Welcome to Dun & Dunn. I'm Alicia, your hostess on this podcast journey, All Things Dominic Dunn.

Thank you for joining me today as we center in on the groundbreaking work by Mart Crowley,

The Boys in the Band.

1968 changed America forever, really. This work's significance at the time and its enduring influence

cannot be emphasized enough. How does the play happen? What's the play about? What is Dominic

Dunn's role in the creation of the play as well as the execution of the film version? And what makes this work by Mark Crowley so significant?

When I say significant, this play was called the Uncle Tom's Cabin of homosexual literature

when it premiered.

In this episode, it is too, the boys in the band, and all of it's spiderwebs too.

Let's investigate.

Oh, Mark Crowley, let's back it up to 1967. He has been dropped by Paramount.

Mart left Natalie Wood for that gig. All of that story is in the last Mark Crowley episode. But I want to bring in here just a little bit of a thought that sometimes when you think it's all going wrong, maybe it is

going right. Because at this point, Mark Crowley is going to write the thing that he is best known

for in the darkest of his times.

Mart, again, not having a lot of success at this point. He's drinking way too much. There's that

whole the decorators thing that gets bailed on before it even gets started. And here,

Mart gets sort of the idea for this play, the boys in the band.

The boys in the band, eight characters, all gay men who meet at a birthday party. That is the

premise. And all of these characters are real people that Mart Crowley knows or even himself, including the character he bases

Alan on his friend Dominic Dunn. So, Mart has lost his gig at Paramount, sublets his apartment.

He is going to take a house- gig for Diana Lynn actress, which is pretty

cushy. His meals are prepared. His sheets are changed every day. There's not a whole lot of excuses that

...