Italian-American actor Frank Merlo was BOTD in 1922. Born in New Jersey to a working-class Sicilian immigrant family, little is known about his early life. He pursued an acting career in the 1940s, with small roles in the Westerns Buzzy Rides the Range, Buzzy and the Phantom Pinto, and Rustler’s Round-Up. In 1948, he met the playwright Tennessee Williams, becoming his lover and long-term companion. The repressed and guilt-ridden Williams was immediately attracted by Merlo’s emotional openness and rugged masculinity, stating later in an interview “He taught me life”. Williams’ 1951 play The Rose Tattoo, in which a Sicilian widow finds love with a swarthy working-class man, was inspired by and dedicated to Merlo, . Merlo lived with Williams in New York and Palm Springs, passing as his personal assistant in public but acknowledged as his partner within Williams’ friendship circle. Their relationship was strained by Williams’ alcoholism and frequent infidelities, but they remained together until Merlo’s death from lung cancer in 1963, aged 42. His last words to Williams were “I’m used to you now,” which Williams accepted as an admission of Merlo’s love. Devastated by Merlo’s death, Williams descended into a self-destructive spiral from which he never fully recovered, though staggered on for a further thirty years until his death in 1983.