Atkinson, [Justin] Brooks (1894–1984), critic. Born in Melrose, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard, he taught briefly at Dartmouth, then entered the newspaper world as a reporter for the Springfield (Massachusetts)
Daily News. In 1919 Atkinson joined the Boston
Evening Transcript as an assistant drama critic but soon moved to the
New York Times, where he became its drama critic in 1924, a post he held, except for a stint as a war correspondent (1941–46), until 1960. As such he became the best known and most important of New York's reviewers. His writing was gracious and gentlemanly, and his views generally tolerant, except for a strong prejudice against older musicals after the advent of
Oklahoma! and the “musical play.” He also wrote several excellent books on the theatre, including
Broadway Scrapbook (1947),
Broadway (1970), and
The Lively Years: 1920–1973 (1974). Typical of his style was the opening of his review of a 1952 revival of
Summer and Smoke: “Nothing has happened for quite a long time as admirable as the new production at the Circle in the Square—in Sheridan Square, to be precise. Tennessee Williams'
Summer and Smoke opened there last evening in a sensitive, highly personal performance. When it was put on at the Music Box in 1948 it looked a little detached, perhaps because the production was too intricate or because the theatre was too large.” In 1961 the Mansfield Theatre was renamed the
Brooks Atkinson Theatre, the first Broadway house to be named after a theatre critic.
