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Terrence McNally

Terrence McNally

Writing

Biography

Terrence McNally (November 3, 1938 – March 24, 2020) was an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. Described as "the bard of American theatre" and "one of the greatest contemporary playwrights the theatre world has yet produced," McNally was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1996. He received the 2019 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011, and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2018, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the highest recognition of artistic merit in the United States. He received the Tony Award for Best Play for Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class, as well as the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime. His other accolades included an Emmy Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, four Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Obie Awards, and three Hull-Warriner Awards. His career spanned six decades, and his plays, musicals, and operas were routinely performed all over the world. He also wrote screenplays, teleplays, and a memoir. Active in the regional and off-Broadway theatre movements as well as on Broadway, he was one of the few playwrights of his generation to have successfully passed from the avant-garde to mainstream acclaim. His work centred on the difficulties of and urgent need for human connection. He was vice-president of the Council of the Dramatists Guild from 1981 to 2001. He died of complications from COVID-19 on March 24, 2020, at a hospital in Florida.

Known For

Scarecrow and Mrs. King
6.6

Scarecrow and Mrs. King is an American television series that aired from October 3, 1983, to May 28, 1987 on CBS. The show stars Kate Jackson and Bruce Boxleitner as divorced housewife Amanda King and top-level "Agency" operative Lee Stetson who begin a strange association, and eventual romance, after encountering one another in a train station.

Scarecrow and Mrs. King

1983
American Playhouse
6.6

American Playhouse is an anthology television series periodically broadcast by Public Broadcasting Service in the United States.

American Playhouse

1982
Charlie Rose
6.1

Acclaimed interviewer and Emmy-winning journalist Charlie Rose engages a wide range of guests, including philosophers, writers, politicians, athletes, entertainers, artists, business leaders, scientists, educators, and other newsmakers in one-on-one interviews and round-table discussions.

Charlie Rose

1991
Kiss of the Spider Woman
6.0

Valentín, a political prisoner, shares a cell with Molina, a window dresser convicted of public indecency. The two form an unlikely bond as Molina recounts the plot of a Hollywood musical starring his favorite silver screen diva, Ingrid Luna.

Kiss of the Spider Woman

2025
Frankie and Johnny
6.8

When Johnny is released from prison following a forgery charge, he quickly lands a job as a short-order cook at a New York diner. Following a brief fling with waitress Cora, he develops an attraction for Cora's friend and fellow waitress Frankie. While Frankie resists Johnny's charms initially, she eventually relents when her best friend, Tim, persuades her to give Johnny a chance.

Frankie and Johnny

1991
Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It
7.5

Rita Moreno defied both her humble upbringing and relentless racism to become one of a select group who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award. Over a seventy year career, she has paved the way for Hispanic-American performers by refusing to be pigeonholed into one-dimensional stereotypes.

Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It

2021
Every Act of Life
6.4

The life of Tony-winning playwright Terrence McNally (Master Class, Ragtime): 60 years of groundbreaking plays and musicals, the struggle for gay rights, addiction and recovery, finding true love, and the relentless pursuit of inspiration.

Every Act of Life

2018
Common Ground
5.0

This movie contains three short stories dealing with the theme of homosexuality. In "A Friend of Dorothy", a woman joins the Navy during the 1950s and discovers lesbianism. In "Mr. Roberts", a teacher in a 1970s classroom struggles with his closeted gay status. Finally in "Amos and Andy", a father wrestles with his own emotional acceptance of a present day wedding between his son and another man.

Common Ground

2000
The Ritz
6.0

To escape from a mobster, businessman Gaetano Proclo orders a cab driver to take him to a place where he can't be found. Unfortunately for Gaetano, the place turns out to be a gay bathhouse.

The Ritz

1976
Ragtime, The Musical: All-Star Reunion Concert
N/A

Celebrate the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Ragtime with this once-in-a-lifetime reunion concert featuring original cast members, including Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Peter Friedman, joined by Kelli O’Hara.

Ragtime, The Musical: All-Star Reunion Concert

2024
Chita Rivera: A Lot Of Livin' To Do
N/A

A retrospective of Chita Rivera's film, television and stage career, including interviews with Dick Van Dyke, Ben Vereen, Carol Lawrence and others. Originally aired as Episode 2 of Season 43 of the PBS series Great Performances.

Chita Rivera: A Lot Of Livin' To Do

2015
Chita: A Legendary Celebration
N/A

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS presents a 2013 concert celebrating Chita Rivera's 80th birthday as a fundraiser to aid struggling artists during the pandemic. Chita offers a musical retrospective of her career in the theatre with guest stars Tommy Tune and Ben Vereen. Includes songs from 'Seventh Heaven,' 'West Side Story,' 'Bye Bye Birdie,' 'The Happy Time,' 'Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris,' 'Chicago,' 'The Rink,' 'Kiss of the Spider Woman,' & 'The Visit,' among others.

Chita: A Legendary Celebration

2020
The Metropolitan Opera: Dead Man Walking
6.5

American composer Jake Heggie’s compelling masterpiece, the most widely performed new opera of the last 20 years, arrives in cinemas in a haunting new production by Ivo van Hove. Based on Sister Helen Prejean’s memoir about her fight for the soul of a condemned murderer, Dead Man Walking matches the high drama of its subject with Heggie’s beautiful and poignant music and a brilliant libretto by Tony and Emmy Award–winner Terrence McNally. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium, with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato starring as Sister Helen. The outstanding cast also features bass-baritone Ryan McKinny as the death-row inmate Joseph De Rocher, soprano Latonia Moore as Sister Rose, and legendary mezzo-soprano Susan Graham—who sang Helen Prejean in the opera’s 2000 premiere—as De Rocher’s mother.

The Metropolitan Opera: Dead Man Walking

2023
Love! Valour! Compassion!
6.2

A group of gay friends spend summer weekends together at a lakeside house in upstate New York. As the season progresses and secrets begin to surface, the complex relationships within the group are sometimes strained and sometimes strengthened.

Love! Valour! Compassion!

1997
Corpus Christi: Playing with Redemption
5.0

Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi is a play retelling the Jesus story, with Jesus as a gay man living in the 1950s in Corpus Christi, Texas. This documentary follows the troupe, playwright, and audience around the world on a five-year journey of Terrence McNally’s passion play, where voices of protest and support collide on one of the central issues facing the LGBT community: religion.

Corpus Christi: Playing with Redemption

2013
Heart of Broadway: The Ensemble Behind Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS
N/A

Heart of Broadway goes inside Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS for an in-depth look at the organization and its key players. Since 1988, they have raised more than $195 million for essential services for people with AIDS and other critical illnesses.

Heart of Broadway: The Ensemble Behind Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS

2011
The Five Forty-Eight
8.0

An advertising man, emotionally estranged from his wife and those around him, has seduced and then fired and discarded his secretary. She pursues him and forces him to confront the squalor of his life.

The Five Forty-Eight

1979
Ragtime
N/A

A new production of EL Doctorow's historical novel, recorded at the Cardiff International Festival of Musical Theatre. Broadcast as part of BBC4's America Night.

Ragtime

2002
No image
N/A

The Boston Pops performs Ragtime: The Symphonic Concert, prepared by the original creators Terrence McNally, Lynn Ahrens, and Stephen Flaherty especially for the Pops. Based on the 1975 novel by E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime weaves together the stories of three intersecting groups in the U.S. in the early 20th century: Eastern European immigrants, the African American community in Harlem, and an upper-class white family. Together, they confront history's timeless tensions of wealth and poverty, freedom and prejudice, hope and despair.

Ragtime: The Symphonic Concert

2023
Concrete Beat
6.0

A newspaper columnist becomes determined to clear a woman who is blamed for the death of her child in a tragic fire.

Concrete Beat

1984