American playwright and screenwriter Mart Crowley was BOTD in 1935. Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, he had a turbulent childhood, marked by his parents’ drug and alcohol addictions. He studied acting at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., then relocated to New York City, where he worked as an assistant to director Elia Kazan during the making of the film Splendour in the Grass. Crowley befriended the film’s star Natalie Wood, who hired him as her assistant, largely to give him an income while he worked on play scripts. He became an overnight star with his play The Boys in the Band, a black comedy about nine gay friends who meet at a boozy birthday party, sparking a long night of revelations, accusations and soul-baring. Opening off-Broadway in 1969, the play became a hit, running for two years, attracting celebrity attendees Jacqueline Kennedy, Marlene Dietrich and Rudolf Nureyev and spawning a successful London production. Pre-Stonewall audiences were shocked at Crowley’s depiction of gay men as bitchy self-loathing drunks, and he was criticised by gay playwright Edward Albee for allowing homophobes “to see people they didn’t have to respect.” Nonetheless, the play became a landmark in American theatre, praised for its uninterrupted focus on gay life, the importance of friendships over family and for a notable lack of suicides in the final act. Playwright and activist Larry Kramer later cited the play as a major influence on his own work. Crowley wrote the screenplay for the successful 1970 film, directed by William Friedkin, which broke similar ground in Hollywood for its frank depiction of homosexuality onscreen. The play and film made Crowley a Hollywood A-lister, and he accepted a lucrative contract with Columbia Studios. Unhappy with rewrites to his screenplay for Fade In, he requested his name be removed from the film’s credits on its release in 1974. He spent much of his later career in television, producing and co-writing the campy TV series Hart to Hart, starring Wood’s husband Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers. Later in life, he wrote the play The Men From the Boys, a sequel to The Boys in the Band set 30 years later in the midst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and For Reasons That Remain Unclear, a drama about a priest and a younger man who share a disturbing past. Crowley lived to see a 2018 Broadway production of Boys, directed by Joe Mantello and with an all-gay cast including Zachary Quinto, Jim Parsons and Matt Bomer. A critical and box-office success, it won the Tony Award for best revival, and prompted extensive discussions about the play’s continued relevance to contemporary gay life. Crowley was in a long-term relationship with screenwriter Gavin Lambert until the latter’s death in 2005. Crowley died in 2020 of complications during open-heart surgery, aged 84. A television film of Boys in the Band was released on Netflix later that year, based on a screenplay by Crowley and featuring the 2018 Broadway cast.