Arthur Laurents' Life Was Full of Legends
by David Patrick Stearns
MAY 9, 2011 TAGS:
He's up there with The Merm.
Such is the benediction accorded to great personalities of the Broadway stage, and none more deserving than playwright/director Arthur Laurents, who died at age 93 on Thursday. He gave Ethel Merman her finest hour. Much the same could also be said for Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone, the actresses who followed her in the musical Gypsy, one of many great works for stage and screen Laurents wrote. His bi-coastal career began with Home of the Brave on Broadway in 1945 and ended in 2009 with a revival of Gypsy and the premieres of two new plays. His life was full of legends. He collaborated with them (Leonard Bernstein in West Side Story), discovered them (Barbra Streisand in I Can Get it For You Wholesale) and either quit or was fired by so many others that it's a wonder he has as many credits as he does. Or that so many projects became iconic.
Gypsy is perhaps the greatest musical of Broadway history. But Laurents had little good to say about his films, especially the best known, The Way We Were (1973). Toughened by studio-era Hollywood, he was also blacklisted as a political subversive in the 1950s. He never informed or recanted - nor did he hide his homosexuality, even when in a longtime partnership with film star Farley Granger. Though Laurents never created a masterpiece on his own, he enabled many of them to happen -- Gypsy (1959), West Side Story (1957). Often the scenes he wrote were subsumed by the songs they inspired (such as "A Boy Like That"). Plays such as his The Time of the Cuckoo (1952) aren't revived today, but they echo in the loosely-adapted, fondly remembered Katharine Hepburn vehicle Summertime or the cult Richard Rodgers/Stephen Sondheim musical "Do I Hear a Waltz?"
Laurents’ personal life was a more consistent success: He had the same partner over 52 years, Tom Hatcher, who walked away from a possible film career to be with Laurents. Hatcher, who died in 2006, inspired Laurents to clean up his life in time for some of his greatest successes, including his direction of the 1983 musical La Cage aux Folles, which reportedly required much sober efficiency during a disorganized out-of-town tryout. His was an enviable life - filled with conflict of the most interesting sort.
Though the Brooklyn-born Laurents (real name: Levine) disparaged his years at Cornell University, they exposed him to people and thinking he used creatively, especially in The Way We Were. His service in the South Pacific in World War II yielded Home of the Brave, about anti-Semitism in the armed forces. Migrating to Hollywood, the untried Laurents landed interesting assignments, such as an uncredited salvage job on the 1948 expose on mental illness, The Snake Pit. It brought him widespread attention within the film industry (though he thought Olivia de Havilland's much-praised performance barely adequate). For Alfred Hitchcock, he wrote Rope (1948), about two gay male characters (though they're never identified as such), one played by Granger. Blacklisted for associations with Marxist organizations, Laurents found his film career on hiatus, until 1956’s Anastasia. His screenplay for The Turning Point (1977) and direction of La Cage aux Folles were two of his last big mainstream successes. Following the failure of the big-budget Broadway musical Nick & Nora (1991), Laurents directed revivals of his famous works, and returned to writing plays, most notably Jolson Sings Again (1992), The Radical Mystique (1995), A Good Name (1997), Attacks on the Heart (2003), New Year's Eve and Come Back, Come Back, Wherever You Are, both in 2009.
Nearly every project, if one is to believe his autobiography, had a minimum of three significant betrayals, even more 180-degree reversals and plenty of severed alliances. Most of his close friends he cut off at some point. During the troubled Nick & Nora (which was the Spider Man musical of its time), Laurents barred the songwriters from the theater under the belief that only he could salvage the show. He blacklisted Lupone from his musicals for years because she turned down Jolson Sings Again.
Then again, his subject matter was rarely easy. Jolson Sings Again refers to the actor Larry Parks, who played Jolson onscreen and was a duplicitous finger-pointer. In The Way We Were, the pivotal marriage breakup between the Streisand and Redford characters wasn't because of a momentary infidelity - as the film's final cut implies. In Laurents' version Streisand becomes blacklisted; only by divorcing her can Redford save his career as a Hollywood writer. Laurents’ version typically offers a more powerful plot twist, but it is one that would've rendered Redford's character irredeemable.
As much as that McCarthy era haunted him, he viewed its aftermath with great nuance. Laurents worked with Jerome Robbins, an informer, because they had a pre-McCarthy friendship. Had he not, the world might not have had as great a Gypsy. Also, when Robbins choreographed “All I Need is the Girl,” Laurents, filling in for a missing dancer, got to participate directly in his process.
Collaborators like Robbins were more than glamorous; some like Ethel Merman kept him grounded. They all helped Laurents stay creatively renewed – he insisted he never repeated himself – which explains his longevity as a writer and director. He was open to the unexpected. Act I of West Side Story ends with two freshly-murdered bodies onstage, which was revolutionary in the 1950s and can shock the audience today. Spectacularly unnerving is the end of Gypsy with an extended musical mad scene in which the pushy stage mother, abandoned by the children she helped become famous, sings her semi-coherent frustration to an empty theater. Most surprising was his willingness to revise his masterpieces. In 2007, still grieving from Hatcher's death, Laurents directed LuPone (no longer on his personal blacklist) in Gypsy, a revival Hatcher had insisted he do. At first Laurents wanted to follow the 1989 production starring Tyne Daly; he was wary of messing with success. LuPone staged a gentle intervention. Laurents gave his actors the freedom to rediscover his greatest work, and experienced creative salvation of his own. The revival was a triumph. "Arthur's transformation was as speedy as it was remarkable.... He grew younger by the day. I could see the light in his eyes ... and what happened was this miracle," LuPone recalled in Patti LuPone, A Memoir: "A whole new play emerged in Arthur's eyes.... If you chose a life on the stage, my wish for you is the kind of experience I had - the kind of experience we all had - in this show."
David Patrick Stearns is classical music critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer and former theater critic for USA Today.
Such is the benediction accorded to great personalities of the Broadway stage, and none more deserving than playwright/director Arthur Laurents, who died at age 93 on Thursday. He gave Ethel Merman her finest hour. Much the same could also be said for Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone, the actresses who followed her in the musical Gypsy, one of many great works for stage and screen Laurents wrote. His bi-coastal career began with Home of the Brave on Broadway in 1945 and ended in 2009 with a revival of Gypsy and the premieres of two new plays. His life was full of legends. He collaborated with them (Leonard Bernstein in West Side Story), discovered them (Barbra Streisand in I Can Get it For You Wholesale) and either quit or was fired by so many others that it's a wonder he has as many credits as he does. Or that so many projects became iconic.
Gypsy is perhaps the greatest musical of Broadway history. But Laurents had little good to say about his films, especially the best known, The Way We Were (1973). Toughened by studio-era Hollywood, he was also blacklisted as a political subversive in the 1950s. He never informed or recanted - nor did he hide his homosexuality, even when in a longtime partnership with film star Farley Granger. Though Laurents never created a masterpiece on his own, he enabled many of them to happen -- Gypsy (1959), West Side Story (1957). Often the scenes he wrote were subsumed by the songs they inspired (such as "A Boy Like That"). Plays such as his The Time of the Cuckoo (1952) aren't revived today, but they echo in the loosely-adapted, fondly remembered Katharine Hepburn vehicle Summertime or the cult Richard Rodgers/Stephen Sondheim musical "Do I Hear a Waltz?"Laurents’ personal life was a more consistent success: He had the same partner over 52 years, Tom Hatcher, who walked away from a possible film career to be with Laurents. Hatcher, who died in 2006, inspired Laurents to clean up his life in time for some of his greatest successes, including his direction of the 1983 musical La Cage aux Folles, which reportedly required much sober efficiency during a disorganized out-of-town tryout. His was an enviable life - filled with conflict of the most interesting sort.
Though the Brooklyn-born Laurents (real name: Levine) disparaged his years at Cornell University, they exposed him to people and thinking he used creatively, especially in The Way We Were. His service in the South Pacific in World War II yielded Home of the Brave, about anti-Semitism in the armed forces. Migrating to Hollywood, the untried Laurents landed interesting assignments, such as an uncredited salvage job on the 1948 expose on mental illness, The Snake Pit. It brought him widespread attention within the film industry (though he thought Olivia de Havilland's much-praised performance barely adequate). For Alfred Hitchcock, he wrote Rope (1948), about two gay male characters (though they're never identified as such), one played by Granger. Blacklisted for associations with Marxist organizations, Laurents found his film career on hiatus, until 1956’s Anastasia. His screenplay for The Turning Point (1977) and direction of La Cage aux Folles were two of his last big mainstream successes. Following the failure of the big-budget Broadway musical Nick & Nora (1991), Laurents directed revivals of his famous works, and returned to writing plays, most notably Jolson Sings Again (1992), The Radical Mystique (1995), A Good Name (1997), Attacks on the Heart (2003), New Year's Eve and Come Back, Come Back, Wherever You Are, both in 2009.
Nearly every project, if one is to believe his autobiography, had a minimum of three significant betrayals, even more 180-degree reversals and plenty of severed alliances. Most of his close friends he cut off at some point. During the troubled Nick & Nora (which was the Spider Man musical of its time), Laurents barred the songwriters from the theater under the belief that only he could salvage the show. He blacklisted Lupone from his musicals for years because she turned down Jolson Sings Again.
Then again, his subject matter was rarely easy. Jolson Sings Again refers to the actor Larry Parks, who played Jolson onscreen and was a duplicitous finger-pointer. In The Way We Were, the pivotal marriage breakup between the Streisand and Redford characters wasn't because of a momentary infidelity - as the film's final cut implies. In Laurents' version Streisand becomes blacklisted; only by divorcing her can Redford save his career as a Hollywood writer. Laurents’ version typically offers a more powerful plot twist, but it is one that would've rendered Redford's character irredeemable.
As much as that McCarthy era haunted him, he viewed its aftermath with great nuance. Laurents worked with Jerome Robbins, an informer, because they had a pre-McCarthy friendship. Had he not, the world might not have had as great a Gypsy. Also, when Robbins choreographed “All I Need is the Girl,” Laurents, filling in for a missing dancer, got to participate directly in his process. Collaborators like Robbins were more than glamorous; some like Ethel Merman kept him grounded. They all helped Laurents stay creatively renewed – he insisted he never repeated himself – which explains his longevity as a writer and director. He was open to the unexpected. Act I of West Side Story ends with two freshly-murdered bodies onstage, which was revolutionary in the 1950s and can shock the audience today. Spectacularly unnerving is the end of Gypsy with an extended musical mad scene in which the pushy stage mother, abandoned by the children she helped become famous, sings her semi-coherent frustration to an empty theater. Most surprising was his willingness to revise his masterpieces. In 2007, still grieving from Hatcher's death, Laurents directed LuPone (no longer on his personal blacklist) in Gypsy, a revival Hatcher had insisted he do. At first Laurents wanted to follow the 1989 production starring Tyne Daly; he was wary of messing with success. LuPone staged a gentle intervention. Laurents gave his actors the freedom to rediscover his greatest work, and experienced creative salvation of his own. The revival was a triumph. "Arthur's transformation was as speedy as it was remarkable.... He grew younger by the day. I could see the light in his eyes ... and what happened was this miracle," LuPone recalled in Patti LuPone, A Memoir: "A whole new play emerged in Arthur's eyes.... If you chose a life on the stage, my wish for you is the kind of experience I had - the kind of experience we all had - in this show."
David Patrick Stearns is classical music critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer and former theater critic for USA Today.
RELATED CONTENT
Latest News Delivered to Your Inbox - Sign up with our site and you will get the latest news about people and subjects that interest you.
