STONE, Peter 1930-2003
(Peter Joshua)

PERSONAL: Born February 27, 1930, in Los Angeles, CA; died of pulmonary fibrosis, April 26, 2003, in New York, NY; son of John (a motion picture producer) and Hilda (a film writer; maiden name, Hess) Stone; married Mary O'Hanley, February 17, 1961. Education: Bard College, B.A., 1951; Yale University, M.F. A., 1953.

CAREER: Playwright and film and television scenarist.

MEMBER: Dramatists Guild (member of executive council; president, beginning 1981), Authors League of America, Writers Guild of America.

AWARDS, HONORS: Emmy Award, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, 1962, for The Defenders; Writers Guild of America award nomination for best television play, 1962, for The Benefactors, and for best comedy film, 1963, for Charade, and 1964, for Father Goose; Mystery Writers of America award for best screenplay, 1963, for Charade; Academy Award for best original story and screenplay (with S. H. Barnett and Frank Tarloff), 1964, for Father Goose; Antoinette Perry ("Tony") Award for best musical, and Drama Desk Award for best book of a musical, both 1969, and New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and Plays and Players award for best new musical, both 1970, all for play 1776; D.Litt., Bard College, 1971; Christopher Award, 1973, for film 1776; Tony Award for best book of a musical, 1980, for Woman of the Year, and 1997, for Titanic; Tony Award nominations for best book of a musical, 1966, for Skyscraper, 1983, for My One and Only, and 1991, for The Will Rogers Follies.

WRITINGS:

plays

Friend of the Family, first produced in St. Louis, MO, 1958.

Kean, music and lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest, first produced on Broadway, 1961.

Skyscraper, music by James Van Heusen, lyrics by Sammy Cahn, first produced on Broadway, 1965.

1776 (first produced in New Haven, CT, 1969; produced on Broadway, 1969), music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards, Viking (New York, NY), 1970.

Two by Two (based on play The Flowering Peach by Clifford Odets), music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Martin Charnin, first produced on Broadway, 1970.

Sugar (based on film Some Like It Hot; first produced on Broadway, 1972), music by Jule Styne, Tams-Witmark Music Library (New York, NY), 1984.

(Adapter) Erich Maria Remarque, Full Circle (first produced on Broadway, 1973), Harcourt (New York, NY), 1974.

Woman of the Year (based on film of same title), first produced in Boston, MA, 1981; produced on Broadway, 1981), S. French (New York, NY), 1984.

(Adaptor) My One and Only, music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, produced 1983.

(Adaptor) The Will Rogers Follies, music composed and arranged by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, produced 1991.

(With Maury Yeston) Titanic (produced, 1997), music and lyrics by Maury Yeston, Applause Books (New York, NY), 1998.

Also author of revival of play Annie Get Your Gun, produced on Broadway, c. 2000.

screenplays

Charade, Universal, 1963, novelization by Stone published under same title, Gold Medal Books, 1963, reprinted, Avon (New York, NY), 1980.

(With S. H. Barnett and Frank Tarloff) Father Goose, Universal, 1964.

Mirage (based on novel Fallen Angel by Howard Fast), Universal, 1965.

Arabesque, Universal, 1966.

(With Frank Tarloff) The Secret War of Harry Frigg, Universal, 1968.

Sweet Charity (based on play of same title by Neil Simon), Universal, 1969.

Skin Game, Warner Bros., 1971.

1776 (based on Stone's play of same title), Jack Warner and Columbia, 1972.

The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, United Artists, 1974.

The Silver Bears, Columbia, 1978.

Who's Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?, Lorimar/Warner Bros., 1978.

Why Would I Lie?, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1980.

(As Peter Joshua) The Truth about Charlie (adaptation of his screenplay Charade), 2002.

Also author of television scripts for Studio One, Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. (CBS), 1956, Brenner, CBS, 1959, Witness, CBS, 1961, Asphalt Jungle, American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. (ABC), 1961, The Defenders, CBS, 1961-62, and Espionage, National Broadcasting Co., Inc. (NBC), 1963; author of script for musical special Androcles and the Lion, music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers, NBC, 1968; creator of and writer for television series Adam's Rib, ABC, 1973-74, and Ivan the Terrible, CBS, 1976.

SIDELIGHTS: A successful writer for television, films, and the Broadway stage, award-winning playwright Peter Stone specialized in the kind of light, high-spirited entertainment that delights and occasionally moves audiences. As a Contemporary Dramatists essayist noted, Stone was "a traditional dramatist" who "brought wit and intelligence, along with the substantive beliefs of the well-read man, to his chosen field. His skills helped the American musical during those uncertain years of reassessment and into the challenging decade of the 1990s." Among Stone's stage successes are Kean, Two by Two, 1776, and the stage adaptation of the film Woman of the Year. He was also active in writing for television from the 1950s through the 1970s.

Among Stone's popular works was the musical 1776, an historical comedy-drama that focuses on various events surrounding the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. Though Stone at first dismissed composer and former history teacher Sherman Edwards's proposal to write such a play as "the single worst idea I ever heard," he became captivated by the catchy score and eventually agreed to do the book. While producer Stuart Ostrow arranged for financial backing, Stone went to work, drawing much of his material from notes Edwards had compiled over a five-year period. As he later remarked in a New York Times article: "I was astonished at what I didn't know about American history, especially that period. I spent seven years in college. I didn't shirk history. But as Sherman told me about what went on I found myself appalled at my ignorance. . . . This is a national legend and it's not really taught in the schools. That's why I insisted that all the information remain."

Despite warnings that a patriotic historical musical staged in eighteenth-century costumes and lacking dance numbers and pretty girls would be a box-office disaster, Stone and the others pressed on, convinced that a reaffirmation of faith in America would be welcome during the turmoil of the late 1960s. But even when the book was completed and enough money had been raised to produce the show, those connected with 1776 still faced a monumental task. Few of them had ever worked on Broadway before; the director and the actors in particular had been chosen "for their enthusiasm for the idea, rather than their professional credits," as Ostrow noted.

The show opened at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, during a blizzard, the audience so small that those in the balcony were invited to sit in the orchestra seats. "The privacy we had!" recalled Stone. "We worked out all the kinks before we hit New York." About five weeks after its snowy Connecticut debut, 1776 opened on Broadway with little advance publicity but numerous dire predictions about its future. Yet when the curtain came down after that first performance, members of the audience reacted in much the same way they had in the previews—they rose and then applauded, cheered, and whistled their approval. By the next day, the word was out: 1776 was destined to be the sleeper of the year. Within a week, it generated more than $500,000 worth of advance ticket sales. Observing the continuous stream of people who lined up at the box office only two days after the premiere, the theater treasurer declared, "It's the utter chaos of a smash hit. We haven't had anything like this since How to Succeed [in Business without Really Trying] back in 1961."

With the exception of a few who questioned the suitability of adapting serious historical material for use in a musical comedy, critics were as enthusiastic about1776 as the preview audiences had been. Comparing its "quality of quiet inspiration" to that of Man of La Mancha, Richard Coe of the Washington Post commented: "At last—our theater has something worth cheering, the Nation's 1776, original, amusing, provocative and inspiring. . . . [It] is the season's most logical contender for the Pulitzer and other prizes. Whatever else comes along will have to beat this one. . . . The humor is imbedded in firmly realized characters and the alternating strands of drama, disappointment, history and comedy are finely knit. . . . Everything is done to keep away from the pageantry subsequent generations gave to this historic scene. . . . These writers have something to say."

Clive Barnes, writing in the New York Times, admitted that "on the face of it, few historic incidents seem more unlikely to spawn a Broadway musical than that solemn moment in the history of mankind, the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Yet 1776 . . . most handsomely demonstrated that people who merely go 'on the face of it' are occasionally outrageously wrong. . . . [It] is a most striking, most gripping musical. I recommend it without reservation. It makes even an Englishman's heart beat a little bit faster. This is a musical with style, humanity, wit and passion. . . . Stone's book is literate, urbane and, on occasion, very amusing."

Walter Kerr, Barnes's New York Times colleague, was equally impressed. Proclaiming 1776 to be "just dandy," he praised Stone for making "you feel smarter than you used to be . . . without having had to slave for it." Kerr also liked the play's spirit of "independence"—that is, its unorthodox theme and the similarly unorthodox treatment of that theme. Wrote the critic: "Book and music do what they want to do, not what musical-comedy custom dictates, and they do it so confidently and so well that you grin and go along quietly. . . . [It all adds up to an] original, strangely determined, immensely pleasing evening."

Many critics found Stone's characterizations especially noteworthy, agreeing with Wall Street Journal reviewer Richard P. Cooke that even "if history has been manipulated a bit here and there for dramatic purposes, the character of the men and the events of those remarkable months in Philadelphia come through admirably." New York News critic John Chapman felt the Founding Fathers seemed "miraculously human" by the end of the evening, a sentiment shared by Elliot Norton of the Boston Record American, who wrote that while 1776 "preserves the heroism of those who, like Adams and Franklin, were heroic after their fashion, it strips away the pomposities and the solemnities, makes them lively and likable, takes them down from the monuments, and introduces them as men of passions and prejudices and weaknesses, fighting and quibbling, dodging and dallying."

Despite some concern in theatrical circles that London reviewers would not like 1776—it does, after all, chronicle the events leading up to a major British defeat—they ended up showering it with nearly as much praise as their American counterparts. London Times critic Irving Wardle, for instance, noted that "if the test of a good musical is to extend the territory by absorbing apparently unmusical material, then [1776] ranks as Broadway's more virile contribution to the form since West Side Story. . . . It also yields far more fun, character, and good writing than appears in the average show whose aim is simply to entertain." London Daily Express contributor Herbert Kretzmer agreed, stating that "what might have been merely a dry-as-dust documentary has been made gay, informative, funny, and moving" and added that 1776 "has a good deal more class than the usual run of Broadway smash hits." Colin Frame paid the show what is perhaps the ultimate compliment in his London Evening News review, writing that 1776 is "the most unusual, most amusing, most emotionally-charged American musical I ever wish to see. . . . With clear, melodious, boisterous singing, lines with a constant chuckle in them, moments of immense heart-tugging tension, this slice of our common history found me rooting for American Independence."

Boston Globe critic Kevin Kelly, among others, viewed 1776 as the beginning of a new era for the Broadway musical: namely, that of "history as intelligent entertainment." Kelly concluded: "Before I saw [1776], a warning by George Washington ran through my head: 'If we are wise, let us prepare for the worst.' Washington must have been speaking before a battle. It seemed to me a musical evening about the Declaration of Independence might be embattled in its own boring way. Well, I was dead wrong. 1776 is a near miracle, a highly skilled entertainment taken from historic fact, and it is unquestionably one of the most intelligent musicals in the history of the American theater. . . . The musical's book is by Peter Stone and it's pretty damned wonderful. . . . Stone, with some easy license, has taken a collection of facts from our history and forged them into a small, compelling drama. . . . There are some moments when 1776 gets trapped into dullness, usually in some of what seems nearly endless politicking, but the evening is so forthright and ends on such eloquence that the moments are almost forgotten. . . . It's enough to make a patriot out of a bolshevik."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Contemporary Dramatists, 6th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

periodicals

America, April 26, 1969; April 29, 1972.

Boston Globe, March 23, 1969.

Boston Record American, March 25, 1969.

Christian Science Monitor, July 2, 1970.

Contemporary, January 18, 1970.

Daily Express (London, England), June 17, 1970.

Daily Mail (London, England), June 17, 1970.

Daily Telegraph (London, England), June 17, 1970.

Life, May 12, 1972; December 8, 1972.

London Evening News, June 17, 1970.

Nation, April 7, 1969.

National Review, December 22, 1972.

New Republic, April 29, 1972; October 14, 1978.

Newsday, March 17, 1969.

Newsweek, March 31, 1969; April 24, 1972; November 27, 1972; October 9, 1978; April 13, 1981.

New York, February 9, 1981; April 13, 1981.

New Yorker, March 22, 1969; April 15, 1972; November 25, 1972; November 13, 1978; April 6, 1981.

New York News, March 17, 1969.

New York Post, March 17, 1969.

New York Times, March 17, 1969; March 18, 1969; March 23, 1969; March 30, 1981.

Reader's Digest, February, 1970.

Saturday Review, April 5, 1969; May 6, 1972; December 16, 1972; November 25, 1978.

Sunday Times (London, England), June 21, 1970.

Time, March 28, 1969; April 24, 1972.

Times (London, England), June 17, 1970.

Wall Street Journal, March 18, 1969.

Washington Post, February 21, 1969; October 6, 1978.*