The Subject Was Roses (Author Biography)

Author Biography

Frank Daniel Gilroy was born on October 13, 1925, to Bettina Vasti and Frank B. Gilroy in the Bronx, New York. He was educated in the Bronx and graduated from De Witt Clinton High School in 1943, after which he joined the U.S. Army. During World War II, he served for two and a half years with the eighty-ninth infantry division, including eighteen months in Europe. After leaving the army, he received his bachelor of arts degree (magna cum laude) from Dartmouth College in 1950. With a grant from Dartmouth, he spent the following year at Yale Drama School.

Gilroy soon began writing for television. During the 1950s, he wrote for Playhouse 90 (CBS), Studio One (CBS), U.S. Steel Hour (ABC), Omnibus (CBS), Kraft Theatre (NBC), and Lux Video Theatre (NBC). Gilroy's first staged play was Who'll Save the Plowboy?, performed at New York's Phoenix Theatre in 1962. It won the Obie Award as the best American play produced off-Broadway. Gilroy followed this with his biggest success, The Subject Was Roses, which won the Outer Critics Circle Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, a Tony Award for best play, and the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Gilroy's next play, That Summer, That Fall (1967), was a reworking of the ancient Greek story of Hippolytus and Phaedra. This was followed by The Only Game in Town, produced in 1968. In 1972, four one-act plays by Gilroy were produced off-Broadway under the collective title Present Tense.

During the 1970s, Gilroy turned his attention to films. In 1971, his screen adaptation of his own play, Desperate Characters, which he also directed, won the Berlin Film Festival Silver Bear. He also wrote, directed, and produced From Noon till Three (1976), Once in Paris (1978), and The Gig (1985). Gilroy also directed television films, including the Gibbsville series (1976) and Nero Wolfe (1979). He also wrote two novels, Private (1970) and From Noon till Three: The Possibly True and Certainly Tragic Story of an Outlaw and a Lady Whose Love Knew No Bounds (1973).

Gilroy returned to stage plays in 1979, when Last Licks was produced. It featured a man and his son who were reminiscent of John and Timmy in The Subject Was Roses. However, the play ran for less than a month at New York's Longacre Theatre.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Gilroy concentrated on one-act plays. Real to Reel was produced off-Broadway in 1987, as was Match Point (1990), A Way with Words (five one-act plays, 1991), and Give the Bishop My Faint Regards (1992). Gilroy returned to Broadway for the first time in fourteen years with a two-act play, Any Given Day, which was produced at Longacre Theatre in 1993. Set in the Bronx, in 1941, it featured characters similar to those that Gilroy had explored in The Subject Was Roses.

Gilroy's most recent work was another one-act play, Getting In, first produced at Ensemble Studio Theatre, 1997.

Gilroy married Ruth Dorothy Gaydos in 1954. They have three children: Anthony, Daniel, and John.