Alan Gross started out as an advertising copywriter before moving full time to writing plays, producing works that were staged in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles.
“He was always trying to write about people close to him, who were experiencing some trouble that they had to work out. He always stayed within his realm of what he knew,” said retired Indiana University theatre professor Dale McFadden, a longtime friend. “Staying local gave him a focus. Not all of his plays were set in Chicago, but most were, and those that were, were 200% autobiographical.”
Gross, 76, died of respiratory failure Aug. 25 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said his wife of 45 years, Norma. He had been an Old Town resident.
Born Alan Philip Gross in Chicago, he grew up in Skokie and graduated from Evanston Township High School and got a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. After college, Gross worked for Sears, Roebuck & Co.’s advertising department before joining the Leo Burnett advertising agency.
In the 1970s, while he was writing plays, Gross took an interest in improvisational acting. He studied with Del Close and Paul Sills at Second City, and with Byrne Piven at the Piven Theatre Workshop in Evanston.
“He was trying to use the things that he learned in improv and take them over to regular plays,” Gross’ wife said.
In 1977, Gross — then still working as an adman — caught a break, when his play “Lunching” was staged by the Body Politic Theater in Lincoln Park under the direction of Mike Nussbaum. Tribune columnist Aaron Gold in 1978 called “Lunching,” which covers the travails of two couples, “the funniest comedy to play in Chicago in the last year,” and noted that it had been the Body Politic’s biggest financial hit since 1972. Some critics likened Gross’ punch-line-a-minute technique to that of Neil Simon.
“‘Lunching’ is an attempt to take the exercises learned in improvisational theater and put them into an atmosphere where four characters can develop as human beings rather than just sketches,” Gross told the Tribune’s Clarence Page in 1978.
Another of Gross’ plays, “The Phone Room,” premiered in February 1978 in the Theater Building and was directed by Gary Houston. The comedy was about middle-aged telephone solicitors for an aluminum siding company. Gross soon decided to leave the ad business and focus full time on the theater.
“‘Lunching’ was a hit. ‘The Phone Room’ was not, but that did not lessen my admiration of it,” Houston said in an interview. “These premieres coincided with Alan’s departure — I think he’d say freedom — from the advertising world. He quit Burnett and was ecstatic about this new chapter in his life: Theatre.”
Gross’ plays over the next two decades include “The Man in 605,” which starred his friend Byrne Piven and also featured a then-unknown Aidan Quinn, “The Houseguest,” “La Brea Tarpits” and “Morning Call” “The Secret Life of American Poets.”
He also wrote feature articles for Chicago magazine, as well as one for the Chicago Tribune magazine. A Chicago magazine article in the February 1981 contained some biting recollections of his childhood in Skokie.
“Alan brought his numerous talents as a playwright to his magazine journalism,” said Bob Cooper, a former articles editor for Chicago magazine in the 1980s. “His writing was tremendously engaging, insightful and at all times, infused with his delicious sense of humor.”
“Lunching” underwent a revival in 1983 at the New Broadway Theatre in Lakeview, directed by longtime TV director Steven Robman.
In 1985, Gross took on a role as a director, helming a revival of Harold Pinter’s 1959 play “A Slight Ache” on a stage at the rear of a restaurant in Lincoln Park.
In 1987, Gross and his wife moved to Los Angeles, where he worked for the Foote, Cone & Belding ad agency, as well as for some smaller agencies. He continued writing plays in L.A., and he also tried to develop some of his projects for television.
“Many people think that Alan is the funniest person they’ve ever met, and I’m among them,” said Robman, who lives near Los Angeles. “We thought he would be able to harness that remarkable humor writing for sitcoms, and that never quite happened — I don’t know why. His talent was enormous. His humor was laced with a certain sweetness and a melancholy that made it much more texture and heart than just jokey-jokey.”
Some of Gross’ work was staged outside of Chicago, including “La Brea Tarpits,” which was produced in New York in 1984 and in Los Angeles in 1995.
Gross and his wife moved back to Chicago in 2000.
“Chicago was home,” Norma Gross said. “We always missed the seasons and missed Chicago.”
Gross in 2005 began work on the semiautobiographical play “High Holidays,” which ultimately was staged in 2009 at the Goodman Theatre and directed by Robman. The play was about growing up Jewish in a Chicago suburb in the early 1960s.
Tribune theater critic Chris Jones in 2010 called “High Holidays” a “caustic take on the first generation of Skokie settlers, condemning them for what Gross saw … as their self-serving resistance to the sexual and political revolutions of the late 1960s.”
Gross also enjoyed writing poetry, and attended several poetry writing workshops in Door County, Wisconsin, that were led by a friend, Albert DeGenova.
“His poetry was narrative poetry, where he would tell narrative stories from his life, often with humor,” DeGenova said. “His poetry was able to capture human experience and often the irony of life, especially aging. He was a highly dedicated writer.”
Former Tribune reporter William Currie, a longtime friend, said Gross “never gave up on the use of the English language.”
“He was always a wit and an entertaining conversationalist,” Currie said. “He was a master of dialogue and the bon mot. In his early days of playwriting, his work clearly rivaled that of David Mamet, as young Chicago contemporaries.”
Gross was awarded the Robert Frost Festival Poetry Award in 2008.
Gross also enjoyed singing jazz numbers and playing the trombone.
A first marriage to Kathy Kaplan ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, Gross is survived by a brother, Gary.
No services are planned.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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