Tennessee Williams

A typed carbon typescript of an early version and playbill for Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

• Sold as a set of 2.
• Tennessee Williams (American).
• N.p., 1954-1955.
• 120 pp., 36 pp.
• Quarto.
• Includes the playbill for the second week of the play's initial Broadway run at the Morosco Theatre.
• In leatherette wrap bound with brads, and final title "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof" in silver lettering. Label in upper left for Hart Stenographic Bureau.

Written between December of 1954 and 1955 in the lead-up to pre-Broadway tryout in Philadelphia. It incorporates the edits made by Williams in a collection of revisions dated "9 December 1954" (currently housed at the Rare Book and Manuscript Collection, Butler Library, Columbia University): Big Daddy’s appearance in Act III, Brick’s admittance "I might be impotent, Maggie", and the inclusion of Big Daddy’s "elephant joke" (which was later replaced by the famous "mendacity" speech). Only 7 typescripts of this version are known to exist, most in wraps from the Liebling-Wood agency. The play premiered March 24, 1955, and the first playbill was of the week of March 21.