The Desperate Hours

Joseph Arnold Hayes was born on Aug. 2, 1918, in Indianapolis, the son of a furniture factory worker. He considered joining the priesthood, but after a brief, unhappy stint in a seminary, went to Indiana University. After graduating, he left for New York, where he wrote for radio and television before his play “Leaf and Bough” was produced on Broadway in 1949. 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.