Arthur Laurents: Rest In Peace

Legendary Broadway playwright and director Arthur Laurents, who wrote the books for such classics of the American musical stage as WEST SIDE STORY and GYPSY, died last week at the age of 93. Although Broadway was his artistic home, Laurents also had some significant film credits. He wrote the script for the 1949 Alfred Hitchcock two-hander ROPE (1949), with its two homicidal (and probably gay) protagonists, as well as such important films as the Ingrid Bergman Oscar-winner ANASTASIA (1956), the New York ballet world-set THE TURNING POINT (1977) and, most famously, the Robert Redford-Barbara Streisand weepie THE WAY WE WERE (1973), which was based on his first novel of the same name. Interestingly, Laurents was not involved in any of the big screen adaptations of his most famous theater plays and musicals, including HOME OF THE BRAVE (1949), SUMMERTIME (1955), WEST SIDE STORY (1961) or GYPSY (1962).

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