Joseph Hardy, the stage director who launched the enduring charmer You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, gained a Tony Award for 1970’s Youngster’s Play and, as an government producer in daytime drama, tried to rescue the fading serial Ryan’s Hope with a few of the most controversial modifications in cleaning soap historical past, has died. He was 95.
His June 6 demise was confirmed by New York’s Primary Stages Off Broadway theater firm. A resident since 2020 on the Actors Fund Dwelling in Englewood, NJ, his passing final month was not broadly reported.
Born March 8, 1929, in Carlsbad, NM, Hardy graduated from the Yale Faculty of Drama and started his present enterprise profession working as a script editor for New York-based cleaning soap operas. He was quickly making his means into the Off Broadway world, working extensively in small theaters earlier than making his early mark with the unique 1967 manufacturing of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown at Theater 80 St. Marks in Manhattan’s East Village.
The musical, with music and lyrics by Clark Gesner primarily based on the wildly standard Peanuts characters crated by cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, was a simply-staged manufacturing that may go on to turn into a staple of novice and college theater seasons. The present featured a guide by John Gordon — a pseudonym later revealed to cowl Gessner, manufacturing workers and the unique solid that included Bob Balaban, Gary Burghoff, amongst others.
By the point the Peanuts musical transferred to Broadway in 1971, Hardy already was there, having directed a number of Broadway productions together with Play It Once more, Sam, the 1969 Woody Allen comedy that first teamed Allen along with his biggest muse, Diane Keaton. The actress was nominated for a Tony for her efficiency within the comedy.
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In 1970, Hardy gained the Tony Award for his route of Youngster’s Play, Charles Marasco’s Tony-nominated darkish thriller drama set in an unique boys boarding faculty. The manufacturing additionally gained Tonys for actors Fritz Weaver and Ken Howard, in addition to for units and lighting.
Hardy’s different Broadway credit embrace Johnny No-Trump (1967); Bob and Ray – The Two and Solely (1970); Kids! Kids! (1972); Gigi (1973); The Night time of the Iguana (1976); and, in 1978, Diversions and Delights, a one-man present starring Vincent Value as Oscar Wilde. Hardy’s closing Broadway credit score was 1979’s Romantic Comedy starring Anthony Perkins and, in her Broadway debut, Mia Farrow.
His stage profession additionally included a stint as Affiliate Artist on the Outdated Globe Theatre in San Diego, and he was a frequent director on the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles.
Hardy additionally had a busy TV profession: He directed, amongst different tasks, Lily Tomlin’s first TV particular in 1973; a 1974 TV-movie adaptation of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; and, that very same yr, the TV movie Nice Expectations starring Michael York and Sarah Miles. He directed and government produced the headline making Nineteen Seventies teen drama James at 15 (later retitled James at 16).
Returning to his roots in daytime soaps, Hardy was employed in 1983 as an government producer of ABC’s Ryan’s Hope, a once-popular serial that had skilled dwindling viewership since its mid-Nineteen Seventies heyday. Hardy grew to become a part of a brand new producing workforce that overhauled the serial by firing a few of its hottest solid members and shifting the main target from its longtime setting of the Ryan household bar to the goings-on at a close-by deli. The rankings crashed, many ABC associates dropped the present, and inside a couple of years the community changed Hardy’s crew and rehired unique producer Claire Labine.
Hardy’s Ryan’s Hope period grew to become one thing of a cautionary story for the daytime drama business, as networks and producers would tread rigorously ever after about making main shifts away from a serial’s founding focus.
Hardy, nonetheless, landed on his ft, quickly employed as government producer of ABC’s Loving and, from 1989-91, the massively standard Common Hospital.
After leaving Common Hospital, Hardy spent a lot of the Nineteen Nineties residing and dealing in France. He returned to New York Metropolis later within the decade and continued directing on the Outdated Globe Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Pageant and the Charlotte Rep. In 2008, he directed his previous good friend Lynn Redgrave in Grace for MCC Theater Off Broadway, and he reteamed with the star the next yr for her acclaimed solo present Nightingale for New York Metropolis Middle.
He’s survived by sister Caroline Rackley of New Mexico. He requested that no service or memorial be held.
