Original Story by: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood

Original Story by Arthur Laurents is an excellent autobiography by a very talented man. His talents include screenwriting, directing, playwriting. His story is told with candor and humor. He is very upfront about being gay and his various affairs in Hollywood and New York, noticeably his long affair in the late 40's, early 50's with Farley Granger. The book takes you behind the scenes of the movie industry and the people who ruled Hollywood. He is frank in his opinion of the people he worked (and lived) with. A Marxist since the thirties, he shows no affection for director Elia Kazan who blew the whistle on many of Hollywood's greats during the '50s. Laurents has wonderful stories about working on Broadway with West Side Story and Gypsy. His priceless vignettes about Ethel Merman are worth the price of the book alone. Many other celebrities are mentioned throughout his book.He has lived a very full life and it is very evident in this entertaining book. And he's still going strong at 83.

I was about 20 pages in to this wonderful autobiography when I found myself thinking, "Man, I'm going to like this". All 380 other pages, I was right. Actually, I wish I could give it four and a half stars, because I do have one small complaint about it -- Arthur Laurents in many places in the book seems to be writing to people who know him already and are, so to speak, looking for themselves in the index. The story leaps around from place to place and time to time and age to age fairly randomly, and in more than just a few places people's first names appear with the apparent assumption that all of us are going to know exactly who it is that Arthur is talking about. That said, there are also lots and lots and lots of people that everyone knows about, and it is sort of gossipingly wonderful to read interpretations of Katharine Hepburn as being sort of weird, Lena Horne as being sort of wonderful, Jerome Robbins as being sort of way too much about himself, etc., etc., etc. Beyond all that there is this man, Arthur Laurents, himself. The flyleaf to the book says that he has had a "rich life", and that's putting it mildly. There is not only the magnificence of the body of his work, but there's also just a guy who lived life to its way-beyond fullest. He smoked dope (and, unlike Bill, inhaled and liked it), he slept around because he found lots of people sexy and attractive, he did what his heart called him to do in his profession, he bitched with a lot of people and made friends with lots of other people -- in short, if that's not necessarily who I would want to be myself, it sure enough is somebody I would like to be friends with and know. This is a wonderful autobiography even for someone who has never heard of Arthur Laurents, because it is all about people you've known all your life, but it is also a wonderful autobiography because few people who write autobiographies ever let that much of themselves show. I loved it, and I think you will, too.

Arthur Laurents' professional life has taken him from obscurity to the highs of Hollywood to the highs of Broadway. And personally, he obviously always felt that a lover was more important than a hit. Laurents pulls no punches. He takes the reader on a journey like none other I've read about: having worked with almost every big (and little) name in the theatre and film, he lets us in on backstage drama and trauma. And he tells how he survived. As to his personal life, it is ALMOST as heady as his writing career. His story is informative and exciting and romantic and funny and moving. This is a MUST READ. 400 pages goes by in a flash.

This is a beautifully written book! I loved every page of this book and I heartily commend Laurents for making me feel what it was like to be a gay man in the forties and fifties who just happened to know most of the greats of New York and Hollywood! it's a cliche but my advice is to run out and buy this incredible book! Thank you, Mr. Laurents!

first and only non-fiction account of an openly gay and openly leftest hollywood and broadway personality spaning 80 years of glamour. His credentials and reputation are beyond question; his legacy will live far byond his years. Even the youngest amounst us will know the personalities. The best part about it is the true life love story that enables and keeps the man productive into his 80's. Straight or gay...don't miss this one!