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Born and raised in Chicago, Arch Brown attended Northwestern University where
he studied under the legendary Alvina Krause and was graduated with a B.S. in
Theatre and Television. Almost immediately after graduation, he was
invited to move to New York City to join the staff of The
Circle in the Square Theatre where he became the Design and Technical
Assistant on Children of Darkness, The Quare
Fellow and Our Town. During
his early years in New York he also designed several musical revues at The
Duplex, The Showplace and Upstairs at
the Downstairs. He
has also worked as a steel warehouse foreman, an insurance adjuster and a model.
In retailing he was a display director, a fashion coordinator and a merchandise
manager. He was the designer for the D’Arni-Gould Sportswear line.
With his life-partner, Bruce Allen Brown, he was a real estate investor in New
York City and owner/manager of Sea Park
St. Croix, a hotel in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Arch
Brown’s still photographs and collages have appeared in Mandate,
Honcho, The Village Voice, Michael’s Thing and
The Union Seminary Quarterly Review and at The
Underground Gallery. His
essays and reviews have appeared in The
Advocate, The Villager, Manhattan G.A.Z.E. and he had a regular column
on “Television and Society” in the
New York Native.
Brown first came to broad public attention through his
films. During gay liberation’s closet-busting first decade,
Brown’s homoerotic films (including
Four
Letters, Pier Groups, The Super, Trips, Harley’s Angels, Longjohns, The Tool
Man, After the Fall, The Leather Bond, Dynamite!, All Tied Up, Rough Idea, and
Woodshole)
achieved an international following and superb reviews. “Over
the years, a lesser man could have easily become a disillusioned hack; Arch
Brown became a master craftsman.” “Musclebound
is the most spirited, most perceptive, wisest, wittiest, funniest,
fastest and cockiest package of male erotica ever. The bath house episode
is a masterpiece in skillfully welding the lustful and the comic, building to a
climax worthy of the Marx Brothers.”
His
film The
Night Before
“A brilliant and intelligent, beautifully crafted Fellini-esque
tour de force” was on Variety’s 50 top-grossing films in the nation for 5
weeks. What A Time It Was “…is disarmingly simple and sometimes
inspired: The traditional institutions. like Hunter College and the
A&P, that keep appearing in the film may be viewed as a metaphor that sees
male sex as part of the traditions of American life. Subversion from within, one
might imagine.” Brown’s
film Tuesday
was the only gay film included by the First
New York Erotic Film Festival in it’s nation-wide release of winning
films. When the distributors were charged with ‘promoting obscenity’,
Norman Mailer said, “The film’s socially redeeming value is that it is
enchanting.” His film Sunday
won first prize in the Park Miller Eros Competition. Brown
also has directed several documentary films on art and culture including a
series on English
as a Second Language for New York University. In
1979, at the suggestion of a friend who recognized the wit in his films, Brown
turned to playwriting. His first play, News
Boy, was produced later that year by The GLINES, went on to a full
Off-Broadway mounting at the Player’s Theatre and had nine productions across
the country over the next 15 years.
Brown’s play, FREEZE! won the 1998
Eric Bentley Playwriting Prize and
has already had three full productions. Other published and/or produced
plays include; Two Married Men, Samson, Sex Symbols, Brut Farce, Seeing Red, Breakfast
with Ferkin and Frank, Doubletalk and Ships That Piss in the Night. Arch Brown is a voting member of The Dramatists Guild.
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He was the founder of G-MAN, The Gay
Men’s Arts Network and, in memory of Bruce Brown who died in 1993 of a
brain hemorrhage, he sponsors