Tom Cole, writer captured character and dialogue
As if he had lived lives other than his own, Tom Cole wrote dialogue that captured humanity in all its brittle complexities. Conjuring scenes for stage and screen, he could craft delicate counterpoints of innocence and sin in scripts that let actors shine and left audiences stunned.
Yet in those moments of collaboration that are a part of plays and films, he generously shared the creative process with those who spoke the words he wrote.
"There is no one more delicious to work with than Tom, because he's just thrilled by where an actor might take a certain line or improvise," said Laura Dern, whose breakthrough as an actress came in the 1985 movie "Smooth Talk," which Mr. Cole wrote.
"There's no ego in anything," she continued. "He's not there to battle because he thought of it. He's there to make sure it lifts off the page and really tells the story the best way possible. His work continues beyond the written word."
In movies, plays, short stories, and a novella, he brought a diverse community of characters to life, giving voice to everyone from a rebellious teenage girl to a guilt-ridden black veteran of the Vietnam War. Mr. Cole, who formerly taught at MIT and began his career as a playwright in Boston, died Feb. 23 in his house in Roxbury, Conn. He was 75 and had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma seven years ago.
"Tom had glorious gifts and an ear for natural dialogue," said David Wheeler, associate artist at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge and the first director of Mr. Cole's 1975 play, "Medal of Honor Rag," about a black Vietnam veteran who committed suicide after being awarded the Medal of Honor. "He was also extraordinary in that he was wonderfully charming and open. People compared him to Gregory Peck in his mannerisms."
Beginning with fiction, Mr. Cole won the first of three O. Henry Awards for a short story he published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1962, eight years out of Harvard. He went on to publish translations of Russian and Italian writers, along with the 1965 novella, "An End to Chivalry."
Time magazine said in 1965 that Mr. Cole "has wit, charm, timing, a flair with atmosphere, a felicity of verbal gesture, a feeling for character so insidious it persuades the reader that every person of the drama is really just an unlived aspect of his own self."
"Medal of Honor Rag," written while Mr. Cole was teaching English and Russian literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was often anthologized, including in "Voices of Color: 50 Scenes and Monologues by African American Playwrights." Mr. Cole liked to point out that he shared, with William Shakespeare, the distinction of being a white playwright in that collection.
"Smooth Talk," Mr. Cole's most honored work, was awarded the Grand Jury Prize in 1986 at the Sundance Film Festival. He collaborated on the project with his wife, Joyce Chopra, who directed the film.
"Though feature-length, it has an unconventional, short-story shape," Vincent Canby wrote, praising the movie in a New York Times review. "Everything that happens in the first part of the film is a set-up for the astonishing penultimate sequence that, as written, directed and acted, takes the breath away."
Dern, a teenager while filming "Smooth Talk," said that Mr. Cole, through his script and on-set encouragement, helped her capture the voice and presence of an adolescent trapped by a young man who grows more unsavory and dangerous as the film progresses.
"It was so haunting and Tom was completely unafraid of exposing the unknown possibilities of humanity," she said. "He made a commitment to reveal what it was to be an angst-ridden teenager in a very different and palpable way."
Born in Paterson, N.J., Charles Thomas Cole was the youngest of three children. His father was a powerful mediation lawyer, but Mr. Cole set a different course.
"It was clear that he had to get his soul out on paper from a very young age," said his brother, Morrill of Grandview, N.Y. "It was not just an emotional outpouring, he was able to filter it intellectually. It was a great gift."
Mr. Cole graduated from Eastside High School and went to Harvard College. After graduating in 1954, he served in the Army and studied Russian, setting the stage for future work as a literary translator.
Then he returned to Harvard for a master's in Russian and began teaching at MIT. Mr. Cole's first marriage, to Ellen Cole of Brookline, ended in divorce, and he left Cambridge in 1979.
With Chopra, whom he married 39 years ago, Mr. Cole collaborated on documentaries as well as on "Smooth Talk."
"Our best times were when we worked together, curiously," Chopra said. "It was when our minds were most working together that I would fall in love with him all over again."
With family members and others, "he had an incredible gift for friendship," said his daughter, Sarah of Cambridge.
"Our conversations were always intense and personal, so you really felt very special that he cared about what you thought and you certainly cared about what he thought," said Rose Styron, a neighbor of Mr. Cole's and the widow of writer William Styron. "Tom was such a compassionate man and he was wonderful to my husband when he was ill. Everyone I've ever met who knows Tom, loves him, and it's hard to say 'loved him,' because that kind of love goes on."
Said Mr. Cole's brother: "Each of us thought that we were one of the most important people in his life - and we were."
Given two years to live when he was diagnosed seven years ago, Mr. Cole persevered and looked to literature as he battled the memory loss that was a side effect of his cancer treatment.
"He memorized Shakespeare's sonnets over the years since he got sick, and he recited them to his friends and family," his daughter said. "He used to wake up in the morning and make sure to recite in his own mind a sonnet. So many of them are about death and acceptance and what lives on after death. He used to talk about that with me, what he was learning from Shakespeare."
A competent flutist in earlier years, Mr. Cole found as much joy in music, particularly Bach, as he did in literature and friendship.
"Every day was filled with such glee," Dern said. "He loved living and he appreciated all that everyone had offered, and everyone I have spoken with has talked about his kindness and his integrity. He was just an incredibly beautiful man and treated us all as if we were his own."
In addition to his wife, daughter, brother, and former wife, Mr. Cole leaves a sister, Elizabeth, of New York City.
A service will be announced. 