Tennessee Williams Blues | Teddi King
In honor of the Tennessee Williams Centennial (the TENNtennial?) here is an old clip of jazz vocalist Teddi King singing a droll ditty, on Hugh Hefner’s “Playboy After Dark” teevee show, that gently mocks the playwright.
(It is a little troubling that an undercurrent of the lyrics is a discomfort with Williams’ decadence, which translates to faggotry, basically, but the spirit of the thing is not hateful. Tenn Dubs did write works that swayed from the achingly romantic to the near-melodramatic and THANKFULLY SO and well as for Inge, that closet he was in turned out to be a little too stifle-y, so I guess we know who won the “authentic life” sweepstakes in the end, though there is no prize awarded for such.)
It is weirder an artifact, this clip, as a marker to judge there was ever a time wherein people who made theater were part of the larger cultural conversation and the name-dropping of playwrights in a popular song might transpire, as they had attained a status that made them worthy of being the subject of a satirical number.
Like, you will never hear ____ even name-check Tony Kushner, or Jon Robin Baitz, or whomever, wittily or not. You would fall out should it happen.
