William Inge

William Inge (1913-1973), American playwright. William Motter Inge was born in Independence, Kansas, and educated at the University of Kansas. He wrote four Broadway hits: Come Back, Little Sheba (1950); Picnic (1953), which won both the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1953; Bus Stop (1955); and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957). All were later adapted as films. He received an Academy Award in 1961 for best original screenplay for Splendor in the Grass (1961). His later Broadway productions—A Loss of Roses (1959), Natural Affection (1963), and Where's Daddy (1966)—were less successful. He also wrote a number of one-act plays and two novels, Good Luck, Miss Wychoff (1970) and My Son Is a Splendid Driver (1971). Inge's work offers a probing but tender look into the depths of emotion beneath the surface of the unfulfilled lives of the people in the small towns of his native Midwest.