William Inge’s Bus Stop was a Broadway show before Marilyn starred in the 1956 movie adaptation. The play is set entirely in Grace’s Diner and features additional characters and scenes. A staged reading will be held at the Everyman Theatre in Rockport, Maine on March 15, as part of a ‘Forgotten Classics’ series – with AnnMarie Lowerre playing Cherie.
“In 1955, as Picnic was being released in movie theatres, Inge brought his new play Bus Stop to the stage. A romantic comedy, it tells the story of a no-talent, down-on-her-luck nightclub singer, and a cowboy who falls in love with her at first sight. Again, audiences and critics loved it. It ran on Broadway for 478 performances. Writing in the New York Herald-Tribune, Walter Kerr said Inge had written ‘the best play we’ve had all season.’ And Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times said, ‘Having written a wonderful play two years ago, William Inge has written a better one. The performance is glorious.’ Twentieth Century-Fox bought the screen rights and turned it into a smash hit, with Marilyn Monroe as the nightclub singer Cherie and a newcomer named Don Murray as ‘Beau’ Decker, the cowboy.”
– From The Bad and the Beautiful: A Chronicle of Hollywood in the Fifties by Sam Kashner & Jennifer MacNair
The Marilyn Report 