Tennessee Williams, pictured with long-term partner Frank Merlo in the Bamboo Room – “air-conditioned”! – a Key West cocktail bar Williams frequented and made references to in his Letters. 

Williams annotated the photo on the base of its paper folder, having a drinky-pie at The Bamboo Room in Key West.

Williams met Frank Merlo – an occasional actor who had served in the U.S. Navy in World War II – in New York in the fall of 1948. Merlo, Williams's partner for nearly 15 years, was also his travel companion, acting as an unofficial secretary on Williams's business trips abroad – and on vacations to Key West, where the pair would eventually settle.

This photograph is part of a larger Tennessee Williams collection containing unpublished annotated Streetcar Named Desire manuscript materials, typescripts, and related correspondence and photographs. For more information please email: sarah@glennhorowitz.com.