Movie Theater Lobby CardReading the works of William Inge, one quickly suspects the famous playwright found small town life to be repressive and stifling.
The truth is more complex, though, as Inge also recognized his own rural background was a profound source of inspiration. "I've often wondered how people raised in our great cities ever develop any knowledge of humankind," he once said, explaining, "People who grow up in small towns get to know each other so much more closely than they do in cities." Born and raised in the town of Independence in southeastern Kansas, Inge had a lifelong interest in theatre. After earning a degree in speech and drama from the University of Kansas, he worked odd jobs and attended graduate school before securing a post as drama critic with a St. Louis newspaper. Meeting Tennessee Williams in the late 1940s inspired Inge to write plays himself. A string of successes soon followed, including Come Back, Little Sheba (1950), Picnic (1952), Bus Stop (1955) and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957). Picnic earned a Pulitzer Prize and other prestigious awards. Inge had been a successful playwright for over a decade when he wrote the screenplay for Splendor in the Grass (1961). Although he had earlier adapted the play Bus Stop into a movie which starred Marilyn Monroe, Splendor was Inge's first work written especially for the screen. The film is set in a small southeast Kansas town, not unlike Independence, in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Its major themes are the class differences and sexual repression that pry apart teenage lovers played by Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty. The movie was Beatty's screen debut. Wood received a Best Actress nomination for her performance but Inge won the film's only Academy Award, for Best Original Story and Screenplay. This Splendor in the Grass lobby card (pictured above) was purchased by the Kansas Museum of History for its collections. Lobby cards were standard fare in promotional packages studios sent movie theaters to advertise coming attractions. They were designed to be posted in theatre lobbies, thus the name. Typically measuring 11 inches by 14 inches, lobby cards were packaged in sets that usually included a title card plus a series of stills from the film. This particular placard is numbered "3" at the center bottom, indicating its number in the original set. Lobby cards were never printed for the general public; theatres were instructed to return them but movie house owners usually just discarded them after a film's run. This lobby card is captioned as follows: Elia Kazan's Production of Splendor in the Grass Starring Natalie Wood with Lead actors Wood and Beatty are not pictured on this particular card, which instead depicts Pat Hingle and Barbara Loden playing Beatty's father and sister, respectively. Although not identified in the credits, screenwriter William Inge played the role of reverend at a Sunday church service in the film. Splendor in the Grass was the last of Inge's popular successes. A string of failures over the next decade caused him to doubt his writing abilities, and he sank into a deep depression. Inge took his own life on June 10, 1973, in California. For more information on Inge's career, see the William Inge Collection at the Axe Library, Pittsburg State University.
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