 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(August 2009) |
 | |
| Author | James Kirkwood Jr. |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Stein and Day |
Publication date | 1972 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 223 pages |
| ISBN | 978-0446829342 |
P.S. Your Cat Is Dead is a novel by James Kirkwood Jr., originally published in 1972, adapted from his play. The book and play later were adapted to film in 2002.
Abandoned by his girlfriend on New Year's Eve, and still unaware that his beloved cat Bobby Seale has died in an animal clinic, hopeless New York actor Jimmy Zoole is feeling depressed and unstable when he happens across a cat burglar named Vito in his apartment. Furious, he beats the stranger unconscious and ties him to his kitchen sink. Jimmy begins to torment his terrified captive; however, the unlikely pair soon establish a bond. Vito once had a wife who left him after she discovered he was gay and who took their child with her. Jimmy questions his own sexual orientation as his relationship with Vito takes on an erotic dimension, and decides to use his prisoner to exact revenge on his former lover. In the end, Jimmy and Vito, now working as a team, sell a stash of stolen drugs and run away together.
In his James Kirkwood biography Ponies & Rainbows, Sean Egan traces the genesis of the play, which had its roots in a series of burglaries at Kirkwood's apartment on West 58th Street in New York. The book also features a photograph of Gino Marino, a friend and lover of Kirkwood's upon whom Egan claims the author based the character Vito.
After five previews, the Broadway production, directed by Vivian Matalon, opened on April 7, 1975, at the John Golden Theatre, where it ran for 16 performances. The cast included Keir Dullea, Tony Musante, and Jennifer Warren. Actor and LGBTQ activist Sal Mineo played Vito in the San Francisco run of the play from November 1975 to January 1976. He was preparing for the Los Angeles run on February 1976, but he was murdered at his West Hollywood apartment on February 12th by a drug addict, a week before it was slated to open. Afterwards, Drama Desk Award nominations were sent to Kirkwood for Outstanding New Play and Musante for Outstanding Actor in a Play.
After changes were made to the script in the early 1980s, the play re-opened Off Broadway at Circle in the Square Downtown with a cast that included Zeljko Ivanek as Vito.
During his acceptance speech for the Tony Award that he received for A Chorus Line on April 16, 1976, author James Kirkwood stated the following: "As A Chorus Line was previewing at the Newman Theater, I had a little ditty open on Broadway about a month before called P.S. Your Cat Is Dead. It was greeted by some of the critics as if I'd dramatized the Black Plague. It's been rewritten. It's got a whole new life on the coast, so it's alive and well." [1] [2]
In Mexico, this play first was produced in 1983 under the title "P.D. Tu gato ha muerto" and starred Manuel Ojeda as Jimmy and Humberto Zurita as Eddie. It was produced from 1997 to 2000 and starred Otto Sirgo in the role of Jimmy. The role of Eddie throughout the years went to Héctor Soberón, Juan Soler, Xavier Ortiz, Héctor Suarez Gomiz, Jorge Poza and Sebastián Rulli. The play was presented in several cities of the United States when Juan Soler was part of the cast.
In 2002, Steve Guttenberg combined the play and novel into the feature film P.S. Your Cat Is Dead , which he co-wrote with Jeff Korn and directed, starring himself as the writer, Cynthia Watros as his ex-girlfriend Kate, and Lombardo Boyar as the youthful burglar Eddie. It was screened at the 2002 Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
In 2004, the play was produced in São Paulo, with the title P.S.: Seu Gato Morreu, directed by Jarbas Homem de Mello, and had Teco Tavares - who also produced and translated the play to Portuguese - in the role of Jimmy Zoole and Paula Picarelli as Kate. The roles of Vito and Fred were played by Luís Araújo and Eduardo Estrela, respectively.
The first performance of a German version of the play took place on 29 January 2011 in Berlin at Jüdisches Theater Bimah, directed by Thomas Maul. While the roles of Vito (played by Markus Riexinger) and Jimmy's girlfriend Kate (Katrin Stephan) were taken from the original play as they are, Jimmy Zoole was turned into a woman: Jenny Zola (Jasmin Steck), turning the relationship with Kate into a lesbian one.
Argentine Play The play was a success back in 1978 at the ATENEO Theater (Buenos Aires), produced by Carlos Rottemberg, directed by Emilio Alfaro and with Luis Brandoni and Gerardo Romano in its leading roles.
Daniel Michael DeVito Jr. is an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He gained prominence for his portrayal of the taxi dispatcher Louie De Palma in the television series Taxi (1978–1983), which won him a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy Award. He plays Frank Reynolds on the FX and FXX sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2006–present).
Salvatore Mineo Jr. was an American actor. He was best known for his role as John "Plato" Crawford in the drama film Rebel Without a Cause (1955), which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor at age 17, making him the fifth-youngest nominee in the category.
James Kirkwood Jr. was an American playwright, author and actor. In 1976 he received the Tony Award, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the Broadway hit A Chorus Line.
The Odd Couple is a play by Neil Simon. Following its premiere on Broadway in 1965, the characters were revived in a successful 1968 film and 1970s television series, as well as several other derivative works and spin-offs. The plot concerns two mismatched roommates: the neat, uptight Felix Ungar and the slovenly, easygoing Oscar Madison. Simon adapted the play in 1985 to feature a pair of female roommates in The Female Odd Couple. An updated version of the 1965 show appeared in 2002 with the title Oscar and Felix: A New Look at the Odd Couple.
James Emil Coco was an American stage and screen actor. He was the recipient of a Primetime Emmy Award, a Drama Desk Award, a Cable ACE Award and three Obie Awards, as well as nominations for a Tony Award, an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards. Coco is remembered for his supporting roles in the films Man of La Mancha (1972), Murder by Death (1976) and Only When I Laugh (1981).
Steven Robert Guttenberg is an American actor, author, businessman, producer, and director. His lead roles in Hollywood films of the 1980s and 1990s include Cocoon, Police Academy, Three Men and a Baby, Diner, The Bedroom Window, Three Men and a Little Lady, The Big Green, and Short Circuit.
Sandra Dale Dennis was an American actress. She made her film debut in the drama Splendor in the Grass (1961). For her performance in the comedy-drama film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), she received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
A View from the Bridge is a play by American playwright Arthur Miller. It was first staged on September 29, 1955, as a one-act verse drama with A Memory of Two Mondays at the Coronet Theatre on Broadway. The run was unsuccessful, and Miller subsequently revised and extended the play to contain two acts; this version is the one with which audiences are most familiar. The two-act version premiered in the New Watergate theatre club in London's West End under the direction of Peter Brook on October 11, 1956.
On Your Toes (1936) is a musical with a book by Richard Rodgers, George Abbott, and Lorenz Hart, music by Rodgers, and lyrics by Hart. It was adapted into a film in 1939.
Manuel Salvador Ojeda Armenta was a Mexican actor. Ojeda was one of the most active actors of television and cinema in Mexico. He played the villain, Zolo, in the Hollywood film Romancing the Stone.
"The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti" is the eighth episode of the HBO original series The Sopranos. It was written by David Chase and Frank Renzulli, directed by Tim Van Patten and originally aired on February 28, 1999.
Taran Hourie Killam is an American actor and comedian. Killam first garnered attention for his brief stint on the Fox comedy series MADtv during its seventh season between 2001 and 2002, followed by his wider success as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 2010 to 2016. He has also appeared in other television series such as Wild ‘N Out, The Amanda Show, How I Met Your Mother, New Girl, and Single Parents. Killam is also known for his portrayal of a teen pop star in the 2004 Disney Channel Original Movie Stuck in the Suburbs. He voices the title character on the PBS children's cartoon series Nature Cat.
Bernard Lee "Pretty" Purdie is an American drummer, and an influential R&B, soul and funk musician. He is known for his precise musical time-keeping and his signature use of triplets against a half-time backbeat: the "Purdie Shuffle." He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2013.
Anthony Peter Musante Jr. was an American actor, best known for the TV series Toma as Detective David Toma, Nino Schibetta in Oz (1997), and Joe D'Angelo in As the World Turns (2000–2003). In movies, he achieved fame relatively early in his career, starring or having significant roles in such films as Once a Thief (1965), The Incident (1967), The Detective (1968) and The Last Run (1971), and also in a number of Italian productions, including The Mercenary (1968), Metti, una sera a cena (1969) and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970).
Robert Felix Torti is an American actor.
James Cornelius Kirkwood Sr. was an American actor and director.
Love Is a Racket is a 1932 American pre-Code romantic comedy-drama film, starring Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Ann Dvorak. The movie was written by Courtney Terrett from the novel by Rian James, and directed by William A. Wellman.
Leonard Joel Baker was an American actor of stage, film, and television, best known for his Golden-Globe-nominated performance in the 1976 Paul Mazursky film Next Stop, Greenwich Village and his 1977 Tony Award-winning performance in the stage play I Love My Wife.
Wonderland, formerly called Wonderland: Alice's New Musical Adventure or Wonderland: A New Alice, is a musical play with a book by Jack Murphy and Gregory Boyd, lyrics by Murphy, and music by Frank Wildhorn. The story, a contemporary version of the novels Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) by Lewis Carroll, is set in New York City and focuses on writer Alice Cornwinkle and her 10-year-old daughter Chloe.
P.S. Your Cat is Dead! is a 2002 American comedy film directed by Steve Guttenberg. The film is based on the novel of the same name published by James Kirkwood, Jr. in 1972, and a 1975 play.
