Mart Crowley
Encyclopedia
Mart Crowley is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

.

Crowley was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi
Vicksburg, Mississippi
Vicksburg is a city in Warren County, Mississippi, United States. It is the only city in Warren County. It is located northwest of New Orleans on the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, and due west of Jackson, the state capital. In 1900, 14,834 people lived in Vicksburg; in 1910, 20,814; in 1920,...

. After graduating from The Catholic University of America
The Catholic University of America
The Catholic University of America is a private university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States. It is a pontifical university of the Catholic Church in the United States and the only institution of higher education founded by the U.S. Catholic bishops...

 in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 in 1957, Crowley headed west to Hollywood, where he worked for a number of television production companies before meeting Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko was an American film and television actress. After first working in films as a child, Wood became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old.Wood began acting in movies at the...

 on the set of her film Inside Daisy Clover
Inside Daisy Clover
Inside Daisy Clover is a 1965 American drama film based on the 1963 novel by Gavin Lambert. It stars Natalie Wood, Christopher Plummer, Robert Redford, Roddy McDowall and Ruth Gordon in her Academy Award nominated role.- Plot :...

. Wood hired him as her assistant, primarily to give him ample free time to work on his gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

-themed play The Boys in the Band
The Boys in the Band
The Boys in the Band is a 1970 American drama film directed by William Friedkin. The screenplay by Mart Crowley is based on his Off Broadway play of the same title, Crowley penned a sequel to the play years later entitled The Men From The Boys...

, which opened off-Broadway to ecstatic reviews on April 14, 1968 and enjoyed a run of 1001 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.

Crowley's sequel to The Boys in the Band
The Boys in the Band (play)
The Boys in the Band is a play by Mart Crowley. The off-Broadway production, directed by Robert Moore, opened on April 14, 1968 at Theater Four, where it ran for 1,001 performances, an extremely healthy run for both an off-Broadway production, and one not geared to a mainstream audience...

was entitled The Men From The Boys
The Men From The Boys
The Men From The Boys is a play by Mart Crowley. It was a sequel to the off-Broadway production The Boys in the Band.-Plot:The Men From The Boys takes place in a New York City apartment where friends are in for more than they expected after a memorial for one of their friends.-External reviews:*...

.

Crowley's second work, Remote Asylum, was mounted with great expectations at the Ahmanson Theatre
Ahmanson Theatre
The Ahmanson Theatre is one of the four main venues that comprise the Los Angeles Music Center.Through the generosity of philanthropist Robert H. Ahmanson, construction began on March 9, 1962. The theatre opened on April 12, 1967 with a production of More Stately Mansions starring Ingrid Bergman,...

 in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 in 1970, but it failed to garner the raves his debut had. In that same year, he enjoyed greater success with the motion picture
The Boys in the Band
The Boys in the Band is a 1970 American drama film directed by William Friedkin. The screenplay by Mart Crowley is based on his Off Broadway play of the same title, Crowley penned a sequel to the play years later entitled The Men From The Boys...

 adaptation of The Boys in the Band. With his next play, the autobiographical A Breeze from the Gulf, he regained cachet with the critics and earned a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award
Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award
The Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards is an annual awards program presented by the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle . Established in 1969, the awards recognize excellence in theatre in the Greater Los Angeles Area....

 nomination for Best Play. The Men From the Boys, his sequel to The Boys in the Band was produced by the New Conservatory Theatre Center
New Conservatory Theatre Center
The New Conservatory Theatre Center is a not-for-profit theatre company located in San Francisco, California. NCTC showcases an eight-show Pride Season, an In-Concert/Cabaret Series, Family Theatre performances, YouthAware Touring Educational Theatre, and an Emerging Artists program. NCTC also...

 in San Francisco in 2002, and by the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles in 2003.

In 1979 and 1980, Crowley served first as the executive script editor and then producer of the ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 series Hart to Hart
Hart to Hart
Hart to Hart is an American television series, starring Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers as Jonathan and Jennifer Hart, a wealthy couple who also moonlighted as amateur detectives. The series was created by writer Sidney Sheldon and produced by Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg...

, starring Wood's husband Robert Wagner
Robert Wagner
Robert John Wagner is an American actor of stage, screen, and television.A veteran of many films in the 1950s and 1960s, Wagner gained prominence in three American television series that spanned three decades: It Takes a Thief , Switch , and Hart to Hart...

 and Stefanie Powers
Stefanie Powers
Stefanie Powers is an American actress best known for her role as Jennifer Hart in the 1980s television series Hart to Hart.-Early life:...

. Other credits include the teleplays for There Must Be a Pony (1986), Bluegrass (1988), People Like Us (1990), and a Hart to Hart reunion special in 1996.

Crowley has appeared in at least three documentaries: The Celluloid Closet
The Celluloid Closet
The Celluloid Closet is a 1996 American documentary film directed and written by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. The film is based on the 1981 book of the same name written by Vito Russo, and on previous lecture and film clip presentations given in person by Russo 1972–82.Russo researched the...

(1995), about homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

 and its depiction on screen throughout the years, Dominick Dunne: After the Party
Dominick Dunne: After the Party
Dominick Dunne: After the Party is a 2008 documentary directed by Kirsty de Garis and Timothy Jolley.Hollywood outcast, top-selling author and reporter, Dominick Dunne is a prominent columnist and society correspondent. This biographical documentary film reflects on his successes and tribulations...

(2007), a biography of Crowley's friend and producer, Dominick Dunne
Dominick Dunne
Dominick John Dunne was an American writer and investigative journalist, whose subjects frequently hinged on the ways in which high society interacts with the judicial system...

, and Making the Boys (2011), a documentary about the making of The Boys in the Band.

Sources

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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