December 26, 1944: "The Glass Menagerie" Premieres

December 26, 1944: The Glass Menagerie premieres at the Civic Opera House in Chicago, catapulting its author, Thomas "Tennessee" Williams to stardom.

Eddie Dowling played Tom Wingfield, the author's counterpart, who supports his family by working in a shoe warehouse in St. Louis. Julie Haydon played Laura, Tom's sister, a mentally fragile teenage girl with a limp, who is afraid to leave the house. Her collection of glass animals gives the play its title.

Laurette Taylor plays Amanda, their mother, a once-rich native of a Mississippi plantation who has come to hate her children as much as her poverty. And Anthony Ross plays Jim O'Connor, Laura's "gentleman caller," a high school classmate of Tom's who now works in the same warehouse, as his family has also hit hard times.

Tom begins the play by telling the audience that the events are based on his memory, so he is what would now be called "an unreliable narrator." Given that Williams, like William Faulkner, was a Southern fabulist, this is not surprising. The gay subtext of Williams' stories, especially this one and Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, add to this.

The play moved to Broadway, and opened on March 31, 1945. It's been filmed twice, with the respective roles as follows: In 1950, with a happier ending that Williams didn't like (Laura loses her limp following her date with Jim, and now has a positive outlook), with Arthur Kennedy, Jane Wyman, Gertrude Lawrence and Kirk Douglas; and in 1987, with John Malkovich, Karen Allen, Joanne Woodward (wife of its director, Paul Newman) and James Naughton.

It's also been done for television twice: In 1966 on CBS, with Hal Holbrook, Barbara Loden, Shirley Booth and Pat Hingle; and in 1973 on ABC, with Sam Waterston, Joanna Miles, Katharine Hepburn and Michael Moriarty.

Built in 1929, the Civic Opera House in Chicago still stands, and with 3,276 seats, it is the 2nd-largest theater in North America that regularly hosts operas, behind the Metropolitan in New York's Lincoln Center.

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December 26, 1944 was a Tuesday. This was also the day the U.S. relief troops arrived, turning the tide of the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. And Weather Underground founder Bill Ayers was born.

Baseball was out of season. Football season was over, except for the college bowl games on New Year's Day. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NFL had no games scheduled. Therefore, there were no scores on this historic day.