David Rothenberg's Reviews

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There are several Arthur Laurents in ORIGINAL STORY, his riveting, if sometimes confusing, autobiography, published by Knopf.

There is Arthur Laurents: playwright, screenwriter, director, whose professional stage credits include "Gypsy," "West Side Story," "Home of the Brave," "The Time of the Cuckoo," "A Clearing in the Woods" and "La Cage aux Folles, among others, and whose best known screenplays are "The Way We Were" and "Snakepit."

And then there is the political, or at least socially aware, Laurents, who didn't testify or name names before the HUAC. He talks candidly about those who did, and the life-long professional decisions to be made in the incestuous, tightly knit Hollywood /Broadway communities. Any gifted artist such as Laurents would have to breathe the same air as the likes of Jerome Robbins (with whom he collaborated in "Gypsy" and "West Side Story") and Elia Kazan, two of the most celebrated informers in his play "Jolson Sings Again"; his protagonist tells his director-turned-informer "You're not evil because you informed, you informed because you are evil."

There is also the Arthur Laurents who tells all the gossip. To sell a show biz book today, you need more than the inevitable "and then I wrote" and political intrigues of the past. Our nation's bottomless pit of sexual curiosity is a must, and Laurents doesn't fail us. Indeed, we learn of film director Anatole Litvak's amazing stunt allegedly performed on Paulette Goddard at the celebrated Hollywood night spot Ciro's, and Lana Turner's midnight auto tryst with John Garfield. More than that, Laurents spares little detail about his sexual peccadilloes, affairs and flirtations with men and women, particularly if the partner's name was usually over the title. More than anything else, I was forced to chuckle when I read that Ethel Merman brought a ham sandwich to composer Jule Styne's seder. Queens-born Ethel Zimmerman, after a lifetime in the theatre, didn't know what Jews ate at Passover!

This is a chatty, readable autobiography. But Laurents occasionally confused me. From the midst of a chapter on the film "The Way We Were," he suddenly reverts years back, describing witch hunt days. It might have been to explain the motivation of Barbra Streisand's character in the film, but the reader can't always follow the mind of the writer. But that is a quibble. This is an information-packed book, mostly about the theatre, and some about the movies, in the second half of the last century.

Laurents knew and talks about everyone. I was particularly pleased of his favorable mention of two people I always liked - the late Emily Hahn (The New Yorker writer) and Fritz Holt, who co-produced "La Cage aux Folles" and the Angela Lansbury "Gypsy" before his premature death. Laurents' view of sexual politics and hypocrisy is sharp. His clear assertions on a number of issues are at once admirable and intimidating.

I can promise you one thing. Reading Arthur Laurents' ORIGINAL STORY will not bore you. As a matter of fact, you might stay up late at night, as I did, until you devoured the last page.

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