Occupation Playwright, writer Name Mart Crowley Nationality American Role Playwright | ||
 | ||
Education Catholic University of America Movies The Boys in the Band, Nijinsky Nominations Lambda Literary Award for Drama Books The Collected Plays of, The band plays, Remote Asylum, Avec Schmaltz, Three Plays Similar People Kenneth Nelson, William Friedkin, Kay Thompson, Sidney Sheldon, Vaslav Nijinsky | ||
Notable work(s) The Boys In The Band | ||
"The Boys in the Band" playwright Mart Crowley
Mart Crowley (born August 21, 1935) is an American playwright.
Contents
- The Boys in the Band playwright Mart Crowley
- Theater Talk Stonewall Special Looking Back at The Boys in the Band
- Biography
- References
Theater Talk: Stonewall Special: Looking Back at "The Boys in the Band"
Biography
Crowley was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi. After graduating from The Catholic University of America (Studying in acting and show business) in Washington, D.C. in 1957, Crowley headed west to Hollywood, where he worked for a number of television production companies before meeting Natalie Wood on the set of her film Splendor in the Grass. Wood hired him as her assistant, primarily to give him ample free time to work on his gay-themed play The Boys in the Band, which opened off-Broadway on April 14, 1968 and enjoyed a run of 1,000 performances. Crowley became part of Wood's inner circle of friends that she called "the nucleus", whose main requirement was that they pass a "kindness" test.
The Boys in the Band was adapted into a film in 1970 directed by William Friedkin.
Crowley's sequel to The Boys in the Band was entitled The Men from the Boys.
Crowley also wrote and produced Remote Asylum and the autobiographical A Breeze from the Gulf.
In 1979 and 1980, Crowley served first as the executive script editor and then producer of the ABC series Hart to Hart, starring Wood's husband Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers. Other credits include the teleplays for There Must Be a Pony (1986), Bluegrass (1988), People Like Us (1990), and a reunion special of Hart to Hart in 1996.
Crowley has appeared in at least three documentaries: The Celluloid Closet (1995), about the depiction of homosexuality in cinema; Dominick Dunne: After the Party (2007), a biography of Crowley's friend and producer Dominick Dunne; and Making the Boys (2011), a documentary about the making of The Boys in the Band.
Crowley is openly gay.