STONE, Peter 1930-2003

(Peter Joshua, Pierre Marton)

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born February 27, 1930, in Los Angeles, CA; died of pulmonary fibrosis April 26, 2003, in New York, NY. Author. Stone was best known as the author of books for musicals, winning Tony Awards for 1776, Woman of the Year, and Titanic, though he was also acclaimed for his film and television work. The son of parents who both wrote for Hollywood, Stone earned his B.A. from Bard College in 1951 and his M.F.A. from Yale University in 1953. After graduating, he traveled to Paris, France, where he was a journalist and news reader for CBS radio and television. He returned to the United States in the late 1950s and began writing plays, his first being Friend of the Family (1958). He also wrote movie screenplays, and after his first film, the 1963 romantic comedy Charade starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, was produced he won an Oscar for the Grant comedy Father Goose. His first big Broadway hit was 1776 (1969), which he adapted three years later to film. Stone became well known for his skill at adapting works to stage and screen, including the movies Mirage (1965) and Sweet Charity (1969), and the plays Sugar (1972), Woman of the Year (1981), and Titanic (1998). His The Will Rogers Follies (1991) won an Antoinette Perry—"Tony" AWard for Best Musical, a Grammy AWard, and a New York Drama Critics Circle award, his Annie Get Your Gun (1999) won a Tony Award for Best Musical Revival and a Grammy Award, and he won Drama Critics Circle and Drama Desk awards for 1776 (1969), as well as numerous other prizes. His last work included a play adaptation of Finian's Rainbow (2000), and the movies Just Cause (1995) and, under the pseudonym Peter Joshua, The Truth about Charlie (2002), an adaptation of Charade Stone, who sometimes wrote under the pen name Pierre Marton, also wrote scripts for television, including Asphalt Jungle (1961), and the series The Defenders (1961-62) and Adam's Rib (1973-74).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Dramatists, sixth edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Contemporary Theatre, Film, and Television, Volume 23, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Ganzl, Kurt, Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre, second edition, Schirmer Books (New York, NY), 2001.

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, May 1, 2003, section 2, p. 12.

Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2003, p. B11.

New York Times, April 28, 2003, p. A25.

Washington Post, April 29, 2003, p. B6.