Arthur Laurents
| Arthur Laurents | |
|---|---|
Laurents in 2009
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| Born | Arthur Levine July 14, 1917 Brooklyn, New York City, U.S. |
| Died | May 5, 2011 (aged 93) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Playwright Stage director Screenwriter |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Cornell University |
| Period | 1945–2011 |
| Notable awards | 1968 Tony Award for Best Musical – Hallelujah, Baby! 1975 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical – 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 |
| Partner | Tom Hatcher (1954–2006; Hatcher's death) |
Arthur Laurents (July 14, 1917 – May 5, 2011) was an American playwright, stage director 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 early 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).
Born Arthur Levine, Laurents was the son of middle-class Jewish parents, a lawyer and a schoolteacher who gave up her career when she married. 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. 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 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."
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