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