NOTEWORTHY DEATHS

— Award-winning playwright, writer King

NEW YORK - Larry L. King, a writer and playwright whose magazine article about a campaign to close down a popular bordello became a hit Tony Award-nominated musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and a movie starring Burt Reynolds, died Thursday. He was 83.

His wife, Barbara Blaine, said King died after battling emphysema at Chevy Chase House, a retirement home in Washington where he had been living the past six months. “One of the things that I will always remember about Larry is that he remained funny all the way through this illness,” she said.

King wrote two musicals, five plays, 14 books, a few screenplays and hundreds of magazine articles, for which he won an O. Henry Award in 2001. His Confessions of a White Racist was a finalist for a National Book Award. He won an Emmy for his 1982 television documentary for CBS, The Best Little Statehouse in Texas. He taught atPrinceton and was a fellow at Duke.

King wrote his most famous piece about the Chicken Ranch brothel in 1974 for Playboy magazine, took the $3,000 and thought no more about it. But Peter Masterson, a Texas actor, saw the article and thought it would make a great play. He and King got together with songwriter Carol Hall, another Texan, to create the smash musical. Tommy Tune was the director and in charge of musical staging.

The movie version starring Dolly Parton and Reynolds was less than a smash with critics, including King, who thought Hollywood had ruined the story and turned it into a sex romp.

King, Tune, Hall and Masterson got together in 1994 to create a sequel, The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public, that flopped spectacularly.

King has three grown children by his first wife. His second wife died in 1972. He also has two grown children with his third wife, Blaine.

Arkansas, Pages 11 on 12/22/2012

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