Arthur Laurents born 14 July 1918 (d. 2011)Playwright, screenwriter, novelist, librettist and Broadway director Arthur Laurents was born in New York City. He served in World War II in an army film production unit where he wrote scripts designed to educate servicemen going overseas, as well as radio plays intended to foster civilian support for the war. The success of his first play Home of the Brave (1945) encouraged him to move to Hollywood. His scripts there included The Snake Pit and Hitchcock's Rope (1948), which starred his then-lover, Farley Granger.
His career damaged by the McCarthy witchhunts - he was blacklisted by Hollywood studio bosses - Laurents returned to New York where he enjoyed success as a playwright, librettist including West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959), and director of I Can Get It for You Wholesale (1962) the 1973 London premiere, the 1989 Broadway revival of Gypsy and La Cage aux Folles (1983) for which he won a Tony award. His collaborations with such major gay talents as Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein, Jerry Herman, Harvey Fierstein, and Jerome Robbins have ensured his place in musical theatre history.
Laurents has also written two novels The Way We Were and The Turning Point, both of which became successful films for which Laurents wrote the screenplays .
Laurents' experience of discrimination as both a Jew and a gay man, intensified by his experience during the Hollywood blacklist period, 'infuses his work with a strong social conscience', even if it is often expressed through strong female characters.In 2000, Laurents published Original Story By Arthur Laurents: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood. In it, he discusses his lengthy career and his many gay affairs and long-term relationships, including those with Farley Granger and Tom Hatcher, an aspiring actor whom Gore Vidal suggested Laurents seek out at the men's clothing store in Beverly Hills Hatcher was managing at the time. The couple remained together for 52 years. Tom Hatcher, Laurents' life-partner since 1955, died in October, 2006.
Arthur Laurents died in Manhattan, New York, from complications of pneumonia in May 2011. He was 93 years old.