Mart Crowley

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mart Crowley (2002)

Mart Crowley (born August 21, 1935 in Vicksburg , Mississippi , † March 7, 2020 in New York City , New York ) was an American author .

life and career

Mart Crowley was born in 1935 as the only child of a conservative-religious couple in the southern states. After an unsuccessful stay in Los Angeles , during which he wanted to establish contacts with the film industry, he studied at the Catholic University of America in Washington until he graduated in 1957 . He then worked on a number of film and television productions in Hollywood in smaller functions until he met Natalie Wood on the set of Elia Kazan's Fever in the Blood . Crowley became one of her closest friends and for some time her personal assistant. Crowley worked in the 1960s on a number of scripts, which, however, remained without a buyer, and at times fell into a depression, out of which Wood helped him out by paying for his sessions with the psychoanalyst.

During this critical phase, during a six-week house-sitting, he wrote The Boys in the Band , on which much of Crowley's fame is based. The play about a dramatically developing birthday party among gay friends became a surprise success on Off-Broadway with over 1000 performances from April 14, 1968 . In addition to a lot of praise, it was also heavily criticized, on the one hand by conservative circles for its pioneering openness in the portrayal of homosexuals, on the other hand by left-wing homosexual activists, who perceived the self-critical and tragic undertones of the piece as a self-hating portrayal of gays. Crowley, himself openly homosexual, incorporated experiences from his own life, especially since he was disappointed that famous gay playwrights such as Tennessee Williams , Edward Albee and William Inge only subliminally dared to portray homosexual themes in their works. In 1970 he worked as a screenwriter and producer on the film adaptation of William Friedkin of the same name , which made Crowley's work well known in Germany. In 2018, The Boys in the Band premiered on Broadway 50 years after its off-Broadway premiere , starring Jim Parsons , Matt Bomer and Zachary Quinto , among others . The 83-year-old Crowley received the Tony Award for this in 2019 in the category “Best Revival of a Play”. A remake by Ryan Murphy was produced with the Broadway cast , which will be released on Netflix in the course of 2020 .

Crowley wrote a number of lesser-known plays, including Remote Asylum (1970) and the autobiographical A Breeze from the Gulf (1975), which addressed his childhood and which earned him second place at the New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards . From 1979 to 1980 he was head of the script department for the television series Hart but cordially with Natalie Wood's husband Robert Wagner in the lead role (in this role Crowley was responsible for monitoring the quality of the scripts), from 1980 to 1983 he rose to one of the producers TV series on. He also wrote screenplays for the Denver Clan as well as several of the Hard But Hearts television films in the 1990s. In 2002, Crowley's The Men from the Boys premiered in San Francisco , his sequel to The Boys in the Band , which played Larry at a funeral over thirty years later. However, this piece was less successful. For his collection of works The Collected Plays of Mart Crowley , published in 2009 , he received a Lambda Literary Award in 2010 .

Crowley was also interviewed for several documentaries, including The Celluloid Closet (1995) and The Men from the Boys (2011); the latter deals specifically with his life and his most famous piece.

Mart Crowley died in New York City in March 2020 at the age of 84 from complications after heart surgery.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Neil Genzlinger: Mart Crowley, 'Boys in the Band' Playwright, Dies at 84. In: The New York Times , March 9, 2020 (English). Retrieved March 9, 2020.
  2. ↑ Mart Crowley Biography - eNotes.com. Retrieved May 1, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Mart Crowley on Natalie Wood. November 23, 2011, accessed May 1, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Dawn B. Sova: Banned Plays: Censorship Histories of 125 Stage Dramas . Infobase Publishing, 2004, ISBN 978-1-4381-2993-8 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  5. ↑ Photos and podcast: Mart Crowley and The Boys in the Band cast on making history. October 7, 2016. Retrieved May 1, 2019 (UK English).
  6. ↑ Mark Peikert: Bringing Back Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band. April 30, 2019, accessed May 1, 2019 .
  7. ↑ First time actress in a wheelchair with Tony. June 10, 2019, accessed September 15, 2019 .
  8. ↑ When is The Boys in the Band on Netflix? Retrieved March 10, 2020 .
  9. ^ Mart Crowley - Lortel Archives. Accessed May 1, 2019 .
  10. ↑ BWW News Desk: Playwright Mart Crowley, Best Known For THE BOYS IN THE BAND, Has Died at 84.Retrieved March 10, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Crowley, Mart
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American playwright
DATE OF BIRTH August 21, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Vicksburg , Mississippi
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 2020
Place of death New York City , New York