Director shepherded Elephant Man to Broadway
Stage and screen director Jack Hofsiss, who won a Tony Award in his first outing on Broadway while helming The Elephant Man and kept working despite an accident that left him without the use of his arms and legs, died Sept. 13, said producer and longtime friend Elizabeth McCann. He was 65.
Hofsiss died at his home in Manhattan after recently being hospitalized at Mount Sinai Hospital for respiratory distress.
Hofsiss also directed several TV films, including a 1982 adaptation of The Elephant Man, a version of Cat of a Hot Tin Roof starring Jessica Lange, and The Oldest Living Graduate with Henry Fonda.
He was best known for shepherding The Elephant Man to Broadway from off-Broadway and in 1979, at 28, became the youngest person at the time to win the Tony for best direction.
The play was based on the actual case history of John Merrick, a Victorian-era freak show outcast whom a London surgeon, Frederick Treves, protected and encouraged. In the play, Philip Anglim played Merrick without the aid of makeup or special costuming.
Hofsiss’ career was interrupted on July 20, 1985, when he dove into the shallow end of a Fire Island swimming pool and broke his neck.
Born in 1950 and a graduate of Georgetown University, he went to New York in 1971. He parlayed a job in the casting department at the New York Shakespeare Festival into several directing assignments, including work at the Public Theater, the New York City Opera and the TV soap opera Another World.
He made his movie-directing debut in 1982 with I’m Dancing As Fast As I Can, starring Jill Clayburgh. After the accident he would direct on Broadway with The Shadow Box in 1994 and such off-Broadway shows as Surviving Grace in 2002, James Joyce’s The Dead in 1999 and Confessions of a Mormon Boy in 2006.
He is survived by three sisters.