CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – Tad Mosel, television screenwriter and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “All the Way Home,” has died at the age of 86.

Mosel died Sunday at a hospice in Concord, N.H., said a longtime friend, Ted Walch.

Mosel, who had suffered a stroke three years ago, wrote every day up until recently, Walch said, finishing a play about trying to reconnect with people from one’s past.

“In a great exchange with his doctor about three weeks ago, when Tad was very irritated that he hadn’t yet died, that it was taking so long, the doctor said to him, ‘Dying is harder than writing a play, and Tad responded, ‘Not really,’ ” Walch said.

Mosel wrote TV screenplays beginning in the late 1940s and into much of the ’50s, a period often called the Golden Age of television. Among the shows he worked on were “Playhouse 90,” “Studio One” and “Producers’ Showcase.”

In November 1960, “All the Way Home,” Mosel’s stage adaptation of James Agee’s autobiographical novel “A Death in the Family,” opened on Broadway to critical acclaim, running for more than 300 performances and winning the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for drama.

The production, directed by Arthur Penn, featured Colleen Dewhurst, Lillian Gish and Arthur Hill. Set in 1915, it chronicled the struggles of a Tennessee family after the father is killed in an auto accident.

“Mr. Mosel has put together “All the Way Home’ with tact and understanding …,” The New York Times critic wrote. “He has achieved what Agee … would have approved: he has kept the story unvarnished and the people true.”

Mosel also wrote several movies including “Dear Heart” (1964), starring Glenn Ford and Geraldine Page, and “Up the Down Staircase” (1967), based on the Bel Kaufman best seller about big-city schools, which starred Sandy Dennis.

Mosel had been living in a retirement home in Concord since 1991, where he would give talks on subjects ranging from song lyrics to children’s literature, Walch said. A local theater group also performed “All the Way Home” in his honor.

He was born George Ault Mosel Jr. in 1922 in Steubenville, Ohio; the family moved to New Rochelle, N.Y., when he was 14. He attended Amherst College but left during World War II to join the Army. After the war, he returned to Amherst and then went to the Yale School of Drama and Columbia University before embarking on a writing career.

He is survived by a nephew.

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