Screenwriter

Writer & Producer

b. July 22, 1982

“There are so many more queer stories being told on television, but often we’re still presented with overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male.”

Lauren Morelli is an American screenwriter, producer and director. Her work often depicts lesbian relationships and issues. She is best known for two Netflix series, “Orange Is the New Black” and “Tales of the City.”

Morelli grew up in McCandless, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. At Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, she followed her passion for dance until a back injury forced her to reconsider her career path. She pursued writing but graduated with a BFA in Modern Dance.

After graduation, Morelli moved to Los Angeles. She wrote short stories and blog posts before securing a position as the lead writer for “Orange Is the New Black.” Premiering on Netflix in 2013, the series is an adaptation of Piper Kerman's memoir, “Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison” (2010). The show features lesbian relationships in a low-security women’s federal prison.

Ranked by The Guardian as one of the 100 best TV shows of the 21^st century, “Orange” earned praise for humanizing prisoners and showcasing diversity in body types, racial backgrounds and sexualities. Nominated for 17 Emmys, six Golden Globes and six Writers Guild Awards, it remained the best-watched series on Netflix, three years after it ended.

Morelli worked on the series for five of its seven seasons. Writing for lesbian characters awakened her own latent sexuality. A year into the show, she came out as a lesbian and divorced her husband.

Following the success of “Orange Is the New Black,” Morelli continued to work on lesbian-themed material at Netflix, becoming the executive producer and writer of “Tales of the City” (2019). An adaption of Armistead Maupin’s 1978 books on LGBT romance in San Francisco, the series starred Oscar winners Ellen Page and Laura Linney.

Morelli’s work extends to playwriting. Her short play “Roach & Rat” was produced in 2013 by Lesser America, a theater company in New York City.

In 2017 Morelli married Samira Wiley. The couple has been together since shortly after Morelli came out. In 2019 Diva Magazine, Europe’s leading publication for lesbian and bisexual women, featured Morelli on its cover.

Trailblazing Writer

b. August 26, 1904
d. January 4, 1986

“One should never write down or up to people, but out of yourself.”

Christopher Isherwood is an Anglo-American writer who was among the first to bring gay themes to mainstream literary audiences. Much of his work is semi-autobiographical, including “Goodbye to Berlin,” the novel that inspired the Tony Award-winning musical and Academy Award-winning film “Cabaret.”

Isherwood was born in 1904 near Manchester, England. From an early age, he formed friendships with people from all walks of life, some of whom later became his creative collaborators. In 1924, after submitting joke answers on his second-year exams, Isherwood was asked to leave Cambridge University. Embracing his newfound freedom, he took part-time jobs as the secretary of a string quartet and as a private tutor. He worked on his first novels and briefly attended medical school.

In 1929 Isherwood visited his friend, the poet W.H. Auden, in Berlin. The trip changed his life, bringing him “face to face with his tribe” and beginning his liberation as a gay man. Isherwood moved to Berlin later that year. His experiences and friendships there provided material for his novels “Mr. Norris Changes Trains” and “Goodbye to Berlin.” The latter, which depicts Germany’s pre-Nazi decadence, became Isherwood’s most famous work and cemented his legacy. The book was adapted into the play “I Am a Camera” and the musical “Cabaret,” which earned eight Tony Awards. The film version of “Cabaret,” starring Liza Minnelli, won eight Academy Awards.

In Berlin, Isherwood also began a relationship with a young German, Heinz Neddermeyer. The pair fled the Nazis, who were persecuting homosexuals, and moved across Europe until the Gestapo arrested Neddermeyer in 1937.

Isherwood returned to London, where he wrote plays and screenplays, before settling in Hollywood. He became a U.S. citizen in 1946. Seven years later, he fell in love with a college student, Don Bachardy. The couple remained together for more than 30 years, until Isherwood’s death. The relationship became a model for many gay men.

In his later years, Isherwood turned increasingly to autobiographical and gay themes. In 1964 he published the critically acclaimed novel, “A Single Man,” about a gay middle-aged English professor. A film adaptation, directed by Tom Ford and starring Colin Firth, premiered in 2009. It earned international recognition, including an Academy Award nomination for best actor.

In Isherwood’s 1976 memoir, “Christopher and His Kind,” the author renounced his reticence to admit his homosexuality in his earlier work. The memoir speaks candidly about his life in Berlin as a young gay man.

Isherwood died of prostate cancer in Santa Monica, California. He was 81.

Oscar-Winning Director

b. April 6, 1955

“[Filmmaking] gave me the opportunity to speak to the world.”

Rob Epstein is an American film director, writer and producer, and the cofounder of the production company Telling Pictures. Best known for his groundbreaking feature-length documentaries, he is the first openly gay director to win an Oscar for an LGBT-themed film.

Epstein was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. At age 19, he moved to San Francisco. He started his career as one of the six-member Mariposa Film Group. Mariposa created “Word Is Out: Stories From Some of Our Lives” (1977), the first feature-length documentary by and for LGBT Americans. The pioneering film aired nationally in theaters and on primetime public television, increasing visibility for the gay community during a transformative period in the LGBT rights movement.

Epstein conceived, directed and co-produced his next project, “The Times of Harvey Milk" (1985), about the slain gay San Francisco board supervisor. Premiering at the Telluride and New York film festivals, the film touched audiences worldwide. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, along with Peabody, Emmy and Sundance Awards. It made Epstein the first openly gay director to win an Oscar for an LGBT-themed movie. In 2013 the Library of Congress selected “The Times of Harvey Milk” for the National Film Registry. The prestigious Criterion Collection also includes it in their catalog.

In 1987 Epstein and his husband, Jeffrey Friedman, founded Telling Pictures, a San Francisco-based production company. Together they produced “Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt” (1985), an HBO documentary about the AIDS epidemic, for which Epstein won a Peabody and his second Academy Award. Their box-office hit, “The Celluloid Closet” (1995), a retrospective of LGBT images in Hollywood, featuring interviews with luminaries such as Tom Hanks and Whoopie Goldberg, won a Peabody and an Emmy Award. Other acclaimed films by Epstein and Friedman include “End Game” (2018), “State of Pride” (2019) and “Paragraph 175” (2000). Shifting from documentary to biopic, the duo also collaborated on “Lovelace” (2013), starring Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard and Sharon Stone, about the porn star Linda Lovelace, and “HOWL” (2015), starring James Franco as the famous gay poet Allen Ginsberg.

In addition to filmmaking, Epstein is a professor and co-chair of the film program at California College of the Arts. He has served on the Sundance Institute's board of trustees and on the board of the governors of the documentary branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 2008 he received the Pioneer Award for distinguished lifetime achievement from the International Documentary Association.

Oscar-Winning Filmmaker

b. June 7, 1928

“[‘Call Me by Your Name’] is a story familiar to most of us, whether we’re straight or gay.”

James Ivory is an award-winning film director, producer and screenwriter. Along with film producer Ismail Merchant, his life partner, he founded the highly successful movie-making enterprise Merchant Ivory Productions. Ivory won the Academy Award for “Call Me by Your Name” (2017), a gay coming-of-age romantic drama set in 1980s Italy.

Ivory was born in Berkeley, California. He studied fine arts at the University of Oregon before attending the USC School for Cinematic Arts. The documentary he created for his master’s thesis, “Venice: Theme and Variations,” was selected by The New York Times as one of the 10 best nontheatrical films of the year.

In 1959 Ivory met Ismail Merchant at a film screening in New York. The two fell in love, and in 1961 they founded Merchant Ivory Productions. Though they initially intended to make English language films in India for the international market, they made many films set in England and the United States. For the most part, Ivory directed and Merchant produced the company’s 44 movies.

Best known for their intelligent themes and superb casting, Merchant Ivory films have garnered countless nominations and awards in the United States and Europe. The company’s most iconic pictures are based on literary works dealing with social issues. “Maurice” (1987), directed by Ivory, was one of the first movies to affirmatively depict gay relationships and became a life-changing film for many young gay men in the ’80s and ’90s. Ivory received the Academy Award nomination for Best Director for “A Room with a View” (1985), “Howards End (1992) and “The Remains of the Day” (1993).
 
Until Merchant’s death in 2015, Ivory and Merchant shared a professional and romantic relationship. Because Merchant came from a deeply conservative Indian Muslim family, the couple kept their 44-year love affair quiet. References to their personal life were made only discreetly by the press.

In 2018 at age 89, Ivory won the Academy Award and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for “Call Me by Your Name,” making him the oldest recipient in the history of either award. In his acceptance speech, he described the film as “a story familiar to most of us; whether we’re straight or gay, or somewhere in between, we’ve all gone through first love, I hope, and come out on the other side mostly intact.”

Oscar-Winning Screenwriter

b. October 17, 1980

“It’s really important for us, in terms of the storytellers, to be able to talk about these intimate details that built our lives.”

Tarell Alvin McCraney is an award-winning playwright and an actor. In 2017 he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for “Moonlight,” a film based on his autobiographical play, “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue.”

McCraney was born in the tough Liberty City section of Miami, Florida, to a teenage mother who struggled with crack addiction. He survived with the help of a kind-hearted drug dealer and his grandparents, who encouraged learning and offered a vision of life outside his crime-infested neighborhood.   

McCraney attended Miami’s New World School of the Arts and was accepted into the Theatre School at DePaul University, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting. At age 24, he enrolled in the playwriting program at Yale School of Drama. Upon graduation he received the prestigious Cole Porter playwriting award. 

At Yale, McCraney wrote his first famous play, “The Brothers Size.” It opened off Broadway in 2007, when he was a third-year student. The New York Times reviewed it enthusiastically.

“The Brothers Size,” and two other plays he wrote in drama school, “In The Red and Brown Water” and “Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet,” make up McCraney’s acclaimed trilogy, “The Brother/Sister Plays.” Set in the Louisiana bayou and drawing upon West African Lore, “The Brother/Sister Plays” distinguished McCraney as a gifted new artist. The trilogy was performed in repertory in the United States and worldwide.

From 2009 to 2011, McCraney served as the Warwick International Playwright in Residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company in London. In 2010 he became a member of the celebrated Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago. He also performed with the Northlight Theatre and co-starred in the Chicago premiere of “Blue/Orange.” 

In 2013 McCraney received a $625,000 MacArthur Fellowship, known as the “genius grant.” The MacArthur Foundation presents the coveted prize annually to 24 “extraordinarily talented and creative individuals.” 

With the director Barry Jenkins, McCraney co-wrote the screenplay for the 2016 film “Moonlight,” which draws on his experience growing up black and gay in a Miami housing project. The film won three Academy Awards, including  Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, the Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for best picture, and dozens of other awards and nominations.
 
Among other honors, McCraney has received London's Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright, The New York Times’ inaugural Outstanding Playwright Award and the renowned Whiting Award. The Advocate named him to its list of “40 under 40” and Out magazine featured him on its “Out100” list.

McCraney is the Chair and Eugene O’Neill Professor in the Practice of Playwriting at Yale University School of Drama and the Playwright-in-Residence of the Yale Repertory Theatre. 

Gay Pioneer

b. October 17, 1917
d. May 11, 2000

“I was one of the founders of the first homosexual organizations in U.S. history. …Our basic argument was that changes in sex laws would not benefit us alone but everyone.”

William Dale Jennings was a gay pioneer who cofounded two early gay organizations and one of the first gay magazines in America. He was dubbed the Rosa Parks of the gay rights movement when he successfully challenged his arrest on homosexuality charges.

Jennings grew up in Denver, Colorado, where he studied piano and dance. He was performing by the age of 12 and traveled with the Lester Horton Dance Group. He moved to Los Angeles in his early 20s, after training in theater direction. Jennings established his own theater company and wrote and produced more than 50 short plays. 

Jennings served in World War II and received several military honors, including a Victory Medal. After an honorable discharge in 1946, he studied cinema for two years at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. 

In 1950 the U.S. Senate declared homosexuals a national threat. That year, Harry Hay, Jennings and four other gay activists cofounded the Mattachine Society—an underground gay community network and one of the first gay civil liberties organizations in the United States. 

During this time, vice detectives posing as homosexuals commonly entrapped gay men and charged them with solicitation. Most men pled guilty for fear of public exposure. When Jennings was arrested for soliciting in 1950, he fought back. He was the first openly gay man known to have done so. During his 10-day trial in 1952, Jennings disclosed his homosexuality but denied the charge. The jury deadlocked one vote shy of acquittal, and the judge dismissed the case. Publicity surrounding the trial exposed the issue of entrapment and made Jennings an gay hero.

Later the same year, with a group Mattachine members, Jennings cofounded ONE, Inc., to develop a publication specifically for homosexuals. With Jennings as its editor, the first issue of ONE Magazine was published in 1953. It became the first widely distributed gay magazine in the United States. 

In 1954 the Los Angeles postmaster cited the publication for obscenity and refused to deliver it. A legal battle ensued, and after several lower court rulings in favor of the post office, the United States Supreme Court ruled for the magazine. A first-of-its-kind victory, the decision in ONE vs. Olesen is celebrated as a legal landmark, making the mail circulation of gay periodicals possible.

In addition to ONE Magazine, Jennings wrote for other publications and published three novels. His California gold-rush-era coming-of-age story, “The Cowboys,” was made into a movie, starring the Academy Award-winning actor John Wayne. Jennings co-wrote the screenplay. 

Jennings died in Los Angeles at the age of 82. The New York Times published his obituary.

Playwright

b. November 3, 1938
d. March 24, 2020

“I think the theatre teaches us who we are, what our society is, where we are going.”

Terrence McNally is an award-winning American playwright whose career spans five decades. His work, which delves into themes of family, war, sexuality and religion, has earned him four Tony Awards. 

Raised in Texas, McNally moved to New York City to attend Columbia University. His first job was as a tutor for John Steinbeck’s children. During this time, McNally wrote his first play, and Steinbeck asked him to write the libretto for the musical based on his novel “East of Eden.”

McNally spend much of his early career writing and submitting works to theater companies around the country. At the famous Actors Studio, he met the playwright Edward Albee, with whom he became romantically involved. 

McNally’s first play was a flop, but he went on to write several successful off-Broadway shows, including “Witness” and “Sweet Eros.” His breakout, “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” was later adapted into a film starring Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer. Several of McNally’s plays have been adapted for the screen.

McNally’s “Lips Together, Teeth Apart,” about two married couples who spend a weekend on Fire Island, is a landmark play about AIDS. McNally also explored gay themes in the book for the musical “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” for which he won his first Tony Award. His play “Love! Valour! Compassion!” earned him another Tony Award for its portrayal of eight gay men facing issues of fidelity, love and happiness. In 1996 McNally was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. 

McNally’s controversial play “Corpus Christi” depicts a modern-day Jesus as a homosexual. The Manhattan Theater Club, the first company to consider staging it, received death threats and temporarily canceled the production before enjoying a successful run. The play continues to spark controversy . 

In 2014 McNally’s play “Mothers and Sons” opened on Broadway. It explores the relationship between a mother and her dead son’s former gay partner. The play revisits McNally’s 1990 television movie, “Andre’s Mother,” for which he won an Emmy Award.

McNally and his partner, Thomas Kirdahy, married in Vermont in 2003 and again in Washington, D.C., in 2010. In 2020 McNally died from complications of the novel coronavirus. His collection of works and notes are held in an open archive at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. 

Actor and Director

b. April 21, 1963, El Paso, Texas

“Rock and roll and theatre and drag are all the same thing. They’re ways to remind yourself that you’re not alone.”

John Cameron Mitchell is best known for writing, directing and starring in the cult classic film “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”

While the story of Hedwig is not autobiographical, the sexually ambiguous character—the lead singer in a fictional rock band—does share some traits with her creator. Like Hedwig, who is from East Germany and spent her youth craving the freedom of the West, Mitchell used to visit his military father in Berlin and became haunted by the Berlin wall. Hedwig, like Mitchell, is a performer with an insatiable passion for the stage. Both are perennial outsiders making their own way—idealists who transcend labels. Hedwig confounds male and female identities and Mitchell is an out gay man who believes gays are on the verge of selling out as they assimilate into society. Hedwig and Mitchell teach us to distrust appearances because true character comes from the inside out.

In 2008 Mitchell established a New York nightclub called Mattachine. It was located at Julius, the nation’s oldest known gay bar. Mattachine was an homage to activists who convened at Julius in 1966 to hold a “sip-in” protest of the State Liquor Authority’s regulation prohibiting bartenders from serving homosexuals.

In 1998 Mitchell’s rock musical, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” debuted Off-Broadway and won an Obie Award. Mitchell played the lead role for seven shows a week. In 2001 he directed and starred in the film version, for which he earned the Best Director Award at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor. The film garnered a cult following. In 2014 a revival of “Hedwig” opened on Broadway with Neil Patrick Harris cast in the leading role. Mitchell also wrote, directed and produced the film “Shortbus” and directed “Rabbit Hole,” starring Nicole Kidman.

Playwright/Director

b. July 14, 1917

d. May 5, 2011

“Entertainment is dessert. It needs to be balanced by the main course: theater of substance.”

Arthur Laurents was a Tony Award-winning playwright, director and screenwriter. He wrote the scripts for “West Side Story,” “Gypsy” and “La Cage Aux Folles."

Born Arthur Levine, Laurents grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Because of anti-Semitism, he changed his last name to the less Jewish-sounding Laurents.

After graduating from Cornell University, Laurents took a class in radio writing and produced “Now Playing Tomorrow,” a comedic fantasy broadcast on CBS Radio. He was drafted into the Army in World War II, but never saw combat. He wrote training films and dramatized radio shows for the Armed Forces.

Laurents started his Broadway career with “Home of the Brave” (1945), which was adapted into a film. He moved to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. He adapted the play “Rope’s End” into a movie, but his Hollywood career was cut short when he was blacklisted for Communist sympathies. Subsequently, he returned to New York City and resumed writing for theater and film.

Laurents wrote 12 plays and musicals, including “The Bird Cage” (1950), “The Time of the Cuckoo” (1952) and “A Clearing in the Woods” (1957). He wrote screenplays for “Anastasia” (1956), “The Way We Were” (1973) and “The Turning Point” (1977).

His scripts for “West Side Story” and “Gypsy” earned Tony nominations for Best Musical. In 1968, the Tony for Best Musical went to “Hallelujah, Baby!,” for which Laurents wrote the script. In 1984, he won a Tony for Best Direction of a Musical for “La Cage Aux Folles.”

In 2010, his autobiography, “Original Story By Arthur Laurents: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood,” was published.

Laurents was in a relationship with actor Tom Hatcher for 52 years. In 2010, the Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award was established. It annually awards a $150,000 enabling grant to an unproduced play of social relevance.

Author

b. September 30, 1924

d. August 25, 1984

“Failure is a condiment that gives success its flavor.”

Truman Capote is a critically acclaimed author of contemporary American literature. He is best known for the novels “In Cold Blood” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

Born Truman Persons in New Orleans, Capote’s parents divorced shortly after his birth. Neglected by his mother, he was sent to Alabama to live with his aunt. While in Alabama, Capote began a lifelong friendship with Harper Lee, author of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” In 1934, Capote’s mother married a successful businessman. She reclaimed her son and the family moved to Manhattan. Truman adopted his step-father Joe Capote’s last name.

At 17, Capote dropped out of high school and worked as a copyboy for The New Yorker. He began writing well-received articles and short stories. In 1948, Capote published his first novel, “Other Voices, Other Rooms.” The novel’s exploration of homosexual themes, coupled with its provocative cover photo of Capote, garnered him fame and controversy.

In 1958, Capote published “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” which was adapted into an iconic film starring Audrey Hepburn. In 1965, Capote secured his place among the American literary elite with “In Cold Blood.” He based the novel on the high- profile murder of a Kansas farming family. With “In Cold Blood,” Capote created a new literary genre, the nonfiction novel, which combines fact and fiction. Among Capote’s other popular works are “Local Color” (1950), “The Grass Harp” (1951), “The Muses are Heard” (1956), “The Dogs Bark” (1973) and “Music for Chameleons” (1980). He also wrote numerous plays and screenplays, most notably “The Innocents” (1961).

Capote was also famous for his extravagant lifestyle and flamboyant personality. He appeared frequently on television talk shows and was a prominent member of the social elite, often in the company of the Chaplins, the Kennedys and Marilyn Monroe. Capote was openly gay during a period when the subject was taboo. In 1966, he hosted the Black and White Ball, which is regarded as one of the most important social events of the decade. For 35 years, Capote was in a relationship with fellow author Jack Dunphy.