John Russell Taylor

John Russell Taylor (born June 19, 1935) is an English critic and author. He is the author of critical studies of British theatre; of critical biographies of such important figures in Anglo-American film as Alfred Hitchcock, Alec Guinness, Orson Welles, Vivien Leigh, and Ingrid Bergman; of "Strangers in Paradise: The Hollywood Emigres 1933-1950" (1983); and some books on art.

Personal

Born in in Dover, Kent, England, the son of Arthur Russell and Kathleen Mary (Picker) Taylor ("filmreference.com" biography), John Russell Taylor is a graduate of Dover Grammar School and the University of Cambridge.Facts|date=May 2008 He lives in London ("filmreference.com" biography).

Career

In the 1960s he wrote on cinema for "Sight and Sound" and the "Monthly Film Bulletin", on the theatre in "Plays and Players", on television for "The Listener", and on various subjects relating to the arts for the "Times Literary Supplement". From the late 1950s he began writing anonymously on television and theatre for "The Times", and by 1962 he had become the paper's film critic, initially anonymous but later named after the paper abandoned its "anonymity rule" in January 1967 when William Rees-Mogg became editor. During this era he wrote a number of books including "Anger and After: A Survey of the New British Drama" (1962), revised and expanded and published in paperback as "The Angry Theatre: New British Drama" (1969); "Anatomy of a Television Play" (1962), concerning the "Armchair Theatre" production "Afternoon of a Nymph"; "Cinema Eye, Cinema Ear: Some Key Film-Makers of the Sixties" (1964); and "The Art Nouveau Book in Britain" (1966). In 1969 he was a member of the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival (IMDb "filmography").

In the early 1970s Taylor wrote the book "Second Wave: British Drama for the Seventies", a follow-up to "Anger and After". In 1972, he moved to California, to become a lecturer on film at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, serving as a Professor of Cinema from 1972 to 1978 ("John Russell Taylor" at the "Encyclopædia Britannica Online"), while continuing to contribute to "The Times" and to "The New York Times", and "The Los Angeles Times". During this period, he wrote "Directors and Directions: Cinema for the Seventies" (1975).

Having developed a friendship with Alfred Hitchcock during the 1970s, he became Hitchcock's official biographer.Facts|date=May 2008 In 1978, after publishing "Hitch", Taylor returned to the UK, becoming the art critic for "The Times", a post that he held until 2005.

Since 2005 he has contributed occasionally to "The Times" and was also editor of the magazine "Films and Filming" from 1983 until its closure in 1990.

References

*Taylor, John Russell. "The Angry Theatre: New British Drama". 1962. Rev. ed. New York: Hill & Wang, 1969. ISBN 9780809026630. (Revised and expanded edition of "Anger and After: A Guide to the New British Drama".)

External links

* [http://www.britannica.com/oscar/author?id=2924 "John Russell Taylor"] at "Encyclopædia Britannica Online", "All about Oscar". Accessed May 7, 2008.
*imdb|id=1110736. Accessed May 7, 2008. ("Filmography".)
* [http://www.filmreference.com/film/71/John-Russell-Taylor.html "John Russell Taylor Biography (1935– )"] at "filmreference.com". Accessed May 7, 2008.