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COPYRIGHT 2008 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
William Inge was sixty years old when he committed suicide, in Los Angeles, on June 10, 1973. For the first half of his life, Inge, who was born in Independence, Kansas, had stayed true to his Bible Belt roots and put off becoming an artist. After graduating from the University of Kansas and completing a teaching degree, he had taught at Stephens College for Women, in Columbia, Missouri, for five years. Then, in 1943, in what must have been a nerve-racking leap of faith for the timid, alcoholic, and largely closeted gay man, he applied for and got a job as a drama critic for the St. Louis Star-Times. At the paper, Inge was sometimes required to write features. One such assignment led to his meeting--and eventually perhaps sleeping with--a young writer named Tennessee Williams. Inge saw Williams's 1944 play, "The Glass Menagerie," in Chicago, and it had a profound effect on his ambitions. Williams recalled:
Bill came up one week end to see the play. . . . After the show, we walked back to my hotel in the Loop of Chicago, and on the way he suddenly confided to me, with characteristic simplicity and directness, that being a successful playwright was what he most wanted in the world for...
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