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Picnic | Author Biography

William Inge, born May 3, 1913, was the fifth and last child of Maude and Luther Inge. He was raised in Independence, Kansas, by his mother; his father was a salesman and was rarely at home. After graduating from the University of Kansas in 1935, Inge attended the George Peabody College for Teachers but left before completing a master of arts degree. After a brief period teaching English at a local high school, Inge returned to college to complete his master's program. He also worked as a drama critic, and it was during this period that he met renowned playwright Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire), who encouraged him to write. Inge completed his first play that year, and with the help of Williams, Farther off from Heaven was produced two years later, in 1947.

Plagued by depression and substance dependencies, Inge joined Alcoholics Anonymous in 1948, having already begun Freudian analysis in an attempt to alleviate his psychological problems. In 1949, he wrote Come Back, Little Sheba, which was produced on Broadway in 1950 and earned Inge the George Jean Nathan and Theatre Time Awards. Three years later, Inge scored another hit with Picnic, which won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama the Outer Circle Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and the Donaldson Award. Inge had two more hits on Broadway in quick succession: Bus Stop (1955) and The Dark At the Top of the Stairs (1957; an earlier version was staged in 1947). After this success, Inge's next plays, A Loss of Roses (1959), Natural Affection (1963), and Where's Daddy? (1965) were commercial failures, each closing after only a few performances.

Despite these theatrical failures, Inge had great success with his 1961 foray into screen writing. Splender in the Grass earned him the Academy Award for best original screenplay in 1961. Following this success, he moved to Los Angeles to concentrate on cinematic writing, but he never repeated his early success. Inge was deeply affected by negative reviews of his work. He struggled with depression and alcoholism much of his life. Many of his plays focus on the complexity of family relationships and deal with characters who struggle with failed expectations, depression, and addiction. His death in 1973 from carbon monoxide poisoning was ruled a suicide.