The 1930’s, it’s Influence on Tennessee Williams, and Jack Balch

By: Beth Parthum

 In the 1930’s, Tennessee Williams was surrounded by a world of controversy. Big business vs.

the unions and the people, and communism were some of the largest issues of the period. Through his

travels, Tennessee met other individuals like the poet/novelist, Jack Balch. Tennessee Williams and

Jack Balch had very different upbringings, but were oth located in the St. Louis area, and became

writers who sided with the unions in the 1930's. Balch didn't really seem to meet Tennessee until 1944

when he became a theatre critic, although they went to similar meetings and worked with similar

people. In looking at the different lives, and writing styles of Balch, and Williams, it is clear to see that

writers are all different artists who work in relation to their environment, and audience.

If it's true that writers can only write because of tragedy in their life, Jack Balch is a prime

example for that statement. Jack Balch was born as Yaakov Balokofsky in London on April 9, 1909.

According to Jack's son Michael, in 1917, Jack's father Shmuel – one of seven Jewish Russian brothers,

all tailors – joined the “Jabotinsky Brigade” of the British Army. This unit was created to assist the

British Army in freeing Palestine from the Ottoman Empire. After some time, the group realized that

the British Army was never going to secure an independent Jewish state, as promised to them, and most

of the “Jabotinsky Brigade” disbanded. Shmuel was one of few who were sent out for another mission

to port of Archangel. Jack and his mother left soon after, fleeing from England and the Zeppelin.

Michael then states that Jack and his mother shipped out to Archangel, but were stopped on the North

Sea and held at gunpoint on a German submarine. They survived this only to arrive in Russia to find

the Soviet USSR in full operation. All of this alone could have given Jack an incredible amount to

write on later in life. Jack's father was nowhere to be found, and it turns out the group had left

Archangel, and moved to the Black Sea, a port called Odessa. It took a year to get across Russia for

Jack and his mother to reach his father. At the time he was only ten, and once settled he became a help

to the British soldiers by showing sailors around the town of Odessa, and translated for them in Russian

based upon what he had picked up in his travels. Even though he was very young, Jack always looked
back on this time and remembers everyone killing everyone else in the name of prosperity, which

influenced his political idea's throughout his life. All the death between groups, political entities, and

general population definitely left its mark. He continued to see death around him as his family traveled

to Constantinople in 1918. Finally in 1920 the Balch's reached Ellis Island, New York.1

Balch first published Castle of Words and Other Poems, a book of poetry in 1931 at the age of

twenty two. The compilation on its face is about a lost lover, but it's the first time readers see his use of

strong relationships which continue through his writings. While later on in the 1930's, Jack wrote

about politics and seemed very passionate about political righteousness, this shows very little of his

political side. His poetic works do change topics to discuss sailors at sea with the ocean as his

uncontrollable mistress, and other versus are dedicated to various friends toward the end of the book.

As the writings progress through the book, they get more dark and mysterious, possibly alluding to

more underlying meanings. Even though there is central topic of the novel the stories tend to centralize

around a woman. It is not the same woman through the book, but Balch refers to a woman more than

any inanimate object or other being. In the beginning, the woman is a lover he has lost and wonders if

others will be as they once were. He says to remember him when he is gone, not for his senseless

deeds, remember him who danced, his dreams, their dreams, their love, their youth. As the poem goes

on, he says for men who read it later to not think he's a drunk or a liar; she was not a goddess, “she was

a mortal doomed from birth to die,” but she was the most beautiful thing to him; “Temple of love was

she where I, a fool, wandered and worshiped and believed myself a god.”2 Later, he refers to the

woman as his darling. In Song, he says how he sat by his darling in snow, and kissed his darling in

spring, and “All the world sang, all but -/ who watched my darling dying.”3 As the book comes to a

close, the woman portrayed is treacherous, deceitful, and manipulative. He wrote a poem called My

Lady Vows,

1
Balch, Jack S., and Michael Szalay. Lamps at High Noon. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2000.
2
Balch, Jack. Castle of Words and Other Poems. St. Louis: Bromberg, 1931. Print.
3
Balch, Jack. Castle of Words and Other Poems. St. Louis: Bromberg, 1931. pg 44. Print.
 “My lady vows she loves me,
She crawls in beside me, sighs,
And leans her empty head to mine
And wields her wicked thighs-
But I, wise wretch, make merry,
For well I know she lies.”4

Writings like My Lady Vows, is a clear sign that Jack felt betrayed in his life. Some readers

think that the woman can be symbolic, and Jack is showing his feeling of betrayal by the government.

Knowing the amount of death he witnessed at a young age, while traveling around the European and

Asian continents, it is possible that he is feeling betrayed by his mother for not allowing him to have a

safe, proper childhood. The poem, “Revolutionists Mother”, is the only poem that is explicitly

discussing political commentary, but knowing the 1930's and Jack's political standpoint; it is easy to see

how some who analyze the book find an underlying political commentary.

In 1934 Balch joined the St. Louis Union of Writers and Artists, and started to appear at

meetings of the John Reed Club, which is where he met Willie Wharton, Joe Jones, and Jack Conroy.

Conroy was the editor of the Anvil, and Balch soon joined in as an associate editor. Balch wrote many

political articles after 1934, and appears in the first 4 volumes of the Anvil, some of the Partisan

Review, and the magazine called New Masses. At the age of twenty-six, he was appointed the assistant

director of the Missouri Writer's Project, which is part of the Federal Writers Project. The Federal

Writers Project was created by the federal government to keep writers working and getting paid. There

were different central stations set up around the country where writers would be hired to work on a

portion of the American Guide, a book meant to depict the country as a whole. On October 27, 1936

Jack Balch went on strike from the Missouri Writer’s Project with other writers such as Jack Conroy.

These writers went on strike because they felt that they were being stifled on their writings for this

guide, and not permitted to do their jobs adequately. Conroy was quoted saying,

4
Balch, Jack. Castle of Words and Other Poems. St. Louis: Bromberg, 1931. pg 36. Print
 “Does the administration, through the Federal Writers' Projects,
intend to stimulate and foster writers, or is its purpose to stifle and
emasculate them, close their mouths, keep them in intellectual bondage
and submission twenty-four hours a day? Those of us who went at the job
of writing the American Guide with the determination to make it a full-
bodied, rich, and recognizable picture of life in the United States – the
land, its people, their customs, their folk-lore – would like to know.” - xii
In 1940, he left the WPA and became a reporter, then a drama critic
where in 1944 he worked for the St. Louis Post Dispatch and met
Tennessee Williams.5

There is an interesting contrast in Balch's writings from Castle of Words, to his articles found in

the Anvil, Partisan Review, and his novel, Lamps at High Noon. It is a progression that can be

foreshadowed by Castle of Words because his lyrical romantic, sometimes sad and longing love turned

to a bitter aggressive, angry tone by the end of the book. Balch's first book, Castle of Words was much

more romantic and whimsical than any of his articles that seem more brash, which could have been

because of time, style, or audience focus. Castle of Words is the only book of Balch's that is poetry, and

that requires a consistent eloquence to be clean. This piece of work was written without a targeted

audience in mind and compiled it so that all classes could read it and find something to relate to, while

not having a main theme. Other publications from this period by Balch are the short stories from

magazines as well as his novel, where his elaborate characters and target audience are more forgiving

and allow for more unpolished language(<rough sentence). Since his writings were then focused to

appeal to the middle to lower classes, using dialects made characters more relatable. While the

characters in his stories do not read as smooth as his poetry, his overall story lines continued to have a

good formed flow when it transitions between “scenes” or places. It is not surprising that later in life

Balch critiqued, directed, and wrote plays because Lamps at High Noon, has a play like quality in the

sense that there is a strong main storyline and well developed characters who have stories of their own

that evolve. The book is broken into three major sections and split up further by bold titles to shift

characters, place, and time.

5
Balch, Jack S. "Balch and Writer's Union." Introduction. Lamps at High Noon. Ed. Michael Szalay. Urbana: University of
Illinois, 2000. XXX. Print.
 Balch wrote his stories and novel for a specific audience, and tended to use dialects for the

characters, allowing them to be more realistic and relatable for the readers. From a dialect standpoint,

In Lamps at High Noon, there is an older Jewish woman, and a very old landlord, a drunk called

Lousey, who could all have overwhelming accents, instead they have a slight dialect and unpolished

speech as to not be distracting. Tony is a bar owner, and his dialect is very appropriate, which makes

the piece easy to grasp a true sense of the character, not add distractions. It becomes clear in Lamps at

High Noon that the dialect is important because the main character, Charlie, meets his soon to be boss,

Mr. Hohaley, there is even a moment of inner monologue where Charlie announces to himself that Mr.

Hohaley is speaking in a southern accent. Dialects are also widely used in his short stories. When he

wrote for the Partisan Review, after it bought the Anvil, he published St. Louis Idyll, and Take a

Number, Take a Seat. A newsboy in St. Louis Idyll proclames, “it wuz better a few years ago when de

cops let yes sellslappers. Yuh cud sell dem slappers ten cents apiece, make six cents profit. When yuh

slapped some fatass gal on de bimbo wid one of dem, boy! she knew what it felt like to be married.6

This is one of the more distracting uses of dialect by Balch. It's hard to read at first glance, and when it

is looked at close, it seems as though Balch wrote it using proper grammar, and randomly added typo's/

respellings. This is one of his later writings, and shows his less polished work. While the dialects can

be hard to decipher, the use of dialects and improper speech generically make stories more appealing,

and the characters are more relatable to the middle and lower classes - the working class.

Politically, Balch shows both sides of many debates during the period in his novel, Lamps at

High Noon. One of the largest debates is about the federal government funding art programs. The

problem with the federal aide programs is that the government becomes the producer figure, controlling

the art being created instead of allowing the artists to freely commentate on society, and create

according to their feelings, emotions, and experiences. Then when there was a strike, many leaders felt

that the writer's project was a nice attempt to support the arts and expand the New Deal to financially

6
Balch, J. S. "St. Louis Idyll." Partisan Review. Vol. 1-2. New York: Partisan Review, 1959. 43-47. Print.
support more citizens, but writers are not seen as a necessity. Most people do not feel that art is a

requirement for life; farming, electricity, automobiles, these were the industries that were needed to

exist as a sovereign nation, and to grow economically. So when the artists created a union and went on

strike, very few people stood behind them and felt that the artists should be grateful they were being

paid to create at all. Balch wrote about the unions because he knew society needed them, and that

without them, the industries and government would emotionally and physically damage people to

increase production. Balch didn't make the unions out to be perfect either, he knew their flaws. How

the unions were organized, sometimes the leaders, and greed became reasons the unions would lose

credibility or fail. This is one of the things about Lamps at High Noon, that make it a great writing of

the time. Arguing about governments role in art (if it has one), and the growth of the communist party

are both addressed in Lamps at High Noon, between Charlie, and a co-worker, Matson. When Charlie

asks Matson why he joined the Communist Party, Matson responds with,

“ 'Revenge on the 'beautiful woman' (work project) for making it

impossible for me to live without blindfolding my ears... each of us has
his true reason for joining, regardless of what sounds good. Chavin
himself talks about the masses, but he also talks just as much about the
drabness of living, the way he had wasted his life up until he changed it.
Well, I ask you. Then there's the case of George Dobbington, a colored
fellow... Ask George the reason he joined the Party, he'll tell you it's to
life the masses. That sounds good. But the real reason is that he's taking
revenge on a loving Church that calls him a murderer.' ”7

This story strongly reflects the hardships of people, and their strained relationships during hard

times. George was a black man who encouraged his wife to have an abortion. When he tried to repent

at his Catholic Church, the priest didn't help, and George is left emotionally and spiritually wandering.

Upset, and lost, George joined the communist party to rebel from an authority that left him feeling

alone. The page space dedicated to personal stories and relationships between families make Balch’s

stories memorable and moving for all readers. In Lamps in High Noon, the reader first meets Charlie

with his family, and there is a hard but loving relationship between him and his mother who are talking

7
Balch, Jack S. Lamps at High Noon. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2000. pg 250-51. Print.
about finances, and the first fifty pages continues to show their hard financial position, and his mother

faltering health. At the end of the novel, Charlie spends days in the hospital with his mother who is

dying and it turns out after she passes, that she was saving his paychecks he was giving her. All of the

pages throughout the novel given to explaining the family and personal relationships make Balch's

stories relatable. Even his short stories such as Telephone Call, published in the first edition of The

Anvil, show families strain under financial difficulties. This little girl, Fanny Prince, comes out of her

mama's room to get a nickel from one of the ladies in the parlor to call her daddy. None of the ladies

have a nickel to spare, and Fanny goes from one place to another until the clerk at the drug store makes

the phone call to Mr. Prince at the City Relief Farm.

“ 'Hello. City Farm? Let me talk to Mr. Prince. P-r-i-n-c-e.

Prince... What's his first name little girl?... Abe. A-b-e. He's one of the
workers, I guess. Yeah, she says it's important... Hello, Abe? Just a
minute...'
Fanny craned her neck. 'Hello, daddy dear. This is Fanny talking.
Mama says come home right away. The baby won't wake up... Can you
hear me, daddy? … The baby-'
She burst into tears and the clerk had to finish the conversation for
her.” 8

This small quote is from the end of Telephone Call, but shows the stress of families without money, and

hardships caused by finances. It is a good representation of how Balch consistently used families and

characters in real situations to show how poorly the lower class was being treated in hopes that it would

get better.

Unexpectedly, Balch uses in his writing a constant reference to God and religion. He himself

was a Jew, which does show in some of his characterizations, but he doesn't write with it as a bias. In

Castles and Other Words, there are prayers, and hymns to God. In the rhymed lyrics section he wrote

Prayer,

8
Balch, J. S. "Telephone Call." Writers in Revolt: the Anvil Anthology,. Ed. Jack Conroy and Curt Johnson. New York: L.
Hill; [distributed by Independent Group, 1973. pg 16-17. Print.
 Let me not see Life slowly wending
pale to the grave, O Lord;
Give to me Death swift, taut, unbending,
Gay like a warrior's sword.
A laugh, a swoop, a surge of sleep.
Instant on warm blood,
Into the abyss, into the deep,
Thus let me fall, o God.9

God is also mentioned throughout Balch's novel. In Lamps at High Noon, the Mother prays to God,

allowing for some first person narration about faith in God to not let bad things happen. In Take a

Number, Take a Seat, the second sentence leaves the community looking bleak without religion to help.

“No more Jewish Community Center, no more St. Vincent de Paul for Catholics, no more Provident

Association for Protestants, no more nothing, it's all government now.”10

Jack Balch wrote for many years as a worker writer, and moved on to work as a theatre critic for

the St. Louis Dispatch, then worked as a playwright in New York City, and ended up as an artist with

some successful showings of his artwork before he died in 1980. There is no doubt that Jack was one

of the most influential writers of the 1930's. His book of poetry, Castle of Words, shows a strong

writer, full of compassion, experience with life's hardships, who can share his thoughts and ideas with

the world in a clear manner. The contributions he made to magazines like The Anvil, New Masses, and

The Partisan Review made strong arguments using creative, realistic character, to help the lower

working class, and to support unions who wanted living wages. Lamps at High Noon, Balch's novel is

the only book written about the writer's union strike, and proves to show the issues at the time, and how

they impacted the writers who wanted to express their opinion of the time in a truthful manner. Balch

was involved in many of the circles Tennessee Williams would become involved with as a young

writer, and while they weren't close, they wrote with many of the same idea's in mind and used similar

techniques.

9
Balch, Jack. "Rhymed Lyrics." Castle of Words and Other Poems. St. Louis: Bromberg, 1931. pg 29. Print.
10
Balch, J. S. "Take a Number, Take a Seat." Partisan Review. Vol. 1-2. New York: Partisan Review, 1959. pg 59. Print.
 Tennessee Williams was raised very differently from Jack Balch. His family was considered

upper class when they lived in the south, but when they moved to the north, they were no longer

considered well established. The family moved several times, but he had a strong roof over his head.

His tragedy was his torn apart family. Tennessee was born Thomas Lanier Williams on March 26, 1911

in Columbus, Mississippi named after his father's father. Rose, Tom's older sister, had two years over

him and played a large part in his life since they were always close. His mother Edwina, was not a

terribly strong woman, but always did what her family needed, and his father Cornelius was a traveling

salesman and a war vet, always working to keep the family economically stable. At the age of eight, he

and his family moved to St. Louis, Missouri, and a few months after the move, his little brother Dakin

was born. At the age of eleven, his mother bought him a typewriter that was old and made terrible

noises, but Tom loved it. Using it, he put together his first known published works which were two

poems written for a high school paper. Edwina had a miscarriage in 1921, and that is the point that

Dakin thinks that Edwina and Cornelius stopped sleeping in the same room. Both Tom and Dakin

remember their parents having huge fights about money, and Cornelius's drinking habits. Their

relationship would never get better, and eventually (after Tom made it big) Edwina did divorce

Cornelius. Watching this relationship of turmoil surely took it's toll on Tom's emotions and his feelings

about relationships. His one true female love, Hazel Kramer dated him through the latter end of high

school, and he even wrote a letter asking her to marry him. Sadly, she declined the offer and they were

over. This devastated Tom and he eventually got over it. Tom's first sexual experience was during his

sophomore year of undergraduate with his roommate.11 Tom's relationships with men and women were

rough and nontraditional. This held true even when he came out of the closet, and became more secure

in his homosexuality after his trip to New Orleans, LA. When Tom became serious about his writings,

he wrote to become a published poet. One of Tom's greatest writing influences when he started to

seriously write was the poet Clark Mills who Tom idolized as a poet, and they became friends. This

11
Williams, Dakin, and Shepherd Mead. Tennessee Williams: an Intimate Biography. New York: Arbor House, 1983. Print.
was the time that Tom started to react to his political surroundings in his writings. Part of this reaction

is due to the new group he started to hang around with, and it is also believed that this could have been

a reaction to the built up aggression towards his father. His father, a high administrator at the

International Shoe Company, forced Tom to quit attending school, miss out on his senior year, and

forced him to work a low level job; claiming it was due to financial hardships. Tom had reason to

dislike his father from all the fights in the house, and then as a worker fighting against his

administrator.

Tom's two earliest plays, Candles to the Sun, and Fugitve Kind, both show a lot of Tom's

opinions. His first play, Candles to the Sun, shows a family falling apart. Like Balch, Tom has a good

storyline, his stories are well written and intriguing, and a reader can become involved because the well

developed, realistic characters that are surrounded by everyday problems. The family in Candles to the

Sun, has all the men working in the coal mines that are unsafe, because the family needs the money,

and that’s the only job. Two of the characters are said to die in the coal mines, and the father is thought

to die at the end of the novel when he manically runs out of the house. These men continue to work in

the dangerous mines because they are brought up with no money, and realistically see no other way of

supporting the family. It's all about the financial instability, and no matter how hopeful the women are

that they can save money and send the next boy to college, the men fall in the same cycle. Tom uses

these characters that are easy to identify with to show how the working class becomes stuck as the

working class, and the unions are needed for not only money but also for the safety of the workers.

A clear Tennessee-ism, is clear, descriptive scene and movement notes in his plays. These notes

talk about the lights, and even mention how the audience should perceive different parts of the set. This

opening to Fugitive Kind depicts all design elements.

“Scene: The lobby of a flophouse in a large Middle Western city.

Outside the door, an arc lamp projects a bright electronic bow,
spotlighting the passing characters. A large glass window admits a
skyline of the city whose towers are outlined at night by a faint
implacable force, pressing in upon the shabby room and crowding its
 fugitive inhabitants back against their last wall.
A stair is visible with a red bulb at the first landing. The desk or
counter is stage right with an office door behind it. About the walls are
benches and one or two chairs. An iron glows hotly. A large calendar
with a single sheet for each day – so that the date is plain to the audience,
OKAY BEDS 15¢ is printed on window and on placard by desk.
When lighted the set is realistic. But during the final scenes of the
play, where the mood is predominantly lyrical, the stage is darkened, the
realistic details are lost – the great window , the red light on the landing
and the shadow walls make an almost expressionistic background.”12

There is no telling where Tom learned to describe a setting so well. It does say something to

where he wants this set, and how the audience is supposed to see it. With Mills, and Balch writings

poems or stories, there are no two readers who can read the writing, and see the same situation, and

Tom has an advantage to portray the same feelings through his productions. This continues throughout

the play as he describes a scene later. “A certain amount of burlesque is allowable but should not be

carried too far. Our aim is to give a satirical, impressionistic interpretation rather than one of exact

realism. It is the sort of overemphasis or humorous exaggeration that might be used, more freely, in a

comic Russian Ballet.”13

Something Tennessee shares with Balch is the use of dialect. Sometimes it's subtle, the change

of a word or the use of a racial slur. Other times it is very distracting and hard to read. The father

figure in Fugitive Kind, Gwendlebaum, is an immigrant who owns a flophouse. When he is upset

about his son leaving, his monologue starts out easy to read but becomes very hard to understand.

“Don't worry. He ain't gone for good. You vouldn't belief it to look
at me now but ven I vas his ach I vass de vay dot he iss. I tought the
whole vorld vas wrong egcep me und dot I vass right absolutely. I tought
it vas up to me to mak de whole vorld offer again – D'you know vot iss
wrong vit him, Glory? De boy iss an optimist! Yass, he's a great optimist!
He tinks it iss possible for men nod too fight vit each udder! - Tomorrow
he vill comehome and admit his mistake! [Herman appears at the
window and raps with a coin.] Dere's Hoiman vaiting out dere. Kvit
cryink!”14

Tennessee did some moving around and it is likely he met a large number of people with different
12
Williams, Tennessee. Fugitive Kind. Comp. Allean Hale. New York: New Directions, 2001. pg 3. Print.
13
Williams, Tennessee. Fugitive Kind. Comp. Allean Hale. New York: New Directions, 2001. pg 25. Print.
14
Williams, Tennessee. Fugitive Kind. Comp. Allean Hale. New York: New Directions, 2001. pg 87. Print.
ethnicities, maybe just met enough to write them into stories. Like Balch, I think Tom hass a clear

understanding that the working class is made up of all types, and both writers want to show that all

people deserve decent work.

Balch doesn't use the exorbitant amount of description like Tennessee, but they clearly share

similarities as writers. The plays written by Tennessee, and articles by Balch were written about the

same time, and while there doesn't seem to be any direct connection between the two, they definitely

were both influenced by their surroundings. Both of these writers were successful in their writings

because they worked to make a strong point and used different techniques such as dialect and detail to

communicate it to their readers.