3 parts as a double for Wood’ s co-star, the two became close friends. Crowley was unsuccessful in selling his TV plays in New York, so after shooting on Splendor in the Grass closed, he moved with Wood and her husband Robert Wagner to Hollywood with the intention of selling his TV plays in Los Angeles, hoping for better success there. Crowley’ s work in LA was limited, with a few shots of success that failed nearly as quickly as they started. His first potential success was with a movie screenplay based on the novel Cassandra at the Wedding, which featured a central( but subtly) lesbian character that scared 20th Century Fox producers and deterred production of the film( despite their initial interest and liking of the screenplay). His second shot came with a TV pilot that he wrote for Bette Davis, which originally featured a gay sidekick( who would’ ve been the first gay man on TV). The producers opted out of the gay sidekick and gave the part to a butch character actress to make it about two female friends, and after the pilot premiered the show was never picked up by the network. Disillusioned, Crowley picked up an article by Stanley Kaufmann titled“ Homosexual Drama and Its Disguises” at a diner one day in 1966 and got a bit of inspiration from a line in an otherwise fairly controversial and disliked article: He needed to write about experiences that he knew. Still busy trying to find work, he put off this inspiration until he could get a break.
Desperate for a break and with a favor to fulfill, Crowley housesat for a friend’ s Beverly Hills mansion for the summer in 1967. He had little responsibilities since the house was fully staffed, so he started to write some dialogue with the advice from that article a year earlier in mind. The few lines of dialogue soon became scenes about a few gay friends celebrating a birthday party in the birthday boy’ s apartment, which became the material from which The Boys in the Band was created. Crowley returned to New York City in the fall after the summer housesitting had ended to finish the final scene of the play. Upon completion, he showed the final copy to his friend Robert Moore, who loved it instantly and wanted to direct it. Moore suggested that he send the script to producer Richard Barr, who produced Edward Albee’ s