Ruthless! Writer Joel Paley Dies at 69, Only Weeks After the Death of Husband Marvin Laird

Joel Paley, best known as the book writer, lyricist and director of the hit off-Broadway musical Ruthless!, died on January 11 in Milford, Connecticut. According to the New York Times, his sister Barbara Paley Cohen confirmed his death, but did not communicate a cause. He was 69.

Paley was born on October 6, 1955, in Philadelphia, and died only six weeks after his husband and collaborator Marvin Laird, who passed away on December 2 at the age of 85. Laird was a Broadway conductor and composed the music for Ruthless!, the famously campy musical about a little girl named Tina Denmark who commits murder to star in her school play (Laura Bell Bundy was the original star with Britney Spears and Natalie Portman understudying the role). The show won Paley a 1993 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics, also winning the 1993 Outer Critics Cirlce Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical. Ruthless! was revived in 2015 at Playhouse 46 at St. Luke's with Paley again directing. Paley proposed marriage to Laird during his speech at the opening-night party. They married on November 1, 2015.

The pair met in 1976 while rehearsing the Shirley MacLaine TV special Where Do We Go From Here?—Paley was dancing with the cross-dressing parody troupe Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo while Laird was the show's musical director. It was then that Paley showed Laird his script for Seedy, a musical adaptation of The Bad Seed. Laird agreed to write the music for what would become Ruthless! nearly 20 years later. "Ruthless! is a comedy," said Paley in a 2022 interview about the show. "That doesn’t make it any less important. After all, laughter truly is the best medicine."

Paley's TV credits include staging musical numbers for a 1978 episode of Maude and directing an episode of the sketch comedy show She TV in 1994. He and Laird also reprised their creative partnership for the musical revue The Yiddish Are Coming … The Yiddish Are Coming! The Chosen Musical, produced at the Denver Civic Center in 2006. 

In addition to Cohen, Paley is survived by another sister, Sheryl Beegal.