williams was recalled to fight
in the Korean War, in which he survived a fiery plane crash. He came
back to baseball in 1954 and received two more batting titles in 1957
and in 1958, making him the oldest player in baseball history to do so.
A pinched nerve in his neck caused Williams to hit a career low .254
in 1959 and made fans and Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey push for his
retirement. But Williams came back to finish his career in 1960,
hitting .316 with 29 home runs, including one in his final at-bat.
Williams finished his baseball career with a .344 lifetime batting
average, the highest on-base percentage in history at .483, 521 home
runs, and the second highest slugging average at .634. The Sporting
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146
News named Ted Williams its ‘‘Player of the Decade’’ for the 1950s.
He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966.
Ted Williams had the stuff heroes were made of, even though his
contemporaries believed otherwise. He served his country in two
wars and was the most prolific hitter of his era. Williams changed the
face of baseball with his scientific approach to hitting and forcing
opposing managers to move their fielders. And today when any player
chases .400, Williams is the man to beat. In his autobiography, My
Turn at Bat, Williams states that when he walked down the street he
dreamed people would say, ‘‘There goes Ted Williams, the greatest
hitter who ever lived.’’ While a case could be made for such a claim,
Williams is less remembered than other more charismatic players.
But he did receive some belated recognition when the Ted Williams
Museum and Hitters Hall of Fame opened in Hernando, Flori-
da, in 1994.
—Nathan R. Meyer
F
URTHER READING:
Linn, Edward. Hitter: The Life and Turmoils of Ted Williams. San
Diego, Harcourt Brace, 1994.
Williams, Ted, with John Underwood. My Turn at Bat: The Story of
My Life. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Williams, Ted, with John Underwood. The Science of Hitting. New
York, Simon and Schuster, 1986.
Wolff, Rick. Ted Williams. New York, Chelsea House, 1993.
Williams, Tennessee (1911-1983)
An American playwright and screenwriter, Tennessee Williams
was regarded in his literary prime with an equal measure of esteem
and notoriety. After Eugene O’Neill, Williams was the first play-
wright to gain international respect for the emerging American
dramatic genre. Williams excelled at creating richly realized charac-
ters peppered with humor and poignancy. The ever-shifting autobiog-
raphy of Williams is equally renowned—always casual with fact, the
playwright shone in an era that adored celebrity and encouraged excess.
Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams on
March 26, 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. His father, Cornelius
Coffin Williams, was a rough man with a fine Southern pedigree.
Absent for long periods of time, Cornelius moved his family from
town to town throughout Williams’ childhood. His mother, Edwina
Dakin Williams, imagined herself to be a Southern belle in her youth;
born in Ohio, Edwina insisted that her sickly young son focus on
Shakespeare over sports, and a writer was born.
The plays of Tennessee Williams deeply resonated with the
performing arts community of the 1940s. The complex characteriza-
tion and difficult subject matter of young Williams’ plays appealed to
a new generation of actors. The 1949 Broadway production of A
Streetcar Named Desire featured then-unknown actors Marlon Brando,
Jessica Tandy, and Karl Malden, trained in ‘‘Method Acting,’’ a new
model of acting experientially to project character psychology. Ac-
tors trained in the Method technique quickly discovered Williams was
writing plays that stripped bare an American culture of repression and
denial. A close-knit circle of performers, directors, and writers
immediately surrounded the temperamental Southern playwright.
Williams preferred certain personalities to be involved with his
Tennessee Williams
projects, including actors Montgomery Clift and Maureen Stapleton,
directors Elia Kazan and Stella Adler, and a cheerfully competi-
tive group of writers including Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, and
William Inge.
The 1950 film version of A Streetcar Named Desire brought
Williams and the actors instant fame. Lines from the film have
entered into the popular lexicon, from Blanche’s pitiful ironies (‘‘I
have always depended on the kindness of strangers’’) to Stanley’s
scream in the New Orleans night (‘‘Stella!’’). More than any other of
Williams’ screenplays, A Streetcar Named Desire’s lines resurface
today in the most unlikely places, from advertisements to television
sitcoms; the public often recognizes these phrases without having
seen the production at all.
Pairing misfortune and loneliness with gracefully lyrical speech,
Williams wrestles in his works with a repressed culture emerging
from Victorian mores. Social commentary is present in most works,
but the focus for Williams is the poetry of human interaction, with its
composite failings, hopes, and eccentricities. Early works were
bluntly political in nature, as in Me, Vashya!, whose villain is a
tyrannical munitions maker. After The Glass Menagerie, however,
Williams found he had a talent for creating real, vivid characters.
Often, figures in his plays struggle for identity and an awakened sense
of sensuality with little to show for the effort. Roles of victim and
victimizer are exchanged between intertwined couples, as with
Alexandra and Chance in Sweet Bird of Youth. The paralyzing fear of
mortality, so often an issue for his characters, plagues Mrs. Goforth of
The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop here Anymore. Most significantly,
perhaps, characters like Shannon of The Night of the Iguana, one of
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147
Williams’ late plays, sometimes find peace of spirit after they can lose
little else. Arthur Miller once declared Williams’ most enduring
theme to be ‘‘the romance of the lost yet sacred misfits, who exist in
order to remind us of our trampled instincts, our forsaken tenderness,
the holiness of the spirit of man.’’
The relationship between Williams’ work and popular culture is
long and varied. Many of his plays—The Glass Menagerie, A
Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sweet Bird of Youth,
and Night of the Iguana—became major films of the 1950s and 1960s.
Williams’ films were immediately popular with mainstream audi-
ences despite their focus on the darker elements of American society,
including pedophilia, venereal disease, domestic violence, and rape.
Williams was one of the first American dramatists to introduce
problematic and challenging content on a broad level. Some of the
playwright’s subplots border on sensationalism, with scenes of im-
plied cannibalism and castration. Consequently, Tennessee Williams
had the curious distinction of being one of the most-censored writers
of the 1960s; Baby Doll, Suddenly Last Summer, and other films were
thoroughly revised by producers before general release. The modern
paradigm of film studios, celebrating fame while editing content, can
be seen in the choices made with Williams’ work, as Metro Goldwyn
Mayer produced his films and at the same time feared his subject
matter to be too provocative for audiences.
Tennessee Williams nurtured a public persona that gradually
shifted from shy to flamboyantly homosexual in an era reluctant to
accept gay men. Williams’ fears of audience backlash against his
personal life gradually proved groundless. Even late in life, however,
Williams was reluctant to assume the political agenda of others. Gay
Sunshine magazine declared in 1976 that the playwright had never
dealt openly with the politics of gay liberation, and Williams—
always adept with the press—immediately responded: ‘‘People so
wish to latch onto something didactic; I do not deal with the didactic,
ever . . . I wish to have a broad audience because the major thrust of
my work is not sexual orientation, it’s social. I’m not about to limit
myself to writing about gay people.’’ As is so often the case with
Williams, the statement is both true and untrue—his great, mid-career
plays focus upon relationships rather than politics, but the figure of
the gay male appears in characters explicit (Charlus in Camino Real)
and implicit (Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) throughout his works.
As is noted in American Writers, Williams took a casual ap-
proach toward the hard facts of his life. In the early period of his fame,
Williams intrigued audiences by implying that characters like Tom
(read Thomas Lanier) in The Glass Menagerie represented his own
experiences. Elia Kazan, a director whose success was often linked to
Williams, promoted the Williams myth once by declaring that ‘‘eve-
rything in [Williams’] life is in his plays, and everything in his plays is
in his life.’’ Tennessee Williams’ connection with the outside world
was often one of gentrified deceit, beginning early as the Williams
family sought to hide his sister’s schizophrenia and eventual lobotomy.
In the closest blend of reality and art, the playwright’s attachment to
his sister, Rose Williams, has been well documented by Lyle Leverich
and others. The connection between Rose and Tennessee Williams
was profound, and images of her mental illness and sexual abuse often
surface in Williams’ most poignant characters. The rose rises as a
complex symbol in his plays, a flower indicative alternately of
strength, passion, and fragility.
The 1970s saw a gradual decline in Tennessee Williams’ artistic
skill, but he continued to tinker with the older plays and write new
works until his death. Williams was highly prolific, crafting over 40
plays, 30 screenplay adaptations of his work, eight collections of
fiction, and various books of poetry and essays. He won the Pulitzer
Prize twice, once in 1948 for A Streetcar Named Desire, and again in
1955 for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. His work continues to command
considerable social relevance—in 1998, a play on prison abuses, Not
About Nightingales, was staged in London for the first time.
—Ryan R. Sloan
F
URTHER READING:
Leithauser, Brad. ‘‘The Grand Dissembler: Sorting out the Life, and
Myth, of Tennessee Williams.’’ Time Magazine. Vol. 146, No. 22,
November 27, 1995.
Leverich, Lyle. Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams. 2 Vols. New
York, Crown, 1997.
Murphy, Brenda. Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan: A Collabora-
tion in the Theatre. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Phillips, Gene D. The Films of Tennessee Williams. Philadelphia, Art
Alliance Press, 1980.
Savran, David. Communists, Cowboys and Queers: The Politics of
Masculinity in the Work of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.
Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1992.
Spoto, Donald. The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee
Williams. Boston, Little, Brown, 1985.
Unger, Leonard, editor. American Writers: A Collection of Literary
Biographies. 4 Vols. New York, Charles Scribner’s and Sons,
1960, 1974, 378-398.
Willis, Bruce (1955—)
Bruce Willis first came to prominence as David Addison in the
mid-1980s television show Moonlighting. With its appealingly ec-
centric mix of throwaway detective plots and screwball romantic
comedy, the show was an ideal showcase for Willis’s often bemused
and often in control, wise-cracking action man. It seemed with his
first two films, Blind Date (1987) and Sunset (1988), both directed by
Blake Edwards, that Willis was going to follow the comedy route, but
after Die Hard (1988) Willis became instead one of the leading action
stars of the 1990s. Early attempts to break free of the John McClane
character and action man image met with failure and it is only since
Pulp Fiction (1994), perhaps, that Willis has been able to extend his
range, now alternating action with the occasional touch of character.
It is, however, easy to see why the Die Hard films succeeded, and how
Willis’s image was established through them.
Expertly directed by John McTiernan, the first Die Hard gave a
new boost to action films, the rough and ready American hero fighting
international terrorists in a disaster movie scenario leading to two
sequels, numerous imitations, and bringing stylish action and vio-
lence to the genre. And for his part, Willis seemed to embody a new
sort of action hero; in contrast to Rambo and the Terminator, John
McClane was a vulnerable family man. Up against high-tech crimi-
nals with nothing but his wits and a gun, he is brutally beaten and his
spirit is wearing thin. Of course, McClane wins the day, dispatching
the terrorist mastermind with his cowboy catchphrase, ‘‘Yippy kay
yay, mother fucker,’’ but he still has a few problems to face. The
skyscraper dynamics that recalled the film Towering Inferno were
followed up by the brutal airport action of Die Hard 2: Die Harder
BOB WILLS AND HIS TEXAS PLAYBOYS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
148
Bruce Willis
(1990). Another dose of realism is added to Die Hard with a
Vengeance (1995) in which McClane is divorced, alcoholic, and out
of shape.
An attempt in the early 1990s to extend his range in such films as
the Vietnam elegy, In Country (1989), did not altogether meet with
favorable reviews—in particular, playing the ‘‘English journalist’’ in
Brian De Palma’s misguided adaptation of Thomas Wolfe’s The
Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), then starring in his own expensive box-
office flop, Hudson Hawk (1991). Tony Scott’s The Last Boy Scout
(1991) only returned Willis to a more violent cop role; Robert
Zemeckis’s Death Becomes Her (1992) was an unfunny special
effects comedy; and Striking Distance (1993) was a minor action
film. In order to focus more attention on his acting rather than his
movie star status, Willis took on some quite interesting cameo roles:
as Dustin Hoffman’s gangster rival in Billy Bathgate (1991); along-
side his wife Demi Moore in Mortal Thoughts (1991); admirably
sending up his action man image in Robert Altman’s The Player
(1992); starring alongside Paul Newman in Nobody’s Fool (1994);
and acting as a comedy bunny in Rob Reiner’s otherwise uninterest-
ing family film, North (1994).
By all accounts, the so-called erotic thriller, Color of Night
(1994), is Willis’s worst film, but in the same year he was to launch a
more mature phase in his career as the boxer, Butch, in Quentin
Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Taking his place amongst an ensemble cast
and latching onto Tarantino’s hip dialogue, Willis pared down his
usual smirks and steely stares, resulting in a notably different per-
formance that was all internal rage and insecurity. Terry Gilliam
managed to get an even more vulnerable performance out of Willis as
the confused time traveller in 12 Monkeys (1995); Walter Hill’s Last
Man Standing (1996) showcased Willis’s pared-down brutality, and
for their part The Fifth Element (1996) and Armageddon (1998)
ranged from glossy Die Hard action in the former to Willis saving the
world from pre-millennial excess in the latter. In between his big
action projects, however, Willis still managed to choose roles in such
small and unsatisfactory action films as The Jackal (1997) and
Mercury Rising (1998). Of the three owners of the Planet Hollywood
restaurant chain, however, Willis has clearly managed to become the
most accessible action hero of the 1990s, taking over from the
previous might of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger and
cultivating an altogether more easygoing screen appeal.
—Stephen Keane
F
URTHER READING:
Parker, John. Bruce Willis: An Unauthorised Biography. London,
Virgin, 1997.
Quinlan, David. Quinlan’s Illustrated Directory of Film Stars. Lon-
don, Batsford, 1996.
Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys
Bob Wills pioneered ‘‘western swing,’’ an upbeat style of
country music that had a lasting impact on the industry. Wills, who
grew up in the cotton fields of northern Texas during the World War I
era, combined the blues of black sharecroppers with southern ‘‘hill-
billy’’ music. In the mid-1930s, Wills formed the Texas Playboys, a
band using experienced swing and Dixieland jazz musicians, who
toured throughout the southwest to packed houses. Western swing
became a national phenomenon after their 1940 hit ‘‘New San
Antonio Rose,’’ and Wills was inducted into the Country Music Hall
of Fame in 1968.
—Jeffrey W. Coker
F
URTHER READING:
Knowles, Ruth Sheldon. Bob Wills: Hubbin’ It. Nashville, Country
Music Foundation Press, 1995.
Malone, Bill C. Country Music USA. Revised edition. Austin, Univer-
sity of Texas Press, 1985.
Townsend, Charles R. San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music of Bob
Wills. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1986.
Wilson, Flip (1933-1998)
In the early 1970s, comedian Flip Wilson secured a place in
television history as the first African American to headline a success-
ful network variety series. Previous attempts by other black perform-
ers, such as Nat ‘‘King’’ Cole, Leslie Uggams, and Sammy Davis, Jr.,
WILSONENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
149
Flip Wilson (left) with Richard Pryor on The Flip Wilson Show.
had all been ratings failures. From 1970 to 1974 The Flip Wilson
Show presented comedy skits, musical performances, and top Holly-
wood guest stars. The main attraction, however, was always Wilson
himself. He possessed a sharp and non-confrontational sense of
humor that appealed to a diverse audience. During its first two
seasons, his show was the second most popular program on television,
second only to All in the Family in the ratings. The most popular
aspect of the show was the large stable of stock characters portrayed
by Wilson each week. His most famous creation was the sassy and
liberated Geraldine Jones, who introduced the catch phrase ‘‘What
you see is what you get’’ into the American lexicon. Flip Wilson
proved that the mainstream American television audience could
accept a performer of color.
Clerow Wilson was born on December 8, 1933, in Jersey City,
New Jersey, and raised in extreme poverty as one of 18 children. He
grew up in a series of foster homes and left school at 16. During a
four-year hitch in the Air Force he traveled around the Pacific and
entertained his fellow enlisted men. Wilson acquired the nickname
‘‘Flip’’ from the troops, who appreciated his flippant sense of humor.
Upon being discharged from the service in 1954, he spent the next
decade touring across America, honing his act in small nightclubs.
His big break came during a 1965 appearance on The Tonight Show
Starring Johnny Carson, which led to frequent guest spots on The Ed
Sullivan Show, Laugh-In, and Love, American Style. In 1969, NBC
signed the comedian to host an hour-long variety show.
The debut episode of The Flip Wilson Show premiered on
September 17, 1970. Unlike other programs of the variety genre, it did
not feature chorus girls and large production numbers, but rather was
presented in a nightclub-like setting on a round stage surrounded by
an audience. Wilson welcomed established entertainment stars such
as John Wayne, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, and Lucille Ball to the
show and introduced audiences to musical guests like Issac Hayes,
James Brown, and the Temptations. He continued the variety format
tradition of portraying several recurring characters on the program.
Among his most noteworthy personas were: Freddy the Playboy,
Sonny the White House janitor, Reverend LeRoy of the Church of
What’s Happening Now, and, of course, Geraldine Jones. Geraldine,
whom Wilson played in drag, became a national sensation as she
made wisecracks about her unseen, and very jealous, boyfriend
named ‘‘Killer.’’ Wilson commented on the miniskirted character’s
popularity, ‘‘The secret of my success with Geraldine is that she’s not
a putdown of women. She’s smart, she’s trustful, she’s loyal, she’s
sassy. Most drag impersonations are a drag. But women can like
Geraldine, men can like Geraldine, everyone can like Geraldine.’’
Along with Geraldine’s trademark line ‘‘What you see is what you
get,’’ Wilson popularized the phrases ‘‘The devil made me do it!’’
and ‘‘When you’re hot, you’re hot (and when you’re not, you’re
not!).’’ Although Wilson based many of his routines on ethnic humor
and black stereotypes, his humor was rarely overtly political. In 1971,
The Flip Wilson Show won Emmy Awards for Best Variety Series and
Best Writing for a Variety Series. The show was canceled in 1974 due
to strong competition from the CBS Depression-era drama The Waltons.
The second half of Wilson’s career was marked by a much
reduced public profile. He appeared in a few films, including Uptown
Saturday Night and The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh, and made
several television guest appearances. In the mid-1980s he returned to
television with two short-lived series: People Are Funny (1984), a
quiz show; and Charlie & Company (1985), a pale sitcom imitation of
The Cosby Show, in which singer Gladys Knight played his wife.
Wilson then retired from show business to raise his family. By the late
1990s, Wilson had again resurfaced due to the reruns of his 1970s
series on the TVLand cable network. Flip Wilson died on November
25, 1998, of liver cancer.
Like Bill Cosby on the television drama I Spy and Diahann
Carroll on the situation comedy Julia, Flip Wilson is regarded as a
breakthrough performer who helped destroy the color line on network
television in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He proved that white
audiences would accept a black comedian and embrace his humor.
His ability to employ racial humor without demeaning its targets gave
him the opportunity to reach the masses and provide network televi-
sion with a too-rare black perspective. In a TV Guide tribute shortly
after the comic’s death, Jay Leno wrote, ‘‘Flip was hip, but he made
sure everybody could understand him and laugh. That’s the sign of a
great performer.’’
—Charles Coletta
F
URTHER READING:
Anderson, Christopher. The New Book of People. New York, G. P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1986.
Brooks, Tim. The Complete Directory to Prime Time TV Stars. New
York, Random House, 1987.
Leno, Jay. ‘‘Flip Wilson.’’ TV Guide. December 26, 1998, 9.
‘‘Flip Wilson - What You Saw Was What You Got.’’ CNN Interac-
tive. http://www.CNN.com. November 26, 1998.
WIMBLEDON ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
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Wimbledon
The world-renowned British tennis tournament, Wimbledon,
has become more than tradition, according to British journalist and
author John Barrett: more than ‘‘just the world’s most important and
historic tennis tournament,’’ having come to symbolize ‘‘all that is
best about sport, royal patronage, and social occasion that the British
do so well, a subtle blend that the rest of the world finds irresistible.’’
Held in late June and early July, Wimbledon is the only one of four
Grand Slam tennis events still played on natural grass.
The event started in 1877 as an amateur tournament called the
Lawn Tennis Championships hosted at the England Croquet and
Lawn Tennis Club (later renamed the All England Lawn Tennis
Club). The only event was men’s singles. Twenty-two players partici-
pated, and Spencer Gore won the final match, which spectators paid
one shilling to watch. The women’s singles event was instituted in
1884. Maud Watson claimed victory over a field of thirteen. Previous-
ly played at Oxford, the men’s doubles event was brought to Wimbledon
in 1883. Over the years, Wimbledon’s popularity continued to grow
steadily. By the mid-1880s, permanent stands were in place for the
crowds who were part of what Wimbledon historians refer to as the
‘‘Renshaw Rush,’’ coming to see the British twins Ernest and
William Renshaw win 13 titles between them in both singles and
doubles between 1881 and 1889.
By the turn of the century, Wimbledon had become an interna-
tional tournament. American May Sutton won the women’s singles
title in 1905 to become Wimbledon’s first overseas champion. About
this time, the royal family began its long association with Wimbledon
when the Prince of Wales and Princess Mary attended the 1907
tournament, and the Prince was named president of the club. In 1969,
the Duke of Kent assumed the duty of presenting the winning trophy.
Play at Wimbledon was suspended during World War I, but the
club survived on private donations. Tournament play resumed in
1919, with Suzanne Lenglen winning the women’s and Gerald
Patterson the men’s titles. In 1920, the club purchased property on
Church Road and built a 14,000-capacity stadium, which Wimbledon
historians credit with playing a critical role in popularizing the event.
World War II suspended play again, but the club remained open to
serve various war-related functions such as a decontamination unit
and fire and ambulance services. In 1940, a bomb struck Centre
Court, demolishing 1,200 seats. Although the tournament’s grounds
were not fully restored until 1949, play resumed in 1946, producing
men’s champion Yvon Petra and women’s champion Pauline Betz.
The expansion of air travel in the 1950s brought even more
international players to Wimbledon. This period also saw the domina-
tion of American players at the tournament, with such champions as
Jack Kramer, Ted Schroeder, Tony Trabert, Louise Brough, Maureen
Connolly, and Althea Gibson (the first African-American winner).
Australian players Lew Hoad, Neale Fraser, Rod Laver, Roy Emer-
son, and John Newcombe then dominated the men’s singles title from
1956 through the early 1970s.
In 1959, the club began considering a change in its amateur-only
policy in light of the increasing number of players receiving financial
assistance in excess of the limits set by the International Tennis
Federation. It was not until 1967, however, that the Lawn Tennis
Association voted to officially open the championship to both profes-
sionals and amateurs. At the first open tournament in 1968, Rod
Laver and Billie Jean King won the men’s and women’s singles
titles, respectively.
In 1977, Wimbledon celebrated its centenary anniversary. In
honor of the occasion, the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum was
opened at Wimbledon. 1984 marked the centenary of the women’s
singles event. The tournament now has five main events: men’s and
women’s singles, men’s and women’s doubles, and mixed doubles. It
also sponsors four events for juniors (18 and under) and invitation
events for former players. Each of the five main championships has a
special trophy. The women’s singles trophy, first presented by the All
England Club in 1886, is a silver parcel gilt tray made by Elkington
and Company in 1864. The men’s singles trophy is a silver gilt cup
and cover inscribed ‘‘The All England Lawn Tennis Club Single
Handed Champion of the World,’’ and was first presented by the All
England Club in 1887. The men’s doubles trophy is a silver challenge
cup, first presented in 1884. The women’s doubles trophy is a silver
cup and cover, known as ‘‘The Duchess of Kent Challenge Cup,’’ and
was first presented in 1949 by Her Royal Highness the Princess
Marina, then president of the All England Club.
Roughly 500 players currently compete at Wimbledon. To
participate, players have to submit an entry six weeks prior to the
tournament. A Committee of Management and a referee rank the
entries and place players into three categories: accepted, need to
qualify, and rejected. The committee then decides which ‘‘wild
cards’’ to include in the draw. Wild cards are players who do not have
a high enough international ranking to make the draw, but are
included by the committee on the basis of past performance at
Wimbledon or popularity with British spectators. A qualifying tour-
nament takes place a week before the championships at the Bank of
England Sports Club in Roehampton, and the winners in the finals of
this tournament qualify to play at Wimbledon. An exception is
players who, although they lose in the final round of the qualifying
tournament, are still selected to play. Dubbed the ‘‘lucky losers’’ by
tournament organizers, these players are chosen in order of their
international ranking to fill any vacancies that occur after the first
round of the draw.
To date, the youngest-ever male champion is Boris Becker of
Germany. In 1985, the 17-year-old won the men’s singles champion-
ship. In 1996, Swedish player Martina Hingis became the youngest
ever female champion at age 15. Other notable records include
American Martina Navratilova’s unprecedented six-year reign on
Centre Court as women’s singles champion, and her overall all-time
record of nine singles titles. Two men have won the men’s singles
tournament five consecutive times, although a century apart: Bjorn
Borg of Sweden (1976-1980), and William Renshaw (1881-1886)
of Britain.
—Courtney Bennett
F
URTHER READING:
Little, A. ‘‘The History of the Championships.’’ http://
www.wimbledon.com/news.nsf/allstatichtml/history.html.
December 1998.
Medlycott, James. 100 Years of the Wimbledon Tennis Champion-
ships. London and New York, Hamlyn, 1977.
Robertson, Max. Wimbledon, Centre Court of the Game. London,
British Broadcasting Corporation, 1981.
Wade, Virginia, with Jean Rafferty. Ladies of the Court: A Century of
Women at Wimbledon. New York, Atheneum, 1984.