Bus Stop By William Inge Views
During the 1961–62 television season, Inge was the script supervisor of ABC's Bus Stop TV series, an adaptation of his play. With Marilyn Maxwell as Grace Sherwood, the owner of Sherwood's Bus Station and Diner in a fictitious Colorado town, the series presented dramas about the townspeople and travelers who passed through the diner in 25 hour-long episodes. The sixth episode, Cherie , with Tuesday Weld, Gary Lockwood and Joseph Cotten, was an abbreviated version of the original Bus Stop play. Robert Altman directed eight episodes, and one of these, A Lion Walks Among Us , led to a Congressional hearing on violence. The episode, which starred Fabian as a maniacal axe-wielding serial killer, was adapted from Tom Wicker's novel Told By an Idiot.[7]
Most of William Inge's plays are a mixture of comedy and drama. Bus Stop is no different. It premiered on Broadway in 1955, just on the heels of Inge's first Broadway success, Picnic. In 1956, Bus Stop was brought to the silver screen, starring Marilyn Monroe in the role of Cherie.The Plot:Bus Stop takes place inside a street-corner restaurant in a small Kansas town about thirty miles west of Kansas City. Due to icy conditions, an inter-state bus is forced to stop for the night. One by one, the bus passengers are introduced, each with their own quirks and conflicts.
In this warm and affecting hit comedic drama, iconic playwright William Inge examines some of the many faces of love. Written in 1955 by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and University of Kansas graduate, Bus Stop is about a group of strangers traveling by bus. Stranded in a rural Kansas diner during a freak snowstorm, the compelling narrative observes eight characters as they experience frustration, tears and laughter, examine their own motivations and forge unlikely romantic connections in a single night. Performed by the celebrated Montana Repertory Theatre and immortalized in the 1956 film featuring Marilyn Monroe, Bus Stop is an enduring work written by an American master and Kansas native.
For many of us who grew to awareness in the 1950s, Bus Stop is a classic American story. Marilyn Monroe rs"s entrance in the film version is imbedded in our consciousness. William Inge's biggest hit and his only out-and-out comedy, Bus Stop truly exemplifies America's postwar awakening and introduces characters that have since become new cultural icons. Inge's American masterpiece still speaks to us in the new century. Rich with character and plot and the message that "we're all in this together," Bus Stop shows that our lives are truly intertwined; we affect each other in subtle and profound ways as we go about our daily lives. Few playwrights are able to make the everyday universal and the commonplace the stuff of great theatre. Inge is one of these playwrights.
Bus Stop By William Inge Images
