James Leo Herlihy
| James Leo Herlihy | |
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| Born | February 27, 1927 Detroit, Michigan, United States |
| Died | Error: Need valid death date (first date): year, month, day Los Angeles, California, United States |
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| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
James Leo Herlihy (/ˈhɜːrləhi/; February 27, 1927 – October 21, 1993) was an American novelist, playwright and actor.
Herlihy is known for his novels Midnight Cowboy and All Fall Down, and his play Blue Denim, all of which were adapted for cinema. Other publications include The Season of the Witch and several short stories.[1]
Contents
Biography
Herlihy was born into a working-class family in Detroit, Michigan, in 1927. He was raised in Detroit and Chillicothe, Ohio.[2] He enlisted with the Navy in 1945 but saw no action due to the end of World War II. He attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina for two years, where he studied sculpture. He then moved to southern California and attended the Pasadena Playhouse College of the Theatre.[1]
A gay man, Herlihy was a close friend of playwright Tennessee Williams, who served as his mentor.[2] Both spent a significant amount of time in Key West, Florida. Like Williams, Herlihy had lived in New York City. Apart from Key West, the primary home of Herlihy was in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles.[2]
Herlihy committed suicide at the age of 66, after taking an overdose of sleeping pills in Los Angeles.[1][3]
Works
Plays he wrote include Streetlight Sonata (1950), Moon in Capricorn (1953), and Blue Denim (produced on Broadway in 1958).[1] He directed actress Tallulah Bankhead in a touring production of his play Crazy October in 1959.[4] Three of his one-act plays, titled collectively Stop, You're Killing Me were presented by the Theater Company of Boston in 1969.[5] According to author Sean Egan in his biography of James Kirkwood Jr., Ponies & Rainbows, Herlihy co-wrote the play UTBU with Kirkwood but demanded his name be taken off the credits.[6]
Herlihy wrote three novels: All Fall Down (1960), Midnight Cowboy (1965), and The Season of the Witch (1971).[7] His short stories were collected in The Sleep of Baby Filbertson and Other Stories (1959) and A Story That Ends in a Scream and Eight Others (1967), a collection which included plays.[1]
Acting roles
Herlihy appeared as a guest star in "A Bunch of Lonely Pagliaccis," a 1962 episode of the TV series Route 66. He acted in the movie In the French Style (1963) with Jean Seberg. Herlihy also acted in Edward Albee's play The Zoo Story in 1963 in Boston and Paris,[1] and in the 1981 film Four Friends directed by Arthur Penn.[1]
Tax protest
In 1968, Herlihy signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments as a protest against the Vietnam War.[8] He later also became a sponsor of the War Tax Resistance project, which practiced and advocated tax resistance as a form of protest against the war.[9]
Bibliography
Novels
- All Fall Down (1960)
- Midnight Cowboy (1965)
- The Season of the Witch (1971)
Plays
- Streetlight Sonata (1950)
- Moon in Capricorn (1953)
- Blue Denim (1958)
- Crazy October (1959)
- Stop, You're Killing Me: Three Short Plays (1969)
Collections
- The Sleep of Baby Filbertson and Other Stories (1958)
- A Story That Ends with a Scream and Eight Others (1967)
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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- ↑ Egan, Sean (2011) "Ponies & Rainbows: The Life of James Kirkwood" Bearmanor Media, ISBN 1-59393-680-X, page 204
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.[dead link]
- ↑ "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest", January 30, 1968 New York Post
- ↑ "A Call to War Tax Resistance" The Cycle 14 May 1970, p. 7
External links
- James Leo Herlihy at the Internet Movie Database
- James Leo Herlihy at the Internet Broadway DatabaseLua error in Module:EditAtWikidata at line 29: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).Lua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 28: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
- James Leo Herlihy at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
- James Leo Herlihy papers held by Special Collections, University of Delaware
- James Leo Herlihy letters to Edward P. Mitchell held by Special Collections, University of Delaware
- Materials related to James Leo Herlihy in the Lyle Bonge - James Leo Herlihy correspondence collection held by Special Collections, University of Delaware
- Materials related to James Leo Herlihy in the Jeffrey Bailey collection of James Leo Herlihy papers held by Special Collections, University of Delaware
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- Articles with dead external links from September 2010
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- Age error
- IBDB name template using Wikidata
- 1927 births
- 1993 suicides
- 20th-century American novelists
- American male novelists
- American tax resisters
- LGBT writers from the United States
- Drug-related suicides in California
- Writers from Detroit
- LGBT dramatists and playwrights
- LGBT people from Michigan
- Gay writers
- LGBT novelists
- American male short story writers
- 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
- American male dramatists and playwrights
- 20th-century American short story writers
- 20th-century American male writers
- Novelists from Michigan
- Black Mountain College alumni
- United States Navy personnel of World War II
