Hustler on the Streets, Missing Both a Limb and a Capacity to Feel
Ben BrantleyJune 10, 2011: Two decades before Joe Buck peddled his flesh in Times Square — as the dim, hunky hero of the 1965 James Leo Herlihy novel (and 1969 movie) “Midnight Cowboy” — Ollie Olsen was feeling the pangs of alienation that come from being a male hustler of great beauty and small intellect. Conceived by Tennessee Williams, who specialized in angels in exile, Ollie first appeared in a 1944 short story. But he is only now making his New York debut, on the stage of the Acorn Theater on West 42nd Street.
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