Author, Playwright. His fame rests on his novel "Mister Roberts" (1946) and its classic stage (1948) and screen (1955) adaptations. The hero of the story, Lt. Douglas Roberts, is a young officer aboard the USS Reluctant, a Navy cargo ship in the South Pacific backwater during the final months of World War II. He yearns for a battle assignment but instead must defend his crew against the petty tyranny of the ship's commander, and the maddening dullness of their duties. Filled with broad humor, pathos, and colorful supporting characters (the obnoxious Captain, philosophical Doc, and scheming, feckless Ensign Pulver), "Mister Roberts" proved one of the most popular tales to emerge from the war years. Heggen's story captures a universal feeling of restlessness felt by many young enlistees, caught in an interminably long war. Thomas Orlo Heggen was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, a small town on the Des Moines River. From his early teens he dreamed of writing something fine, influenced by Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his cousin, novelist Wallace Stegner. Heggen was an excellent student and avid reader, skipping two grades before high school. His father was unable to find work for most of his childhood, requiring frequent moves between home rentals. At the height of the Dust Bowl, when Heggen was in high school, the family relocated to Oklahoma City where his father found work. After graduating from the University of Minnesota with a degree in journalism, Heggen moved to White Plains, New York to work as an assistant editor for Reader's Digest. He joined the US Navy immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor and was commissioned a lieutenant in August 1942. Heggen served on five ships in four years, participating in the naval campaigns at Guam, Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. His ships were: the USS South Dakota, the USS Salinas, USS Agawam, USS Rotanin and USS Virgo. The South Dakota was a battleship. The Salinas was a replenishment oiler. The Agawam was a tanker, delivering gasoline to warships. The Rotanen delivered troops and equipment in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater. Heggen's last ship, the USS Virgo, was an attack cargo ship. He came aboard in July 1944. She carried troops, ammunition and cargo, delivering troops to battles at Guam and Palau Islands. In February 1945 she replenished destroyers at Iwo Jima. From there she joined the battle at Okinawa where the crew was frequently called to quarters for air alerts and kamikaze attacks. The Japanese launched 2,000 suicide attacks against the invasion fleet and 240,000 people were killed at Okinawa. (The National WWII Museum) Heggen began using prescription medication for insomnia during his Navy years. He served as Assistant Communications Officer, often responsible for deck watches, on rotating shifts.

During his 14 months aboard the Virgo, Heggen wrote a collection of vignettes about daily life on the ship, which he described as sailing "from Tedium to Apathy and back again, with an occasional side trip to Monotony". Like his fictional alter ego Doug Roberts, he felt "left out" of the war and butted heads with his commander, a coarse martinet who repeatedly denied his requests for transfer to a destroyer. Following his discharge in December 1945, he moved to New York and reworked the material into a loosely structured novel, adding an introductory chapter. Heggen's editor at Houghton-Mifflin suggested changing the novel's title from "The Iron-Bound Bucket" to "Mister Roberts" and Heggen agreed. It sold over 1 million copies and made Heggen the toast of the New York literary scene, followed by a lucrative offer to adapt the book for the Broadway stage. Heggen worked with Broadway director-producer Joshua Logan to write the play version of "Mister Roberts". They become close friends as well as collaborators. "Mister Roberts" opened at Broadway's Alvin Theater in February 1948. With a now legendary performance by Henry Fonda in the title role, the 1948 stage version of "Mister Roberts" was a smash. Heggen and Logan shared the first Tony Award presented for Best Play and the original production ran for 1,157 performances. It was made into an Oscar-winning 1955 film, starring Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell, and Jack Lemmon. Heggen would not live to see it. At 29, Heggen drowned in his bathtub. His death was ruled a probable suicide, though he left no note and those close to him insisted it was an accident. The novel version of "Mister Roberts" has slipped in and out of print since then but the play is still revived. It spawned the movie sequel "Ensign Pulver" (1964) and a television series (1965), and in 1984 was performed live on a primetime NBC broadcast, starring Robert Hays, Charles Durning, and Kevin Bacon. John Leggett's "Ross and Tom: Two American Tragedies" (1974, reissued in 2000) is a novelized study of Heggen and a similarly ill-fated author, Ross Lockridge ("Raintree County").