Mart Crowley

Mart Crowley (1935-2020) was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi and educated at The Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. After graduating from the drama department, he went to New York to pursue a career in the theatre and landed jobs as production assistant to the directors Sidney Lumet and Elia Kazan.

His first play, the groundbreaking The Boys in the Band, opened Off-Broadway on April 14, 1968 to rave reviews. He wrote the screenplay and produced the film version, directed by Academy Award winner William Friedkin. The 2011 documentary Making the Boys explores the genesis of the play and film. Crowley’s other produced plays are Remote Asylum (1970); A Breeze from the Gulf (1973), which earned a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle nomination for Best Play; Avec Schmaltz (1984), written for the Williamstown Theatre Festival; For Reasons That Remain Unclear (1993), a pre-scandal effort to investigate sexual abuse in the Catholic Church; and The Men from the Boys (2002), a sequel to The Boys in the Band.

From 1979 through 1984, Crowley was the producer/co-writer of the ABC TV series Hart to Hart. He also wrote several television movies and mini-series. In addition, he is the co-author of the children’s book Kay Thompson’s Eloise Takes a Bawth, published by Simon & Schuster (2002). In 2009 he won the Lambda Literary Award for The Collected Plays of Mart Crowley.