Bernstein suggested they rework East Side Story and set it in Los Angeles, but Laurents felt he was more familiar with Puerto Ricans and Harlem than he was with Mexican Americans and Olvera Street.

Laurents felt that the building tension needed to be alleviated in order to increase the impact of the play's tragic outcome, so comic relief in the form of Officer Krupke was added to the second act.

Because of his own background, Laurents felt it was important for his heroine to be Jewish and share his outrage at injustice.

Other locations included the village of Ballston Spa in upstate New York, Central Park, the beach in Malibu, and Union Station in Los Angeles, the latter for a scene Laurents felt was absurd and fought to have deleted, without success.

Both stars appeared to be playing themselves more often than their characters, and Streisand often used a grand accent that Laurents felt hurt her performance.

Dexter insisted on giving the lead role of Leona to Elizabeth Allen, who Laurents felt could manage the acting and singing but had a cold personality too contrary to that of the character.

Laurents rued the casting-he felt Allen was too young and colorless and Franchi couldn't act-and ignored all the ongoing problems in favor of making his dream a reality, but most of all he regretted the break in his friendship with Sondheim after the show.

He enthusiastically contacted Laurents and the two discussed changes that could be made to improve the show.

Laurents stated, " The musical theatre and cultural conventions of 1957 made it next to impossible for the characters to have authenticity.

The director demanded the role of Hubbell be made equal to that of Katie, and throughout filming, for unexplained reasons, he kept Laurents away from Redford.

A decade after the film was released, Redford, having made peace with Laurents, contacted him to discuss the possibility of collaborating on a new project, and eventually the two settled on a sequel to The Way We Were.

The story was adapted from a play by Arthur Laurents, originally about anti-Semitism in the army, but revised and made into a film about the persecution of a black soldier.

Laurents sent Redford the completed script but, aside from receiving a brief note acknowledging the actor had received it and looked forward to reading it, he never heard from him again.

Laurents was not a fan of drag or camp entertainment and thought Holt and Brown never would find enough investors to finance a gay-themed project at a time when, during the early years of the AIDS epidemic, homophobia was more intense than ever.

She received praise from Walter Goodman in a New York Times review of one of her many off-Broadway performances: as June Yeager, a young wife who feels she is never " loved enough ", in the 1986 York Theater Company production of Arthur Laurents ' dramatic play The Time of the Cuckoo staged at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York's Upper East Side neighborhood ( Manhattan ).

Laurents thought the script was not as good as he remembered it being, and agreed to rewrite it once Stark agreed to sell the rights to the characters and their story to Streisand.

Stark was less enthused, but agreed because Pollack assured him he could deliver Robert Redford for the role of Hubbell, which Laurents had written with Ryan O ' Neal in mind.

With gay-activist Fierstein and the political Laurents on board, the show could have " become a polemic diatribe on gay rights.

Laurents declined, and any new projects related to the film have been in limbo ever since.

Laurents had been impressed with They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

It has also been reported that Arthur Laurents changed portions of the dialogue for the UNCSA production.

Laurents suspected Rodgers had been drinking, and when he discovered a bottle of vodka secreted in the toilet tank during a later visit to the Rodgers apartment, he realized he had been correct.

At the last moment they were joined by Arthur Laurents, who remained behind when the group departed for London to see the opening of the New York City Ballet, which had been choreographed by Jerome Robbins.

Anyone Can Whistle is a musical with a book by Arthur Laurents and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

The show was first announced in The New York Times on October 5, 1961: " For the winter of 1962, Laurents is nurturing another musical project, The Natives Are Restless.

A meager description was furnished by Mr. Laurents, who refused to elaborate.

In a letter to Bloomgarden from Laurents, he wrote, " I beg you not to mention the money problems or any difficulties to Steve anymore.

" This behavior is considered unusual for Laurents, which runs contrary to his current reputation.

Sondheim discovered that Laurents hated doing backers ' auditions and he took over that responsibility, playing and singing more than 30.

Eager to work with both Laurents and Sondheim, Angela Lansbury accepted the lead role as Mayoress Cora Hoover Hooper, despite her strong misgivings about the script and her ability to handle the score.

Laurents had wanted Barbra Streisand for the role of Fay, but she turned it down to star in Funny Girl.

Laurents, ignoring criticism about the show's message being trite and its absurdist style difficult to comprehend, poured his energies into restaging rather than dealing with the crux of the problem.

Howard Taubman in his New York Times review wrote that Laurents ' " book lacks the fantasy that would make the idea work, and his staging has not improved matters.

Sondheim worked closely with book writer Arthur Laurents to create the show.

West Side Story is an American musical with a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and conception and choreography by Jerome Robbins.

In 1949, Jerome Robbins approached Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents about collaborating on a contemporary musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.

Eager to write his first musical, Laurents immediately agreed.

Bernstein wanted to present the material in operatic form, but Robbins and Laurents resisted the suggestion.

They described the project as " lyric theatre ", and Laurents wrote a first draft he called East Side Story.

In 1955, theatrical producer Martin Gabel was working on a stage adaptation of the James M. Cain novel Serenade, about an opera singer who comes to the realization he is homosexual, and he invited Laurents to write the book.

Laurents accepted and suggested Bernstein and Robbins join the creative team.

Laurents, however, was committed to Gabel, who introduced him to the young composer / lyricist Stephen Sondheim.

Laurents liked the lyrics but was not impressed with the music.

Sondheim did not care for Laurents ' opinion.

Laurents was soon hired to write the screenplay for a remake of the 1934 Greta Garbo film The Painted Veil for Ava Gardner.