Larry L. King, a writer and playwright whose magazine article about a campaign to close down a popular bordello became a hit Tony Award-nominated musical "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" and a movie starring Burt Reynolds, dies at 83.
His wife, Barbara Blaine, said King died after battling emphysema at Chevy Chase House, a retirement home in Washington where he had been living the past six months. "One of the things that I will always remember about Larry is that he remained funny all the way through this illness," she said.
He wrote in a good ol' boy vernacular style similar to other Southern authors such as Roy Blount and Charles Portis. King wrote two musicals, five plays, 14 books, a few screenplays and hundreds of magazine articles, for which he won an O. Henry Award in 2001.
