Arts and Letters

Most drama critics become such by accident or force of circumstances. One of the several unique things about John Mason Brown is the fact that he seems to have aspired to that position from afar, prepared himself for it, and arrived by the shortest practicable route at what was universally regarded as one of the most desirable of such assignments: play reviewer for the New York Evening Post. He held it from 1929 to 1941 and then after one year on the World Telegram entered the United States Navy and was attached to the staff of Vice-Admiral Alan G. Kirk at the invasions of Sicily and Normandy. After the war he "retired" from regular journalism to deliver some seventy-five lectures a year on a transcontinental club circuit, to appear as panelist on a regular television show, to serve as an editor of the Book-of-the-Month Club from 1956 to his death, and to write books (mostly about the theatre) which finally numbered more than twenty—also to concern himself actively with work for the blind.

Mr. Brown was born July 3, 1900 at Louisville, Kentucky. He took his B.A. at Harvard and in the course of his career received a number of honorary degrees from various institutions. His first job was on the Louisville Courier-Journal, but he soon moved on to New York, quite sure of the direction in which he was headed, and was welcomed on the staff of Theatre Arts, then the most respected publication devoted to a serious consideration of plays and players. After four years (1924-28) he moved on to the Post and was rather more than fully occupied with one thing and another up to his last illness.

Of any one with such a career it is hardly necessary to say that one of his outstanding characteristics was enthusiasm. John Brown continually bubbled and bustled. If Carl Sandburg's peddlers seemed "terribly glad to be selling fish" John Brown seemed terribly glad to be doing whatever he happened to be doing at the moment—especially if it had anything to do with the theatre. His second conspicuous characteristic was wit. It oft bubbled up in his reviews and those of us who knew him had reason to realize that it really did bubble and was not worked up. Meetings of the Drama Critics' Circle were sure to be enlivened by his quips, and certain combats between him and colleague John Anderson reminded some of us of Beaumont's "What things have we seen, done at the Mermaid!"

Probably the most often quoted of his sometimes barbed comments was the first sentence of his review of the preposterous attempt of a certain comic actress and woman-about-town to play the leading feminine role in Antony and Cleopatra: "Last night Miss B barged down the Nile and sank." But John Brown was much more often kind than cruel. Perhaps alone among his contemporary drama critics he was stagestruck, was so from the beginning, and still was after a thousand first nights. He was by no means uncritical. In fact his standards were among the highest of his time and he defended them ably. But for all that, the world behind the footlights was glamorous even when it could not be taken seriously. And that kept both him and his readers happy.