24 Facts About Tom O'Horgan

Tom O'Horgan was an American theater and film director, composer, actor and musician.

Tom O'Horgan is best known for his Broadway work as director of the hit musicals Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar.

Tom O'Horgan received his degree from DePaul University where he learned to play dozens of musical instruments.

Tom O'Horgan moved to New York City and began acting downtown at places like Judson Memorial Church.

Tom O'Horgan thought of his work as "kinetic sculpture" and said that his goal was to be "able to blend all aspects of the theatre without letting any part become secondary to the others".

Tom O'Horgan directed some 50 productions at La MaMa including The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria by Fernando Arrabal, a surrealist play about two men on an island, and Tom Paine by Paul Foster, a recounting of the life of the US Revolutionary War figure.

Tom O'Horgan first directed the play off-off-Broadway for La MaMa in March 1967 and later took it to the Edinburgh Festival and then to New York's Theater de Lys, an off-Broadway venue in June 1968.

Tom O'Horgan sends his actors mugging and careening across the stage in great joyous surges of energy.

Tom O'Horgan made his Broadway directorial debut in 1968 with the ground-breaking musical, Hair.

Tom O'Horgan prepared actors by having them undress in slow motion, praying to God and Buddha and jostling one another.

Tom O'Horgan had them deliver lines while being carried around or doing handstands.

Also, Tom O'Horgan had used nudity in many of the plays he directed, and he helped integrate the idea into the fabric of the show.

Tom O'Horgan said that the experience gave him the opportunity to help create "a theater form whose demeanor, language, clothing, dance, and even its name accurately reflect a social epoch in full explosion".

Tom O'Horgan believed that the actors in Hair, some from "right off the street", made an important contribution to Broadway theater.

The next Broadway project for Tom O'Horgan was to direct the Julian Barry play Lenny, with Cliff Gorman as controversial comedian-satirist Lenny Bruce.

Tom O'Horgan directed and composed the score for the screen adaptation of Futz with Frederic Forrest, Sally Kirkland, and Jennifer O'Neill, and directed the film version of Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros starring Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, and Karen Black.

Tom O'Horgan composed the score for Paul Mazursky's Alex in Wonderland starring Donald Sutherland and Ellen Burstyn.

Tom O'Horgan was awarded the 1967 Obie Award for best off-off-Broadway director of the year and the 1968 Brandeis Award for Creative Arts.

Tom O'Horgan lived in a 3,000-square-foot loft in Manhattan at 840 Broadway that was famous for parties and events attended by artistic figures like Norman Mailer and Beverly Sills.

Tom O'Horgan's loft was visited by children's television host Fred Rogers on a 1985 episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.

Tom O'Horgan held the weddings of two close friends there.

Tom O'Horgan was the initial representation of a father figure to one underaged John Galen McKinley, aka.

Harvey Milk would occasionally loan some money to Tom O'Horgan to encourage him to be more ambitious and take on a major production.

Tom O'Horgan came under the care of friends Marc and Julia Cohen, his loft and collections of instruments were sold, and he moved to Venice, Florida, where he died on January 11,2009.