Griffin, Tom Playwrights/The Boys Next Door Wade Bradford, M.A., is a playwright and theatrical director who has won several awards. He developed and directed seven shows for the juvenile theater of the Yorba Linda Civic Light Opera. Tom Griffin wrote The Boys Next Door in the early 1980s. It was originally called A School Is Not a Home, but later changed to its current title. He grew up in Southern California, the son of a lawyer and a teacher. His family had a close-knit group of friends that included girls. As a teenager, he used to ride his bike to the local movie theater to watch John Wayne movies with his father. Later, he would work as a carpenter while writing plays for the civic light opera. In 1978, when he was 21 years old, Griffin received a Master's Degree in Social Work from California State University, Long Beach. Two years later, he went to New York City to try and find success as a playwright. However, it wasn't until the mid-1980s that his first play was produced off-off-Broadway. Since then, he has gone on to write more than 30 plays, including several film adaptations. One of his scripts, Babes in Toyland, was turned into a film starring Diane Lane, Willem Dafoe, and Natasha Richardson.