Arthur Laurents

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Arthur Laurents
Gypsy
1977 Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay – The Turning Point
1984 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical – La Cage aux Folles
PartnerTom Hatcher (co. 1954; d. 2006)

Arthur Laurents (July 14, 1917 – May 5, 2011) was an American playwright, theatre director, film producer and screenwriter.

Golden Globe Award
.

After writing scripts for radio shows after college and then

Gypsy (1959), and Hallelujah, Baby! (1967), winning the Tony Award for Best Musical for the latter. He directed the musical La Cage aux Folles in 1983 and received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical
.

Laurents also worked as a screenwriter on

Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay for the Herbert Ross drama film The Turning Point
(1977).

Early life

Born Arthur Levine, Laurents was the son of middle-class Jewish parents, his father a lawyer and his mother a schoolteacher, who gave up her career when she married.

chorea as a child.[7]

His paternal grandparents were

Bar Mitzvah marked the end of Laurents's religious education and the beginning of his rejection of all fundamentalist religions,[8] although he continued to identify himself as Jewish.[9] However, late in life he admitted to having changed his last name from Levine to the less Jewish-sounding Laurents, "to get a job."[3]

After graduating from

Lux Radio Theater.[10] Laurents' career was interrupted when he was drafted into the U.S. Army in the middle of World War II. Through a series of clerical errors, he never saw battle, but instead was assigned to the U.S. Army Pictorial Service located in a film studio in Astoria, Queens, where he wrote training films and met, among others, George Cukor and William Holden. He later was reassigned to write plays for Armed Service Force Presents, a radio show that dramatized the contributions of all branches of the armed forces.[11]

Career

Theatre

Left to right:Harvey Fierstein, Jerry Herman, Arthur Laurents, creators of the musical La Cage Aux Folles, in front of the Palace theater where it is playing, 1983

According to John Clum, "Laurents was always a mirror of his times. Through his best work, one sees a staged history of leftist, gender, and gay politics in the decades after World War II."[12] After graduating from Cornell University in 1937, Laurents, who was gay, went to work as a writer for radio drama at CBS in New York. His military duties during World War II, which consisted of writing training films and radio scripts for Armed Service Force Presents, brought him into contact with some of the best film directors—distinguished director George Cukor directed his first script. Laurents's work in radio and film during World War II was an excellent apprenticeship for a budding playwright and screenwriter. He also had the good fortune to be based in New York City. His first stage play, Home of the Brave, was produced in 1945. The sale of the play to a film studio gave Laurents the entrée he needed to become a Hollywood screenwriter though he continued, with mixed success, to write plays. The most important of his early screenplays is his adaptation of Rope for Alfred Hitchcock.[13]

Soon after being discharged from the Army, Laurents met ballerina Nora Kaye, and the two became involved in an on-again, off-again romantic relationship. While Kaye was on tour with Fancy Free, Laurents continued to write for the radio but was becoming discontented with the medium. In 1962, Laurents directed I Can Get It for You Wholesale, which helped to turn then-unknown Barbra Streisand into a star. His next project was the stage musical Anyone Can Whistle, which he directed and for which he wrote the book, but it proved to be an infamous flop. He later had success with the musicals Hallelujah, Baby! (written for Lena Horne[14] but ultimately starring Leslie Uggams) and La Cage Aux Folles (1983), which he directed, however Nick & Nora was not successful.

Laurents in 2009

In 2008, Laurents directed a Broadway revival of Gypsy starring

Palace Theatre, Ben Brantley of The New York Times called the translations "an only partly successful experiment" and added, "Mr. Laurents has exchanged insolence for innocence and, as with most such bargains, there are dividends and losses."[16] The national tour (2011-2012) was directed by David Saint, who was Laurents' assistant director on the Broadway production. The Spanish lyrics and dialog were reduced from about 18% of the total to about 10%.[17]

Hollywood

Laurents' first Hollywood experience proved to be a frustrating disappointment. Director Anatole Litvak, unhappy with the script submitted by Frank Partos and Millen Brand for The Snake Pit (1948), hired Laurents to rewrite it. Partos and Brand later insisted the bulk of the shooting script was theirs, and produced carbon copies of many of the pages Laurents actually had written to bolster their claim. Having destroyed the original script and all his notes and rewritten pages after completing the project, Laurents had no way to prove most of the work was his, and the Writers Guild of America denied him screen credit. Brand later confessed he and Partos had copied scenes written by Laurents and apologized for his role in the deception. Four decades later, Laurents learned he was ineligible for WGA health benefits because he had failed to accumulate enough credits to qualify. He was short by one, the one he failed to get for The Snake Pit.[18]

Upon hearing

The Hays Office kept close tabs on his work, and the final script was so discreet that Laurents was unsure whether co-star James Stewart ever realized that his character was gay.[19] In later years, Hitchcock asked him to script both Torn Curtain (1966) and Topaz (1969), However, Laurents, in both cases unenthused by the material, declined the offers.[20]

Laurents also scripted

Bonjour Tristesse (1958). The Way We Were (1973), in which he incorporated many of his own experiences, particularly those with the HUAC, reunited him with Barbra Streisand, and The Turning Point (1977), inspired in part by his love for Nora Kaye, was directed by her husband Herbert Ross. The Fox animated feature film Anastasia (1997) was based in part on his screenplay of the live-action 1956 film of the same title.[21]

Blacklist

Because of a casual remark made by Russel Crouse, Laurents was called to Washington, D.C., to account for his political views.[22] He explained himself to the House Un-American Activities Committee, and his appearance had no obvious impact on his career, which at the time was primarily in the theatre. When the McCarran Internal Security Act, which prohibited individuals suspected of engaging in subversive activities from obtaining a passport, was passed in 1950, Laurents and Granger immediately applied for and received passports and departed for Paris with Harold Clurman and his wife Stella Adler. Laurents and Granger remained abroad, traveling throughout Europe and northern Africa, for about 18 months.[23]

Years earlier, Laurents and

Robert E. Lee.[24][25] When Robbins approached Paramount Pictures
about directing a screen version, the studio agreed as long as Laurents was not part of the package.

It was only then that Laurents learned he officially had been

Ile de France. While on board, he received a cable from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer offering him a screenwriting assignment. The blacklisting had ended.[26]

Memoirs

Laurents wrote Original Story By Arthur Laurents: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood, published in 2000. In it, he discusses his lengthy career and his many gay affairs and long-term relationships, including those with

Beverly Hills men's clothing store Hatcher was managing at the time. The couple remained together for 52 years until Hatcher's death on October 26, 2006.[27]

Laurents wrote Mainly on Directing: Gypsy, West Side Story and Other Musicals, published in 2009, in which he discussed musicals he directed and the work of other directors he admired.

His last memoir titled The Rest of the Story was published posthumously in September 2012.

Death

Laurents died from complications of pneumonia at his home in Manhattan on May 5, 2011, aged 93.[28] Following a long tradition, Broadway theatre lights were dimmed at 8 p.m. on May 6, 2011, for one minute in his memory.[29] His ashes were buried alongside those of Tom Hatcher in a memorial bench in Quogue, Long Island, New York.[1]

Work

Writing

Musicals
Novels
  • Harper & Row
    (New York City)
  • OCLC 11014907
Plays

Directing

Additional credits

  • Anna Lucasta (screenwriter)
  • A Clearing in the Woods (playwright)
  • Invitation to a March (playwright, director)
  • The Madwoman of Central Park West (playwright, director)
  • My Good Name (playwright)
  • Jolson Sings Again (playwright)
  • The Enclave (playwright, director)
  • Radical Mystique (playwright, director)
  • Big Potato (playwright)
  • Two Lives (playwright)
  • My Good Name (playwright)
  • Claudia Lazlo (playwright)
  • Attacks on the Heart (playwright)
  • 2 Lives (playwright)
  • New Year's Eve (playwright)
  • Come Back, Come Back, Wherever You Are (playwright, director)
  • Caught (screenwriter)
  • Rope (screenwriter)

Accolades

Year Award Category Work Result Ref.
1977 Academy Awards Best Picture The Turning Point Nominated [30]
Best Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen Nominated
1957 British Academy Film Awards Best British Screenplay Anastasia Nominated [31]
1958
Bonjour Tristesse
 		Nominated [32]
1975 Drama Desk Awards Outstanding Director of a Musical Gypsy Won [33]
1948 Edgar Allan Poe Awards Best Motion Picture Rope Nominated [34]
1977 Golden Globe Awards Best Screenplay – Motion Picture The Turning Point Nominated [35]
1999 National Board of Review Awards Best Screenplay (for career achievement) — Won [36]
1958 Tony Awards Best Musical West Side Story Nominated [37]
1960 Gypsy Nominated [38]
1968 Hallelujah, Baby! Won [39]
1975 Best Direction of a Musical Gypsy Nominated [40]
1984 La Cage aux Folles Won [41]
2008 Gypsy Nominated [42]
1973 Writers Guild of America Awards Best Drama – Written Directly for the Screen The Way We Were Nominated [43]
1977 The Turning Point Won

Honors A new award was established in 2010, The Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award. This is awarded annually "for an un-produced, full-length play of social relevance by an emerging American playwright." The Laurents/Hatcher Foundation will give $50,000 to the writer with a grant of $100,000 towards production costs at a nonprofit theatre. The first award will be given in 2011.[44]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b John M. Clum. The Works of Arthur Laurents: Politics, Love, and Betrayal. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2014.
  2. ^ "Obituaries: Arthur Laurents". The Daily Telegraph. May 6, 2011.
  3. ^ a b "When You’re a Shark You’re a Shark All the Way". New York.
  4. ^ Hawtree, Christopher (May 6, 2011). "Arthur Laurents obituary: Playwright and screenwriter who wrote the book for West Side Story". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 August 2012.
  5. Daily News
    .
  6. ^ Arnold, Laurence (May 5, 2011). "Arthur Laurents, Writer of 'West Side Story,' 'Gypsy' Scripts, Dies at 93". Bloomberg News.
  7. ISBN 1-55783-467-9
    , pp. 10–11, 34–35.
  8. ISBN 0-375-40055-9
    , pp. 6–7.
  9. ^ Laurents, p. 133.
  10. ^ Laurents, pp. 12–13.
  11. ^ Laurents, pp. 22–28.
  12. ISBN 1604978848
  13. ^ Clum, John, "The Works of Arthur Laurents: Politics, Love, and Betrayal"
  14. ^ Laurents, p. 93.
  15. ^ Jones, Kenneth (July 16, 2008). "'West Side Story', This Time With Bilingual Approach, Will Return to Broadway in February 2009" Archived 2008-09-07 at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.
  16. ^ Brantley, Ben (March 20, 2009). "Our Gangs". The New York Times.
  17. Seattle Times
    .
  18. ^ Laurents, pp. 106–120.
  19. ^ Laurents, pp. 115–116, 124–131.
  20. ^ Laurents, p. 136.
  21. ^ ""West Side Story Author Arthur Laurents Dies, 93" Archived July 9, 2012, at archive.today forum.bcdb.com. May 4, 2011.
  22. ^ Laurents, p. 29.
  23. ^ Laurents, pp. 165–190.
  24. ISBN 0-7679-0420-6
    .
  25. ^ "'Look Ma, I'm Dancin' listing". Internet Broadway Database.
  26. ^ Laurents, pp. 286–289.
  27. ^ "Backstage.com obituary, November 1, 2006". Backstage.
  28. ^ Berkvist, Robert (May 5, 2011). "Arthur Laurents, Playwright and Director on Broadway, Dies at 93". The New York Times.
  29. ^ Jones, Kenneth (May 6, 2011). "Broadway Lights Will Dim May 6 in Memory of Arthur Laurents" Archived October 21, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.
  30. ^ "The 50th Academy Awards (1978) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 2011-10-05.
  31. BAFTA
    . 1958. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
  32. BAFTA
    . 1959. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
  33. ^ "Nominees and Recipients – 1975 Awards". dramadesk.org. Drama Desk Awards. Retrieved May 15, 2021.
  34. ^ "Category List – Best Motion Picture". Edgar Awards. Retrieved August 15, 2021.
  35. HFPA
    . Retrieved July 5, 2021.
  36. ^ "1999 Award Winners". National Board of Review. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
  37. ^ "1958 Tony Awards". Tony Awards. Retrieved February 20, 2022.
  38. ^ "1960 Tony Awards". Tony Awards. Retrieved February 20, 2022.
  39. ^ "1968 Tony Awards". Tony Awards. Retrieved February 20, 2022.
  40. ^ "1975 Tony Awards". Tony Awards. Retrieved February 20, 2022.
  41. ^ "1984 Tony Awards". Tony Awards. Retrieved February 20, 2022.
  42. ^ "2008 Tony Awards". Tony Awards. Retrieved February 20, 2022.
  43. ^ "Awards Winners". wga.org. Writers Guild of America. Archived from the original on 2012-12-05. Retrieved 2010-06-06.
  44. ^ Gans, Andrew (June 3, 2010). "New Award Named for Arthur Laurents and His Partner, the Late Tom Hatcher" Archived June 5, 2010, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.

Further reading

External links

Archives at
LocationMusic Division, Library of Congress
SourceArthur Laurents Papers, circa 1900-2011
How to use archival material
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