Original Story By: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood.
LAURENTS, Arthur [Charles Strouse].
Original Story By: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood.
First Edition of Original Story By: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood; Signed by Arthur Laurents and From the Collection of Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.
$300.00
In Stock
Item Number: 152199
First edition of the candid memoir of playwright and screenwriter Arthur Laurents, author of the books for West Side Story and Gypsy. Octavo, original half cloth, illustrated with black-and-white photographs. Boldly signed by Arthur Laurents on the half-title page. From the collection of Tony, Grammy, and Emmy Award-winning composer Charles Strouse and his wife, choreographer Barbara Siman. Over his 50-year career, Charles Strouse wrote the music for such iconic musical theater hits as Bye Bye Birdie, Applause, and Annie, as well as the theme song for the classic sitcom All in the Family (“Those Were the Days”). His partnership with Martin Charnin on Annie produced one of Broadway’s most successful scores ever, with “Tomorrow” and other songs from the production becoming enduring American musical standards admired by generations. His reach knew no genre or generation, from a number-one Billboard hit in 1958 to Jay-Z’s Grammy-winning sampling of “It’s the Hard-Knock Life” four decades later – and his honors include three Tony Awards and induction into both the Songwriters and Theater Halls of Fame. With his ownership stamp to the front free endpaper. Fine in a very good dust jacket. An engaging association uniting two giants of the American musical theater.
Original Story By: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood (2000) is the candid and frequently combative autobiography of Arthur Laurents (1917-2011), one of the defining figures of the American stage and screen. Laurents wrote the books for two of the greatest of all Broadway musicals, West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959), as well as the plays Home of the Brave and The Time of the Cuckoo and the screenplays for The Way We Were and The Turning Point; he later directed the acclaimed Broadway revivals of Gypsy and West Side Story. In this memoir he writes with unsparing honesty about his career, his life as a gay man, the Hollywood blacklist that ensnared him, his decades-long partnership with Tom Hatcher, and his often stormy collaborations with figures including Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Jerome Robbins.
