Tom O'Horgan
Encyclopedia
Tom O'Horgan was an American theatre and film director
, composer
, actor
and musician
. He is best known for his Broadway
work as director of the hit musicals Hair
and Jesus Christ Superstar
. During his career he sought to achieve a form of "total theater" described by the New York Times as “wittily physical,” and which earned him a reputation as the “Busby Berkeley
of the acid set.”
O'Horgan received his degree from DePaul University
where he learned to play dozens of musical instruments. After graduating he worked in Chicago as a harpist and also performed with Second City
, the Chicago improvisatory group. He moved to New York City and began acting downtown at places like Judson Memorial Church
. During this time he developed a night club act where he performed improvisational humor as he accompanied himself on the harp.
O'Horgan said that an element of his artistic gratification is "just getting the vicarious joy of turning people on, making them respond, turning them on to their own sensual powers that are buried under layers of cement. When you see how people in the streets will run to see a fire or an accident or a fight, hoping against hope to see something really happen, something that will prove that the people walking beside them are more than mere mannequins, you realize how much they want to break out of all their emotional rigidity." Though he would become well known for his Broadway work, he was more comfortable in the Off Broadway world. As he told Lester in 1968, "Sure, I've been sent scripts from Broadway offices, but so far I haven't seen anything that I could possibly be interested in. Of course, I'll continue working with La MaMa. Where else can you work things out? Certainly not on Broadway where the meter is always running."
experimental theatre
productions. One of his earliest projects was Love and Vexations at the Caffe Cino in September, 1963, and soon after he became a protege of Ellen Stewart
, founder of La MaMa, E.T.C.
. The first play he directed there was The Maids
by Jean Genet
in 1964, and he later led a La MaMa troupe that went to Denmark to showcase early plays by Sam Shepard
and Lanford Wilson
. He directed some 50 productions at La MaMa including The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria by Fernando Arrabal
, a surrealist
play about two men on an island, and Tom Paine by Paul Foster
, a recounting of the life of the US Revolutionary War figure
.
O'Horgan directed and also composed music for the Rochelle Owens
play Futz!. He first directed the play off-off-Broadway for La MaMa in March 1967 and later took it to the Edinburgh Festival
and then to New York's Theater de Lys, an off-Broadway venue in June 1968. O'Horgan also directed a film version of Futz! that was released in 1969. Futz! tells the story of the difficulties a farm boy encounters with the people of the town when he falls in love with his pig. Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Times, "Mr. O'Horgan ... has visualized Futz! as some kind of Dionysiac
dance, wild and fevered. He sends his actors mugging and careening across the stage in great joyous surges of energy." Hair authors James Rado and Gerome Ragni
attended the La MaMa production of Futz! and it influenced them to choose O'Horgan to direct Hair on Broadway.
In November 1974, he conceived and directed a stage adaptation of The Beatles
' classic recording Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
. The show, entitled Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road
, played at the Beacon Theater concert venue on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The production, developed in collaboration with Hair set designer Robin Wagner
, featured 34 actors performing 29 Beatles songs with elaborate scenery, special effects and colorful costumes. The show was not well received by critics and closed in January 1975 after 66 performances.
Among O'Horgan's other off-Broadway credits are To the Water Tower, When the Owl Screams, and The Wrecking Ball as composer, and Masked Men (at the Westbeth Theatre) and Birdbath as director.
O'Horgan made his Broadway directorial debut in 1968 with the ground-breaking musical
Hair. Based on his growing reputation with Futz! and other off-off-Broadway plays he directed, Hair authors Ragni and Rado sought out O'Horgan to direct the Off-Broadway production of the show when it opened at The Public Theater in the fall of 1967, but O'Horgan was working in Europe at the time and was unable to accept the invitation. When the show made the transition uptown to Broadway, O'Horgan was called again and this time he was able to accept.
Hair underwent a massive overhaul from its downtown version to its Broadway opening in April 1968. The Off-Broadway book, already light on plot, was loosened even further, and were added. O'Horgan said that "I see [Hair] as a singspiel, a popular opera." In rehearsals, he used techniques passed down by Viola Spolin
and Paul Sills
of improvisational "games" and role playing theories that encouraged freedom and spontaneity. Many of these improvisations were incorporated into the Broadway script. He prepared actors by having them undress in slow motion, praying to God and Buddha and jostling one another. He had them deliver lines while being carried around or doing handstands. The Playbill
for the 2009 Broadway revival of Hair says O'Horgan and new choreographer Julie Arenal infused the production with a sense of "freedom and spontaneity, introducing an organic, expansive style of staging" that had never been seen before on Broadway. Also, O'Horgan had used nudity in many of the plays he directed, and he helped integrate the idea into the fabric of the show. Some credit him with transforming "a mildly successful off-Broadway musical into a Broadway hit."
O'Horgan said that the experience gave him the opportunity to help create "a theater form whose demeanor, language, clothing, dance, and even its name accurately reflect a social epoch in full explosion." He believed that the actors in Hair, some from "right off the street", made an important contribution to Broadway theater. He said that "the kids are talking their won language, they're expressing their real sex attitudes and they're laying it on the line about race and miscegenation. The kids on stage are authentic and people sense this." Of its wider impact, he contentiously stated that "Hair is an assault on the theatrical dead area: Broadway. It's almost an effort to give Broadway mouth-to-mouth recuscitation."
The next Broadway project for O'Horgan was to direct the Julian Barry
play Lenny, with Cliff Gorman
as controversial comedian
-satirist Lenny Bruce
. Lenny opened at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre
in May 1971, across the street from the Biltmore Theater where Hair was still running. The play followed Bruce's nightclub career through run-ins with the police and the courts, and put the same language on a Broadway stage that had gotten Bruce—who died in 1966—arrested in nightclubs just a few years earlier. Lenny ran on Broadway for 453 performances until June 1972 and won Gorman a Tony for best actor in a play.
That same year O'Horgan would also direct the 1971 Andrew Lloyd Webber
musical Jesus Christ Superstar that became popular with audiences and that, like Hair, would later be made into a movie. Superstar was notable for the performance of Ben Vereen
-- whom O'Horgan directed previously on Broadway in the role of Hud in Hair -- as Judas Iscariot
. According to playwright Robert Patrick
, O'Horgan didn't want to accept the job but relented finally because he said "Bob ... You wouldn't believe the money they just offered me."
Additional Broadway directing credits include the Tony Award-winning Inner City (1971), a musical conceived by O'Horgan based on controversial poetry book The Inner City Mother Goose by Eve Merriam
; the musical Dude
(1972) written by Hair author Gerome Ragni with music by Hair composer Galt MacDermot; The Leaf People (1975), a Joe Papp-produced play by Dennis Reardon depicting the first contact by white men with a hostile tribe of Amazonian Indians; and I Won't Dance (1981), a murder whodunit play by Oliver Hailey. At one point in 1971, there were four simultaneous O'Horgan-directed productions on Broadway - Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, Lenny, and Inner City.
, Sally Kirkland
, and Jennifer O'Neill
, and directed the film version of Eugene Ionesco
's Rhinoceros
starring Zero Mostel
, Gene Wilder
, and Karen Black
(and which featured a score by Hair composer Galt MacDermot
). O'Horgan composed the score for Paul Mazursky's
Alex in Wonderland
starring Donald Sutherland
and Ellen Burstyn
. In addition, he is credited with "stage production conceived and adapted by" for the 1978 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
film.
s for his direction of Lenny and off-Broadway plays Futz! (1969), and Tom Paine (1968), and was also named Theatrical Director of the Year by Newsweek
in 1968. He was awarded the 1967 Obie Award
for best off-off-Broadway director of the year and the 1968 Brandeis Award
for Creative Arts. In 1969 he was nominated for a Tony Award
for best director of a musical for Hair but lost out to Peter Hunt
who directed 1776
.
In 2006 Ben Vereen
presented O'Horgan with the Artistic Achievement Award from the New York Innovative Theatre Awards
. This honor was bestowed to O'Horgan on behalf off his peers and fellow artists "in recognition of his significant artistic contributions to the Off-Off-Broadway community." When receiving the honor O'Horgan said "I'm in love with this whole game."
and Beverly Sills
. The walls were covered with his impressive collection of unusual musical instruments from throughout the world. Many were displayed in order of their history, from antique to current. There was also an alcove of gongs, including the one used in "Jesus Christ Superstar". He and his friends rang in many a New Year there, where at midnight everyone would take an instrument off the wall, or find a drum or a gong, and celebrate with an abandon and joy that Mr. O'Horgan so often set the stage for (both personally and professionally). He also held the weddings of two close friends there. Martha Wingate married Hunt Taylor there in 1980, and Soni Moreno married Harry Primeau there a few years later.
He died at home on January 11, 2009, in Venice, Florida
, while in the care of his friends Marc and Julia Cohen, who had taken care of him through years of suffering from Alzheimer's disease
. A small group of close friends scattered his ashes in San Francisco Bay, where they had scattered the ashes of his lifelong friends Harvey Milk and Galen McKinley years before. He was 84 years old.
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
and musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
. He is best known for his Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
work as director of the hit musicals Hair
Hair (musical)
Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement...
and Jesus Christ Superstar
Jesus Christ Superstar
Jesus Christ Superstar is a rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with lyrics by Tim Rice. The musical started off as a rock opera concept recording before its first staging on Broadway in 1971...
. During his career he sought to achieve a form of "total theater" described by the New York Times as “wittily physical,” and which earned him a reputation as the “Busby Berkeley
Busby Berkeley
Busby Berkeley was a highly influential Hollywood movie director and musical choreographer. Berkeley was famous for his elaborate musical production numbers that often involved complex geometric patterns...
of the acid set.”
Early years
Born in Chicago, Illinois, O'Horgan was introduced to theater by his father, a newspaper owner and sometimes actor, who took him to shows and built him footlights and a wind machine. As a child he sang in churches and wrote operas, including one entitled "Doom of the Earth" at age 12.O'Horgan received his degree from DePaul University
DePaul University
DePaul University is a private institution of higher education and research in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by the Vincentians in 1898, the university takes its name from the 17th century French priest Saint Vincent de Paul...
where he learned to play dozens of musical instruments. After graduating he worked in Chicago as a harpist and also performed with Second City
The Second City
The Second City is a improvisational comedy enterprise which originated in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood.The Second City Theatre opened on December 16, 1959 and has since expanded its presence to several other cities, including Toronto and Los Angeles...
, the Chicago improvisatory group. He moved to New York City and began acting downtown at places like Judson Memorial Church
Judson Memorial Church
The Judson Memorial Church is located on Washington Square South between Thompson and Sullivan Streets, opposite Washington Square Park, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of the Manhattan borough of New York City...
. During this time he developed a night club act where he performed improvisational humor as he accompanied himself on the harp.
Career
O'Horgan thought of his work as "kinetic sculpture" and said that his goal was to be "able to blend all aspects of the theatre without letting any part become secondary to the others." Of contemporary commercial theater, he believed that people are, "hung up on chandeliers because they insist that the one-dimensional, verbal Ibsenite theater is the only theater. But this is an aberration of the 19th century. If the ideas are the primary thing, it's not theater. Theater has always meant music, dance, art. That's what the Greek theater was." Shortly after Hair opened on Broadway, Eleanore Lester wrote in the New York Times:
O'Horgan, a veteran of many years of experimentation and frustration in his search for The Way in theater, successfully incorporates a number of strands coming on strong in the rapidly evolving post-Miller-Williams-Albee and post-absurdist theater. Those trends, growing partly out of the intimate Off Off Broadway movement and partly out of the visceral political drama of be-ins, sit-ins and demonstrations, include the use of improvisational techniques, vigorous ensemble playing, a more physical style of acting, greater use of dance, music, and puppets, and Pop-camp comedy - plus the Total Theater concept in which the audience becomes more closely involved in the work.
O'Horgan said that an element of his artistic gratification is "just getting the vicarious joy of turning people on, making them respond, turning them on to their own sensual powers that are buried under layers of cement. When you see how people in the streets will run to see a fire or an accident or a fight, hoping against hope to see something really happen, something that will prove that the people walking beside them are more than mere mannequins, you realize how much they want to break out of all their emotional rigidity." Though he would become well known for his Broadway work, he was more comfortable in the Off Broadway world. As he told Lester in 1968, "Sure, I've been sent scripts from Broadway offices, but so far I haven't seen anything that I could possibly be interested in. Of course, I'll continue working with La MaMa. Where else can you work things out? Certainly not on Broadway where the meter is always running."
Off-Broadway & Off-Off-Broadway
Most of his early career work was in Off-Off-BroadwayOff-Off-Broadway
Off-Off-Broadway theatrical productions in New York City are those in theatres that are smaller than Broadway and Off-Broadway theatres. Off-Off-Broadway theaters are often defined as theaters that have fewer than 100 seats, though the term can be used for any show in the New York City area that...
experimental theatre
Experimental theatre
Experimental theatre is a general term for various movements in Western theatre that began in the late 19th century as a retraction against the dominant vent governing the writing and production of dramatical menstrophy, and age in particular. The term has shifted over time as the mainstream...
productions. One of his earliest projects was Love and Vexations at the Caffe Cino in September, 1963, and soon after he became a protege of Ellen Stewart
Ellen Stewart
Ellen Stewart was an American theater director and producer and the founder of La MaMa, E.T.C. . In the 1950s she worked as a fashion designer for Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, Lord & Taylor, and Henri Bendel.-Biography:Ellen Stewart was either born in Alexandria, Louisiana or Chicago,...
, founder of La MaMa, E.T.C.
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club is an off-off Broadway theatre founded in 1961 by Ellen Stewart, and named in reference to her. Located on Manhattan's Lower East Side, the theatre grew out of Stewart's tiny basement boutique for her fashion designs; the boutique's space acted as a theatre for...
. The first play he directed there was The Maids
The Maids
The Maids is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. It was first performed at the Théâtre de l'Athénée in Paris in a production that opened on 17 April 1947, which Louis Jouvet directed...
by Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
in 1964, and he later led a La MaMa troupe that went to Denmark to showcase early plays by Sam Shepard
Sam Shepard
Sam Shepard is an American playwright, actor, and television and film director. He is the author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child...
and Lanford Wilson
Lanford Wilson
Lanford Wilson was an American playwright who helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters...
. He directed some 50 productions at La MaMa including The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria by Fernando Arrabal
Fernando Arrabal
Fernando Arrabal Terán is a Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist and poet. He settled in France in 1955, he describes himself as “desterrado,” or “half-expatriate, half-exiled.”...
, a surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
play about two men on an island, and Tom Paine by Paul Foster
Paul Foster (cartoonist)
Paul Foster was a Merry Prankster best known for illustrating the book Ken Kesey's Garage Sale.He is the author of The Answer Is Always Yes and he was also a founding member of Wavy Gravy's Hog Farm commune....
, a recounting of the life of the US Revolutionary War figure
Thomas Paine
Thomas "Tom" Paine was an English author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States...
.
O'Horgan directed and also composed music for the Rochelle Owens
Rochelle Owens
Rochelle Bass Owens is an American poet and playwright.-Life:She is the daughter of Maxwell and Molly Bass. A native New Yorker, Owens studied at the New School for Social Research and University of Montreal...
play Futz!. He first directed the play off-off-Broadway for La MaMa in March 1967 and later took it to the Edinburgh Festival
Edinburgh Festival
The Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...
and then to New York's Theater de Lys, an off-Broadway venue in June 1968. O'Horgan also directed a film version of Futz! that was released in 1969. Futz! tells the story of the difficulties a farm boy encounters with the people of the town when he falls in love with his pig. Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Times, "Mr. O'Horgan ... has visualized Futz! as some kind of Dionysiac
Dionysus
Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...
dance, wild and fevered. He sends his actors mugging and careening across the stage in great joyous surges of energy." Hair authors James Rado and Gerome Ragni
Gerome Ragni
Gerome Bernard Ragni was an American actor, singer and songwriter, best known as the co-author of the groundbreaking 1960s Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical.-Early life:...
attended the La MaMa production of Futz! and it influenced them to choose O'Horgan to direct Hair on Broadway.
In November 1974, he conceived and directed a stage adaptation of The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
' classic recording Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, released on 1 June 1967 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin...
. The show, entitled Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road was a 1974 off-Broadway production directed by Tom O'Horgan. It opened at the Beacon Theatre in New York on November 17, 1974 and ran for a total of 66 performances....
, played at the Beacon Theater concert venue on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The production, developed in collaboration with Hair set designer Robin Wagner
Robin Wagner (designer)
Robin Wagner is an American scenic designer.Born Robin Samuel Anton Wagner in San Francisco, he attended art school and started his career in theatres in that city with designs for Don Pasquale, Amahl and the Night Visitors, Tea and Sympathy, and Waiting for Godot, among others...
, featured 34 actors performing 29 Beatles songs with elaborate scenery, special effects and colorful costumes. The show was not well received by critics and closed in January 1975 after 66 performances.
Among O'Horgan's other off-Broadway credits are To the Water Tower, When the Owl Screams, and The Wrecking Ball as composer, and Masked Men (at the Westbeth Theatre) and Birdbath as director.
Hair
O'Horgan made his Broadway directorial debut in 1968 with the ground-breaking musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
Hair. Based on his growing reputation with Futz! and other off-off-Broadway plays he directed, Hair authors Ragni and Rado sought out O'Horgan to direct the Off-Broadway production of the show when it opened at The Public Theater in the fall of 1967, but O'Horgan was working in Europe at the time and was unable to accept the invitation. When the show made the transition uptown to Broadway, O'Horgan was called again and this time he was able to accept.
Hair underwent a massive overhaul from its downtown version to its Broadway opening in April 1968. The Off-Broadway book, already light on plot, was loosened even further, and were added. O'Horgan said that "I see [Hair] as a singspiel, a popular opera." In rehearsals, he used techniques passed down by Viola Spolin
Viola Spolin
Viola Spolin was an important innovator of the American theater in the 20th century. She created directorial techniques to help actors to be focused in the present moment and to find choices improvisationally, as if in real life...
and Paul Sills
Paul Sills
Paul Sills was a director and improvisation teacher, and the original director of Chicago's The Second City.-Biography:...
of improvisational "games" and role playing theories that encouraged freedom and spontaneity. Many of these improvisations were incorporated into the Broadway script. He prepared actors by having them undress in slow motion, praying to God and Buddha and jostling one another. He had them deliver lines while being carried around or doing handstands. The Playbill
Playbill
Playbill is a monthly U.S. magazine for theatregoers. Although there is a subscription issue available for home delivery, most Playbills are printed for particular shows to be distributed at the door...
for the 2009 Broadway revival of Hair says O'Horgan and new choreographer Julie Arenal infused the production with a sense of "freedom and spontaneity, introducing an organic, expansive style of staging" that had never been seen before on Broadway. Also, O'Horgan had used nudity in many of the plays he directed, and he helped integrate the idea into the fabric of the show. Some credit him with transforming "a mildly successful off-Broadway musical into a Broadway hit."
O'Horgan said that the experience gave him the opportunity to help create "a theater form whose demeanor, language, clothing, dance, and even its name accurately reflect a social epoch in full explosion." He believed that the actors in Hair, some from "right off the street", made an important contribution to Broadway theater. He said that "the kids are talking their won language, they're expressing their real sex attitudes and they're laying it on the line about race and miscegenation. The kids on stage are authentic and people sense this." Of its wider impact, he contentiously stated that "Hair is an assault on the theatrical dead area: Broadway. It's almost an effort to give Broadway mouth-to-mouth recuscitation."
Lenny and Jesus Christ Superstar
The next Broadway project for O'Horgan was to direct the Julian Barry
Julian Barry
Julian Barry is an American screenwriter and playwright best known for his Oscar-nominated script for the film Lenny about comedian Lenny Bruce, which Barry adapted from his successful Broadway play of the same name...
play Lenny, with Cliff Gorman
Cliff Gorman
Cliff Gorman was an American stage and screen actor. He won an Obie award in 1968 for the stage presentation of The Boys in the Band, and went on to reprise his role in the 1970 film version....
as controversial comedian
Comedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...
-satirist Lenny Bruce
Lenny Bruce
Leonard Alfred Schneider , better known by the stage name Lenny Bruce, was a Jewish-American comedian, social critic and satirist...
. Lenny opened at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre
Brooks Atkinson Theatre
The Brooks Atkinson Theatre is a Broadway theater located at 256 West 47th Street in Manhattan.Designed by architect Herbert J. Krapp, it was constructed as the Mansfield Theatre by the Chanin brothers in 1926. After 1933, the theatre fell into relative disuse until 1945, when Michael Myerberg...
in May 1971, across the street from the Biltmore Theater where Hair was still running. The play followed Bruce's nightclub career through run-ins with the police and the courts, and put the same language on a Broadway stage that had gotten Bruce—who died in 1966—arrested in nightclubs just a few years earlier. Lenny ran on Broadway for 453 performances until June 1972 and won Gorman a Tony for best actor in a play.
That same year O'Horgan would also direct the 1971 Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
musical Jesus Christ Superstar that became popular with audiences and that, like Hair, would later be made into a movie. Superstar was notable for the performance of Ben Vereen
Ben Vereen
Ben Vereen is an American actor, dancer, and singer who has appeared in numerous Broadway theatre shows. Vereen graduated from Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts.- Early years :...
-- whom O'Horgan directed previously on Broadway in the role of Hud in Hair -- as Judas Iscariot
Judas Iscariot
Judas Iscariot was, according to the New Testament, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. He is best known for his betrayal of Jesus to the hands of the chief priests for 30 pieces of silver.-Etymology:...
. According to playwright Robert Patrick
Robert Patrick (playwright)
Robert Patrick is a gay American playwright, poet, lyricist, and short-story writer and novelist. He was born Robert Patrick O'Connor in Kilgore, Texas, USA.-Personal life:...
, O'Horgan didn't want to accept the job but relented finally because he said "Bob ... You wouldn't believe the money they just offered me."
Other Broadway work
Additional Broadway directing credits include the Tony Award-winning Inner City (1971), a musical conceived by O'Horgan based on controversial poetry book The Inner City Mother Goose by Eve Merriam
Eve Merriam
-Writing career:Merriam's first book was the 1946 Family Circle, which won the Yale Younger Poets Prize.Her book, The Inner City Mother Goose, was described as one of the most banned books of the time. It inspired a 1971 Broadway musical called Inner City and a 1982 musical production called Street...
; the musical Dude
Dude (musical)
Dude is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. It is an allegory about good and evil, the conflict between mankind's creative and destructive urges, the power of love, and the joy to be found in simple pleasures...
(1972) written by Hair author Gerome Ragni with music by Hair composer Galt MacDermot; The Leaf People (1975), a Joe Papp-produced play by Dennis Reardon depicting the first contact by white men with a hostile tribe of Amazonian Indians; and I Won't Dance (1981), a murder whodunit play by Oliver Hailey. At one point in 1971, there were four simultaneous O'Horgan-directed productions on Broadway - Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, Lenny, and Inner City.
Film
O'Horgan directed and composed the score for the screen adaptation of Futz! with Frederic ForrestFrederic Forrest
-Life:Forrest was born in Waxahachie, Texas, the son of Virginia Allie and Frederic Fenimore Forrest, a furniture store owner. He is known for his roles as Chef in Apocalypse Now, When The Legends Die, It Lives Again, the neo-Nazi surplus store owner in Falling Down, Right to Kill? and for playing...
, Sally Kirkland
Sally Kirkland
Sally Kirkland is an American film and television actress.-Early life:Kirkland was named after her mother, fashion editor Sally Kirkland, who was a fashion editor at Vogue and LIFE magazines, and was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her father, Frederic McMichael Kirkland, worked in the scrap...
, and Jennifer O'Neill
Jennifer O'Neill
-Early life:O'Neill was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the daughter of a famous Spanish-Irish dental supply import/export businessman, Oscar D' O'Neill and his English wife. As a teenager, O'Neill worked as a fashion model and appeared in television commercials and on magazine covers before moving...
, and directed the film version of Eugene Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
's Rhinoceros
Rhinoceros (play)
Rhinoceros is a play by Eugène Ionesco, written in 1959. The play belongs to the school of drama known as the Theatre of the Absurd...
starring Zero Mostel
Zero Mostel
Samuel Joel “Zero” Mostel was an American actor of stage and screen, best known for his portrayal of comic characters such as Tevye on stage in Fiddler on the Roof, Pseudolus on stage and on screen in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Max Bialystock in the original film version...
, Gene Wilder
Gene Wilder
Gene Wilder is an American stage and screen actor, director, screenwriter, and author.Wilder began his career on stage, making his screen debut in the film Bonnie and Clyde in 1967. His first major role was as Leopold Bloom in the 1968 film The Producers...
, and Karen Black
Karen Black
Karen Black is an American actress, screenwriter, singer, and songwriter. She is noted for appearing in such films as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Great Gatsby, Rhinoceros, The Day of the Locust, Nashville, Airport 1975, and Alfred Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot...
(and which featured a score by Hair composer Galt MacDermot
Galt MacDermot
Galt MacDermot is a Canadian composer, pianist and writer of musical theatre. He won a Grammy Award for the song African Waltz in 1960. His most successful musicals have been Hair and Two Gentlemen of Verona...
). O'Horgan composed the score for Paul Mazursky's
Paul Mazursky
Paul Mazursky is an American film director, screenwriter and actor.-Personal life:He was born Irwin Mazursky in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jean , a piano player for dance classes, and David Mazursky, a laborer. Mazursky was born to a Jewish family; his grandfather was an immigrant from...
Alex in Wonderland
Alex in Wonderland
Alex in Wonderland is a 1970 feature-length film directed by Paul Mazursky, written with his partner Larry Tucker and starring Donald Sutherland and Ellen Burstyn. Sutherland plays Alex Morrison, a director who has made one feature and spends his time in Hollywood pondering what his next will be...
starring Donald Sutherland
Donald Sutherland
Donald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...
and Ellen Burstyn
Ellen Burstyn
Ellen Burstyn is a leading American actress of film, stage, and television. Burstyn's career began in theatre during the late 1950s, and over the next ten years she appeared in several films and television series before joining the Actors Studio in 1967...
. In addition, he is credited with "stage production conceived and adapted by" for the 1978 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (film)
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is a 1978 American musical film. Its soundtrack, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, features new versions of songs originally written and performed by The Beatles. The film draws primarily from two of their albums, 1967's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club...
film.
Awards
O'Horgan won three Drama Desk AwardDrama Desk Award
The Drama Desk Awards, which are given annually in a number of categories, are the only major New York theater honors for which productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway compete against each other in the same category...
s for his direction of Lenny and off-Broadway plays Futz! (1969), and Tom Paine (1968), and was also named Theatrical Director of the Year by Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
in 1968. He was awarded the 1967 Obie Award
Obie Award
The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City...
for best off-off-Broadway director of the year and the 1968 Brandeis Award
Brandeis Award
Brandeis Award may refer to:* Brandeis Award * Brandeis Award * Brandeis Award , from Federal Trade Commission...
for Creative Arts. In 1969 he was nominated for a Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
for best director of a musical for Hair but lost out to Peter Hunt
Peter H. Hunt
Peter Huls Hunt is an American theatre, film, and television director and a theatrical lighting designer.Hunt was born in Pasadena, California, the son of Gertrude and George Smith Hunt II, a Minnesota-born industrial designer. Hunt began his career as a lighting designer at the Williamstown...
who directed 1776
1776 (musical)
1776 is a musical with music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards and a book by Peter Stone. The story is based on the events surrounding the signing of the Declaration of Independence...
.
In 2006 Ben Vereen
Ben Vereen
Ben Vereen is an American actor, dancer, and singer who has appeared in numerous Broadway theatre shows. Vereen graduated from Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts.- Early years :...
presented O'Horgan with the Artistic Achievement Award from the New York Innovative Theatre Awards
New York Innovative Theatre Awards
The New York Innovative Theatre Awards were founded in 2004. These annual awards honor excellence in Off-Off-Broadway Theatre and help nurture and promote the Off-Off-Broadway community.-Mission statement:...
. This honor was bestowed to O'Horgan on behalf off his peers and fellow artists "in recognition of his significant artistic contributions to the Off-Off-Broadway community." When receiving the honor O'Horgan said "I'm in love with this whole game."
Personal life
O'Horgan lived in a 3000 square feet (278.7 m²) loft in Manhattan at 840 Broadway (at 13th Street) that was famous for parties and events attended by artistic figures like Norman MailerNorman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
and Beverly Sills
Beverly Sills
Beverly Sills was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s. In her prime she was the only real rival to Joan Sutherland as the leading bel canto stylist...
. The walls were covered with his impressive collection of unusual musical instruments from throughout the world. Many were displayed in order of their history, from antique to current. There was also an alcove of gongs, including the one used in "Jesus Christ Superstar". He and his friends rang in many a New Year there, where at midnight everyone would take an instrument off the wall, or find a drum or a gong, and celebrate with an abandon and joy that Mr. O'Horgan so often set the stage for (both personally and professionally). He also held the weddings of two close friends there. Martha Wingate married Hunt Taylor there in 1980, and Soni Moreno married Harry Primeau there a few years later.
He died at home on January 11, 2009, in Venice, Florida
Venice, Florida
Venice is a city in Sarasota County, Florida, United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2007 estimates, the city had a population of 21,015. It is noted for its large snowbird population. Its newspaper is the Venice Gondolier Sun...
, while in the care of his friends Marc and Julia Cohen, who had taken care of him through years of suffering from Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease also known in medical literature as Alzheimer disease is the most common form of dementia. There is no cure for the disease, which worsens as it progresses, and eventually leads to death...
. A small group of close friends scattered his ashes in San Francisco Bay, where they had scattered the ashes of his lifelong friends Harvey Milk and Galen McKinley years before. He was 84 years old.