Biography

He was a child prodigy on piano. He attended a conservatory and studied at two other colleges without graduating. He accompanied his mother on her Christian Science healing visits, and was a church organist in Oregon and Southern California, where he settled before eventually leaving the faith.

He started out as a musician and singer, and had never written a play before director Charles Nelson Reilly asked him to write about Emily Dickinson for actress Julie Harris. He subsequently wrote plays about writers Charlotte Brontë, Lillian Hellman, Isak Dinesen, Molière and Zelda Fitzgerald, as well as fashion designer Coco Chanel and actor John Barrymore.