Prolific author co-wrote Tootsie
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Murray Schisgal, a playwright and screenwriter who brought his off- kilter brand of black comedy to Broadway with the screwball hit Luv, and who later forged a partnership with actor Dustin Hoffman that led him to co-write the gender-bending blockbuster Tootsie, died Oct. 1 at a nursing home in Port Chester, N.Y. He was 93.
Whether in plays, movies, or a novel involving a hunchbacked musician, Schisgal was known for creating angst-ridden characters who were often more ludicrous than endearing, struggling with family conflict or professional failures that served as a backdrop for Schisgal’s examinations of self- loathing or modern romance.
His work often set irascible men ( played by Hoffman, Alan Arkin or Eli Wallach) against coolly intelligent women, often portrayed by Anne Jackson, Wallach’s wife.
Schisgal wrote dozens of plays but came to the theatre relatively late, after practicing law, teaching junior high English and playing saxophone and clarinet in a jazz band. In his early 30s he wrote one- act plays produced in London and New York, then made his Broadway debut with Luv, about a husband who sets his wife up with a downcast friend so he can marry another woman.
Directed by Mike Nichols, Luv premiered in November 1964 and ran for more than 900 performances, winning three Tony Awards and earning Schisgal nominations for best play and best author.
It was turned into a 1967 movie, adapted into an off- Broadway musical and followed on Broadway by his play Jimmy Shine.
The 1968 comedy starred Hoffman, fresh off his success in The Graduate. He and Schisgal had met a few years earlier, working on regional theatre in Massachusetts. They went on to develop movies together and work on Broadway plays such as All Over Town, which Hoffman directed in 1974.
But their most acclaimed collaboration was Tootsie ( 1982), in which Hoffman played Michael Dorsey, an out-of-work actor who dresses as a woman to win a role on a soap opera. The movie was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including best screenplay.
Schisgal described playwriting as an “addiction” and “a form of therapy,” even if it was frequently unsatisfying. “I have never done anything which has held up over a period of time so that I feel I have fulfilled the potential of an idea,” he told The Times in 1987.