Arthur Laurents

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

After writing scripts for radio shows after college and then training films for the U.S. Army during World War II, Laurents turned to writing for Broadway, producing a body of work that includes ''West Side Story'' (1957), ''Gypsy'' (1959), and ''Hallelujah, Baby!'' (1967), and directing some of his own shows and other Broadway productions.

His film scripts include ''Rope'' (1948) for Alfred Hitchcock, followed by '' Anastasia'' (1956), '' Bonjour Tristesse'' (1958), ''The Way We Were'' (1973), and '' 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."When You’re a Shark You’re a Shark All the Way"
'' New York''. He was born and raised in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, New York, the elder of two children, and attended Erasmus Hall High School.Arnold, Laurence (May 5, 2011)
"Arthur Laurents, Writer of 'West Side Story,' 'Gypsy' Scripts, Dies at 93"
Bloomberg News. His sister Edith suffered from chorea as a child.

His paternal grandparents were Orthodox Jews, and his mother's parents, although born Jewish, were atheists. His mother kept a kosher home for her husband's sake, but was lax about attending synagogue and observing the Jewish holidays. His Bar and Bat Mitzvah, Bar Mitzvah marked the end of Laurents's religious education and the beginning of his rejection of all fundamentalist religions, although he continued to identify himself as Jewish. However, late in life he admitted to having changed his last name from Levine to the less Jewish-sounding Laurents, "to get a job."

After graduating from Cornell University, Laurents took an evening class in radio writing at New York University. William N. Robson, his instructor, a CBS Radio director/producer, submitted his script ''Now Playing Tomorrow'', a comedic fantasy about clairvoyance, to the network, and it was produced in the Columbia Workshop series on January 30, 1939, with Shirley Booth in the lead role. It was Laurents' first professional credit. The show's success led to him being hired to write scripts for various radio shows, among them ''Lux Radio Theater''. 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.

Theatrical career

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." After graduating from Cornell University in 1937, Laurents 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.

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. At the urging of Martin Gabel, he spent nine consecutive nights writing a play 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 but ultimately starring Leslie Uggams) and '' La Cage Aux Folles'' (1983), which he directed, however '' Nick & Nora'' was not successful.

In 2008, Laurents directed a Broadway revival of ''Gypsy'' starring Patti LuPone, and in 2009, he tackled a bilingual revival of ''West Side Story'', with Spanish translations of some dialogue and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda. While preparing ''West Side Story'', he noted, "The musical theatre and cultural conventions of 1957 made it next to impossible for the characters to have authenticity." Following the production's March 19 opening at the 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." 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%.

Film career

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''.

Upon hearing 20th Century Fox executives were pleased with Laurents' work on ''The Snake Pit'', Alfred Hitchcock hired him for his next project, the film ''Rope'' starring James Stewart. Hitchcock wanted Laurents to Americanize the British play ''Rope'' (1929) by Patrick Hamilton for the screen. With his then-lover Farley Granger set to star, Laurents was happy to accept the assignment. His dilemma was how to make the audience aware of the fact the three main characters were homosexual without blatantly saying so. 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. 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.

Laurents also scripted '' Anastasia'' (1956) and '' 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.

Blacklist

Because of a casual remark made by Russel Crouse, Laurents was called to Washington, D.C., to account for his political views. 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

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