Plays
About
Lewis John Carlino was born in New York. He served in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War, then began his studies at the School of Communications of the University of Southern California, taking his graduate degree in playwriting in their Department of Drama. His first plays were produced in the University’s Workshop Theater and later found their way on to the professional stage in Los Angeles. They were also performed by the American National Theatre and Academy, with Mr. Carlino directing these productions. Mr. Carlino then returned to New York and was admitted to the New Dramatists Committee and the Playwright’s Unit of the Actor’s Studio. For a short while, he taught playwriting at Columbia University, then decided to devote all his time to the theatre with a series of three works, which were all produced Off-Broadway in the 1963-64 season. The first of these works was CAGES, starring Shelley Winters and Jack Warden. The second was TELEMACHUS CLAY, a “collage for sound and voices.” The third was entitled DOUBLETALK, and starred Franchot Tone and Ruth White. These plays earned Mr. Carlino the Vernon Rice Award for contributions to the Off-Broadway theatre and the New York Critics’ Drama Desk Award. In 1967, his play THE EXERCISE was produced on Broadway and starred Anne Jackson and Stephen Joyce. Mr. Carlino’s films include: “Seconds,” the official U.S. entry at the Cannes Film Festival, directed by John Frankenheimer; the original screenplay “The Brotherhood,” starring Kirk Douglas and directed by Martin Ritt; an adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s “The Fox,” nominated for the Golden Globes Foreign Press Award; the original screenplay “The Mechanic,” starring Charles Bronson, which Mr. Carlino also co-produced. Following was the screenplay “A Reflection of Fear,” then “Crazy Joe,” produced by Dino de Laurentiis. In 1974 he wrote the screenplay for “The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea” from the novel by the Japanese author Yukio Mishima. The film starried Kris Kristofferson and Sarah Miles. Mr. Carlino also directed and co-produced this film. His adaptation of “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” from the novel by Hannah Green was nominated for an Academy Award. Following this was the original screenplay of “Resurrection” starring Ellen Burstyn and Eva Le Gallienne, earning Academy Award nominations for the two stars in 1978. The same year he wrote and directed the screenplay for “The Great Santini,” from the novel by Pat Conroy. It starred Blythe Danner, Robert Duval, and Michael O’Keefe, earning the latter two Academy Award nominations in the same year. In 1984, Mr. Carlino directed Jacqueline Bisset, Rob Lowe, and Andy McCarthy in “Class.” The following year his screenplay “Haunted Summer,” dealing with the lives of Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Lord Byron, was produced. His work in television includes the following: “Honor Thy Father,” from the novel by Gay Talese; “In Search of America,” an original teleplay; “Doc Elliot,” an original pilot and TV series; “Where Have all the People Gone,” an original teleplay; and “The Brick and the Rose,” an original teleplay, which premiered the CBS Repertory Workshop. His novels, “The Brotherhood” and “The Mechanic,” were published by Random House, along with his early plays. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, The Playwright’s Unit of the Actor’s Studio, the New Dramatists Committee, Le Sociétié des Auteurs Dramatique, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the Writers Guild, and the Directors Guild of America.