This article is about the American writer. For the UK typographer and writer (1910-2008), see Robert Harling (typographer). For the 15th-century knight, see Robert Harling.
Robert M. Harling III (born November 12, 1951) is an American writer, producer and film director.
Biography
Early life
He was born in 1951 in Dothan, Alabama, one of three children of Robert M. Harling Jr (1923-2019) and Margaret Jones Harling (1923-2013).[1][2][3][4] He graduated from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana and obtained a Juris Doctor from Tulane University Law School in New Orleans.[3][4][5] While in law school, he sang in a band which performed in New Orleans on weekends.[4]
Career
However, Harling never used his legal education: skipping the bar exam, he instead moved to New York City to become an actor, auditioning for bit parts in plays and television commercials as well as working as a ticket seller for Broadway shows.[3][4]
After the death of his younger sister, Susan, in 1985 due to diabetes, Harling wrote a short story and adapted it into the play Steel Magnolias,[3][4][5][6][7] which was produced off-Broadway in 1987 to great acclaim and was translated into 17 languages.[4]
In the spring of 2012, he served as writer and producer of the TV show GCB.[5][8][11] In the same year, it was reported that Harling was adapting Soapdish into a musical.[5][13]
^Karen Hollinger, In the company of women: contemporary female friendship films, Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1998, p. 75 [2]
^Tara McPherson, Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender, and Nostalgia in the Imagined South, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2003, p. 159 [3]