The Boston Globe - 11.03.2020

C10 The Boston Globe WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2020

Obituaries

By Harrison Smith

WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — Mart

Crowley, a Tony Award-winning

playwright whose comic trage-

dy ‘‘The Boys in the Band’’

helped bring openly gay charac-

ters onto the stage and screen,

emerging as a landmark depic-

tion of gay life more than a year

before the Stonewall riots gal-

vanized a national liberation

movement, died March 7 at a

hospital in Manhattan. He was

84.

The cause was complica-

tions from heart surgery, said

his goddaughter Natasha Greg-

son Wagner. Her mother, ac-

tress Natalie Wood, was one of

Mr. Crowley’s closest friends,

hiring him as an assistant and

housing him from time to time

in the home Wood shared with

her husband, Robert Wagner.

For much of his career, Mr.

Crowley was overshadowed by

gay playwrights such as Larry

Kramer, whose drama ‘‘The

Normal Heart’’ wrestled with

the AIDS crisis of the early

1980s, and Tony Kushner,

whose two-part epic ‘‘Angels in

America’’ won the Pulitzer

Prize. But his 1968 examination

of gay identity, repression, and

self-loathing was a milestone

for artists and other theatergo-

ers who recognized themselves

as one of ‘‘The Boys in the

Band,’’ even if some of the play’s

acid-tongued dialogue would

come to seem dated.

‘‘We all stand firmly on the

shoulders of that play,’’ said

writer and producer Ryan Mur-

phy, who brought ‘‘The Boys in

the Band’’ to Broadway in 2018

and is producing an upcoming

movie adaptation for Netflix.

As a gay youth in Indiana,

Murphyaddedbyphone,‘‘I

thought I was an alien’’ — a sen-

timent that vanished after see-

ing the 1970 movie adaptation,

directed by William Friedkin

and written and produced by

Mr. Crowley. Since then, he

said, ‘‘The play never left my

subconsciousness.’’

Mr. Crowley wrote ‘‘The

Boys in the Band’’ at a time

when homosexuality was crimi-

nalized across most of the coun-

try and gay characters were

rarely seen in pop culture, often

appearing only for comic effect

or in marginal roles that ended

in tragedy.

Nonetheless, three of the

country’s leading playwrights

— Edward Albee, William Inge

and Tennessee Williams — were

widely known to be gay, a fact

that spurred a notorious New

York Times essay by critic Stan-

ley Kauffmann, who lamented

‘‘disguised homosexual influ-

ence’’ in the theater and called

on dramatists to address gay

themes head-on, without using

straight characters as stand-ins.

His 1966 essay amounted to

a kind of dare for Mr. Crowley, a

gay 30-year-old screenwriter

with a self-described ‘‘sugar-

cane accent’’ from Mississippi.

He was then broke, unem-

ployed, and frequently drunk,

albeit building a happier life for

himself in Hollywood than he

had as a young man in the

South, where he was molested

by a family friend as a child but

found refuge watching movies

and plays.

In a 2009 episode of the pub-

lic television show ‘‘Theater

Talk,’’ Mr. Crowley recalled

writing ‘‘The Boys in the Band’’

while staying at the home of a

wealthy friend, actress Diana

Lynn, the daughter-in-law of

New York Post publisher Doro-

thy Schiff. Living for five weeks

‘‘in the lap of luxury — nannies

butlers, maids, and cooks’’ — he

returned to his own home with

the script of ‘‘The Boys in the

Band,’’ which took its name

from a throwaway line in the

1954 remake of ‘‘A Star Is Born.’’

‘‘There was a little of me in

all the characters in that play,’’

Mr. Crowley once said. ‘‘I was

determined to write a new kind

of drama about homosexuality.

All the plays I had ever seen on

the subject were stereotyped,

sensational, embarrassed, or

evasive. I tried to be thoughtful

and honest and adult.’’

Centered on a group of gay

men gathered for a birthday

party, ‘‘The Boys in the Band’’

premiered off-Broadway at

Theater Four on Easter Sunday,

1968. The production ‘‘did for
      plays what ‘Oklahoma!’ did for
      musicals,’’ the playwright Neil
      Simon later told writer-produc-
      er Richard Kramer, adding that
      ‘‘he’d never seen such honesty
      on the stage before,’’ according
      to a 1993 New York Times re-
      port.
      The original production nev-
      er made it to Broadway but ran
      for more than two years and
      1,001 performances, with a cast
      that included Cliff Gorman in
      an Obie-winning turn as Emo-
      ry, who drops an f-bomb to de-
      liver one of the play’s iconic
      lines about trading sex for a
      drink.
      New York Times theater crit-
      ic Clive Barnes called ‘‘The Boys
      in the Band’’ ‘‘the frankest treat-
      ment of homosexuality I have
      ever seen on the stage,’’ declar-
      ing that it was so vitriolic it
      made Albee’s ‘‘Who’s Afraid of
      Virginia Woolf?’’ ‘‘seem like a
      vicarage tea party.’’ Mr. Crow-
      ley’s script, he added, ‘‘remorse-
      lessly peels away the preten-
      sions of its characters and re-
      veals a pessimism so
      uncrompomising in its honesty
      that it becomes in itself an affir-
      mation of life.’’
      That pessimism was brac-
      ingly evident in one of the play
      and movie’s most shocking
      lines — ‘‘You show me a happy
      homosexual and I’ll show you a
      gay corpse’’ — and defended by
      Mr. Crowley, who said that of-
      fering a stream of purely ‘‘posi-
      tive images’’ was the role of po-
      litical activists, not artists.
      In the aftermath of Stone-
      wall, some critics mellowed on
      ‘‘The Boys in the Band,’’ with
      LGBTQ scholar Michael Brons-
      ki writing that Mr. Crowley
      ‘‘made sure that heterosexual
      critics and audiences saw what
      they really believed: gay men
      who were unhappy and willful-
      ly cruel to one another.’’ None-
      theless, he added, the play ‘‘cre-
      ated possibilities for presenting
      gay material on the stage,’’ pav-
      ing the way for gay characters
      in Broadway shows such as
      ‘‘Find Your Way Home’’ and
      ‘‘Butley.’’
      Mr. Crowley went on to
      write several more plays but
      primarily supported himself
      with television work, including
      on the ABC detective series
      ‘‘Hart to Hart.’’ And while ‘‘The
      Boys in the Band’’ was pro-
      duced in translation around the
      world, it remained far from
      Broadway until 2018, when a
      star-studded revival featured

actors including Jim Parsons,

Zachary Quinto, and Robin De

Jesús, who was nominated for a

Tony as Emory.

The production received a

Tony Award for best revival of a

play, which served as vindica-

tion of sorts for Mr. Crowley. He

had spent years feeling misun-

derstood by members of the gay

community, said Murphy, who

recalled an emotional exchange

with the playwright after the

award ceremony.

‘‘You gave me something I’ve

never had before,’’ Mr. Crowley

told Murphy, ‘‘which is peace.’’

Edward Martino Crowley

was born in Vicksburg, Miss.,

on Aug. 21, 1935. ‘‘My father

was a drunkard and my mother

was a hypochondriac, depen-

dent upon drugs,’’ he once said.

Mr. Crowley studied drama

at the Catholic University in

Washington, receiving a bache-

lor’s degree in 1957, but was

home in Mississippi for the

filming of director Elia Kazan’s

movie ‘‘Baby Doll.’’

After introducing himself to

the filmmaker, he talked his

way into a job as a production

assistant, later working on ‘‘The

Fugitive Kind’’ (1960), directed

by Sidney Lumet, and ‘‘Splen-

dor in the Grass’’ (1961), a Ka-

zan film starring Wood.

Mr. Crowley ‘‘was hired to

pick my mom up at home and

drive her to work every day,’’

Gregson Wagner said by phone.

‘‘When ‘Splendor’ wrapped he

didn’t have a job, so she hired

him as her assistant.’’

He later developed a close

friendship with Wood’s hus-

band Wagner (they divorced

and later remarried), who

starred in ‘‘Hart to Hart’’ and

helped recruit Mr. Crowley to

the show as a producer and ex-

ecutive script consultant.

Mr. Crowley’s other plays in-

cluded ‘‘Remote Asylum’’

(1970); ‘‘A Breeze From the

Gulf’’ (1973), a semiautobio-

graphical work that ran off-

Broadway; ‘‘For Reasons That

Remain Unclear’’ (1993), about

a sexually abusive Catholic

priest; and ‘‘The Men From the

Boys,’’ a sequel to ‘‘The Boys in

the Band’’ that premiered in

San Francisco in 2002.

He also wrote TV movies in-

cluding ‘‘There Must Be a Pony’’

(1986), starring Wagner and

Elizabeth Taylor, and helped

write the picture book ‘‘Eloise

Takes a Bawth’’ (2002), starring

the devious young Plaza Hotel

resident created by Kay Thomp-

son.

Mr. Crowley, who leaves no

immediate survivors, described

writing as a kind of alchemy, in

which he transformed coal-

black experiences from his own

life into a kind of theatrical

gold, as a well as a form of spiri-

tual nourishment for himself

and his audience.

‘‘I feel my whole life is ob-

serving,’’ he told the Advocate

in 1996, ‘‘and I wish I could get

into the action. I came from a

very ugly background and a

very ugly small town with peo-

ple with very ugly attitudes. I

had a need for beauty, and I

think I share that with lots of

people. That need comes sim-

ply because of all of the sordid-

ness and unhappiness and re-

sentment as well as the calami-

ty of growing up gay when I was

growing up. That’s a round-

about way of saying I never felt

too included.’’

MartCrowley,writerof‘BoysintheBand’

SARA KRULWICH/NEW YORK TIMES

Mr. Crowley accepted the 2019 Tony for best revival of a play for “The Boys in the Band,” at

the 73rd annual Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York.

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Funeral Services

Of Dedham, formerly of Mattapan,
passed away on March 8, 2020. Beloved
wifeofthelateRichardM.Walsh.
Devoted mother of Richard M. Walsh
andhispartnerDavidBellofNewYork,
NY, Paul F. Walsh and his wife Arlene of
Dedham,andCatherineM.Mazzocca
and her husband Robert of Medway.
Loving grandmother of Nicholas and
Vanessa Mazzocca. Sister of Claire Finn
of Dedham and the late Paula Kennedy,
and Richard and John Fernands.
Visiting Hours at the George F.
Doherty & Sons Wilson-Cannon Funeral
Home, 456 High St., DEDHAM, on
Wednesday, March 11th from 4-8pm.
Funeral from the Funeral Home on
Thursday, March 12th at 9am, followed
by a Funeral Mass at St. Mary’s Church,
Dedham, at 10am. Relatives and
friends kindly invited. Interment Blue
Hill Cemetery, Braintree. For directions
and guestbook, gfdoherty.com

WALSH, Patricia A.

(Fernands)

George F. Doherty & Sons

Dedham 781 326 0500

VASS WALKER, Sandra D.

In Conyers, GA Sat., Feb. 29, 2020.
Sandra will be sorely missed. She leaves
to cherish her memory, her beloved
Mother, Barbara; her caring father,
Vernon (Leah) Vass, her beloved sister
Cheryl devoted and loving life Partner,
Rupert; her loving sons, Lamarr, Devon
(DJ) and Andre (Casey); her grandchil-
dren; Aniyah, Andre, Jr. and Avery;
nephews Robert (Rachelle) and Karee,
niece Junelle, great-niece Raiana.
She was predeceased by Thomas C.
Allen and James and Julia Walkeer. A
Celebration of Life will be held at Union
Baptist Church, 874 Main St., Cam-
bridge Friday, March 13, 11 A.M.

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