Arthur Laurents Movies and Career Information

Arthur Laurents (July 14, 1917 – May 5, 2011) was an American playwright, stage director and screenwriter. After writing scripts for radio shows after college and then training films for the U.S. Army during World War II, Laurents turned to writing for Broadway, producing a body of work that includes West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), Hallelujah, Baby! (1967) and La Cage Aux Folles (1983), and directing some of his own shows and other Broadway productions. His early film scripts include Rope (1948) for Alfred Hitchcock, followed by Anastasia (1956), Bonjour Tristesse (1958), The Way We Were (1973) and The Turning Point (1977). Born Arthur Levine, Laurents was the son of a lawyer and a schoolteacher who gave up her career when she married. He was born and raised in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, New York, the elder of two children, and attended Erasmus Hall High School. His sister Edith suffered from chorea as a child. His paternal grandparents were Orthodox Jews, and his mother's parents, although born Jewish, were atheists. His mother kept a kosher home for her husband's sake, but was lax about attending synagogue and observing the Jewish