Biography
Distinguished American playwright and screenwriter best known for writing the play "Lenny," based on the life and writings of cutting-edge comic Lenny Bruce, and the 1974 feature film based on that play and starring Dustin Hoffman. Julian Barry earned an Oscar nomination for his adaptation of his play. There has since been considerable distance between his produced screenplays. He began in movies with the adaptation of Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinoceros" (1972), in which Gene Wilder decides not to conform and turns into a pachyderm. "Lenny" followed. It was not until 1984 that Barry had another produced screenplay, "The River," which starred Sissy Spacek and Mel Gibson as stubborn farmers who won't let the bank foreclose on their land. Barry went back to comedy with "Me, Myself & I" (1992), an uneven work in which George Segal falls in love with his neighbor (JoBeth Williams), a schizophrenic with mood swings. Barry's TV work has also been limited. He wrote the 1991 PBS original drama "A Marriage: Georgia O'Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz" about the relationship between the artist and the photographer. Always there was the stage, although many of Barry's works have played London's West End, but not Broadway, such as the musical "Jean Seberg," which he wrote with Marvin Hamlisch and which chronicled the story of the small-town girl plucked for stardom, chewed up by Hollywood, and who then became a radical leftist. In 1990, he musicalized "Rhinoceros" as "Born Again," which premiered in Britain with Mandy Patinkin in the leading role. With Don McLean, Barry also wrote the musical "American Pie," inspired by McLean's hit song. Julian Barry died on July 25, 2023 in Beverly Hills, CA at the age of 92.
