Frank D. Gilroy

• Born: October 13, 1925
• Birthplace: New York, NY

Frank D. Gilroy won a Pulitzer Prize for his first Broadway play, The Subject Was Roses, in 1965. The play also was awarded the Critics' Circle Award and that year's Best Play Tony, a coup, as it had taken some two years to bring to the stage, having been turned down by many of Broadway's big names. It was adapted into a 1968 film, starring Patricia Neal and Jack Albertson. In 1993, Gilroy wrote a prequel to the story called, Any Given Day.

An earlier play of Gilroy's, Who'll Save the Plowboy?, won 1962's Obie Award, for best Off-Broadway play.

A magna cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College, Gilroy also studied at the Yale School of Drama. He began his career as a TV writer in the 1950s for shows like Playhouse 90, Kraft Television Theatre, and Studio One and cowrote the screenplays for The Fastest Gun Alive (1956) and The Gallant Hours (1960). He also adapted his play The Only Game in Town for Warren Beatty and Elizabeth Taylor (1970), before making his directing debut the next year with Desperate Characters (1971, which he also adapted). Gilroy went on to write and direct a series of small, offbeat projects including, From Noon Till Three (1976), The Gig (1985), and The Luckiest Man in the World (1989).

Most Famous Works

• Who'll Save the Plowboy? (1962)
• The Subject Was Roses (1964)
• Any Given Day (1993)

(b. 1925)

1962	Who'll Save the Plowboy? Gilroy's initial drama success concerns a veteran, haunted by the trauma of his war experiences, in a reunion with the man who saved his life. Produced off-Broadway, it wins the Obie Award.
1964	The Subject Was Roses. Gilroy's subtle portrait of the postwar American family deals with parents competing for the affection of a son who has returned home after his army service. It wins both the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.
1993	Any Given Day. Gilroy revisits the family he dealt with in his most famous play, The Subject Was Roses (1964), in action predating the original, at the outbreak of World War II.

• Born: Oct 13, 1925 in New York City, New York
• Occupation: Writer, Director
• Active: '50s, '70s-'80s
• Major Genres: Drama, Western
• Career Highlights: The Subject Was Roses, The Turning Point of Jim Malloy, Desperate Characters
• First Major Screen Credit: The Fastest Gun Alive (1956)

Biography

A magna cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College, Frank D. Gilroy completed his education at the Yale School of Drama. He entered television as a writer in the early '50s, contributing to the many live dramatic anthologies of the era (Kraft Theatre, Omnibus, Playhouse 90 et al.) In 1962, Gilroy won the Obie Award for his off-Broadway piece Who'll Save the Plowboy; in 1964, he walked away with the Pulitzer Prize and the Critics' Circle Award for his first Broadway play, The Subject Was Roses, which took two years to reach the stage after having been turned down by practically every "name" actor in the business. In 1971, Frank Gilroy made his movie-directing bow with the Manhattan-filmed Desperate Characters (1971); he has since directed such films as the revisionist western From Noon Till Three (1976), and the curious "regeneration" seriocomedy The Luckiest Man in the World (1989). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jinxed! Buy this Movie	Once in Paris... Buy this Movie	From Noon Till Three Buy this Movie	Desperate Characters Buy this Movie
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