Darkness in the Heartland

Abstract

With a recommendation from Tennessee Williams, an early play of William (“Bill”) Inge reached Audrey Wood’s desk in 1945. Audrey’s client had returned from the Chicago tryout of The Glass Menagerie in late 1944 to his family home in St. Louis and consented to an interview with a local reporter originally from Independence, Kansas. The playwright and the journalist struck up an intense friendship (some allude to a brief sexual affair) based on mutual interests and shared life-styles.² Within a month, Inge attended the Chicago opening of Williams’s new play and was inspired to pursue playwriting as a career.³

In the theater, what seems a rational solution often does not apply to the emotional problems of creative people.¹