Laguna Beach: A Famed Playwright’s Early Playground

Tom Williams (as he was known at the time) and his friend Jim Parrott left their home in Hawthorne in May of 1939, armed with nothing but a guitar, a phonograph, some paints, and a portable typewriter. The two men rented a small cabin in “Bootleg Canyon” (now known as Canyon Acres) two miles from town.

Williams was immediately smitten by Laguna Beach. He immediately likened the small community to Paul Gaugin’s Nave Nave Mahana, an idyllic Tahitian painting that translates into “Delicious Day.” In his memoir, Williams recalls that “there was constant volleyball, there was surfing and surfers, there was an artist colony…and all of it was delightful.” Although he and Jim made frequent trips to Los Angeles, they always returned to their cabin in Laguna.

Main Beach in Laguna Beach, 1930's

Tom found Laguna to be incredibly conducive to his writing, as evidenced by his frequent letters to his literary agent. Although he was still years away from writing his breakthrough The Glass Menagerie, he was publishing occasional short stories, as well as occupying himself with poetry, plays, and even dabbling in painting. To supplement his income, Williams even worked as a part-time pin-setter at the Laguna Beach bowling alley.

Williams’s telegram to his parents about the Broadway opening of “The Glass Menagerie.”

In his letters from Laguna Beach, Williams initially described a halcyon lifestyle that was “too perfect.” For an artist, there was “nothing to do but write or lie around all morning & swim & lie on the beach all afternoon and make a round of the village taverns at night.” However, self-aware of his neuroticism, Tom Williams quickly tired of such a monotonous lifestyle until it became “unendurable.” His private journals describe panic attacks, restlessness, and “a dreadful lifeless weight on [his] heart and body.”

Ultimately, Tennessee Williams’ sojourn in south Orange County came to an end in the middle of August 1939, when he set off for Taos, New Mexico to meet with Frieda Lawrence (D.H. Lawrence’s widow). The impetus for his departure was the spread of an avian epidemic at the cabin where he and Jim were staying; a third of the chickens they had been enlisted to care for by the property’s owners were killed instantly.

Although not during the golden-era of his writing, Williams’ residency is significant in one major regard. One of the 20th century’s most prominent openly gay writers, Tom mentions an incident in his journal that one researcher states was “likely…Williams’ first homosexual encounter.” Although only described in the briefest of terms, this occurrence is nonetheless of extreme importance (particularly when examining the homosexual themes in many of his later works).

Coast Highway, 1930s

Today, few realize that one of the 20th century’s most famous playwrights spent some of his formative months in Laguna Beach (less than a decade after another unknown writer, John Steinbeck, wintered only a few miles away from Williams’ cabin). It seems extremely fitting that Tennessee Williams chose to live in a place that, to this day, features such vibrant artistic and gay communities.