A gay man, Herlihy became a close friend of playwright Tennessee Williams, who served as his mentor.[2] Both spent a significant amount of time in Key West, Florida. Like Williams, Herlihy had lived in New York City. Apart from Key West, the primary home of Herlihy was in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles.[2] There, another mentor and close friend was French author Anais Nin, who shared some of her most secret diaries with him.
Works
Plays he wrote include Streetlight Sonata (1950), Moon in Capricorn (1953), and Blue Denim (produced on Broadway in 1958).[1]
He directed actress Tallulah Bankhead in a touring production of his play Crazy October in 1959.[3]
Three of his one-act plays, titled collectively Stop, You're Killing Me were presented by the Theater Company of Boston in 1969.[4]
According to author Sean Egan in his biography of James Kirkwood Jr., Ponies & Rainbows, Herlihy co-wrote the play UTBU with Kirkwood but demanded his name be taken off the credits.[5]
Herlihy wrote three novels: All Fall Down (1960), Midnight Cowboy (1965), and The Season of the Witch (1971).[6]
His short stories were collected in The Sleep of Baby Filbertson and Other Stories (1959) and A Story That Ends in a Scream and Eight Others (1967), a collection which included plays.[1]
In 1968, Herlihy signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments as a protest against the Vietnam War.[7] He later also became a sponsor of the War Tax Resistance project, which practiced and advocated tax resistance as a form of protest against the war.[8]
