John Lahr
Encyclopedia
John Lahr is an American theater critic, and the son of actor Bert Lahr
. Since 1992, he has been the senior drama critic at The New Yorker
magazine.
, Lahr holds a B.A. from Yale University
and a Master's degree from Worcester College, Oxford. He has written many books, including the novels "The Autograph Hound", and "Hot to Trot", as well as three biographies
of important theatrical figures: one of his father called Notes on a Cowardly Lion; one of the British
playwright Joe Orton
called Prick Up Your Ears; and one of the Australian comedian Barry Humphries
called Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilization: Backstage with Barry Humphries. In 1987 he co-produced a film version
of "Prick Up Your Ears" directed by Stephen Frears
and written by Alan Bennett
in which Lahr appeared as a character played by Wallace Shawn
. Lahr also wrote the foreword to Love All the People: Letters, Lyrics, Routines
: a 1994 collection of Bill Hicks
' work.
In 2002, Lahr became the first drama critic ever to win a Tony Award
for his part in writing actress Elaine Stritch
’s one–woman show, "Elaine Stritch at Liberty", for which he and Stritch also won the Drama Desk Award for the Best Book to a Musical. Among his many awards, Lahr has twice won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism.
In 1994, Lahr published a profile in The New Yorker detailing the vagaries of Lady Maria St. Just, an executor of playwright Tennessee Williams
's estate. The profile helped liberate Lyle Leverich's biography of Williams, Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams, from a four-year legal stranglehold. While working on a planned second volume in 2000, Leverich died and named Lahr as his favored successor. Lahr agreed to complete the second volume, which will follow Williams from 1945 to his death in 1983. In October 2007, Lahr said that he was taking a half-year sabbatical from writing New Yorker profiles to work on the biography, and stated, "I'll probably finish it when I'm in my seventies."
Lahr was married for many years to the late Anthea Mander, daughter of the Liberal politician, art patron and industrialist Sir Geoffrey Mander
, of the prominent Midlands family
. In 1988, Lahr began a relationship with former actress Connie Booth
; they married in 2000 and live together in London
, England
. His sister is the editor and writer Jane Lahr
.
Lahr contributed to John Kerry
and Democratic organizations.
Bert Lahr
Bert Lahr was an American actor and comedian. Lahr is remembered today for his roles as the Cowardly Lion and Kansas farmworker Zeke in The Wizard of Oz, but was also well-known for work in burlesque, vaudeville, and on Broadway.-Early life:Lahr was born in New York City, of German-Jewish heritage...
. Since 1992, he has been the senior drama critic at The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
magazine.
Biography
Born in Los Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, Lahr holds a B.A. from Yale University
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...
and a Master's degree from Worcester College, Oxford. He has written many books, including the novels "The Autograph Hound", and "Hot to Trot", as well as three biographies
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
of important theatrical figures: one of his father called Notes on a Cowardly Lion; one of the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
playwright Joe Orton
Joe Orton
John Kingsley Orton was an English playwright.In a short but prolific career lasting from 1964 until his death, he shocked, outraged and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies...
called Prick Up Your Ears; and one of the Australian comedian Barry Humphries
Barry Humphries
John Barry Humphries, AO, CBE is an Australian comedian, satirist, dadaist, artist, author and character actor, best known for his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage, a Melbourne housewife and "gigastar", and Sir Les Patterson, Australia's foul-mouthed cultural attaché to the...
called Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilization: Backstage with Barry Humphries. In 1987 he co-produced a film version
Prick Up Your Ears
Prick Up Your Ears is a 1987 film, directed by Stephen Frears, about the playwright Joe Orton and his lover Kenneth Halliwell. The screenplay was written by Alan Bennett, based on the book by John Lahr...
of "Prick Up Your Ears" directed by Stephen Frears
Stephen Frears
Stephen Arthur Frears is an English film director.-Early life:Frears was born in Leicester, England to Ruth M., a social worker, and Dr Russell E. Frears, a general practitioner and accountant. He did not find out that his mother was Jewish until he was in his late 20s...
and written by Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. Born in Leeds, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research mediaeval history at the university for several years...
in which Lahr appeared as a character played by Wallace Shawn
Wallace Shawn
Wallace Michael Shawn , sometimes credited as Wally Shawn, is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, author, voice artist, and intellectual. His best-known film roles include Wally Shawn in My Dinner with Andre , Vizzini in The Princess Bride , and debate teacher Mr...
. Lahr also wrote the foreword to Love All the People: Letters, Lyrics, Routines
Love All The People: Letters, Lyrics, Routines
Love All The People: Letters, Lyrics, Routines was a posthumously released collection of routines, letters and lyrics by American comedian Bill Hicks. It was published in February 2004 in the UK , and November 2004 in the US . In May 2005 a second expanded edition was published...
: a 1994 collection of Bill Hicks
Bill Hicks
William Melvin "Bill" Hicks was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, and musician. His material largely consisted of general discussions about society, religion, politics, philosophy, and personal issues. Hicks' material was often controversial and steeped in dark comedy...
' work.
In 2002, Lahr became the first drama critic ever to win a Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
for his part in writing actress Elaine Stritch
Elaine Stritch
Elaine Stritch is an American actress and vocalist. She has appeared in numerous stage plays and musicals, feature films, and many television programs...
’s one–woman show, "Elaine Stritch at Liberty", for which he and Stritch also won the Drama Desk Award for the Best Book to a Musical. Among his many awards, Lahr has twice won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism.
In 1994, Lahr published a profile in The New Yorker detailing the vagaries of Lady Maria St. Just, an executor of playwright Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
's estate. The profile helped liberate Lyle Leverich's biography of Williams, Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams, from a four-year legal stranglehold. While working on a planned second volume in 2000, Leverich died and named Lahr as his favored successor. Lahr agreed to complete the second volume, which will follow Williams from 1945 to his death in 1983. In October 2007, Lahr said that he was taking a half-year sabbatical from writing New Yorker profiles to work on the biography, and stated, "I'll probably finish it when I'm in my seventies."
Lahr was married for many years to the late Anthea Mander, daughter of the Liberal politician, art patron and industrialist Sir Geoffrey Mander
Geoffrey Mander
Sir Geoffrey Le Mesurier Mander KB , was a Midland industrialist and chairman of Mander Brothers Ltd., paint and varnish manufacturers in Wolverhampton, England, an art collector and radical parliamentarian....
, of the prominent Midlands family
Mander family
The Mander family has held for over 200 years a prominent position in the Midland counties of England, both in the family business and public life....
. In 1988, Lahr began a relationship with former actress Connie Booth
Connie Booth
Constance "Connie" Booth is an American-born writer and actress, known for appearances on British television and particularly for her portrayal of Polly Sherman in the popular 1970s television show Fawlty Towers, which she co-wrote with her then-husband John Cleese.-Biography:Booth's father was a...
; they married in 2000 and live together in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. His sister is the editor and writer Jane Lahr
Jane Lahr
Jane Lahr is an American author.Lahr is the daughter of actor Bert Lahr, and sister of the New Yorker drama critic John Lahr.Lahr's career began at Harry N. Abrams, Inc., where she pioneered the area of Special Sales and became Director of Advertising Publicity and Promotion...
.
Lahr contributed to John Kerry
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...
and Democratic organizations.
Biographies and profiles
- Notes on a Cowardly Lion-The Biography of Bert Lahr (1969)
- Prick Up Your Ears (1978)
- CowardNoël CowardSir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
the Playwright (1983) - Dame Edna EverageDame Edna EverageDame Edna is a character created and played by Australian dadaist performer and comedian, Barry Humphries, famous for her lilac-coloured or "wisteria hue" hair and cat eye glasses or "face furniture," her favorite flower, the gladiola and her boisterous greeting: "Hello Possums!" As Dame Edna,...
and the Rise of Western Civilization: Backstage with Barry HumphriesBarry HumphriesJohn Barry Humphries, AO, CBE is an Australian comedian, satirist, dadaist, artist, author and character actor, best known for his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage, a Melbourne housewife and "gigastar", and Sir Les Patterson, Australia's foul-mouthed cultural attaché to the...
(1991) - SinatraFrank SinatraFrancis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
: The Artist and the Man (1997) - Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles (2000)
- Honky Tonk Parade: New Yorker Profiles of Show People (2005)
- Tennessee WilliamsTennessee WilliamsThomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
biography (forthcoming)
Criticism
- Up Against the Fourth Wall (1970)
- Acting Out America (1972)
- Astonish Me: Adventures in Contemporary Theater (1973)
- Life Show (1973, with Jonathan PriceJonathan PriceJonathan Price is an American composer who is best known for his musical Lao Jiu and for the film scores to Cyber Wars and Rustin.- Musicals :*Escape From Eldorado , Bar Harbor, The Unusual Cabaret...
) - Automatic Vaudeville (1984)
- Light Fantastic: Adventures in Theatre (1996)
Co-edited essay collections
- A Casebook on Harold Pinter's The Homecoming (1971) (With Anthea Lahr)
Plays
- Diary of a Somebody (1989) (adapted from Joe OrtonJoe OrtonJohn Kingsley Orton was an English playwright.In a short but prolific career lasting from 1964 until his death, he shocked, outraged and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies...
's diaries) - The Manchurian Candidate (1993) (adapted from Richard CondonRichard CondonRichard Thomas Condon was a prolific and popular American political novelist whose satiric works were generally presented in the form of thrillers or semi-thrillers...
's 1959 novel of the same nameThe Manchurian CandidateThe Manchurian Candidate , by Richard Condon, is a political thriller novel about the son of a prominent US political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for the Communist Party....
)
External links
- "The Man in the Middle" (2006 interview with The New York Review of Magazines)