Clarksdale, Mississippi, Tom Williams and Betty Ellis

In July, Laura and I took a drive down to Clarksdale Mississippi to study the accent for her upcoming role as Alma Winemiller in Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke. Clarksdale is where Tennessee Williams grew up and was the inspiration for the town Glorious Hill, where the play is set. Clarksdale is also the home of the Crossroads and is the birthplace of the Delta Blues.

We rolled into town in late afternoon and checked around for a hotel, but it appeared that Clarksdale had seen better days. We decided to head up to the Moon Lake area to stay at a crappy casino on the river. There is a Moon Lake Casino in the play, which is where John Buchanan spends many a debaucherous night so we thought this was an appropriate place to stay. In the morning we headed back into town and found the downtown area, the Delta Blues Museum and Morgan Freeman’s juke joint, Ground Zero, where we had lunch. A kindly, unofficial tour guide of Clarksdale pointed us in the direction of Tennessee Williams park so we went across the center of town to visit his 20 foot by 50 foot park. Then something pretty amazing happened.

We were there about 15 minutes just soaking up the hot Delta air, trying to absorb some Tennessee Williams energy when an older woman pulled up in her car and started walking her dog around the park and eventually found her way over to us. At some point we mentioned that we were there to research accents and the area because of Laura’s part in the play. The woman, whose name is Betty Ellis, then proceeded to tell us the story of how she met Tom (Tennessee) Williams and how Summer and Smoke was her favorite play by him. She told us that Tom stayed in the rectory of St. George Episcopal church, the church she was active in all of her life. As we were recording her voice so we could study her accent more later, she told us about how the character Alma was based on her grade school piano teacher and that the character John Buchanan, was the based on the son of the real life Blanche Dubois.

We were wondering how we just happened to be in that park at the same time as Clarksdale’s eyewitness expert on Tennessee Williams when she asked to borrow my cell phone so she could call her son to come let us into the church and rectory that is so prominent in Summer and Smoke. We tried to insist this wasn’t necessary but trying to talk an older Southern woman out of this kind of hospitality was futile. So, we followed her over to the church and toured the rectory where Tennessee Williams lived and where Alma, through his writing lived. It was quite a magical moment.

Thank you, Miss Betty!

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