William Inge

For other people named William Inge, seeWilliam Inge (disambiguation).

William Inge
Inge in 1954
Born	William Motter Inge (1913-05-03)May 3, 1913 Independence, Kansas,U.S.
Died	June 10, 1973(1973-06-10)(aged 60) Los Angeles,California,U.S.
Education	Independence Community College University of Kansas(BA) Vanderbilt University
Occupation(s)	Playwright, novelist
Years active	1947–1973

William Motter Inge(/ˈɪndʒ/;May 3, 1913 – June 10, 1973) was an Americanplaywrightandnovelist,whose works typically feature solitaryprotagonistsencumbered with strained sexual relations. In the early 1950s he had a string of memorable Broadway productions, includingPicnic,which earned him aPulitzer Prize.With his portraits of small-town life and settings rooted in the Americanheartland,Inge became known as the "Playwright of theMidwest".

Early years

Inge was born inIndependence, Kansas,the fifth child of Maude Sarah Gibson-Inge and Luther Clay Inge.William attendedIndependence Community Collegeand graduated from theUniversity of Kansasin 1935 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Speech and Drama. At the University of Kansas he was a member of the Nu chapter ofSigma Nu.Offered a scholarship to work on a Master of Arts degree, Inge moved toNashville, Tennessee,to attend theGeorge Peabody College for Teachers,but later dropped out.

Back in Kansas, he worked as a laborer on state highways and as aWichitanews announcer. From 1937 to 1938 he taught English and drama atCherokee CountyCommunity High School inColumbus, Kansas.After returning and completing his Master's at Peabody in 1938, he taught atStephens CollegeinColumbia, Missouri,from 1938 to 1943.

Career

Inge began as a drama critic at theSt. Louis Star-Timesin 1943. WithTennessee Williams's encouragement, Inge wrote his first play,Farther Off from Heaven(1947), which was staged atMargo Jones' Theatre '47 inDallas,Texas. As a teacher atWashington University in St. Louisbetween 1946 and 1949, he wroteCome Back, Little Sheba.It ran on Broadway for 190 performances in 1950, winningTony AwardsforShirley BoothandSidney Blackmer.(The 1952 film adaptation won both anOscarand aGolden Globefor Shirley Booth.Willy van Hemertdirected a 1955 adaptation for Dutch television, and NBC aired another TV production in 1977.) During his time teaching at Washington University, Inge's struggles with alcoholism became more acute; in 1947, he joinedAlcoholics Anonymous(AA). It was through AA that Inge met the wife of a member of his AA group whose name was Lola and, who through name as well as personal characteristics, was the person upon whom one of the lead characters inCome Back, Little Sheba,"Lola", was based. Even asCome Back, Little Shebawas in a pre-Broadway run in early 1950, Inge was filled with some doubt as to its success. He expressed in a letter to his sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous, "IfShebamakes it inHartfordI guess it will go on to Broadway and if it doesn't I suppose I'll be back in St. Louis. If it does make it to Broadway, I don't know when I'll be back. "Inge never had to return to St. Louis.

Portrait of William Inge byCarl Van Vechten

In 1953, Inge received a Pulitzer Prize forPicnic,a play based on women he had known as a small child:

When I was a boy in Kansas, my mother had a boarding house. There were three women school teachers living in the house. I was four years old, and they were nice to me. I liked them. I saw their attempts, and, even as a child, I sensed every woman's failure. I began to sense the sorrow and the emptiness in their lives, and it touched me.

Picnichad a successful Broadway run from February 19, 1953, to April 10, 1954.Afilm adaptationmade in 1955 was directed byJoshua Loganand won twoAcademy Awards.

In 1953, Inge's short playGlory in the Flowerwas telecast onOmnibuswith a cast ofHume Cronyn,Jessica Tandy,andJames Dean.

In 1955, his playBus Stoppremiered. Inge's inspiration of boy-pursuing-girl came from a similar situation he'd seen on a bus trip toKansas City.Nominated for four Tony Awards including Best Play,it was made into a 1956filmstarringMarilyn Monroe.

In 1957 he wroteThe Dark at the Top of the Stairs,an expansion of his earlierFarther Off from Heaven.The play was nominated for five Tony Awards, including Best Play,and was adapted as afilmin 1960.

His 1959 playA Loss of Roses,withCarol Haney,Warren Beatty,andBetty Field,was filmed asThe Stripper(1963), withJoanne Woodward,Richard Beymer,andClaire Trevor,and a popularJerry Goldsmithscore.

Natural Affectionhad the misfortune to open on Broadway during the1962 New York City newspaper strike,which lasted from December 8, 1962, until April 1, 1963. Thus, few were aware of the play, and fewer bought tickets. It lasted only 36 performances, from January 31, 1963, to March 2, 1963. What theatergoers missed was a drama exploring themes of fragmented families and random violence. As withTruman Capote'sIn Cold Blood,the inspiration forNatural Affectioncame from a newspaper account of a seemingly meaningless and unmotivated murder. The play centers on a single mother, Chicago department store buyer Sue Barker (Kim Stanley). While troubled teen Donnie (Gregory Rozakis), Sue's illegitimate son, has been away at reform school, she has entered into a relationship with Cadillac salesman Bernie Slovenk (Harry Guardino). With Donnie's unexpected return to her Chicago apartment, conflicts escalate, and Donnie finds himself on an emotional precipice. The closing five minutes of the play introduces a new character, a young woman Donnie meets in the apartment hallway. He invites her into the apartment and, without warning, kills her as the curtains close. The Broadway production, directed byTony Richardson,benefited from composerJohn Lewis's made-to-order background music, which was provided via tape recordings, rather than live performance, and worked in the same fashion as a film score. A highly successful revival ofNatural Affectionwas mounted in 2005 at Chicago's The Artistic Home. Directed by John Mossman, it was named by theChicago Tribuneone of the year's best productions.

Inge'sThe Last Padpremiered inPhoenix, Arizona,in 1972. Originally titledThe Disposal,the world premiere ofThe Last Padwas produced by Robert L. "Bob" Johnson and directed by Keith A. Anderson through the Southwest Ensemble Theatre. The production starredNick Noltewith Jim Matz and Richard Elmore (Elmer). The production moved to Los Angeles and opened just days after Inge died by suicide. The original production in Phoenix was proclaimed the Best Play of 1972 by theArizona Republic,while the Los Angeles production brought awards to Nolte and helped introduce him to the film industry and catapult his subsequent film career.

The Last Padis one of three of Inge's plays that either haveopenlygay characters or address homosexuality directly.The Boy in the Basement,a one-act play written in the early 1950s, but not published until 1962, is his only play that addresses homosexuality overtly, while Archie inThe Last Padand Pinky inWhere's Daddy?(1966) are gay characters. Inge himself wascloseted.

Summer Brave,produced posthumously on Broadway in 1975, is Inge's reworking ofPicnic,as he noted:

It would be fair to say thatSummer Braveis the original version ofPicnic.I have written before that I never completely fulfilled my original intentions in writingPicnicbefore we went into production in 1953, and that I wrote what some considered a fortuitous ending in order to have a finished play to go into rehearsal. A couple of years afterPicnichad closed on Broadway, after the film version had made its success, I got the early version out of my files and began to rework it, just for my own satisfaction.Summer Braveis the result. I admit that I prefer it to the version of the play that was produced, but I don't necessarily expect others to agree.Summer Bravemight not have enjoyed any success on Broadway whatever, nor won any of the prizes that were bestowed uponPicnic.But I feel that it is more humorously true thanPicnic,and it does fulfill my original intentions.

About two dozen unperformed plays by Inge began receiving wider attention in 2009. They were available for viewing, but not copying or borrowing, in the collection of his papers at Independence Community College.One, a three-act play titledOff the Main Road,was read at the Flea Theater in New York City on May 11, 2009, withSigourney Weaver,Jay O. Sanders,andFrances Sternhagenin the cast. Another,The Killing,a one-act play, directed by José Angel Santana, and starringNeal Huffand J.J. Kandel, was performed at the 59E59 Theater, in New York City, through August 27, 2009. It is not yet known how many of these additional plays are complete. BesidesOff the Main RoadandThe Killing,six others were performed in April 2009 at the William Inge Theater Festival, in Independence, Kansas. These six were published inA Complex Evening: Six Short Plays by William Inge.

Television and film

In 1961, Inge won anAcademy AwardforSplendor in the Grass(Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen). He made his film debut as a clergyman in the film.John FrankenheimerdirectedAll Fall Down(1962), Inge's screenplay adaptation of the novel byJames Leo Herlihy.Inge was unhappy with changes made to his screenplay forBus Riley's Back in Town(1965), so at his insistence, the writing credit on the film is "Walter Gage".

During the 1961–62 television season, Inge was the script supervisor ofABC'sBus StopTV series, an adaptation of his play. WithMarilyn Maxwellas Grace Sherwood, the owner of Sherwood's Bus Station and Diner in a fictitiousColoradotown, the series presented dramas about the townspeople and travelers who passed through the diner in 25 one-hour episodes. The sixth episode, "Cherie", withTuesday Weld,Gary LockwoodandJoseph Cotten,was an abbreviated version of the originalBus Stopplay.Robert Altmandirected eight episodes, and one of these, "A Lion Walks Among Us", led to a Congressional hearing on violence. The episode, which starredFabian Forteas a maniacal axe-wielding serial killer, was adapted fromTom Wicker's novelTold By an Idiot.

In 1963 Inge met withCBSto consider a one-hour filmed television drama about a family in a Midwestern town. The series, with six continuing characters, had the tentative titleAll Over Town,and was planned for the 1964–65 season. Instead, Inge did a play,Out on the Outskirts of Town,which was seen on November 6, 1964, on NBC as part of theBob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatreseries. It starredAnne BancroftandJack Wardenwith Inge taking the role of the town doctor.NBC gave the play a repeat on June 25, 1965.

Novels

Inge wrote two novels, both set in the fictional town of Freedom, Kansas. InGood Luck, Miss Wyckoff(Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1970),high-school Latin teacher Evelyn Wyckoff loses her job because she has an affair with the school's black janitor. The novel's themes include spinsterhood, racism, sexual tension and public humiliation during the late 1950s. Polly Platt wrote the screenplay for the1979 film adaptationstarringAnne Heywoodas Evelyn Wyckoff. The film was released under several titles:The Shaming,The Sin,Secret YearningsandGood Luck, Miss Wyckoff.

My Son Is a Splendid Driver(Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1971)is an autobiographical novel that traces the Hansen family from 1919 into the second half of the 20th century. The novel received praise fromKirkus Reviews:

Mr. Inge's novel, told in the form of a memoir, is a little more extended thanGood Luck, Miss Wyckoffand though there's a slackening of structure and splintering of content towards the second half, the first part is immaculate in both design and focus. It features the early years of Joey, the narrator here, and there are lovely scenes, as clear as the summer sunlight, with his family and on visits to assorted relatives. The time lag between Joey and his older brother Jule—his mother's favorite, my son the splendid driver, and an attractive playboy of this midwestern world—will never be reconciled. Even long after Jule's early death from a wanton incidental. Here Act I breaks away from Act II, a whole psychic anatomy of Joey's years as a young man in compressed and fractured incidents—one replayed from Miss Wyckoff and one which seems unnecessary (his parents'syphilis). Thus Joey grows up impaired, never resolving his relationship with his absentee father or insufficiently loving mother, and ends up with his"aloneness like a corridor that has no end".Inge has told his story of life and death and all those spaces in between with a gentleness and probity which gives his novel a persistence few writers achieve.

During the early 1970s Inge lived in Los Angeles, where he taught playwriting at theUniversity of California, Irvine.His last several plays attracted little notice or critical acclaim, and he fell into a deep depression, convinced he would never be able to write well again.

Death and legacy

Inge died of suicide bycarbon monoxidepoisoning on June 10, 1973, at the Hollywood home he shared with his sister, Helene.He was 60 years old. Inge is buried at Mt. Hope Cemetery in his hometown ofIndependence, Kansas.

Inge has a star on theSt. Louis Walk of Fame.

Beginning with the premiere ofCome Back, Little Shebain 1950, Inge became wealthy from the success of his plays and movies. On the advice of his financial advisors, he began to buy works of contemporary art so he could reduce his taxes by donating them to museums. According to his biographer, “He bought only what he liked, but had excellent fortune in choosing what was going to become valuable...” [e.g. works byde Kooning,Pollock,andModigliani].Inge liked the modern art he bought because “in its abstractions and distortions”he saw “a reflection of the distorted times in which he...lived, the times he...tried to portray” in his written work.He donated a total of ten contemporary paintings to theNelson Galleryin Kansas City, Missouri.

Ablack box theateris named for William Inge in Murphy Hall at the University of Kansas.

Inge is a member of theAmerican Theater Hall of Fame,inducted posthumously in 1979.

Since 1982, Independence Community College'sWilliam Inge Center for the Artsin his hometown has sponsored the annual William Inge Theatre Festival to honor playwrights.The William Inge Collection at the college is the most extensive collection of Inge material, including 400 manuscripts, films, correspondence, theater programs, and other related items.

The March 2008 issue ofThe Brooklyn Railfeatured interviews by playwright Adam Kraar of former Inge House resident playwrightsMarcia Cebulska,Catherine Filloux,Caridad Svich,Lydia Stryk, andAlice Tuan,relating how Inge's life and work has influenced them.

Works

Plays

• 1950:Come Back, Little Sheba
• 1953:Picnic
• 1955:Bus Stop
• 1957:The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
• 1959:A Loss of Roses
• 1962:Summer Brave(a reworking ofPicnic)
• 1963:Natural Affection
• 1966:Where's Daddy?
• 1973:The Last Pad
• Off the Main Road

Short plays

• To Bobolink, for Her Spirit
• People in the Wind
• A Social Event
• The Boy in the Basement
• The Tiny Closet
• Memory of Summer
• Bus Riley's Back in Town
• The Rainy Afternoon
• The Mall
• An Incident at the Standish Arms
• The Strains of Triumph
• 1953:Glory in the Flower
• The Killing
• The Love Death
• The Silent Call
• Bad Breath
• Morning on the Beach
• Moving In
• A Murder

Film and TV

• 1952:Come Back Little Sheba
• 1955:Picnic
• 1956:Bus Stop
• 1960:The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
• 1961:Splendor in the Grass- Reverend Whitman (uncredited)
• 1963:All Fall Down
• 1964:Out on the Outskirts of Town(a reworking ofOff the Main Road)- Doctor (final appearance)
• 1965:Bus Riley's Back in Town(as Walter Gage)

Novels

• 1970:Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff
• 1971:My Son Is a Splendid Driver

Further reading

• Johnson, Jeff.William Inge and the Subversion of Gender: Rewriting Stereotypes in the Plays, Novels, and Screenplays.Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2005.
• Radavich, David. "William Inge's Dramatic Mindscape".South Dakota Review42:3 (Fall 2004): 49–69.
• Voss, Ralph F.A Life of William Inge: The Strains of Triumph.Lawrence, KS:University Press of Kansas,2000.ISBN978-0-7006-0442-5

Listen to

• Natural Affectionaudio scenes and interview

External links

• William Ingeat theInternet Broadway Database
• William Ingeat theInternet Off-Broadway Database
• William IngeatIMDb
• William Inge Center for the Arts,at Independence Community College, in Independence, Kansas.
• William Inge CollectionArchivedDecember 10, 2012, atarchive.todayat theKenneth Spencer Research Libraryat theUniversity of Kansas
• William Motter Inge CollectionatPittsburg State University
• William Inge Collectionat theHarry Ransom Center
• St. Louis Walk of FameArchivedApril 15, 2013, atarchive.today
• New York Public Library Blog about William Inge and Barbara Baxley