April 13, 1937, I spent a certain amount of time & energy in the late 1970s attempting to get a production of the beautiful, soulful play, Fifth Of July, off the ground, one of those lost endeavors that somehow slipped away. I have remained a fan of the work of playwright Lanford Wilson for the past 50 years, since seeing his play Balm In Gilead in 1965. I was drawn to Wilson’s desperate eccentric characters were filled fears & needs that were portrayed with sympathy & a sense of humor.
Wilson was born in Lebanon, Missouri & he brought a certain Midwestern sensibility & outlook to his work. He studied at the University of Chicago & lived there for a decade worked briefly in advertising. Wilson emerged as a playwright at NYC’s Caffe Cino in 1964, where his play The Madness Of Lady Bright was a major hit & a significant milestone in the development of gay-themed theatre. The play’s protagonist, Leslie Bright, is a middle-aged gay man confronting a wistful past, a lonely present & an uncertain future.
Most of his plays, including the early: The Hot L Baltimore, Serenading Louie, & Balm In Gilead were produced in association with Circle Repertory Company, where he was founding member in 1969.
Wilson’s works are earthy, realist, greatly admired, & frequently performed. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for Talley’s Folly, part a trilogy- The Talley Cycle, along with Talley & Son, & Fifth Of July.
My personal favorite, Fifth Of July, is a bittersweet & funny drama that explores the disillusionment of the Vietnam era. The Broadway production starred Christopher Reeve as a gay, paraplegic Vietnam veteran, & co-starred Jeff Daniels & Swoosie Kurtz. It was made into an excellent TV movie in 1982. Wilson’s other Broadway plays include Burn This (1987), Angels Fall (1983), & Redwood Curtain, which I understudied several of the roles when it premiered at Seattle Repertory Theatre in 1993. It was made as a film for TV film in 1995, featuring Jeff Daniels & John Lithgow. His work reminds me of Tennessee Williams, in the best way.
His Off-Broadway work The Hot L Baltimore, about the residents of a seedy residential hotel, was the basis of a short-lived TV sitcom of the same name, broadcast on ABC in 1975.
Actors frequently associated with Wilson’s work include: Judd Hirsch, William Hurt, Kathy Bates, Barnard Hughes, Christopher Reeve, Jeff Daniels, Cherry Jones & Cynthia Nixon.
Wilson’s work is filled with authentic, gritty, overlapping dialogue & characters concerned with broken dreams great & meager, plus the themes of loss in life, love, companionship & sanity. His characters are drawn as socially marginalized by a playwright whose own identity was as a guy from the Ozarks, a child of a broken home, & gay at a time when it was very tough to be gay. Wilson was one of the first mainstream playwrights to create central, meaningful gay characters.
Beginning in the early 1960s, Wilson lived in a small apartment in Greenwich Village. In the 1970s, he bought a house in Sag Harbor. He lived in both places, using his city apartment when he had a play in production. He became active in a community theatre company in Sag Harbor.
Wilson was bravely openly gay all of his professional life, but my research finds nothing about a boyfriend or partner.
In spring 2011, Wilson put down his pen at last, gone from pneumonia, at his home in Sag Harbor. He was 73 years old.
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