Walter Kerr
Encyclopedia
For the RN admiral see Lord Walter Kerr
Walter Francis Kerr (July 8, 1913 – October 9, 1996) was an American writer and Broadway theater critic. He also was the writer, lyricist, and/or director of several Broadway plays and musicals.
and earned both a B.A. and M.A. from Northwestern University
. He taught speech and drama at The Catholic University of America
. After writing criticism for Commonweal
he became a theater critic for the New York Herald Tribune
in 1951. When that paper ended, he then began writing theater reviews for the New York Times in 1966, writing for the next seventeen years.
He married Jean Kerr
(née Collins) on August 9, 1943. She was also a writer. Together, they wrote the musical Goldilocks (1958), which won two Tony Award
s. They also collaborated on Touch and Go (1949) and King of Hearts (1954).
He was portrayed pseudonymously by David Niven
in the 1960 film Please Don't Eat the Daisies
, based on Jean Kerr's best-selling collection of humorous essays.
. Of Sondheim's Company
, Kerr wrote that the show was too cold, cynical and distant for his taste, though he "admitted to admiring large parts of the show."
In his review of Sondheim's Follies
, he wrote " 'Follies' " is intermissionless and exhausting, an extravaganza that becomes tedious for two simple reasons: Its extravagances have nothing to do with its pebble of a plot; and the plot, which could be wrapped up in approximately two songs, dawdles through 22 before it declares itself done...Mr. Sondheim may be too much a man of the seventies, too present-tense sophisticated...The effort to bind it up inhibits the crackling, open-ended, restlessly varied surges of sound he devised with such distinction for "Company'."
He praised A Little Night Music
, writing that "The score is a gift, the ladies are delightful, and producer Harold Prince has staged the moody meetings with easy skill."
He expressed mixed sentiments about Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
, praising the music but deeming it too lilting for the show's grisly subject, and finally writing, "What is this musical about?" As an afterthought, he wrote a follow-up article on his observation that the musical contained a plot from Molière
's The School for Wives
, posing the question who, of all of the authors who had revised the tale of Sweeney Todd
over the years, had put the plot into the story.
Nevertheless, in 1977, he wrote of Sondheim "I needn't tell you that Stephen Sondheim is, both musically and lyrically, the most sophisticated composer now working for the Broadway theater."
In his review of the original 1956 Broadway production of Candide
, he wrote that it was a "really spectacular disaster". However, in reviewing the 1973 revival of Candide he wrote that it was a "most satisfying resurrection. [...] 'Candide' may at last have stumbled into the best of all possible productions...The show is now a carousel and we are on it quite safely...The design of the unending chase is so firm, the performers are so secure in their climbing and tumbling...that we are able to join the journey and still see it with the detachment that Voltaire prescribes."
's "musical with a lot of music" [sic. opera], The Most Happy Fella
he wrote: "the evening at the Imperial is finally heavy with its own inventiveness, weighted down with the variety and fulsomeness of a genuinely creative appetite. It's as though Mr. Loesser had written two complete musicals — the operetta and the haymaker — on the same simple play and then crammed them both into a single structure."
: "a bright, brassy, and jubilantly sassy show [that] takes a whole barrelful of bright new talents, and a handful of stimulating ideas as well, and sends them tumbling in happy profusion over the footlights."
Of Frank D. Gilroy
's famous play The Subject Was Roses
:"a family triangle in which a father loves a son and the mother loves that son and the son loves both mother and father and not one of them can make a move or utter a sound that does not instantly damage the other."
Notoriously he is credited with one of the world's shortest reviews, "Me no Leica" for John Van Druten's I Am a Camera
in the New York Herald Tribune
, December 31, 1951.
in 1978 for "articles on the theater".
In 1990, the former Ritz Theater on West 48th Street in the Theatre District, New York
was renamed the Walter Kerr Theatre
in his honor.
Lord Walter Kerr
Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Walter Talbot Kerr, GCB, PC was the British First Naval Lord from 1899 to 1904.-Early Life and Indian Mutiny:...
Walter Francis Kerr (July 8, 1913 – October 9, 1996) was an American writer and Broadway theater critic. He also was the writer, lyricist, and/or director of several Broadway plays and musicals.
Biography
Kerr was born in Evanston, IllinoisEvanston, Illinois
Evanston is a suburban municipality in Cook County, Illinois 12 miles north of downtown Chicago, bordering Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, and Wilmette to the north, with an estimated population of 74,360 as of 2003. It is one of the North Shore communities that adjoin Lake Michigan...
and earned both a B.A. and M.A. from Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
. He taught speech and drama at The Catholic University of America
The Catholic University of America
The Catholic University of America is a private university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States. It is a pontifical university of the Catholic Church in the United States and the only institution of higher education founded by the U.S. Catholic bishops...
. After writing criticism for Commonweal
Commonweal
Commonweal is a American journal of opinion edited and managed by lay Catholics. It is headquartered in The Interchurch Center in New York City.-History:...
he became a theater critic for the New York Herald Tribune
New York Herald Tribune
The New York Herald Tribune was a daily newspaper created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald.Other predecessors, which had earlier merged into the New York Tribune, included the original The New Yorker newsweekly , and the Whig Party's Log Cabin.The paper was home to...
in 1951. When that paper ended, he then began writing theater reviews for the New York Times in 1966, writing for the next seventeen years.
He married Jean Kerr
Jean Kerr
Jean Kerr was an American author and playwright born in Scranton, Pennsylvania and best known for her humorous bestseller, Please Don't Eat the Daisies, and the plays King of Hearts and Mary, Mary...
(née Collins) on August 9, 1943. She was also a writer. Together, they wrote the musical Goldilocks (1958), which won two 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...
s. They also collaborated on Touch and Go (1949) and King of Hearts (1954).
He was portrayed pseudonymously by David Niven
David Niven
James David Graham Niven , known as David Niven, was a British actor and novelist, best known for his roles as Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days and Sir Charles Lytton, a.k.a. "the Phantom", in The Pink Panther...
in the 1960 film Please Don't Eat the Daisies
Please Don't Eat the Daisies (film)
Please Don't Eat the Daisies is a comedy film starring Doris Day and David Niven, made by Euterpe Inc., and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer...
, based on Jean Kerr's best-selling collection of humorous essays.
Stephen Sondheim
Some of the shows he panned over his long career included the musically ambitious shows of Stephen SondheimStephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
. Of Sondheim's Company
Company (musical)
Company is a musical with a book by George Furth and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The original production was nominated for a record-setting fourteen Tony Awards and won six....
, Kerr wrote that the show was too cold, cynical and distant for his taste, though he "admitted to admiring large parts of the show."
In his review of Sondheim's Follies
Follies
Follies is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman. The story concerns a reunion in a crumbling Broadway theatre, scheduled for demolition, of the past performers of the "Weismann's Follies," a musical revue , that played in that theatre between the World Wars...
, he wrote " 'Follies' " is intermissionless and exhausting, an extravaganza that becomes tedious for two simple reasons: Its extravagances have nothing to do with its pebble of a plot; and the plot, which could be wrapped up in approximately two songs, dawdles through 22 before it declares itself done...Mr. Sondheim may be too much a man of the seventies, too present-tense sophisticated...The effort to bind it up inhibits the crackling, open-ended, restlessly varied surges of sound he devised with such distinction for "Company'."
He praised A Little Night Music
A Little Night Music
A Little Night Music is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. Inspired by the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, it involves the romantic lives of several couples. Its title is a literal English translation of the German name for Mozart's Serenade...
, writing that "The score is a gift, the ladies are delightful, and producer Harold Prince has staged the moody meetings with easy skill."
He expressed mixed sentiments about Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 1936 British film produced and directed by George King.-Plot:The film features Tod Slaughter in one of his most famous roles as barber Sweeney Todd. Sweeney Todd was wrongly sentenced to life in prison. After his release 15 years later, he begins...
, praising the music but deeming it too lilting for the show's grisly subject, and finally writing, "What is this musical about?" As an afterthought, he wrote a follow-up article on his observation that the musical contained a plot from Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
's The School for Wives
The School for Wives
The School for Wives is a theatrical comedy written by the seventeenth century French playwright Molière and considered by some critics to be one of his finest achievements. It was first staged at the Palais Royal theatre on 26 December 1662 for the brother of the King...
, posing the question who, of all of the authors who had revised the tale of Sweeney Todd
Sweeney Todd
Sweeney Todd is a fictional character who first appeared as then antagonist of the Victorian penny dreadful The String of Pearls and he was later introduced as an antihero in the broadway musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and its film adaptation...
over the years, had put the plot into the story.
Nevertheless, in 1977, he wrote of Sondheim "I needn't tell you that Stephen Sondheim is, both musically and lyrically, the most sophisticated composer now working for the Broadway theater."
Leonard Bernstein
In reviewing West Side Story he focused on the dancing: "the most savage, restless, electrifying dance patterns we've been exposed to in a dozen seasons...The dancing is it. Don't look for laughter or – for that matter – tears."In his review of the original 1956 Broadway production of Candide
Candide (operetta)
Candide is an operetta with music composed by Leonard Bernstein, based on the novella of the same name by Voltaire. The operetta was first performed in 1956 with a libretto by Lillian Hellman; but since 1974 it has been generally performed with a book by Hugh Wheeler which is more faithful to...
, he wrote that it was a "really spectacular disaster". However, in reviewing the 1973 revival of Candide he wrote that it was a "most satisfying resurrection. [...] 'Candide' may at last have stumbled into the best of all possible productions...The show is now a carousel and we are on it quite safely...The design of the unending chase is so firm, the performers are so secure in their climbing and tumbling...that we are able to join the journey and still see it with the detachment that Voltaire prescribes."
Frank Loesser
Of Frank LoesserFrank Loesser
Frank Henry Loesser was an American songwriter who wrote the lyrics and scores to the Broadway hits Guys and Dolls and How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, among others. He won separate Tony Awards for the music and lyrics in both shows, as well as sharing the Pulitzer Prize for...
's "musical with a lot of music" [sic. opera], The Most Happy Fella
The Most Happy Fella
The Most Happy Fella is a 1956 musical with a book, music, and lyrics by Frank Loesser. The story, about a romance between an older man and younger woman, is based on the play They Knew What They Wanted by Sidney Howard...
he wrote: "the evening at the Imperial is finally heavy with its own inventiveness, weighted down with the variety and fulsomeness of a genuinely creative appetite. It's as though Mr. Loesser had written two complete musicals — the operetta and the haymaker — on the same simple play and then crammed them both into a single structure."
Other criticism
Kerr wrote a favorable review of The Pajama GameThe Pajama Game
The Pajama Game is a musical based on the novel 7½ Cents by Richard Bissell. It features a score by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. The story deals with labor troubles in a pajama factory, where worker demands for a seven-and-a-half cents raise are going unheeded...
: "a bright, brassy, and jubilantly sassy show [that] takes a whole barrelful of bright new talents, and a handful of stimulating ideas as well, and sends them tumbling in happy profusion over the footlights."
Of Frank D. Gilroy
Frank D. Gilroy
Frank Daniel Gilroy is an American playwright, screenwriter, and film producer and director. He received the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play The Subject Was Roses in 1965.-Early life:...
's famous play The Subject Was Roses
The Subject Was Roses
The Subject Was Roses is a Pulitzer Prize-winning 1964 play written by Frank D. Gilroy, who also adapted the work in 1968 for film with the same title.- Background :...
:"a family triangle in which a father loves a son and the mother loves that son and the son loves both mother and father and not one of them can make a move or utter a sound that does not instantly damage the other."
Notoriously he is credited with one of the world's shortest reviews, "Me no Leica" for John Van Druten's I Am a Camera
I Am a Camera
I Am a Camera is a 1951 Broadway play inspired by Christopher Isherwood's novel Goodbye to Berlin which is part of The Berlin Stories...
in the New York Herald Tribune
New York Herald Tribune
The New York Herald Tribune was a daily newspaper created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald.Other predecessors, which had earlier merged into the New York Tribune, included the original The New Yorker newsweekly , and the Whig Party's Log Cabin.The paper was home to...
, December 31, 1951.
Awards and honors
Kerr won a Pulitzer Prize for CriticismPulitzer Prize for Criticism
The Pulitzer Prize for Criticism has been presented since 1970 to a newspaper writer who has demonstrated 'distinguished criticism'. Recipients of the award are chosen by an independent board and officially administered by Columbia University...
in 1978 for "articles on the theater".
In 1990, the former Ritz Theater on West 48th Street in the Theatre District, New York
Theatre District, New York
The Theater District is an area in Midtown Manhattan where most Broadway theaters are located, as well as many other theaters, movie theaters, restaurants, hotels and other places of entertainment. It extends from 40th Street to 54th Street, and from west of Sixth Avenue to east of Eighth Avenue,...
was renamed the Walter Kerr Theatre
Walter Kerr Theatre
The Walter Kerr Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre. Located at 219 West 48th Street, it is owned and operated by Jujamcyn Theaters. One of the smaller auditoriums in the theatre district, it seats 975....
in his honor.
Books (selected)
- How Not to Write a PlayHow Not to Write a PlayHow Not to Write a Play is a book written by Walter Kerr, one time chief theatre critic for the New York Times.The first edition was published in 1955 by Simon and Schuster, four years after Kerr had begun work as a theater critic for the New York Herald Tribune.His book is an examination of what...
(1955) - Criticism and Censorship (1957)
- Pieces at Eight (1958)
- The Decline of Pleasure (1962)
- The Theatre in Spite of Itself (1963)
- Tragedy and Comedy (1967)
- Thirty Plays Hath November (1969)
- God on the Gymnasium Floor (1971)
- The Silent Clowns (1975)
- Journey to the Center of the Theater (1979)
Broadway
- Count Me In 1942 musical - wrote book
- Sing Out, Sweet Land 1944 musical revue - wrote book and directed
- The Song of Bernadette 1946 play - wrote book with Jean Kerr and directed
- Touch and Go 1949 musical revue - wrote sketches and lyrics with Jean Kerr and directed
- King of Hearts 1954 play - directed (written by Jean Kerr and Eleanor Brooke)
- Goldilocks 1958 musical - wrote book and lyrics with Jean Kerr and Joan Ford (lyrics) and directed