Arthur Laurents '37, a reigning figure on Broadway for six decades, died from complications of pneumonia May 5 at his home in New York City. He was 93.

Laurents wrote the books for such musicals as "West Side Story" and "Gypsy" and several film screenplays, including Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope," "The Way We Were" and "The Turning Point."

Born Arthur Levine on July 14, 1917, Laurents grew up in Brooklyn. After graduating with an A.B. from Cornell with a major in theater arts in the College of Arts and Sciences, he took an evening class in radio writing at New York University. After his instructor submitted Laurents' script "Now Playing Tomorrow," it was produced for broadcast with Shirley Booth in the lead role. After this first professional credit, Laurents was hired to write scripts for various radio shows, until he was drafted and assigned to the U.S. Army Pictorial Service at a film studio in Astoria, Queens, where he wrote scripts for training films and for Armed Forces radio.

After World War II, his first Broadway play, "Home of the Brave," was produced in 1945-46. After a review of the play appeared in the Daily Worker, Laurents was secretly blacklisted for suspected Communist sympathies, being active in civil rights causes and a member of a Marxist study group.

Laurents resumed writing for Broadway in the 1950s and enjoyed a string of successes -- including "West Side Story" (1957), "Gypsy" (1959), "Hallelujah, Baby!" (1967) and "La Cage Aux Folles" (1983, based on his 1950 play "The Bird Cage") -- and directed some of his own shows and other Broadway productions.

His screenwriting credits include "Rope" (1948), "Anastasia" (1956), "Bonjour Tristesse" (1958), "The Way We Were" (1973, based on his semiautobiographical 1972 novel) -- and "The Turning Point" (1977).

Many of his works explored questions of honesty and self-deception, guilt and innocence, love and loyalty and the effects of bigotry.

In his 2000 memoir, "Original Story By: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood," Laurents discussed his career and his many gay affairs and long-term relationships. His book "Mainly on Directing: 'Gypsy,' 'West Side Story' and Other Musicals" (2009) focused on the musicals he directed and the work of other directors he admired.

His awards included Tonys for best musical for "Hallelujah, Baby!" (1968) and best direction of a musical for "La Cage aux Folles" (1984), a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical for "Gypsy" (1975), a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay for "The Turning Point" (1977) and a career achievement award from the National Board of Review (1999). The Cornell Council for the Arts gave Laurents its 2005 Distinguished Alumni Award.

The Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award (honoring Laurents and Tom Hatcher, Laurents' companion for 52 years until his death in 2006) was established in 2010 "for an unproduced, full-length play of social relevance by an emerging American playwright." The foundation will give $50,000 to the writer with a grant of $100,000 toward production costs at a nonprofit theater. The first award was granted in February.