Brown, John Mason

Brown, John Mason (1900–69), critic and author. A native of Louisville, he studied under Professor George P. Baker at Harvard, then became an associate editor and drama critic of Theatre Arts Monthly. Brown left the magazine to become critic of the Evening Post in 1929, then moved to the World‐Telegram in 1939. Following service in World War II, he was appointed drama critic for the Saturday Review of Literature. From 1925 to 1931 he was a lecturer at the American Laboratory Theatre, and he conducted courses at Harvard, Yale, Middlebury College, and elsewhere. Among his many books are The Modern Theatre in Revolt (1929), Upstage: The American Theatre in Performance (1930), Letters from Greenroom Ghosts (1934), The Art of Playgoing (1936), Two on the Aisle (1939), Dramatis Personae (1963), and The Worlds of Robert E. Sherwood (1965). His style, often described as courtly or urbane, was suffused with an elegant humor, as in his recollection of his first exposure to theatre: “I have been stage‐struck ever since, when eight, I was taken to Macauley's Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky, to see Robert B. Mantell play King Lear, one of the few parts, I realize now, that he was still young enough to act.” Biography: Speak for Yourself, John, George Stevens, 1974.