There’s mention of it in the Celebrity Death Pool thread ( http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=812514&page=27&highlight=Gurney ), but it’s pretty minor. Gurney deserves a bit more.
Unless you were into the New York theater scene, probably the only play of his you know is Love Letters, because it was so very widely produced, and with so many actors, famous and not. It required no costumes, scenery, or blocking, or even memorization, when you come down to it – just a male and female actor, sitting at a table, looking at the audience, reading from letters they wrote to each other over the years. Its ease of production probably contributed to its success, but quite a few “name” actors performed in it.
I knew him because he was one of my professors, during his brief stint at teaching. He put on a play that I wrote (not for his class), and several of us produced his plays, or went to see them off-Broadway.
He specialized, as articles about him said (and now his obituaries observe) in chronicling the lives of a tribe I’m not really familiar with – the Upper-Class American WASP. In The Dining Room and The Cocktail Hour and his many other plays, they’re front and center.
His obituary answered a question I’ve had for years, and which he refused to answer – Why, with a name like Albert Ramsdell Gurney did he have the nickname “Pete”? I thought it must have some deep and significant origin, but it turns out to be that his mother liked the sound of it.
His later plays had more success, and he graduated from Off-off Broadway and Off-Broadway to Broadway itself with Love Letters and Sylvia. The latter had Sarah Jessica Parker in it during its original run, and Matthew Broderick on its revival.
Weird that this comes less than a week after my class reunion. I’d been hearing about him for years, but I hadn’t contacted him in quite a long time. I should’ve sent him a copy of the publication I finally got out of that play I wrote.