Husband David Webster
Queer Places:
2 5th Ave, New York, NY 10011, Stati Uniti
Larry Kramer (June
25, 1935 - May 27, 2020) was an American playwright, author, film
producer, public health advocate, and LGBT rights activist. He began his
career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures, which led him to
London where he worked with United Artists. There he wrote the screenplay for
the 1969 film Women in Love (1969) and earned an Academy Award
nomination for his work. Kramer introduced a controversial and confrontational
style in his novel Faggots (1978), which earned mixed reviews and
emphatic denunciations from elements within the gay community for Kramer's
one-sided portrayal of shallow, promiscuous gay relationships in the 1970s.
Kramer witnessed the spread of the disease later known as Acquired Immune
Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) among his friends in 1980. He co-founded the Gay
Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), which has become the world's largest private
organization assisting people living with AIDS. Kramer grew frustrated with
bureaucratic paralysis and the apathy of gay men to the AIDS crisis, and
wished to engage in further action than the social services GMHC provided. He
expressed his frustration by writing a play titled The Normal Heart,
produced at The Public Theater in New York City in 1985. His political
activism continued with the founding of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power
(ACT UP) in 1987, an influential direct action protest organization with the
aim of gaining more public action to fight the AIDS crisis. ACT UP has been
widely credited with changing public health policy and the perception of
people living with AIDS (PWAs), and with raising awareness of HIV and
AIDS-related diseases.[1]
Kramer has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his play The Destiny
of Me (1992), and he is a
two-time recipient of the Obie Award.
Featured in
Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay
and Lesbian Writers by Robert Giard [Rights Notice: Copyright Jonathan G. Silin (jsilin@optonline.net)]
2 5th Ave
Kramer and his partner, architectural designer
David Webster, have been together since
1991. It was Webster's ending of his relationship with Kramer in the 1970s
that inspired Kramer to write Faggots (1978). When asked
about their reunion decades later, Webster replied, "He'd grown up, I'd grown
up."[8]
On July 24, 2013 in New York City, Kramer and Webster married.[52]
Kramer lived in
Manhattan,
near
Washington Square Park in
Greenwich Village, and in
Connecticut. Another resident of Kramer's Manhattan residential complex
was Kramer's longtime nemesis,
Ed Koch.
The two saw each other relatively infrequently, since they lived in separate
towers. When Kramer saw Koch looking at the apartment in 1989, Kramer
reportedly told him, "Don't move in here! There are people here who hate you!"
On another occasion, Koch tried to pet Kramer's dog in the building's mail
area, and Kramer snatched the dog away.[53]
Kramer died of pneumonia on May 27, 2020, at age 84, less than a month
short of his 85th birthday.[70][71]
My published books:
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Kramer