The Broadway community mourns the loss of Harold Pinter -- dramatist, actor, essayist, novelist, screenwriter, poet and director -- who passed away on December 24th at age 78.

The marquees of Broadway theatres in New York will be dimmed in his memory on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 at exactly 7:00pm for one minute.

After writing nearly 30 plays that made him one of the most significant and influential figures in contemporary drama, Mr. Pinter won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005.

Mr. Pinter’s The Homecoming won the Tony Award® for Best Play in 1967. The Caretaker was nominated for Best Play in 1962; Old Times was nominated for Best Play in 1972; and in 1969 he received a nomination for Best Direction of a Play for staging Robert Shaw’s The Man in the Glass Booth.

The British writer also earned two Oscar nominations in a career that included more than 20 screenplays, poetry and one novel.

Among his masterpieces including The Birthday Party and Betrayal, his work mixed humor, loneliness and pregnant pauses with such impact that he inspired the phrase “Pinteresque dialogue.”

Charlotte St. Martin, Executive Director of The Broadway League, said, “Harold Pinter has been called one of the most influential and imitated playwrights of his generation. He repeated on several occasions that he had ‘written 29 damn plays, isn’t that enough?’ We are so grateful for his genius and distinct contributions to modern theatre.”

Mr. Pinter, who lived in London, had cancer of the esophagus. He is survived by his second wife, Lady Antonia Fraser.