Tom Hatcher (August 24, 1929 - October 26, 2006) was an aspiring actor whom
Gore Vidal suggested
Arthur Laurents
seek out at the Beverly Hills men's clothing store Hatcher was managing at the
time. The couple remained together for 52 years until Hatcher's death in 2006.
Laurents’ latest memoir was published posthumously in September 2012, titled,
The Rest of the Story.Quogue is an incorporated village in the Town of Southampton, on the South Shore of Long Island. In 1954, Arthur Laurents bought five acres of beachfront property in Quogue on the Eastern end of Long Island. He lived in a small house there as much of the time as possible. Shortly after that, he began a 52 years long loving relationship with Tom Hatcher, who appeared as an actor in “A Clearing in the Woods” and “Invitation to a March.” Hatcher later became a successful real estate developer in Quogue. The setting for “Invitation to a March” is based on Laurents’s own property. When Laurents spoke of his relationship with Tom in his final volume of memoirs, he associated him with the garden Tom created near their compound in Quogue. There is a bench in that garden where Laurents used to read drafts of his plays to Tom. Now Tom’s ashes are buried on one side of the bench, Laurent’s on the other. After Tom’s death of lung cancer in 2006, Laurents would continue to feel his presence in the garden: “When I got back to Quogue, I sat on our bench in his park and talked to him. He was there, he is the park. I was surprised the few close friends I told this weren’t surprised. The park was Tom for them, too.”
