Joseph Hardy, Tony Winner and Original Director of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Dies at 95

Joseph Hardy, prolific theatermaker and director of the original off-Broadway, Broadway and West End productions of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, died on June 6. His death, initially not widely reported, was confirmed by the off-Broadway theater company Primary Stages. Hardy was 95.

Hardy was born March 8, 1929 in Carlsbad, New Mexico. He earned an MFA from the Yale School of Drama where he won a Fulbright scholarship to study in Paris. He made his off-Broadway directorial debut in 1963 with Dion Boucicault's The Streets of New York, which ran for 318 performances at the Maidman Playhouse. In 1967, he debuted You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown off-Broadway at Theater 80 St. Marks in the East Village. The musical, based on the characters created by Charles M. Schulz, featured music and lyrics by Clark Gesner (later revised by Andrew Lippa for the 1999 Broadway revival). The production ran for nearly 1,600 performances, earning Hardy a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director. The production transferred to Broadway's John Golden Theatre in 1971 for a short-lived run of just over a month.

Prior to the musical's transfer, Hardy had been building his Broadway resume with productions of Johnny No-Trump (which ran for only one post-opening performance and featured an early-career Bernadette Peters in a minor role), followed by Woody Allen's Play It Again, Sam, which earned Hardy a 1969 Tony nomination, and Robert Marasco's Child's Play, which won him the award in 1970. His Broadway resume also includes a 1976 revival of Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana, starring Richard Chamberlain and Dorothy McGuire, and the Broadway premiere of Lerner and Loewe’s Gigi.

Hardy directed his last Broadway production in 1979—Bernard Slade's Romantic Comedy, starring Mia Farrow and Anthony Perkins. He continued working off-Broadway until 2013 with a Red Bull Theater production of August Strindberg's Dance of Death at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. Throughout his career, he also served as executive producer of several daytime soap operas including General Hospital, Ryan’s Hope and Love Is a Many Splendored Thing. 

Hardy had been a resident at the Actors Fund home in Englewood, New Jersey since 2020. He is survived by his sister, Caroline Rackley.