Arthur Laurents, 1917–2011

Arthur Laurents revealed his reasons for becoming a writer in 12 words of dialogue from one of his most famous musicals. Gypsy Rose Lee asks her domineering mother, Rose, why she pushed her so relentlessly. “Just wanted to be noticed,” Mama Rose says. Gypsy Rose replies: “Like I wanted you to notice me.” Laurents said his own “need for recognition” drove him to reinvent the American musical, transforming it from a carefree exercise in dancing, singing, and clowning into a complex exploration of divided characters, conflicting motives, and tragic fates.

Born Arthur Levine in Brooklyn to a lawyer father and a teacher mother, Laurents fell in love with the theater at an early age, said The Washington Post. After graduating from Cornell University, he started out writing radio dramas. In the Army during World War II, he wrote patriotic plays about American troops. His wartime experience fed into his first Broadway play, Home of the Brave, which opened in 1945 and dealt with anti-Semitism in the Army.

His breakthrough came in 1957 with West Side Story, said the Associated Press. An update of Romeo and Juliet, it featured “pulsating, jazz-flecked music” by Leonard Bernstein, choreography by Jerome Robbins, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The tough, slangy argot spoken by the gang members sounded authentic but was largely Laurents’s own invention.

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Just two years later came Gypsy, about the relationship between Gypsy Rose Lee and her mother, originally played by Ethel Merman, said the London Guardian. Without soft-pedaling the monstrous aspects of Mama Rose, Laurents also recognized what he called the “naked, frightening, and gallant” nature of her determination.

Although Broadway was his first love, Laurents worked in Hollywood as well. He wrote the screenplay for the Robert Redford–Barbra Streisand weeper The Way We Were, which drew upon Laurents’s memories of the McCarthy era. He was back on Broadway as recently as 2009, when he directed an acclaimed revival of West Side Story.