Arthur Levine grew up in a middle class family that was half Orthodox Jews and half atheist. Arthur himself rejected of all fundamentalist religions, but he identify himself as Jewish. Before embarking on a writing career he started using the less Jewish-sounding Laurents to improve his job prospects.
In the military during WWII, Laurents was assigned to the U.S. Army Pictorial Service located in Astoria, Queens. While working on training films he met director George Cukor and actor William Holden. He also wrote plays for Armed Service Force Presents radio show.
Later in life he wrote his autobiography, about the war in NYC:
“Everything was rationed except the two things everyone wanted most: sex and booze. The city reeked of sex. . . . I whirled in a blender of sex and booze.”
After the war, his career in writing led him to Broadway. When his first play, “Home of the Brave” (1945), was sold to Hollywood, he achieve an opportunity to write movies
Laurents’ best known early film is “Rope” (1948) directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It tells the story about two young men who nurder a friend then hide the body in a chest while they hold a cocktail party. One of the stars of the film was Farley Granger who was already in a relationship with Laurants.
He later wrote the popular “The Way We Were” (1973) which starred Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford; and “The Turning Point” (1977) for which he was nominated for an Oscar.
But Laurents most memorable works are the musicals he wrote for Broadway (he wrote structure the plot and wrote the dialogue): “West Side Story” (1957) and “Gypsy” (1959). Laurents also directed for the stage: credits include “I can get it for you wholesale” (1962), the 1974 revival of “Gypsy”, “La Cage Aux Folles” (1983), and the bilingual production of “West Side Story” (2009.
The creative team of “West Side Story" (1957): Sondheim, Arthur Laurents, Hal Prince, Robert Griffith (a co-producer, seated), Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins.
But Laurents’ longest credit is his 52 year relationship with his partner Tom Hatcher. In 1954, fellow writer Gore Vidal suggested to Laurents that he visit a certain men’s clothing store in downtown Hollywood. The reason? The young blond man who worked there.
Laurents later described the encounter:
“It was lust, not love, at first sight.”
But out of that intense early relationship, Laurents and Hatcher were together until Hatcher’s death in 2006.
