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DDuring the 1950s and early '60s, no other American dramatist with the exception of Tennessee Williams could compare with William Inge in his prominence on the Broadway stage and in films. As Williams tapped into the mannerisms and neuroses of the American South, Inge did much the same for the Midwest in such plays as Come Back, Little Sheba (filmed in 1952), the Pulitzer prize-winning Picnic (filmed in 1955), Bus Stop (filmed in 1956) and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (filmed in 1960). Most of Inge's works depicted small-town life, with solitary protagonists who were often embroiled in conflicts of a sexual nature. Like Williams, he also occasionally wrote film scripts, and he won an Oscar® for Splendor in the Grass (1961) as Best Original Screenplay.

Born in Independence, Kansas, in 1913, Inge graduated from the University of Kansas in 1935 and earned his Master's degree at the George Peabody College for Teachers in 1938. After work as a teacher and drama critic, he was encouraged by Tennessee Williams to become a playwright and enjoyed his first major success with Come Back, Little Sheba, produced on Broadway in 1950. Inge created many roles that were relished by actors and often brought them awards; for her role as the slatternly housewife Lola in the stage and film versions of Sheba, Shirley Booth won a Tony, an Oscar® and a Golden Globe as Best Actress.

Director Joshua Logan showed his empathy with Inge's poignant small-town characters by directing the film versions of Picnic and Bus Stop. Picnic featured outstanding performances from, among others, William Holden as a sexy drifter, Kim Novak as the town beauty he seduces, Rosalind Russell as an old-maid schoolteacher and Oscar®-nominated Arthur O'Connell as the teacher's reluctant husband-to-be. Bus Stop gave Marilyn Monroe one of her best roles as a would-be chanteuse from the Ozarks, with Oscar®-nominated Don Murray as her overly eager cowboy suitor.

Robert Preston and Dorothy McGuire star as a troubled married couple in Oklahoma of the 1920s in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, with Oscar®-nominated Shirley Knight as their older child. Splendor in the Grass, set in 1920s Kansas, brought Natalie Wood a Best Actress Oscar® nomination for her performance as a fragile young woman driven to a nervous breakdown by her forbidden love for a local Lothario (Warren Beatty, in his star-making role).

All Fall Down (1962), Inge's screen adaptation of the James Leo Herlihy novel, is a strongly acted study of a dysfunctional family, with Warren Beatty as the no-good son, Brandon De Wilde as the hero-worshiping younger brother, Angela Lansbury and Karl Malden as the overbearing parents and Eva Marie Saint as a pretty boarder ill-used by Beatty. The Stripper (1963), adapted from Inge's play A Loss of Roses, gave Joanne Woodward a juicy role as an aging actress/showgirl who has a fling with a younger man (Richard Beymer).

Inge was so displeased with the handling of his screenplay for the Ann-Margret/Michael Parks vehicle Bus Riley's Back in Town (1965) that a pseudonym, Walter Gage, was used in the credits. Several of his works have been given television treatments, with Bus Stop turned into a short-lived TV series in 1961.

Inge taught playwriting at the University of California in the early 1970s, but fell into a deep depression because he felt he had lost his creative edge. On June 10, 1973, at the age of 60, he committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Since 1982 the William Inge Theatre Festival has honored playwrights in his hometown of Independence.

by Roger Fristoe