James Kirkwood Jr. (August 22, 1924 – April 21, 1989) 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. Biography Kirkwood was born in Los Angeles. His father James Kirkwood Sr. was an actor and director in silent films, and his mother was actress Lila Lee. He had a half sister Joan Mary Kirkwood Thompson. After their divorce, he spent much of his time with his mother's family in Elyria, Ohio, where he graduated from high school. Career From 1953 to 1957, he played Mickey Emerson on the soap opera Valiant Lady. Kirkwood wrote the semi-autobiographical novel There Must Be a Pony, made into a television film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Wagner. Other novels include P.S. Your Cat Is Dead (adapted into a play of the same name, which was, in turn, adapted into a film by Steve Guttenberg), Good Times/Bad Times, Some Kind of Hero, and Hit Me with a Rainbow. In 1959, Kirkwood appeared on Perry Mason as Johnny Baylor, son of Sen. Harriman Baylor, in "The Case of the Foot-Loose Doll." In 1970, Simon & Schuster published Kirkwood's American Grotesque about the trial of Clay Shaw. Shaw, a New Orleans businessman, was tried by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison on charges that he was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate United States President John F. Kennedy and later acquitted. Kirkus Reviews wrote that "Kirkwood's portrait of Shaw as St. Sebastian is overdone to the point of self defeat" and that "the book does clinch the impression that legal grounds for the conspiracy charges were insufficient." Kirkwood won the 1976 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama with collaborator Nicholas Dante for A Chorus Line. Kirkwood also wrote the comedic play Legends! which toured the United States with Mary Martin and Carol Channing in 1987. The plot concerns a producer with a sure-fire commercial script, but no credibility, who lures two out-of-work but long-time feuding actresses "of a certain age" to star in his putative Broadway production. Legends! was the most financially successful road production of that season, but when producers insisted on cutting