James Leo Herlihy

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James Leo Herlihy (27 February 1927 – 21 October 1993) was an American novelist, playwright, and actor.

Born into a working class family in Detroit, Michigan, Herlihy is known for his novels Midnight Cowboy and All Fall Down and his play Blue Denim, all of which were adapted for the screen. Other works include The Season of the Witch and a number of short stories.

Contents

[edit] Biography

After leaving high school, Herlihy enlisted in the Navy in 1945, receiving his overseas orders just two days before the end of World War II. From 1947-48, with money from the G.I. Bill, Herlihy attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina, a small, experimental institution whose faculty included Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Willem de Kooning, and other innovative figures in the arts. Herlihy studied art, music, and literature.

Herlihy formed strong relationships in the Black Mountain community, and his friendships with such figures as Anaïs Nin and the poet/potter M. C. (Mary Caroline) Richards would provide inspiration and support in his future creative endeavors. After an aptitude test indicated that his abilities might lie in the theater, Herlihy moved to California and attended the Pasadena Playhouse College from 1948-1950.

Over the next four years, Herlihy performed in about fifty plays in theaters along the West Coast. In the early 1960s, he became a member of the Theater Company of Boston, and he continued acting, off and on, throughout his life. His acting credits included Edward Albee's Zoo Story (which he performed in Paris and Boston in 1963) and the film Four Friends (1981).

The Pasadena Playhouse also produced Herlihy's first plays, Streetlight Sonata (1950) and Moon in Capricorn (1953). In 1953, Herlihy collaborated with his teacher William Noble on the play Blue Denim, which had a successful run on Broadway in 1958 and was adapted into a film in 1959. From 1953-1958, Herlihy wrote scripts for television. In 1959, he directed Tallulah Bankhead in a touring production of his play Crazy October. A trio of Herlihy's one-act plays, collected under the title Stop You're Killing Me (1970), included Terrible Jim Fitch (produced in 1965), Bad Bad Jo-Jo (produced in 1969), and Laughs, Etc. (produced in 1973).

Herlihy was also successful as a fiction writer. In 1952, the Paris Review published one of his short stories that would become the title work of his 1959 collection, The Sleep of Baby Filbertson and Other Stories. His first novel, All Fall Down, was published in 1960, and 1965 saw the appearance of Midnight Cowboy. This latter work was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film, and much of Herlihy's lasting fame is based on the popularity of that movie.

Despite this acclaim, Herlihy would only publish two more books, a collection of short stories and plays entitled A Story That Ends in a Scream and Eight Others (1967), and a novel about a young teenage runaway, The Season of the Witch (1971).

If Herlihy became more ambivalent about his writing over the years, he developed an increasing enthusiasm for teaching. He led classes in playwriting at City College, New York in 1967-68, and was a distinguished visiting professor at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, in 1983. He also taught acting and writing at many other institutions, including Colorado College and the University of Southern California.

Herlihy traveled extensively throughout the United States and Europe, but lived for much of his life in Los Angeles, California. He also resided in Key West, Florida, in the late sixties and early seventies, and in New York City during various intervals.

One hallmark of Herlihy's writing style is his strong characterization. His novels are populated with colorful characters, who are nonetheless portrayed with amazing psychological sensitivity. He may be indebted to his theater background for his ability to write characters that speak with such realistic and individualized speech patterns.

Herlihy's novels often feature protagonists living outside mainstream American culture, like Joe Buck, the male prostitute in Midnight Cowboy and Witch Gliz, the female teenage runaway in Season of the Witch. He wrote about aspects of the gay subculture in urban America in much of his fiction. Most of his books are now out of print, although they were very popular at the time of their publication.

Herlihy committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills in Los Angeles.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Novels

  • All Fall Down (1960)
  • Midnight Cowboy (1965)
  • The Season of the Witch (1971)

[edit] Plays

  • Streetlight Sonata (1950)
  • Moon in Capricorn (1953)
  • Blue Denim (1958)
  • Crazy October (1959)
  • Stop, You’re Killing Me: Three Short Plays (1969)

[edit] Collections

  • The Sleep of Baby Filbertson and Other Stories (1958)
  • A Story That Ends with a Scream and Eight Others (1967)


Persondata
NAME Herlihy, James Leo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE OF DEATH October 21, 1993
PLACE OF DEATH