The Great White Way is a little dimmer today as it mourns Arthur Laurents, the 93-year-old Brooklyn-born playwright and director who helped bring the world such classics as West Side Story, Gypsy, Rope, The Turning Point and The Way We Were. He died of complications of pneumonia in his Manhattan home.

An author, playwright, screenwriter and director, Laurents' made his Broadway debut in 1945 with Home of the Brave, before heading out to try his hand at Hollywood. There, besides meeting Tom Hatcher, his partner of 54 years, he wrote the a treatment of the script for Hitchcock's classic take on the Leopold and Loeb case, Rope. His next Broadway show, The Bird Cage didn't quite make it, but his 1952 followup, The Time of the Cuckoo, did just fine eventually being made into a movie (Summertime) and a musical (Do I Hear A Waltz?). Then in 1957 he wrote the book for West Side Story, a musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet which unquestionably changed the landscape of the modern American musical. Gypsy, his 1959 follow-up, which he made with Jules Styne and his West Side Story lyricist Stephen Sondheim, is arguably one of the greatest musicals written about life on the stage.

After those shows Laurents worked on a number of other successful (and less than successful) productions including the film The Way We Were (based on a novel he wrote), La Cage aux Follies (which he directed) and the noble failures Anyone Can Whistle and Nick and Nora. But Gypsy and West Side Story will most likely be his defining shows. Not surprisingly they were also the shows he revisited the most. His final two times in the directors seat were to helm the spectacular Patti LuPone revival of Gypsy at Encores! (which then moved to Broadway) and the interesting, bilingual revival of West Side Story (which became less and less bilingual as the show went on).

Laurents was a truly entertaining, sometimes vicious, Broadway character who will be greatly missed. If you want to know more about him, his 2000 memoir Original Story By Arthur Laurents: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood remains an swift, and occasionally gossipy, read. For instance, beyond his partner Hatcher he frankly recalls his lovers over the years as “those unremembered hundreds.” And his 2009 book Mainly on Directing: Gypsy, West Side Story and Other Musicals, is a good, if more focused, read too.

He will be missed.