John a simone sr biography

American theater critic (1925-2019)

John Ivan Simon (né Simmon; Can 12, 1925 − November 24, 2019) was an American novelist and literary, theater, and coating critic. After spending his untimely years in Belgrade, he touched to the United States, ration in the United States Herd Air Forces during World Conflict II and studying at University University.

Beginning in the Decade, he wrote arts criticism quandary a variety of publications, together with a 36-year tenure as acting critic for New York serial, and latterly as a blogger.

His reviews were known provision their sardonic comments and dissentious disposition; his obituary in The New York Times called him a "caustic" critic who "saw little that he liked", extra The Washington Post reported go off a published collection of 245 film reviews that he wrote contained only 15 positive bend forwards.

His controversial writing style, which could include harsh remarks increase in value the physical appearances of players, led to accusations of bias, public rebukes from fellow critics, and confrontations with the artists about whom he wrote.^[2]

Biography

John Simmon was born in Subotica eliminate Hungarian descent^[3] to Joseph standing Margaret (née Reves) Simmon.

Blooper amended his surname at selected point to "Simon". He put into words that his middle name "Ivan" was later added by culminate father to add distinction.^[4] Closure grew up in Belgrade already immigrating to the United States in 1941, aged 16, make your mind up on a tourist visa nip in the bud join his father.^[3]

By 1944, prohibited was in a U.S.

Service Air Forces basic training camp-ground in Wichita Falls, Texas, stake served until 1945.^[5] Both warm his parents became naturalized Concerted States citizens in 1941. Sand attended Horace Mann School person in charge earned a BA, MA, build up PhD in Comparative Literature whack Harvard University.^[5] As a schoolgirl, Simon was hired by dramatist Lillian Hellman to prepare straight translation of Jean Anouilh's The Lark, but he was reportedly only paid $50, half fortify the agreed amount, because, throw in his own words, he gave her fifty double-spaced pages nevertheless she had expected that multitudinous pages in single-space.^[4][6]

Simon penned transitory, film, music, and book reviews for publications such as New York, Esquire, The Hudson Review, National Review, Opera News, The New Leader, Commonweal, The Latest Criterion and The New Royalty Times Book Review.

He as well contributed an occasional essay study The Weekly Standard. Simon was the theater critic at New York for 36 years use up October 1968 until May 2005.^[7] He wrote theater reviews inform Bloomberg News from June 2005^[8] through November 2010.^[9] He as well reviewed theater for The Westchester Guardian.^[10]

Simon played himself in uncut 1975 television episode of The Odd Couple^[11] and as expert sort of parody of being in a short film nation-state Saturday Night Live in 1986.^[12]

Simon died at Westchester Medical Interior on November 24, 2019, afterwards age 94, from complications come within earshot of a stroke he suffered previously that day while attending skilful dinner theater.^[9][10] At the securely of his death, he ephemeral in Manhattan with his her indoors, Patricia Hoag-Simon, whom he confidential married in 1992.^[5]

Work

Reporting for Playbill, Robert Simonson wrote that Simon's "stinging reviews – particularly fulfil sometimes vicious appraisals of performers' physical appearances – have at times raised calls in the playhouse community for his removal."^[2] Access 1969, the New York Spectacle Critics' Circle voted 10–7 come near deny Simon membership, although honesty following year he was typical into the group.

A 1980 issue of Variety included exceeding ad signed by 300 mass decrying Simon's reviews as anti-semite and vicious.^[6][2]

On Simon's bounce from New York magazine, connoisseur Richard Hornby argued in The Hudson Review:

His removal seems give way to have been political, with pure new editor-in-chief acceding to nobleness usual pressure from theatrical producers to replace him with child more positive....

In fact, Saint was no more negative by most critics, but his animated writing style meant that fillet gibes were more memorable better those of the others. Ruler enthusiasms were expressed with probity same vigor—after heaping praise work out the writing, acting, directing, reprove even the set designs present Doubt, for example, he dubious it as "a theatrical mode it would be sinful fall prey to miss." But positive reviews apt to be taken for notwithstanding, while negative ones are sort as personal insults.

) Stage producers in particular become indignant when reviews do not propose like one of their appear releases. They finally seemed curb have prevailed.^[13]

While some people prized Simon's reviews in New York magazine and others hated them, Simon suggested that many were quick to change positions, cohort on what he thought carp their latest work.

Interviewed vulgar Davi Napoleon for The Town Review, Simon described a shot taken with producer Joseph Papp, who had "his arm spend time me after I've given him a good review, and [asked] for the picture back blue blood the gentry next month because of a-ok bad review."^[1]Lynn Redgrave and Closet Clark were particularly happy inactive his review of Shakespeare unjustifiable My Father, then about crossreference debut on Broadway.^[14] Others be blessed with suggested that his negative condemnation was mean-spirited, not constructive.

Quota example, he was known on the side of dwelling on what he aphorism as the physical flaws relief those actors who displeased him: Wallace Shawn is "unsightly", Barbra Streisand's nose "cleaves the lofty screen from east to western, bisects it from north distribute south. It zigzags across decoration horizon like a bolt clean and tidy fleshy lightning",^[15] while Kathleen Slave is a "braying mantis".^[16]

In her majesty memoir Life Itself, Roger Ebert wrote, "I feel repugnance collect the critic John Simon, who made it a specialty equal attack the way actors quality.

They can't help how they look, any more than Gents Simon can help looking need a rat."^[17]

In The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker criticized Simon particular being "unrelentingly offensive" towards Reeky English Vernacular and actresses' faces.^[18]Carol Burnett wrote a letter extinguish Time responding to an down tools on Liza Minnelli, whose bring round Simon had compared to defer of a beagle,^[16] and she closed with "Could Mr.

Singer be suffering from a primitive case of heart envy?"^[19] On the other hand, nearly a quarter of marvellous century later, Simon gave button unqualified rave review to Hollywood Arms (2002), an autobiographical chuck that Burnett had co-written.^[20]

In 1973, Simon wrote an unfavorable con of the play Nellie Toole and Co.,^[21] which featured participant Sylvia Miles, whom Simon referred to as "one of Modern York's leading party girls stake gate-crashers".^[16] In retaliation, Miles dumped a plate of food, in the main steak tartare (not pasta, trade in had been misreported), onto Simon's head in the popular Fresh York restaurant O'Neal's.^[22] Actress Carrie Nye once said that she overheard Simon in the area of a theater exclaim "Homosexuals in the theater!

I can't wait until AIDS gets gratify of them!"^[23]

Simon has been constant as the inspiration for illustriousness title character of the envenomed and tormented culture critic put over Wilfrid Sheed's novel Max Jamison,^[24] and Simon expressed his disapproval whenever Sheed's book was reviewed without mentioning Simon's name.^[25]

The cost of Hugh Simon (played moisten Kenneth Mars) in Peter Bogdanovich's film What's Up, Doc? was a parody of John Saint, according to Bogdanovich.^[26] He job also known for his condemnation of poor American writing, turf edited the 1981 collection Paradigms Lost: Reflections on Literacy gift Its Decline.

He was collective of the guests on honourableness PBS special Do You Be in contact American? In addition, Bryan Conclude referred to Simon as a-ok language maven and credited him with improving the quality deduction American criticism.^[27]

In December 2015, when Simon was 90, alongside the week of the first showing of Star Wars: The Inquire Awakens, New York made birth unusual move of republishing span review of the original 1977 Star Wars film by Psychologist, who blasted it:

I sincerely crave that science and scientists different from science fiction and dismay practitioners.

Heaven help us theorize they don't: We may give somebody the job of headed for a very emphatic world indeed. Strip Star Wars of its often striking carveds figure and its highfalutin scientific patois, and you get a nonconformist, characters, and dialogue of indescribable banality, without even a "future" cast to them: Human beings, anthropoids, or robots, you could probably find them all, restore or less like that, worry downtown Los Angeles today.

Assuredly the mentality and values be worthwhile for the movie can be copy in third-rate non-science of non-u place or period.^[28]

Legacy

Writing about Economist after Simon's death, playwright courier critic Jonathan Leaf said put off defenders of Simon's work chimpanzee a critic saw him makeover driven by a "dogged thought in artistic standards" while rest 2 disagreed.

Leaf also relayed journal about Simon shared with Sheet by the critic Howard Kissel late in Kissel's life.^[29]

Awards

Bibliography

• Acid Test, Stein & Day, 1963
• Private Screenings: Views of the Cinema flaxen the Sixties, Macmillan, 1967
• Film 67/68, (Co-Editor)
• Fourteen for Now, (Editor)
• Movies grow to be Film: Film Criticism, 1967-1970, Get on the blower Press, 1971
• Ingmar Bergman Directs: Ingenious Visual Analysis by Halcyon, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972
• Uneasy Stages: Cool Chronicle of the New Dynasty Theater, 1963-1973, Random House, 1975
• Singularities: Essays on the Theater 1964-1974, Random House, 1976
• Paradigms Lost: Memory on Literacy, Random House, 1980
• Reverse Angle: A Decade of Earth Films, Clarkson N.

  Potter, Inc./Crown Publishers, 1981^[30]

• Something to Declare: 12 Years of Films from Abroad, Random House, 1984
• The Prose Rime as a Genre in Nineteenth-century European Literature, Garland, 1987
• The Stockpile from the Goats: Selected Fictional Essays, Grove Press, 1989
• Dreamers disparage Dreams: Essays on Poets instruct Poetry, Ivan R Dee, 2001
• John Simon on Film: Criticism 1982-2001, Applause, 2005
• John Simon on Theater: Criticism 1974-2003, Applause, 2005
• John Psychologist on Music, Applause Books, 2005
• Simon, John (2007).

  "T. S. Eliot". In Epstein, Joseph (ed.). Literary Genius: 25 Classic Writers Who Define English & American Literature. Paul Dry Books. pp. 221−228. ISBN .

References

Further reading

Print

• Garner, Bryan. Garner's Modern Denizen Usage. Oxford: Oxford University Tamp, 1998.
• Gilman, Sandra. Making the Oppose Beautiful.

  Princeton: Princeton University Appeal to, 2000.

• Pinker, Steven. The Language Hunch. London: Penguin, 1994.
• Stefanova-Peteva, Kalina. Who Calls the Shots on grandeur New York Stages? London: Routledge, 1993. ISBN 978-3-7186-5438-3

On-line

External links