Leo Lerman

Leo Lerman (May 23, 1914 – August 22, 1994) was an American writer, editor, and Broadway performer born in New York City. The son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Ida (née Goldwasser) and Samuel Lerman, he grew up in East Harlem and Queens. As a child, he accompanied his grandfather and father, both house painters, on jobs in upper-class homes.

Lerman built a career spanning more than five decades at Condé Nast Publications. He also contributed writing to the New York Herald Tribune, Harper's Bazaar, Dance Magazine, and Vogue, and served as editor of Playbill for many years. In 1964, he appeared in the film The Troublemaker, credited as Dirty Old Man.

On Broadway, Lerman appeared in 1972 in A Celebration of Richard Rodgers. His journals, covering his social and professional interactions with figures across the New York arts scene from the 1940s through the 1990s, were originally intended as source material for a novel he never completed. Approximately ten percent of those writings were published posthumously in 2007 under the title The Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman, edited by Stephen Pascal and published by Knopf.

Lerman was openly gay. His longtime partner was Gray Foy (1922–2012), an artist known for his drawings, whose career as a visual artist was largely overshadowed by the social life he shared with Lerman. Foy's work "Dimensions" was donated to the Museum of Modern Art in New York by actor Steve Martin, a friend of Foy's. Lerman died in New York City on August 22, 1994, at the age of 80.