Lahr, John 1941-

Tennessee Williams : mad pilgrimage of the flesh by John Lahr( Book )

28 editions published between 2014 and 2015 in English and held by 1,888 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

Here, celebrated drama critic John Lahr gives intimate access to the mind of one of the most brilliant dramatists of his century, whose plays reshaped the American theater and the nation's sense of itself. This astute, deeply researched biography sheds light on Williams's warring family, his guilt, his creative triumphs and failures, his sexuality and numerous affairs, his misreported death, even the shenanigans surrounding his estate. With vivid cameos of the formative influences in Williams's life, this book is as much a biography of the man as it is a trenchant exploration of his plays and the tortured process of bringing them to stage and screen. Lahr explores how Williams's relationships informed his work and how the resulting success brought turmoil to his personal life. Lahr captures not just his tempestuous public persona but also his backstage life, where his agent Audrey Wood and the director Elia Kazan play major roles, and Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Bette Davis, Maureen Stapleton, Diana Barrymore, and Tallulah Bankhead have scintillating walk-on parts. This is a theater biography like no other.--From publisher description

Notes on a cowardly lion : the biography of Bert Lahr by John Lahr( Book )

24 editions published between 1969 and 2017 in English and Undetermined and held by 1,748 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

Lahr's professional career and his complex private life are seen as an organic whole in a work that, combining immediacy with genuine perspective, is important both as a personal portrait and as a contribution to theater history

Prick up your ears : the biography of Joe Orton by John Lahr( Book )

62 editions published between 1978 and 2016 in English and held by 1,520 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

Story of murder/suicide of playwright Joe Orton and his lover, Ken Halliwell. When Orton, after years of unsuccessful collaboration with Halliwell, breaks away and achieves fame and fortune on his own, Halliwell cracks, hammers Orton to death and then kills himself

Coward, the playwright by John Lahr( Book )

30 editions published between 1982 and 2014 in English and held by 1,519 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

In five dexterously argued chapters, John Lahr investigates all the major plays and many of Noël Coward's lesser-known pieces

The Orton diaries : including the correspondence of Edna Welthorpe and others by Joe Orton( Book )

50 editions published between 1985 and 2013 in English and held by 1,020 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

"To be young, good-looking, healthy, famous, comparatively rich, and happy is surely going against nature." When Joe Orton (1933-1967) wrote those words in his diary in May 1967, he was being hailed as the greatest comic playwright since Oscar Wilde for his darkly hilarious Entertaining Mr. Sloane and the farce hit Loot, and was completing What the Butler Saw; but less than three months later, his longtime companion, Kenneth Halliwell, smashed Orton's skull in with a hammer before killing himself. The Orton Diaries, written during his last eight months, chronicle in a remarkably candid style his outrageously unfettered life: his literary success, capped by an Evening Standard Award and overtures from the Beatles; his sexual escapades - at his mother's funeral, with a dwarf in Brighton, and, extensively, in Tangiers; and the breakdown of his sixteen-year "marriage" to Halliwell, the relationship that transformed and destroyed him. Edited with a superb introduction by John Lahr, The Orton Diaries is his crowning achievement

Up against the fourth wall, essays on modern theater by John Lahr( Book )

13 editions published in 1970 in 3 languages and held by 834 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

Astonish me : adventures in contemporary theater by John Lahr( Book )

7 editions published in 1973 in English and held by 712 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

Automatic vaudeville : essays on star turns by John Lahr( Book )

22 editions published between 1984 and 1985 in English and Undetermined and held by 679 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

In this collection of essays, biographer and critic John Lahr examines the present-day cult of fame and its effects on some of our brightest stars

Life-show; how to see theater in life and life in theater by John Lahr( Book )

14 editions published between 1973 and 1989 in English and held by 602 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

Sinatra : the artist and the man by John Lahr( Book )

16 editions published between 1997 and 2018 in 3 languages and held by 579 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

The artist and the man: Sinatra epitomized control and he raged uncontrollably, destroying friendships, love affairs, and a plate-glass window or two; he won fans around the world across three generations, created an unparalleled body of recorded work, and almost single-handedly invented the postwar American swagger and "the image," Lahr writes, "of perfect individualism."