Harold was a sheet metal worker, a trade the younger Gelber would briefly adopt to finance his education at the University of Illinois.
Several theatre critics, particularly those writing for the daily newspapers, objected to the play's graphic depiction of heroin addiction and its performance style.
The play also attracted prominent supporters, such as the drama critics Kenneth Tynan and Henry Hewes, the poet Allen Ginsberg, the writer Norman Mailer, director Harold Clurman, and Jerry Tallmer, who lauded what they perceived as its innovative style, authentic language, and realism.
It won the Obie Awards of the Village Voice for Best New Play, Best Production, and Best Actor (Warren Finnerty in the role of Leach) of the 1959–1960 season.
In 1961 the Living Theatre took its production to Europe, where it earned the Grand Prix at the Théâtre des Nations Festival in Paris.
Gelber never achieved the same success with his later plays, but he enjoyed a long and active career writing, directing, and teaching drama.
Produced at Henry Miller's Theatre, the play was controversial for what some believed was a favorable portrayal of the communist leader Fidel Castro, when the Cold War was going strong.
This interpretation sparked large and sometimes violent protests by Cuban exiles and others against the production, and the play ended its run after only one night.
[2] In 1972 the Rockefeller Foundation awarded Gelber a fellowship for a residency at the American Place Theatre, where his next play, Sleep, was performed.
He received the Obie Award for Distinguished Direction in 1973 when he oversaw the American Place Theatre's production of The Kid by Robert Coover.
His next production, entitled Farmyard and staged by the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1975, was an adaptation of Franz Xaver Kroetz' 1971 play Stallerhof.