The Rest of the Story: A Life Completed

by Arthur Laurents

Best known for the hit musicals West Side Story and Gypsy, Arthur Laurents began his career writing socially minded plays such as Home of the Brave and Time of the Cuckoo. He also garnered impressive credits as a screenwriter (The Way We Were) and stage director (La Cage aux Folles). Such a varied professional life makes for absorbing reading, as unleashed in his lively 2000 autobiography, Original Story By.

Laurents passed away early in 2011 but not before writing The Rest of the Story, in which he revealed all that had happened in his life since Original Story By, filled with the wisdom he gained in growing older and a new perspective brought on by Laurents' experience of deep personal loss, including the death of his longtime companion, Tom Hatcher.

Laurents' style remains engrossing and brutally honest. His voice is still highly intelligent, loving, generous, and gracious. He remained committed to his artistic vision to the very end, as captured in the epilogue, which he completed only days before his death. The book ends with a loving and insightful coda by Laurent's good friend and the editor of this book, David Saint.

212 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2012

About the author

Arthur Laurents was an American playwright, librettist, stage director, and screenwriter. His credits included the stage musicals West Side Story and Gypsy and the film The Way We Were.

Reviews

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is something of a mess (one Goodreads reviewer said it was a "bit incoherent"). It is the follow-up to screenwriter/playwright Arthur Laurents' 2000 autobiography, "Original Story By," which was certainly entertaining. However, that book also had its fair share of nastiness, name-dropping, and score-settling. This 2011 entry, finished just ten days prior to Laurents' death, is a more charitable work, and it focuses on the idea of change -- change that had taken place since 2000, and change that occurred in Laurents' life as he wrote this memoir. Its principal preoccupation is with the death of Laurents' partner of 52 years, Tom Hatcher, in 2006, which left him bereft and anchorless. Laurents' devotion is obvious and touching, but also extremely repetitious (we hear the same laments over and over again). This book would have benefited from some judicious editing; however, David Saint, Laurents' best friend, served as editor and author of the brief "coda" at the end of the book, and I think that Saint must have felt that he should include every single word that Laurents penned at this late stage of his life.

There are a few interesting stories and revelations here, particularly about Laurents' re-stagings of "Gypsy" and "West Side Story." There are also some disclosures about his relationships with celebrities like Lena Horne, Barbra Streisand, Lauren Bacall, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin and Bernadette Peters that will be fascinating to theater and film buffs. But this is a very uneven read, and I was grateful that it ran only about 200 pages.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second memoir from Arthur Laurents that continues where his first memoir ended. Focused on the death of his partner, the book, like the first book wanders all over the place without any real chronological focus and has an even weaker structure than the first book. What kept me reading is the details of Laurents' life and how he participated in so many shows that were formative in my own life.

"Poem: The Layers by Stanley Kunitz."

"That's one thing that never changes-the need for hope." 10

"Life in Hollywood reflected the life they saw on the screen, which reflected the life they lived." 43

"Gay liberation later didn't bring as much liberation as the former plantation owners believed, either. Progress for a minority is never as much as the majority likes to believe." 45

"One holdover remains from that Time of the Toad, as Dalton Turbo called it..." 50

"Anyone who lived through the eighties knows the change made by AIDS. I saw it early on because of where Tom and I lived: the West Village, the exhilarating centre of the gay community in that decade. Then overnight, a heart-wrenching visible change-streets that had been alive with vibrant young men emptied overnight. That emptiness haunts the West Village to this day; even the ghosts are disappearing." 92

"Hurt lingers. Like cancer, it can go into remission but it keeps coming back." 138

[elissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arthur Laurents looks back on his more than 90 years and discusses life after the death of his husband Tom. Read this if you are interested in Laurents, and his long term collaborators, Steven Sondheim, Lenny Bernstein (who is not discusses here) and the actors and movie folks they worked with and around. Hint: Barbra Streisand, Patti Lupone, Lena Horne ...

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This follow-up to his original memoir, 2000's ORIGINAL STORY BY, is framed around the idea of change. He updates his memoir but he also looks back and sees how he's changed during the decade since he published his epic biography. He wrote the last page of this volume several days before he died in 2011 at the age of 93.

Looking back, he regrets putting so much sex in the first book, feeling that it seemed to overshadow everything else (although, I, as a reader of the original book, have no complaint about all the sex in it!); he is sorry that he outed longtime boyfriend/actor Farley Granger (they weren't friendly win 2000, but renewed their friendship after the book was published). He's sorry that in his second book ("Mainly on Directing: Gypsy, West Side Story, and Other Musicals"), he focused so much of the blame on director Sam Mendes for most of what was wrong with the 2003 revival of GYPSY with Bernadette Peters.

But, don't think that he lost his fight. He may have regretted outing Granger, but that doesn't stop his from outing director Herbert Ross in this volume. (Ross was also the director/producer of THE TURNING POINT--screenplay by Laurents--of which Ross cut almost all gay content from the film.)

Laurents is a wonderful writer: his portraits of working with and/or friendships with Alfred Hitchcock and Charles Chaplin are illuminating even after countless of full-length bios have gotten to them first. He's also affectionate to Barbra Streisand (saying she'd make a great Mama Rose if she cuts her nails and doesn't play the role for sympathy).

But, primarily, this book is a love letter to Tom Hatcher, his partner of 52 years. Hatcher died in 2006, and never let Laurents know how ill he was with cancer. Prior to his death, he set in motion two projects (revivals of GYPSY and WEST SIDE STORY, under the helm of Laurents), knowing that the only way his partner would be able to cope with his death is by burying himself in work. Even after five years, everything still reminds Laurents of Hatcher and the life they shared. It's a beautiful love story and tale of grief.

If you're a fan of the theatre, you won't want to miss this valuable piece of history.

[Dan Kagan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rest in peace you old meanie. The 3rd autobiography of his life. Written when he was in his 90s. A bit incoherent but short and worth reading. He might have been rude opinionated and rough bit he gave us great theatre and lived openly from the 1950s onward. History.