18 Facts About Tom Eyen

Tom Eyen was an American playwright, lyricist, television writer and director.

Tom Eyen received a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Dreamgirls in 1981.

Tom Eyen is best known for works at opposite ends of the theatrical spectrum.

Tom Eyen's career started with experimental theatre that he wrote and directed Off-Off Broadway in the 1960s.

Tom Eyen died of AIDS-related complications in Palm Beach, Florida at the age of 50.

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Tom Eyen was born in Cambridge, Ohio, the youngest of seven children.

Tom Eyen attended Ohio State University but left before graduating.

Tom Eyen moved to New York City in 1960 to study acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Tom Eyen sought acting roles without success, and worked briefly as a press agent, before he began writing for the theatre.

Tom Eyen found an artistic home in the 1960s off-off-Broadway Experimental theatre scene, based at Caffe Cino and La MaMa Experimental Theatre Company.

Tom Eyen gave Bette Midler her first professional acting roles in Miss Nefertiti Regrets and Cinderella Revisited.

Tom Eyen's work was central to the 1960s neo-expressionist off-off-Broadway movement.

Tom Eyen was prolific, writing, and usually directing, 35 plays at La MaMa alone during the 1960s and 1970s.

Tom Eyen wrote the song "Ode to a Screw" with Peter Cornell for the 1971 Milos Forman film Taking Off.

In 1978, Tom Eyen earned an Emmy Award nomination for writing Midler's first television special, Ol' Red Hair is Back.

In 1984, Tom Eyen sought to duplicate his Dreamgirls success with Kicks: The Showgirl Musical, a collaboration with composer Alan Menken about the Rockettes during World War II.

Tom Eyen died of complications from AIDS in 1991, at the age of fifty, in Palm Beach, Florida.

In 1993, Eyen posthumously received the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E Lee Theatre Research Institute Award from Ohio State University, where his papers are archived.