"The Glass Menagerie" [playbill from the original Broadway production]

New York: Playbill Incorporated. Good. 1945. First Edition. Stapled wraps. [moderately edgeworn and lightly soiled; bound with a single staple (wartime conservation?), which has rusted and caused the covers and the center-spread pages to detach]. (advertisements) 28-page (including covers) playbill for the first Broadway production of Williams's first major success, his autobiographical "memory play" starring Laurette Taylor and Eddie Dowling (both pictured in the front-cover photo), which opened at The Playhouse on March 31, 1945. (The play had originally premiered in Chicago in late December 1944.) It went on to enjoy a long run (563 performances) and received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award as the Best American Play of its season. Dowling was also the co-director (with Margo Jones) of the Broadway production, which probably accounts for why his biography precedes Ms. Taylor's in the "Who's Who in the Cast" section; they are followed by the supporting players (Julie Haydon and Anthony Ross), the co-producer (Louis J. Singer), co-director Jones, and finally Williams himself, whose little bio ticks off his struggling-writer early work-life as "a typist for a large shoe concern, work on a squab ranch in California, elevator operator and movie usher in New York." NOTE that this playbill is from the first week ("week of April 1, 1945") of the Broadway run. .