Mart Crowley, Mississippi writer, producer and playwright of

Biography of Mart Crowley
By Brooke Shannon (SHS)

Crowley is a playwright who was born on August 21, 1935, in Vicksburg, Mississippi. He attended a Catholic high school in his hometown and graduated from Catholic University of America in 1957 in Washington D.C. In the 1960's, he worked in California for many television companies. Some of them included Martin Manulis Productions and Four Star Television. From Three plays by Mart Crowley

1964 to 1966, he was secretary for actress Natalie Wood. Mart Crowley is primarily known for his landmark play, The Boys in the Band, written in 1968, which deals with male homosexual lifestyles. From almost every critical view, the play was praised by critics and Crowley was acknowledged as a master composer of economical, pungent and bitingly-humorous dialogue.

The Boys in the Band , his first play, was first performed on the New York stage at Theater Four for the first time on April 14, 1968. Crowley's second play, Remote Asylum, was not quite as successful. It was produced in 1970 in Los Angeles at the Ahmanson Theatre on December 1, 1970. Crowley's third play opened in the fall of 1975. It was entitled A Breeze from the Gulf and is based on the early life of Crowley. Fortunately, the play brought back some of the power and energy of Crowley's first play. It earned Crowley a second place vote for the prestigious New York Drama Critics Circle Award.

Crowley admits that his plays are autobiographical. In his introduction to 3 Plays by Mart Crowley, he refers to The Boys in the Band and says, "There was never a real birthday party attended by nine actual men...However, just before I began to write the play, I had...attended a party for a friend's birthday and it gave me the idea of how to frame what had already been on my mind...All of the characters are based on people I either knew well or are amalgams of several I'd known to varying degrees, plus a large order of myself thrown into the mix." A Breeze from the Gulf is based on his relationship with his parents but it has been "pushed and pulled, fictionalized and dramatized, and ...personalized." The fictional Michael is in many ways Mart Crowley. Teddy is Crowley's father and Lorraine is his mother.

Crowley has not written any new plays since 1984 when he wrote Avec Schmaltz for the Williamstown (Mass.) Theatre Festival. . From 1979 to 1980 he served as the executive script editor for the ABC series "Hart to Hart" and later as the producer. In the early 1980's Crowley returned to television production in California, writing the television movie adaptation of James Kirkwood's There Must Be a Pony. In 1996, he performed in The Celluloid Closet, which was nominated for an Emmy. He has most recently collaborated in the publication of a children's book called "Eloise Takes a Bawth, " a creation of Kay Thompson. After writing "Eloise in Moscow," Thompson and Hilary Knight went to Rome where they worked on the book for four years. Playwright Mart Crowley lived in Rome nearby and visited them, adding his creative talents. Despite the fact that "Eloise Takes a Bawth" was cataloged by Harper and Row in 1964, the book was never published. Thompson died, but in 2001, Thompson's heirs decided finally to publish "Eloise Takes a Bawth." Hilary Knight again set to work creating art from sketches he'd drawn forty years before. Matt Crowley pieced together the many drafts of Kay Thompson's text. Her niece and nephew and the editors at Simon & Schuster succeeded in publishing the book with the help of Crowley.

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As a Starkville High school student, the subject of the play The Boys in the Band, by Mark Crowley is offensive. In my opinion, this literature deals with a subject unsuitable for high school age children and under. I feel the play's subject matter and language are too adult for high school students to deal with. Throughout the book, comments are made on masturbation, fairies, "queenies," and other such words.

To be fair, the play is one of the most out-spoken and liberated plays to be produced. One could say it paved the way for more of its kind to come. It took a tough subject matter and presented on stage the life of a homosexual at a time when there was enormous guilt felt by those whose life style this was. Crowley allows the subject to be at times humorous and also at times pessimistic, but he is always honest and uncompromising.

Hear the noted playwright, author of the landmark "The Boys in the Band" and its recent sequel "The Men from the Boys" discuss the creation of both works. Crowley also tells stories about his encounters with Tennessee Williams, Marlon Brando, Elia Kazan, and others in this special 48-minute web real audio interview which is hosted by Richard Wolinsky.

Crowley collaborated with Kay Thompson on The Fox and the Fig when he lived across the street from her in Rome in 1962. Mart Crowley now lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

In October 2002, the first "new" Eloise book in 40 years, Eloise Takes a Bawth by Kay Thompson, a refurbished edition authorized by Thompson's estate with "additional plumbing" by Mart Crowley and illustrated by Hilary Knight was published.

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MacNicholas, John, ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography: Twentieth Century American Dramatists. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1981.

Regarding the page on Mart Crowley, whose play "The Boys in the Band" was both prophetic and brave in 1968, prior to Stonewall, prior to AIDS, even prior to the assassination of Robert Kennedy: ... In 1968, homosexuality was still considered a psychological aberration caused by a domineering mother; the "solution" was psychoanalysis. The attitudes of many, like Alan in the play, have not changed. The Alans of the world will go on denying his homosexuality, and the boys in the band will go on hating themselves if the Right has anything to say about it. Some things never change.

I am a straight, female journalist, critic and poet, 67 years old. Your "reviewer" says that the Crowley's play is not suitable for viewing or reading by "children" high school age or younger. I say it is a life-saving play for the ten to fifteen percent of gay Mississippi teens who might run across it, if it can be found, and obviously it can, in your state. I would also tell her that I've interviewed many, many gay men, who say they knew their sexual preference at age 9 or younger. When does one cease being a child?...

San Diego's Gay & Lesbian theater company, Diversionary, is currently producing Crowley's play. That's what brought your web site to my attention. Aside from the advent of AIDS and a different attitude about themselves that's come about after years of strife, both the gay men and the play hold up pretty well, even today, even in a city that is not always nurturing.

I would ask your young critic why Alan sits silently watching the game in act two and why he attacks Emory in act one. I hope you are teaching them to think down there in Mississippi. Otherwise a rude awakening awaits at college.

Just one note about the Mart Crowley review. I don't want to be perceived as attacking Brook Shannon's critique of Mart Crowley. I do want to make it clear, however, that reading "The Boys in the Band" in high school probably helped to save me from committing suicide in high school. This was the first exposure I had to gay literature, and it was the moment in which I finally figured out that I was not a monster. I was finally a real human being.

This is not a life-style. I came out for the first time when I was five years old. Homosexuality has a genetic basis just like eye and skin color. I can only hope that Mr. Crowley's plays can continue to be made available to high school students because internalized homophobia is still rampant and destroys many of us.

-Kim Murphy

P.S. Brooke Shannon's review was the best source of Mart Crowley information that I was able to find anywhere, so please add that to my original e-mail. She truly deserves to be complimented on her research.

Monday, November 07, 2005