Mart Crowley, Tony-Winning Playwright of The Boys in the Band, Is Dead at 84
(Photo by Emilio Madrid for Broadway.com)
Mart Crowley, the Tony-winning playwright of The Boys in the Band, has passed away. He reportedly had a heart attack, and died while recovering from heart surgery. He was 84 years old. A playwright and screenwriter, Crowley is best known for creating the first mainstream portrayal of gay men in Boys in the Band, which is being released later this year as a Netflix film.
Crowley was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi. He studied acting and show business at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Then in 1957, Crowley headed to Hollywood, with the goal of being a screenwriter. One of his first jobs was as an assistant to Natalie Wood while she was filming West Side Story. The two became close friends and she encouraged him to write The Boys in the Band, which he did over the course of five weeks while housesitting for actress Diana Lynn in Beverly Hills.
The Boys in the Band is about nine gay men who gather at a birthday party. Its exploration of the complicated life of gay men—filled with romantic yearning, witty banter, and, for some, self-hatred—was considered revolutionary for its time. At that point, being gay was still seen as a crime. Though the play was championed by Edward Albee and Richard Barr, it was difficult to find actors who would star in it. “The first time, we would take anyone who would do it; we were beating the bushes [for actors],” Crowley told Broadway.com in 2019. "It was very different back then. You could get arrested for doing the things they do in this play. It was quite awful and ridiculous and demeaning. Naturally, everybody's agent told them not to do this play. We offered the roles and many turned it down. Agents said it was a career killer.”
The Boys in the Band premiered off-Broadway on April 14, 1968 at Theater Four. It was originally scheduled to run for five performances but it was soon a success and its run was extended; it eventually played 1,001 performances and coincided with the Stonewall Riots in 1969. In 1970, it was turned into a movie directed by Oscar winner William Friedkin, featuring the off-Broadway cast. The film was revolutionary because it was the first to depict gay men not as villains and deviants, but as complex protagonists. The Boys in the Band was also the subject of the 2011 documentary, Making the Boys.
(Photo by Caitlin McNaney for Broadway.com)
The play also received two off-Broadway revivals in 1996 and 2010. Then in 2002, Crowley wrote The Men From the Boys, a sequel to the play which takes place during a memorial service; it premiered in San Francisco. In 2018, in time for its 50th anniversary, The Boys in the Band received its first Broadway production, directed by Joe Mantello and featuring an all-gay cast that included Matt Bomer, Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto and Andrew Rannells. The Broadway production received two Tony nominations and won one: for Best Revival of a Play (it also won a Broadway.com Audience Choice Awards for Favorite Play Revival). The Boys in the Band film—produced by Ryan Murphy and David Stone, and starring the Broadway cast—will be released in 2020. “I think there's a Guinness Book of Records here because I can't think of another play that was made into a movie twice that had the exact original actors from New York each time,” said Crowley last year. “I think it's quite amazing.”
Crowley’s other plays include Remote Asylum, A Breeze From the Gulf, Avec Schmaltz and For Reasons That Remain Unclear, which was written in 1993 and was about sexual abuse in the Catholic church. He also had a career in Hollywood; he was the producer/cowriter of the ABC show Hart to Hart (1979-1984). He is the co-author of the children’s book Eloise Takes a Bawth. He’s also set to appear in May in the HBO documentary Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind.
Though The Boys in the Band is what he's known for, Crowley never thought the play would be considered an integral part of gay cultural history. “Everybody that knew me, my friends, they all thought I was going around the bend a bit when I'd tell them what I was working on," he recalled of writing it. "I just kept going. I had faith in something, I don't know what it was—myself, I hope. I finally typed ‘The End’ and put it on my arm and came to New York with it.”
Boys in the Band star Andrew Rannells wrote a tribute to Crowley on his Instagram, which said, "Mart Crowley. Kind. Smart. Hilarious. Generous. I feel incredibly fortunate to have spent so much time with him. He will be greatly missed and always loved."