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Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men (1946)
Robert Penn Warren wrote All the King's Men while teaching at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. The highly controversial Louisiana governor, Huey P. Long, was said to have been the inspiration for Warren's central character, Willie Stark. Like Long, Stark wields enormous power and he uses that power, to strong-arm any and all who get in his way. Long was assassinated in the state Capitol building, as is Stark in the novel. The novel became a successful movie that won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1950. Warren based his title on the nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty": "All the king's horses and all the king's men / Couldn't put Humpty together again." Also known as a poet, Warren served as U.S. Poet Laureate, 1944−1945, and won Pulitzer Prizes for his poetry in 1958 and 1979. |