JOSEPH HAYES
Author/Producer

    Seldom has a writer enjoyed the critical and commercial success of a first full length novel as has Mr. Hayes with "The Desperate Hours." Random House accepted it overnight and showed great literary perception in doing so as it was selected by two major book clubs and was on the best seller lists for many months; and Hollywood filmed it at the same time the Broadway production was being prepared, although the screen version will be held until 1956 for release. Mr. Hayes, who has been free-lance writing for nearly ten years, has by no means limited his activites to this art, however. His life story, which reads like a novel itself, began in Indianapolis and encompasses two years in a monastery while still in his teens, an extended hitch hiking tour of the South, pushing wheel chairs at the Dallas Fair, managing a small ice house and doing farm and warehouse work. After his marriage, he and his wife, Marrijane, worked their ways though a midwestern university by editing a drama magazine and typing and editing these. In 1941 they moved to New York where he was employed for two years in the editorial department of a play publishing house. He and his family--including three sons--now live in Connecticut. Mr. Hayes' only previous contribution to Broadway was "Leaf and Bough" in 1949, although many of his plays have been published and performed outside of New York.

Mr. Hayes and son Gregory celebrate the success of "The Desperate Hours" in juvenile style.