The Glass Menagerie

Amanda Wingfield, a faded Southern belle of middle age, shares a dingy St. Louis apartment with her son Tom, in his early 20s, and his slightly older sister, Laura.

She worries especially about the future of her daughter Laura, a young woman with a limp caused by a childhood illness, possibly polio, and a tremulous insecurity about the outside world.

Amanda is obsessed with finding a suitor — or, as she puts it, a "gentleman caller" — for Laura, whose crippling shyness and anxiety led her to drop out of both high school and a subsequent secretarial course and who spends much of her time polishing and arranging her collection of little glass animals.

The delighted Amanda spruces up the apartment, prepares a special dinner, and converses coquettishly with Jim, almost reliving her youth when she had an abundance of suitors calling on her.

The cast for opening night was as follows: Laurette Taylor's performance as Amanda set a standard against which subsequent actresses taking the role were to be judged, typically to their disadvantage.

He later designated half of the royalties from his play Summer and Smoke to provide for Rose's care, arranging for her move from the state hospital to a private sanitarium.

The first, released in 1950 and directed by Irving Rapper, stars Gertrude Lawrence (Amanda), Jane Wyman (Laura), Arthur Kennedy (Tom) and Kirk Douglas (Jim).

[9] Williams characterized this version, which had an implied happy ending grafted onto it in the style of American films from that era, as the worst adaptation of his work.

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote, "As much as we hate to say so, Miss Lawrence's performance does not compare with the tender and radiant creation of the late Laurette Taylor on the stage.

In 1987, a second adaptation was released, directed by Paul Newman and starring Joanne Woodward (Amanda), Karen Allen (Laura), John Malkovich (Tom) and James Naughton (Jim).

However, The New York Times reviewer noted it "starts stiffly and gets better as it goes along, with the dinner-party sequence its biggest success; in this highly charged situation, Miss Woodward's Amanda indeed seems to flower.

The characters were renamed to fit context (the surname Wingfield was changed to D'Costa, reflecting the part-Portuguese heritage of the family — probably on the absent father's side, since the mother is Anglo-Indian), but the story remains essentially the same.

[12] The first radio adaptation was performed on Theatre Guild on the Air in 1951 starring Helen Hayes as Amanda with Montgomery Clift as Tom,[13] Kathryn Baird as Laura and Karl Malden as Jim.

The production starred Jessica Tandy as Amanda, Montgomery Clift as Tom, Julie Harris as Laura and David Wayne as the gentleman caller.

In 2020, BBC Radio 3 adapted the play with Anastasia Hille as Amanda, George MacKay as Tom, Patsy Ferran as Laura, Sope Dirisu as Jim.

The videotape, long thought to be lost, was reconstructed from unedited takes found in the archives of the University of Southern California and an audio recording of the original telecast.

[15] A second television adaptation was broadcast on ABC on December 16, 1973, starring Katharine Hepburn as Amanda, Sam Waterston as Tom, Joanna Miles as Laura and Michael Moriarty as Jim.

(Tom's initial soliloquy is cut from this version; it opens with him walking alone in an alley, sitting on a rampart to read the newspaper and having his sister's and mother's voices conjure up the first domestic scene.)

Anthony Ross , Laurette Taylor , Eddie Dowling and Julie Haydon in the Broadway production of The Glass Menagerie (1945)