Monday, September 25, 2006

Joseph Hayes, R. I. P.

Joseph Hayes, 88, Author of ‘The Desperate Hours,’ Dies - New York Times: "Joseph Hayes, who wrote the novel “The Desperate Hours,” which he later turned into a Tony Award-winning play and a movie, died on Sept. 11 in St. Augustine, Fla., where he lived. He was 88.

Mr. Hayes died in a nursing home of complications from Alzheimer’s disease, said his son Daniel Hayes.

Though Mr. Hayes had already made it to Broadway in 1949 with a short-lived play, “Leaf and Bough,” he was catapulted to fame with “The Desperate Hours,” his 1954 suspense novel about a suburban family taken hostage at home by three escaped convicts. In his review in The New York Times, the critic Orville Prescott called it “an expert study of the agonizing dilemma of a group of sharply delineated and deeply understood characters.”

Immediately after the book’s debut, Mr. Hayes joined with an actor-turned-producer, Howard Erskine, to bring the theatrical version to Broadway. Their production, based on Mr. Hayes’s adaptation and starring a young Paul Newman, won the 1955 Tony Award for best play. Mr. Hayes also developed the novel into a screenplay; the movie, directed by William Wyler, with Humphrey Bogart in the role that Mr. Newman originated and Fredric March as the homeowner, won an Edgar Award in 1956. The film was remade in 1990 by Michael Cimino."

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