Arthur Laurents was born and grew up in Brooklyn. His father was a lawyer. The family was Jewish. Laurents was attending Cornell University when he was drafted into the U.S. Army before Pearl Harbor.
Laurents began writing scripts for radio and in 1945 penned his first play, Home of the Brave. It was a drama set during World War II about anti-semitism in the military. During the era of McCarthyism, Laurents was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses and for several years none of his work was used in film.
Laurents wrote a number of plays including the 1952 hit The Time of the Cuckoo, Invitation to a March, The Enclave, and Jolson Sings Again.
He wrote the books for several musicals including West Side Story, Gypsy, Anyone Can Whistle, and Do I Hear a Waltz? based on his play The Time of the Cuckoo.
Laurents directed several Broadway productions including the musicals I Can Get It for You Wholesale (with the then-unknown Barbra Streisand and La Cage Aux Folles.
Laurents wrote two novels, The Way We Were and The Turning Point. Both became successful films for which Laurents wrote the screenplays.
He wrote the screenplays for Anatole Litvak's The Snake Pit, Anastasia, and the Hitchcock's film Rope. The play The Time of the Cuckoo later became the David Lean/Katherine Hepburn film Summertime.
In 2000, Laurents published a memoir, Original Story By. In it, the author reveals that he is gay and had relationships with Farley Granger and Tom Hatcher. Laurents and Hatcher were together for more than fifty years until Hatcher's death on October 26, 2006.
The Snake Pit (1948)
