obituaries
Obituaries from page 144
Broadway's Arthur Laurents
A
rthur Laurents, the award-
winning writer of Broadway
classics such as West Side
Story and Gypsy, and Hollywood films
including The Way We Were, died May
5, 2011, at 93. Broadway marquees
dimmed their lights the night after
news of Laurents' death was reported.
Laurents wrote West
Side Story for Leonard
Bernstein and Jerome
Robbins, creating
along with Stephen
Sondheim (all Jews) a
modern-day musical
rewrite of Romeo and
Juliet
that has become
Arthur
a
touchstone
of mod-
Laurents
ern popular culture.
Theater experts also rate Gypsy, the
fictionalized story of stripper Gypsy
Rose Lee, as one of Broadway's endur-
ing classics.
In recent weeks, reports confirmed
by a statement on Barbra Streisand's
website indicated that Laurents was
planning to work with the actress on a
new movie of Gypsy.
"We were about to do Gypsy togeth-
er," Streisand said. "He created people
you care about because he cared about
people. I spoke to him a few weeks ago
and he sounded so strong, as always.
He was lucky to have lived a full and
creative life up till the very end. I'll
miss working with him again."
Among Laurents' many produced
works were the screenplay for Alfred
Hitchcock's chilling film of murder,
Rope; Anastasia, with Ingrid Bergman;
and The Turning Point, with Anne
Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine.
Laurents wrote The Way We Were, a
1973 romantic tearjerker with a politi-
cal subtext starring Robert Redford
and Streisand, which was adapted from
his own novel. Laurents directed the
original Broadway production of the
musical La Cage Aux Folles in 1983.
Laurents was born Arthur Levine
to a lawyer and schoolteacher in
Brooklyn's Flatbush neighborhood.
According to his autobiography,
Original Story By: A Memoir of
Broadway and Hollywood, he gave up
Jewish practice after his "meaning-
less" bar mitzvah, which his Orthodox
grandmother would not attend.
Laurents said he faced anti-Semitism
as a boy in Brooklyn and later changed
his name to avoid harming his career.
Laurents was known for being brash
and outspoken. During the preparation
and run of a critically assailed revival
of West Side Story in 2009, Laurents
addressed new and old feuds with
Bernstein and Robbins.
Yet Laurents, having lived through
the McCarthy era, was close-mouthed
about being a homosexual. However,
he publicly acknowledged being gay
in a newspaper interview in the late
1980s after being challenged to do so
by author Armistead Maupin. Laurents'
partner of more than 50 years, actor
Tom Hatcher, died several years ago.
In recent years, along with his work
directing revivals of his greatest tri-
umphs, Laurents continued to write
plays, many of which were produced in
a New Jersey theater. (JTA)
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Obituaries
Hot Dog Mogul
urray Handwerker, who grew
up behind the counter of his
father's Coney Island hot dog
stand and then turned Nathan's Famous
into a national fast food chain, died May
14, 2011, at 89 in Palm Beach Gardens,
Fla.
"We called it finger food; you didn't
need a knife and fork:' he said. "But it
was always quality. My father insisted on
that:'
Nathan's, named for Handwerker's
father, grew to fame in the prewar era.
But Handwerker returned from Army
service after World War II with even
greater expansion plans.
After he joined the company he
expanded the menu to include, among
other items, shrimp and clams — over
his father's objections.
The company began franchising in the
1970s, went public, and then suffered
financial reversals. The Handwerker fam-
ily sold the company to a private invest-
ment group in 1987, which later took it
public again. (JTA)