LOUIS LARUSSO II, PLAYRIGHT, DIES AT 67

New York Times
By Wolfgang Saxon
February 25, 2003

Louis LaRusso II, a prolific playwright whose characters often relived the tribulations of the working people among whom he lived, died on Saturday in Jersey City. He was 67 and lived in Hoboken.

The cause was bladder cancer. He described the diagnosis and spread of his cancer in an interview with The New York Times four years ago.

Mr. LaRusso, a native of Hoboken, wrote scores of plays. About two dozen of them chronicled working-class life in his hometown, starting with "Beginnings," which recalled his grandparents' arrival at the house that became his own home.

Among his work was "Lamppost Reunion," which won Tony and Drama Desk nominations for best play in 1976. It told of past friends spending the night drinking with a famous singer after a performance at Madison Square Garden.

Other plays produced on Broadway were "Wheelbarrow Closers" (1976) and "Knockout" (1979). His Off Broadway work included "Marlon Brando Sat Right Here" (1980) and "Sweatshop" (1998).

"Sweatshop," at the American Theater of Actors, was the tale of 10 struggling women in a coat factory during a heat wave 40 years earlier. The reviewer for The Times, Lawrence Van Gelder, called it a "big, sentimental drama" in which Mr. LaRusso's skills could "sustain interest and arouse emotion.

"Mr. LaRusso worked on the books of several Broadway musicals and in the movies. He helped rewrite "Saturday Night Fever" in 1977, and, living in Los Angeles for a time, received screen credits for "Beyond the Reef" (1983), "Hell Hunters" (1986) and "The Closer" (1990), based on his own play.

Mr. LaRusso studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He lived in the row house, built around 1860, in which his mother had been born. He had his first poem published in a local newspaper at 5 after giving it to his kindergarten teacher as a Christmas offering. (A collection of his poems, "More Than Just Works," was published in 1962.)

Twice married and twice divorced, he started writing plays after his mother's death in 1969. He lived in Los Angeles from 1983 to 1995, when he decided that "art is a dirty word in L.A." and went home.

His cancer was diagnosed in 1997, when his doctors sent him, X-rays in hand, to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

His survivors include a son, Louis III.

Louis LaRusso II, Playwright, Dies at 67
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/25/obituaries/25LARU.html