A Streetcar Named Desire Script: Rare Book of the Week

A rehearsal script headed “Final Version, December 3rd, 1947”, signed and dated by the author on the title page, “Tennessee Williams, 1975” is one of the highlights of Peter Harrington's latest catalogue So Much Like Life: The Performing Arts.

The date is that of the opening night on Broadway, and the title page also gives the name and address of Irene M. Selznick, the producer. Tennessee Williams significantly reworked and changed his scripts, making this script, which provides the text of the premiere of the play, significant.

Twelve pages in this script include pencil circles around the character name of Stella. It is not thought, however, that this script belonged to the creator of the role Kim Hunter. It is offered at £37,500.

This item is from the theatre collection of Clive Hirschhorn who spent decades as the Sunday Express’s film and theatre critic, and whose various histories of Hollywood include The Warner Bros. Story and The Hollywood Musical. Clive Hirschhorn acquired the script from Clouds Hill Books who noted that the “playscript originates from a New Orleans family of doctors and lawyers who knew Tennessee Williams personally”.

Other highlights of the catalogue include:

• rehearsal scripts from Arthur Miller’s From Under the Sea (an earlier version of A View from the Bridge), and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
• items from West Side Story, Chicago, and Carousel including annotated rehearsal scripts and inscribed score
• first draft screenplays for Ian Fleming’s Thunderball and Roald Dahl’s manuscript draft screenplay for You Only Live Twice, alongside Orson Welles’s final draft screenplay for The Lady from Shanghai
• a lavishly printed programme collection from Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes featuring original lithographs after Picasso and Cocteau
• a first edition of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac in its original decorated wrappers
• Wilkie Collins’s own copy, extensively annotated by him throughout and with his ownership inscription of The Moonstone
• a copy of Feuillet’s Choregraphie ou l’art de décrire la dance (1701), bound for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans and Regent of the Kingdom of France from 1715 to 1723, with his arms in gilt on both covers