Rarely seen Tennessee Williams story set in post-WWII Italy

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “The Summer Woman” was written in the early 1950s and tells of an American academic, “the remarkably young head of the English department at an important Southern university,” who frequently visits Rome and hopes to reunite with an Italian lover whom he had met “on the street” and had financially supported in hopes of keeping her “off the street.” "There in Europe, mostly in Italy, he had his other life, the existence that his heart longed for: Bohemian, sensual, not at all academic, not in the least reserved," Williams writes. She had taken him by his cold, nervous fingers and led him into that country and made him quickly at home there.” A native of Mississippi who set “A Streetcar Named Desire” and other plays in the American South, Williams identified strongly with Italy, seeing it as an escape from the condemnation — and his own unshakeable “sense of guilt” — he confronted in the U.S. as a gay man. He lived in Italy off and on for several years after World War II and often wrote about the passions and clashes between Americans and Italians, whether in the play “The Rose Tattoo," the novel “The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone” or the short story “Man Bring This Up Road.” Robert Bray, founding director of the Tennessee Williams Annual Review, noted that Williams' attachment to Rome became highly personal: His partner Frank Merlo was of Sicilian descent, and he formed a close friendship with Italian actress Anna Magnini, who starred in the film version of “The Rose Tattoo.” Bray said Williams was “enamored of the sexuality exuded by young Italian men and the easier relationship between men than back at home in the more constrained U.S.” But “The Summer Woman” is a snapshot of a country still recovering from the war and no longer welcoming to Americans. “We think of Tennessee Williams as the chronicler of faded grandeur, angst, and weakness, but his travels and interactions show what a versatile observer he was of how American foreign policy was viewed around the world.” On a draft manuscript for “The Summer Woman,” Williams had another working title: “The Marshall Plan," referring to the massive aid program which the U.S. set up for European countries.