Robert Harling (b. 1951)

The playwright, who was born and raised in Louisiana, was graduated from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, LA, and obtained a J.D. degree from Tulane University Law School in New Orleans.

However, Harling never used his legal education: skipping the bar exam, he moved to New York City to become an actor, auditioning for bit parts in plays and television commercials, and working as a ticket seller for Broadway shows.

After the death of his younger sister, Susan, in 1985 due to diabetes, Harling wrote a short story and adapted it into Steel Magnolias, which was produced off-Broadway in 1987.

Harling also wrote the screenplay for the film version produced in 1989, with an all-star cast. He played a small role in the film as a minister. Harling later wrote and directed the sequel to Terms of Endearment titled The Evening Star (1996).

“In Memory of Susan Harling Robinson. Dedicated to her son, Robert.”

The action of Steel Magnolias, placed in a fictitious Southern town of Chinquapin, passes entirely in a beauty salon. And no wonder, since, as they say, there is no salon like a beauty salon (especially a small-town beauty salon) to engage in one of the most enjoyable activities that humans have ever invented: giving freely of unsolicited advice to your fellow beauty-salon clients and stylists while also freely talking about yourself and/or about everyone you know or have heard of.

In Harling’s play it is a generous-natured Truvy Jones, the owner of the salon, who happily dispenses advice to her female clientele and who presides over the non-stop discourse on a multitude of themes and attitudes; complaining about a dog who is a general nuisance, lamenting over someone’s physical problems, discussing the details of the wedding ensemble of the daughter of one of their best friends… The conversations and commentaries we hear are witty, often plainly hilarious; and yet, what the author ultimately gives us is neither a spoof nor a satire, nor even a plain comedy. The reason for it is simply this: all the women in the play come across as regular human beings. Harling’s women, all gathered in their favorite beauty parlor, are real and complex, who experience true joy as well as true heartbreak, their own and someone else’s, with humor and/or empathy. Moreover, they all seem to realize fully that the duality of life: happiness versus tragedy, is the expected way of the world; and they accept it.