James Leo Herlihy (27 February 1927 — 21 October 1993) was an American novelist, playwright and actor.
Born into a working class family in Detroit, Michigan, Herlihy is known for his novels Midnight Cowboy and All Fall Down and his play Blue Denim, all of which were adapted for the screen. Other works include The Season of the Witch and a number of short stories.
Herlihy joined the Navy in 1944. He attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina for two years, where he studied sculpture. He then moved to California and attended the Pasadena Playhouse College of the Theater.
Plays which he wrote include Streetlight Sonata (1950), Moon in Capricorn (1953), and Blue Denim (produced on Broadway in 1958).He directed Tallulah Bankhead in a touring production of his play Crazy October in 1959.Three of his one-act plays, collectively titled Stop You're Killing Me were presented by the Theater Company of Boston in 1969.
He wrote three novels: All Fall Down (1960), Midnight Cowboy (1960), and Season of the Witch (1971).His short stories were collected in The Sleep of Baby Filbertson and Other Stories (1959) and A Story That Ends in a Scream and Eight Others (1967), a collection which also included plays.
He acted in Edward Albee's play Zoo Story in 1963 in Boston and Paris.
He acted in the 1981 film Four Friends directed by Arthur Penn.
Herlihy committed suicide, aged 66, by taking an overdose of sleeping pills in Los Angeles.