Arthur Laurents

Playwright, screenwriter, and director Arthur Laurents writes about directing Broadway musicals, especially Gypsy and West Side Story, about other musicals and other directors, interacting with producers, writers, and actors, and about life with his late partner, Tom Hatcher.

This musical sets the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet against a backdrop of the rivalry of two street gangs, the Sharks and the Jets, in New York of the 1950s. A young woman who is sister to the Sharks leader has her first taste of love with the former head of the Jets.

Original Broadway cast recording of the story of gang warfare in New York's upper West Side.

Two friends strangle a college classmate and then proceed to invite his family and friends to dinner after they stuff the body inside a trunk to be used for the dining table. One of the guests, their teacher, suspects foul play. Based on the real-life Leopold-Loeb murder, Hitchcock's study of total mise-en-scene construction was shot entirely on a single sound stage.

This musical sets the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet against a backdrop of the rivalry of two street gangs, the Sharks and the Jets, in New York of the 1950s. A young woman who is sister to the Sharks leader has her first taste of love with the former head of the Jets.