VIDEO: On This Day, July 14- Remembering Arthur Laurents

Today, we remember playwright and director Arthur Laurents, who was born on this day in 1917.

Arthur Laurents was best known for his work as librettist on Gypsy and West Side Story, but was also well known as a playwright, having won a Tony Award® for Hallelujah, Baby! in 1968. Later as a director, he was Tony-nominated for Gypsy in 1975 (and the 2008 revival) as well as the original 1984 La Cage Aux Folles.

He made his Broadway debut in 1945 with Home of the Brave, but in the late 1940s Mr. Laurents successfully tried his luck as a screenwriter in Hollywood. Film credits include Hitchcock's "Rope," "Anastasia," with Ingrid Bergman, and "The Turning Point," with Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine. His screenplay for "The Way We Were," with Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand, was adapted from his novel by the same name.

In 2010, he established an award for emerging playwrights, to be funded through the Laurents-Hatcher Foundation, a tribute to his relationship with Tom Hatcher, an aspiring actor when they met. The couple remained together for 52 years until Hatcher's death in 2006. Mr. Laurents' play Two Lives was written about their relationship