Original Story By: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood
Best known as the author of scripts for such hit musicals asWest Side StoryandGypsy, Arthur Laurents began his career writing strong, socially conscious plays likeHome of the BraveandTime of the Cuckoo; he also has impressive credits as a screenwriter (The Way We Were) and stage director (La Cage aux Folles). Such a varied professional life makes for absorbing reading in this lively autobiography stuffed with famous names, including George Cukor, Katharine Hepburn, Barbra Streisand, and Stephen Sondheim, all of whom emerge vividly in thumbnail portraits ranging from affectionately frank (Stella Adler) to frankly unflattering (Jerome Robbins). Laurents, born in 1917, was a Marxist during his college years at Cornell, and he retains strong political opinions to this day: he has no use for bigots of any kind, and his memoir displays no inclination to forgive people like Elia Kazan, who named names during the 1950s. Yet the author also has a marvelous sense of humor (after critic Frank Rich inadvertently made public reference to Laurents's homosexuality, Laurents introduced him at a charity lunch as "the man who outed me as a liberal") and a zest for life that shines particularly in a loving portrait of his longtime companion, Tom Hatcher.--Wendy Smith