Larry L. King dies

Larry L. King, a popular author who wrote the Broadway musical “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," has died. He was 83.

King was from Texas and often critiqued rural American culture in Playboy, Harper's, Texas Monthly and other publications, the New York Times reported.

“There are ‘good’ people, yes, who might properly answer to the appellation ‘redneck,’ ” he wrote in Texas Monthly in 1974, “…But even among a high percentage of these salts-of-the-earth lives a terrible reluctance toward even modest passes at social justice, a suspicious regard of the mind as an instrument of worth, a view of the world extending little further than the ends of their own noses and only a vague notion that they are small quills writing a large history."

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King wrote about a Chicken Ranch brothel in 1974 for Playboy, which then caught the attention of Texas actor Peter Masterson. Together, they turned the article into the "Whorehouse" play, which went on to become an extremely popular, Tony award-nominated musical, the Associated Press reported. 

The play was later adapted into a movie starring Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds. 

King wrote a number of books. His 1971 memoir "Confessions of a White Racist" was nominated for a National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times reported.