University City, Missouri, is a small town that is part of the greater St. Louis area. University City High School produced one of the most famous American playwrights, Tennessee Williams, who graduated from the institution in 1928. His earliest writing successes came during his time at University City High School.
Williams was born in Mississippi to an unhappy home—his father was largely absent and his mother emotionally crippled by her tumultuous relationship with her husband. At eight, Williams moved with his family to the St. Louis after his father accepted a job at the International Shoe Company. Eventually, the family settled in University City for a time, and Williams attended high school while there.
At 16, Williams won third prize for an essay he wrote for Smart Set titled, “Can a Good Wife Be a Good Sport?” This essay resulted in a win of 5.00, and a year later, his short story “The Vengeance of Nitocris” was published in the magazine Weird Tales. One can almost imagine the young Williams in his English classes at University City High School, writing creatively, taking the passion of the classroom back home to put his imagination to paper. The influences on his own writing, including Shakespeare, D.H. Lawrence, William Faulkner, and Emily Dickinson, were certainly introduced to Williams during this formative period. Combined with the legendary writers of the past (and some of his contemporaries like Hemingway) and his own personal experiences in a tumultuous family, Williams would go on to become a prolific playwright, arguably the most influential in America throughout the twentieth century. His time in University City would stay with him for decades and appear in different moments in several of his plays, including his most famous, The Glass Menagerie.
Williams struggled throughout his life with crippling self-doubt, poor health, depression, and anxiety. As a gay man, it was difficult for him to fully be himself during this time in American history, and he was continually in and out of favor in the literary and theater community after he left Missouri in the late 1920s. He lived into his seventies, cycling through the best and worst of times mentally and professionally before he died in 1983 in New York City.
Students in University City would do well to think of Williams as they experiment with writing and other academic subjects. Occasionally, they may struggle the way Williams did—encountering success and failure—but tutors at Grade Potential are there to draw out the best potential of their clients. Williams looked to his life and to his influences to find the best ideas; tutors in University City are there to help students identify their own strengths and work on their weak spots to turn academic struggle into academic success.
