As a film critic, Agee made a name for himself as the author of prescient, elegant prose in TIME and THE NATION during the 1940s. In 1948, he gave up reviewing to co-write John Huston's "The African Queen" (1951) and to script on his own the bizarre cult favorite, Charles Laughton's "The Night of the Hunter" (1955).
The two-volume "Agee on Film"--the first part containing his acclaimed film criticism, the second his screenplays--was published posthumously in 1958 and 1960, respectively. "All the Way Home", Tad Mosel's Pulitzer Prize-winning stage adaptation of "A Death in the Family", was presented on Broadway in 1961 and later served as the basis for the film version in 1963.