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.

Laurents felt the changes made it better but never as good as it could have been.

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.

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 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, 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.

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

In New York, Laurents went to the opening night party for a new play by Ugo Betti, and there he met Sondheim, who had heard that East Side Story, now retitled West Side Story, was back on track.

Meanwhile, Laurents had written a new draft of the book changing the characters ' backgrounds: Anton, once an Irish American, was now of Polish and Irish descent, and the formerly Jewish Maria had become a Puerto Rican.

Laurents ultimately invented what sounded like real street talk but actually was not: " cut the frabba-jabba ", for example.

With the help of Oscar Hammerstein, Laurents convinced Bernstein and Sondheim to move " One Hand, One Heart ", which he considered too pristine for the balcony scene, to the scene set in the bridal shop, and as a result " Tonight " was written to replace it.

Another song, " Kid Stuff ", was added and quickly removed during the Washington, D. C. tryout when Laurents convinced the others it was helping tip the balance of the show into typical musical comedy.

Robbins was involved with Bells Are Ringing, then Bernstein with Candide, and in January 1957 A Clearing in the Woods, Laurents ' latest play, opened and quickly closed.

The film was adapted by Millen Brand, Arthur Laurents ( uncredited ) and Frank Partos from the novel by Mary Jane Ward.

1876 The first rice mill was built by Gustave Laurents and D. Derouen.

* Stage ( Musical ): In 1991, a Broadway musical, Nick & Nora with a book by Arthur Laurents, lyrics by Richard Maltby, Jr., and music by Charles Strouse was based on the characters.

Gypsy's memoir, titled Gypsy, was published in 1957 and was taken as inspirational material for the Jule Styne, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents Broadway musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable.

It later was reported she was negotiating with Daniel Mann instead, and Laurents would be adapting his play for the screen.

Laurents ' screenplay allegedly was unsatisfactory, and newly hired director David Lean tried to improve it with associate producer Norman Spencer and writers Donald Ogden Stewart and S. N.

The movie was adapted by Guy Bolton and Arthur Laurents from the play by Bolton and Marcelle Maurette.

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 ).

When the producer of The Painted Veil replaced Gardner with Eleanor Parker and asked Laurents to revise his script with her in mind, he backed out of the film, freeing him to devote all his time to the stage musical.

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

During his time in Venice, Granger renewed his friendship with Peggy Guggenheim, whom he had met during his earlier trip to Italy with Arthur Laurents, and he met Mike Todd, who cajoled him into making a cameo appearance as a gondolier in his epic Around the World in 80 Days.

Bosley Crowther of the New York Times observed, " In adapting for the screen Arthur Laurents ' stage play The Time of the Cuckoo, Mr. Lean and H. E. Bates discarded most of the individual shadings and psychological subtleties of that romance.

Laurents ultimately regretted recommending Pollack.

Laurents suggested that John Dexter direct the show, but later regretted the choice.

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

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, 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.

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.

He arrived in Hollywood to choreograph the dance sequences for The King and I, and he and Laurents began developing the musical while working on their respective projects, keeping in touch with Bernstein, who had returned to New York.

In 2007, Arthur Laurents stated, " I've come up with a way of doing Side Story that will make it absolutely contemporary without changing a word or a note.

The screenplay by Arthur Laurents was based on his college days at Cornell University and his experiences with the House Un-American Activities Committee.

The fiery campus radical organized rallies and a peace strike, and the memory of her fervor remained with Laurents long after the two lost touch.

Laurents decided to develop a story with a similar character at its center, but was unsure what other elements to add.

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

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.

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.

In 1996, Streisand came across the sequel Laurents had written, and decided she wanted to produce and direct it as well as co-star with Redford, but didn't want to work with Stark.