The text comes from an acting edition of five short plays by Williams, American Blues, published by Dramatists Play Service in 1948. Although that volume inherited the title of Williams’s “American Blues” cycle, only two of the five plays—Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry and The Dark Room—had ever been grouped by Williams as installments in that cycle. Crushed Petunias and the other two plays, Ten Blocks on the Camino Real, and The Unsatisfactory Supper, were written after Williams had essentially abandoned the American Blues rubric.

The author’s dedication of Crushed Petunias is dated “February, 1941.” This is confirmed as the date of composition by a letter of February 27, 1941, from Williams to Audrey Wood. Williams mentions enclosing “a one-act fantasy (light) which might do for the radio,” and he suggests that Wood submit it for publication.

Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry (1936)

The first play by Williams to be published, Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry was selected by the editor Margaret Mayora for The Best One-Act Plays of 1940 (New York: Dodd Mead, 1941). The text published here comes from the American Blues acting edition, 1948.

According to biographer Lyle Leverich, the earliest known play by Tennessee Williams is Beauty is the Word, written in 1930 for an annual one-act play contest at the University of Missouri. Williams’s second attempt, Hot Milk at Three in the Morning, written in 1932 for the same annual contest, bears a strong connection to Eugene O’Neill’s one-act Before Breakfast. In 1934, Williams began rewriting Hot Milk as Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry.

Although the play is usually dated to its rewriting under the present title in 1934, Williams mentions revising it in a journal entry dated March 24, 1936: “. . . finished re-writing my ‘One Act’—‘Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry’ which I will submit to Prof. Webster tomorrow—A little too windy I’m afraid—but I think it would be effective on the stage— Wish I could have a play produced.”

The Dark Room (c. 1939)

The text published here is that published by Dramatists Play Service in American Blues, 1948. A draft at HRC is dated 1938.

Not included on the “American Blues” list that Williams prepared in December 1938, the play is mentioned in a May 5, 1939, letter from Williams to Wood: “One of the dramatic sketches in American Blues (‘The Dark Room’) actually was first in short-story form—I will send you a copy.” Williams could have revised the play at any time during that ten-year period from its first draft of 1938 to its initial publication in 1948. However, no evidence for revision after 1939 is known. The story version was published in The Collected Stories of Tennessee Williams in 1985.

The only available information on the first professional production of The Dark Room is found in a Williams sourcebook compiled by Catherine M. Arnott, who indicates that it premiered in London in 1966.

The Pretty Trap (c. 1944)