Bosley Crowther

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Francis Bosley Crowther Jr. (born July 13, 1905 in Lutherville , Maryland , † March 7, 1981 in Mount Kisco , New York ) was an American film critic and journalist .

Life

Francis Bosley Crowther Jr. was born in Maryland, but grew up in Winston-Salem , North Carolina , where he published the neighborhood newspaper The Evening Star as a teenager . His family then moved to Washington, DC , where he graduated from Western High School in 1922 . After two more years at Woodberry Forest School in Orange , Virginia , he began studying at Princeton University , where he majored in history . After graduating, Arthur Hays Sulzberger , publisher of the New York Times , made him an offer to work as a journalist for $ 30 a week. Crowther refused for the time being in the hope of earning more money elsewhere. But since other offers rarely promised more than half the earnings, he took it anyway and became the Times' first nightclub reporter. The theater critic Brooks Atkinson asked him some time later to join the culture section, after which Crowther wrote theater reviews for the Times for over five years.

From 1938 Crowther worked for the film sector, and after Frank S. Nugent was poached from Hollywood as a screenwriter, he took over the management of the department until 1967. After he resigned from his post, he stayed with the newspaper and worked as a film development consultant for Columbia Pictures .

Crowther was married to Florence Marks, a New York Times employee, whom he married on January 20, 1933. Crowther died on March 7, 1981 of complications from a heart attack.

Views

Bosley Crowther has long been considered one of the most influential film critics and helped build the careers of many major filmmakers. His special concern was to introduce international cinema to the American film audience - who mainly watched domestic films. He brought directors Roberto Rossellini , Vittorio De Sica , Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini into conversation in the USA. On films he disliked, Crowther could write with biting mockery. For decades Joan Crawford was a popular target of his, whose depictions were regularly panned by him.

Crowther was outspoken against the persecution of left-wing filmmakers during the McCarthy era . He also spoke out against the American film censorship of the Hays Code . Above all, films that expressed social awareness were important to him, which is why younger critics sometimes gave him a moralizing view of films. This conflict became clear towards the end of his time at the New York Times when he criticized the film Bonnie and Clyde (1967), one of the founding films of New Hollywood . While other, mostly younger, critics celebrated the film, Crowther positioned himself as an opponent of what he saw as the senseless brutality of the film.

Publications

  • Frank Eugene Beaver: Bosley Crowther: Social Critic of the Film, 1940-1967. Ayer Publishing, 1974.
  • Beverly M. Kellye: Reelpolitik II: Political Ideologies in '50s and' 60s Films. Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.
  • The Lion's Share: The Story of an Entertainment Empire. Ams Press, 1957.
  • The Great Films: Fifty Golden Years of Motion Pictures. Putnam, New York 1971.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b Bosley Crowther Papers ( memento June 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), biblioteca.universia.net, accessed April 11, 2012.
  2. ^ A b Robert D. McFadden: Bosley Crowther, 27 Years a Critic of Film for Times, is Dead at 75. In: The New York Times. March 8, 1981, Retrieved April 11, 2012 .
  3. ^ Marjorie Dent Candee. In: Current Biography Yearbook - 1957. HW Wilson Co., 1958, p. 121.
  4. Bosley Crowther at the New York Times
  5. Bosley Crowther at the New York Times
  6. ^ Robert D. McFadden: Bosley Crowther, 27 Years a Critic of Films for Times, Is Dead at 75 . In: The New York Times . March 8, 1981, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed May 11, 2020]).
  7. ^ Jonas Mekas: Movie Journal: The Rise of the New American Cinema, 1959-1971 . Columbia University Press, 2016, ISBN 978-0-231-54158-9 ( google.de [accessed May 11, 2020]).