Now, with the publication of the fifteen previously unpublished or uncollected titles in this volume, more than seventy one-act plays by Tennessee Williams are available in print. From the beginning, Williams envisioned evenings of his one-acts grouped in thematic cycles or performed as combinations. Some of the thematic groups were titled “Vieux Carré,” “Three Plays for the Lyric Theatre,” “Garden District,” “Dragon Country,” “Mississippi Sketches,” “Of Babylon, the Fall,” “Dominoes,” and “Williams’ Guignol.” But perhaps the most ambitious was a project titled “American Blues,” on which Williams worked from 1937 until at least 1943.

It was in 1939 that “the first three sketches in the series AMERICAN BLUES” won Williams “a special prize” of $100.00 from the prestigious Group Theatre. Though it has never been established exactly which short plays Williams submitted, it can be plausibly inferred from references in his letters, journals, and the typed lists (discussed below), that he had submitted four: Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry, The Dark Room, Hello From Bertha, and The Long Goodbye. To meet the contest requirement of being twenty-five or younger, Williams “changed” his birth year from 1911 and wrote it as 1914 on the entry form. Just for good measure, he went ahead and used his nickname as his first name and submitted his plays as “Tennessee Williams.” This was done in December 1938, just before he left on his first trip to New Orleans.

Two draft lists—trial balloons or musings, perhaps—of the “American Blues” plays are filed in Harry Ransom Humanities and Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin (“HRC”). Both are carefully typewritten to resemble playbills or title pages for a bound manuscript of completed plays. One reads as follows: “AMERICAN BLUES / (A program of one-act plays designed to approximate in dramaturgy / the mood, atmosphere and meaning of American Blues music) / 1. American Gothic / 2. Hello From Bertha / 3. Escape / 4. The Fat Man’s Wife / 5. The Big Game / 6. Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry.”

The other list is a bit more involved: “AMERICAN BLUES / A Program of One-act Plays / (designed to approximate in dramaturgy the mood, atmosphere and / meaning of American blues music) / by / Tennessee Williams / 1. Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry / 2. Hello From Bertha / 3. The Long Goodbye / (Also included in this cycle are Summer at the Lake, Every Twenty / Minutes, The Fat Man’s Wife, The Big Game, In Our Profession, Man- / ana Es Otro Dio, Death in the Movies and American Gothic).”

The first, shorter list is likely older (about 1937–38), since it is signed in the upper right corner by “T. L. Williams”—the name that Williams used professionally only until the end of 1938. The second list, by “Tennessee Williams,” likely was typed around the time Williams began writing under this pseudonym (late 1938).