Leonard Melfi

Leonard Melfi
Born	February 21, 1932 Binghamton, NY, US
Died	October 28, 2001

Leonard Melfi (February 21, 1932 – October 28, 2001) is an American playwright and actor whose work has been widely produced for the American stage.

During the 1960s, when experimental theatre was generating enormous interest, Leonard Melfi was considered one of the most important artists working in the American theatre. Melfi's best-known work for the stage, Birdbath, was first produced in 1965 at La MaMa ETC in New York City, under the direction of Tom O'Horgan. When La MaMa's Ellen Stewart first collaborated with actor/producer Leslie Irons to found Corner Theatre ETC in Baltimore, that theatre's inaugural production was Melfi's Birdbath. Melfi's first produced play, Lazy Baby Susan, was likewise staged at La MaMa during its inaugural season, in 1962. Melfi was also a contributor, along with John Lennon and playwright Sam Shepard, to the notorious 1969 Broadway musical Oh, Calcutta! In all, Leonard Melfi wrote over 70 plays of various length during the course of his lifetime.

The eldest child of Leonard and Louise Melfi, owner-operators of the Circle Tavern in Binghamton, New York, Melfi once quipped that he had developed his prodigious appetite for alcohol by "working in the family business." In a 1966 radio interview with WBAI's Janet Coleman he confessed "We always talked, and we always cooked together, and while cooking we drank. My father's father was a bootlegger and my mother's father made wine in the cellar...I was sort of doomed."

Melfi briefly attended the St. Bonaventure University, followed by a tour of duty in Germany. Upon his discharge from the U.S. Army, he moved to New York City to pursue a writing career. His plays tended to portray social outcasts with dark secrets, spontaneously revealed in moments of great anxiety. Although Melfi never achieved the sustained success of many of his mid-60's peers, he co-wrote the screenplay for Lady Liberty, a 1972 film starring William Devane and Sophia Loren. He also appeared in the film Rent Control, in the role of Milton Goeller. A number of Melfi's later works were performed at the Theater for the New City. After years of struggling with alcohol, Melfi moved into the single-room occupancy Narragansett Hotel at Broadway and 93rd Street.

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