Art Brokerage: The playwright Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams, III, on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi, to Cornelius Coffin and Edwina Dakin Williams. He spent his early childhood in Mississippi and Tennessee before his family moved to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1918. Williams started writing at an early age, and he showed early artistic ability. He moved to New Orleans, where he soon became friends with a clarinetist, Jim Parrott. In early 1939, Williams went with Parrott to Los Angeles and briefly worked at a shoe store and on Parrott's uncle's pigeon farm. During this time he also received art lessons from Adelaide Parrott, a WPA art instructor, who was impressed by Williams' artistic talent. Toward the end of his life, Tennessee gave up writing for painting, a less harsh way to express himself. Critics didn't think as much of his painting as his plays, but many people clambered to own the framed treasures. After his first major literary success, The Glass Menagerie, and his second, A Streetcar Named Desire, he had enough money to buy a home in Key West, a one-and-a-half story Bahamian at 1431 Duncan Street. Although he loved Key West, he spent most of his life in a series of hotels and rented apartments at other locations in the United States and Europe. He died February 25, 1983, in New York City.