John Crosby (media critic)
Encyclopedia
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee is the largest city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, the 28th most populous city in the United States and 39th most populous region in the United States. It is the county seat of Milwaukee County and is located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. According to 2010 census data, the...
, Crosby was the son of Fred G. Crosby and the former Edna Campbell. His father was in the insurance business. After graduating from New Hampshire's Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy is a private secondary school located in Exeter, New Hampshire, in the United States.Exeter is noted for its application of Harkness education, a system based on a conference format of teacher and student interaction, similar to the Socratic method of learning through asking...
, Crosby attended Yale
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
but left minus a degree. In 1933, he was a reporter with The Milwaukee Sentinel, moving on to The New York Herald Tribune (1935–41).
Radio
During World War II, he spent five years with the Army News Service, rising to the rank of Captain. In the post-WWII years, he returned to the Herald Tribune and began writing about radio, widening his horizon to television in 1952. That same year, his book-length collection of columns, Out of the Blue, was published, prompting Lewis GannettLewis Gannett
Lewis Gannett is an American writer.Gannett is the author of the books The Living One, Magazine Beach, The Siege, as well as two Millennium novels: Gehenna and Force Majeure.-External links:*...
to comment: "Crosby is at his best when he engages in the art of amiable murder. He can, by his special personalized art of denunciation, make the most brainless radio program interesting, at least in its death pangs. He slays with zest."
Crosby once observed, "A radio critic is forced to be literate about the illiterate, witty about the witless and coherent about the incoherent." He aimed for a higher standard, as is evident when he wrote about Jean Shepherd
Jean Shepherd
Jean Parker Shepherd was an American raconteur, radio and TV personality, writer and actor who was often referred to by the nickname Shep....
for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
(August 8, 1956):
- It looks as if the day people have won again against the night people. Jean Shepherd, patron saint of the night people, who talks and only occasionally plays records over WOR, New York, from 1 to 5:30am. seven days a week, is going off the air August 13 because night people apparently don't buy things...
- Shepherd more or less invented the term night people and day people, and frequently on his four-and-a-half-hour nightly talkathon defines them. "There's a great body of people who flower at night, who feel night is their time. Night is the time people truly become individuals, because al the familiar things are dark and done, all the restrictions on freedom are removed. Many artists work at night—it is particularly conducive to creative work. Many of us attuned to night are not artists but are embattled against the official, organized, righteous day people who are completely bound by their switchboards and their red tape." Day people, he says, invented red tape because then they can blame not themselves but the system. "Night people like the quiet darkness; day people are terrified at suddenly becoming individuals, afraid to let the mind probe into unknown areas."
- If you listen to Shepherd any length of time, you will find the night people definitely feel persecuted by the day people and get their biggest thrill when, if only for a moment, they can win a victory over them. Shepherd may tell a story of his Army days when a recruit, bored by physical training exercises, just walked off into a swamp, followed shortly by 45 others, a revolt against authority deeply satisfying the night people.
Television
Crosby was known for his literate, caustic remarks about the television industry. One of his most notable quotes came upon the cancellation of Edward R. MurrowEdward R. Murrow
Edward Roscoe Murrow, KBE was an American broadcast journalist. He first came to prominence with a series of radio news broadcasts during World War II, which were followed by millions of listeners in the United States and Canada.Fellow journalists Eric Sevareid, Ed Bliss, and Alexander Kendrick...
's television series See It Now
See It Now
See It Now is an American newsmagazine and documentary series broadcast by CBS from 1951 to 1958. It was created by Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly, Murrow being the host of the show. From 1952 to 1957, See It Now won four Emmy Awards and was nominated three times...
: "See it Now... is by every criterion television's most brilliant, most decorated, most imaginative, most courageous and most important program. The fact that CBS cannot afford it but can afford Beat the Clock
Beat the Clock
Beat the Clock is a Goodson-Todman game show which has aired on American television in several versions since 1950.The original show, hosted by Bud Collyer, ran on CBS from 1950–1958 and ABC from 1958–1961. The show was revived in syndication as The New Beat the Clock from 1969–1974, with Jack Narz...
is shocking."
Crosby was so highly respected that he became one of the first media critics to host a television show: the Emmy-winning anthology series The Seven Lively Arts
Seven Lively Arts
The Seven Lively Arts was a short-lived Sunday afternoon hour-long television anthology series produced in 1957 by CBS television and executive producer John Houseman. It was hosted by New York Herald Tribune critic John Crosby...
, on CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
. Telecast on Sunday afternoons, it lasted a single season, from late 1957 to early 1958, with individual episodes on such subjects as jazz, ballet and films. The program was notable for showcasing the first (albeit heavily abridged) telecast of Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
's ballet The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker is a two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann's story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". It was given its première at the Mariinsky Theatre in St...
.
From 1965 to 1975 he was a columnist for the British weekly, The Observer. He married Mary B. Wolferth in 1946, and they divorced in 1959. His second wife, the former Katharine J. B. Wood, was a former fashion editor of Edinburgh's The Scotsman. In 1977, he moved to a farm outside Esmont, Virginia
Esmont, Virginia
Esmont is a census-designated place in Albemarle County, Virginia, United States. The population as of the 2010 Census was 528.-References:*...
, and turned to writing suspense novels, including Men in Arms (1983). He died of cancer in 1991 in Esmont.