Scope and Content Note
The Arthur Laurents Papers span from around 1900-2011, with the majority of the materials dating from 1960 to 2011. The collection includes scripts for various theatrical works, correspondence, business papers, published and unpublished writings, photographs, biographical materials, datebooks, digital files, and other materials.
The Project Files series consists mostly of script drafts for various stage works in addition to correspondence, business papers, photographs, and other materials related to these productions. Included in the collection of nearly forty musicals, plays and screenplays are West Side Story, Gypsy and Hallelujah, Baby!. Novelizations or novelistic treatments of his works The Way We Were, The Turning Point, and The Enclave are present as well. There are also working scripts from productions that Laurents directed, including La Cage aux Folles. Although the majority of correspondence from notable personalities is filed separately, some letters from collaborators, including Stephen Sondheim, are also found among the project files.
The Correspondence series includes personal and business letters, telegrams, postcards, and other communications gathered throughout Laurents' career. He moved in Hollywood and Broadway circles for over 60 years and accumulated a vast number of contacts and friends. Notable figures of twentieth-century theatre and film with whom he communicated include, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Redford, Jerome Robbins, Richard Rodgers, Barbra Streisand, and Patti LuPone. He also corresponded with major figures at institutions such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Walt Disney Studios, and Columbia Pictures. Laurents' personal correspondence with certain individuals, including Tom Hatcher and Millie Rowland, takes place over decades and offers insights into his personal life.
The Writings series chiefly contains drafts of Laurents's published autobiography and memoir, Original Story By: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood and Mainly on Directing: Gypsy, West Side Story and Other Musicals respectively. This series also includes drafts of a third unpublished memoir, The Rest of the Story, as well as interviews and articles by and about Laurents. The Photographs series chiefly consists of portraits and miscellaneous headshots of Laurents that span the playwright's life, from only several months old until the year of his death in 2011. This series also contains old family photographs, images of Laurents with other people, and photographs of his lovers Farley Granger and Tom Hatcher. There are also a large number of negatives, both developed and undeveloped. Those negatives that have been developed and are present in the collection have been identified as such.
A small series of Biographical Materials contains various documents pertaining to Laurents' other life activities. These include biographical notes for programs, his FBI Freedom of Information Act File, a living will, Army records and Cornell University materials. The Datebooks series contain bound volumes that chart Laurents' daily activities from 1954 to 2011. The Miscellany series includes housing contracts, assorted business materials, awards, memorials, and several folders of research materials that Laurents prepared on the various decades of the twentieth century.