“Our continued existence as gay men upon the face of this earth is at stake,” he wrote. He tried to rouse the gay community with speeches and articles such as “1,112 and Counting,” published in gay newspapers in 1983. In 1981, when AIDS had not yet acquired its name and only a few dozen people had been diagnosed with it, Kramer and a group of his friends in New York City founded Gay Men’s Health Crisis, one of the first groups in the country to address the epidemic. He loudly told everyone that the gay community was grappling with a plague.

He also wrote the 1972 screenplay “Lost Horizon,” a novel, “Faggots,” and the plays “Sissies’ Scrapbook,” “The Furniture of Home,” “Just Say No” and “The Destiny of Me,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1993.īut for many years he was best known for his public fight to secure medical treatment, acceptance and civil rights for people with AIDS. It starred Glenda Jackson, who won her first Oscar for her performance. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay for “Women in Love,” the 1969 adaptation of D.H. He also suffered from hepatitis B and received a liver transplant in 2001 because the virus had caused liver failure. Kramer, who wrote “The Normal Heart” and founded the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, lost his lover to acquired immune deficiency syndrome in 1984 and was himself infected with the virus. Kramer’s husband, David Webster, told The New York Times that Kramer died of pneumonia on Wednesday. NEW YORK (AP) - Larry Kramer, the playwright whose angry voice and pen raised theatergoers’ consciousness about AIDS and roused thousands to militant protests in the early years of the epidemic, has died at 84.īill Goldstein, a writer who was working on a biography of Kramer, confirmed the news to The Associated Press.

Eddie haskell syndrome