Douglas Watt, New York Theater Critic, Dies at 95
Douglas Watt, whose well-informed theater reporting and stylish criticism for The Daily News in New York were fixtures in an era when theater was king and critics were legion, died Tuesday in Southampton, N.Y. He was 95 and lived in Southampton and Manhattan.
He died after a bout with pneumonia, his daughter Patricia said.
As a newspaperman, Mr. Watt had remarkable longevity. He started at The News in 1934 as a copy boy in the drama department, and he retired in 1993 as a critic at large. His career passed through and outlasted the era when plays and musicals were still the leading forms of entertainment and the theater writers for New York’s daily newspapers and weekly magazines constituted a powerful, multifarious chorus of tastemakers.
He supported the careers of Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams. He was in the opening-night audience of “Death of a Salesman” on Broadway in 1949, with Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman, and he was there again when the curtain went up on the 50th-anniversary production, starring Brian Dennehy.
Known as a gentlemanly critic who could write even a negative review without incurring the wrath of the criticized, Mr. Watt covered Broadway and, after there were such things, Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway. A pianist and a songwriter himself, he was fond of musicals and befriended theater composers like Richard Rodgers, Kurt Weill and Frank Loesser. He collaborated with Duke Ellington on an unfinished project based on George Bernard Shaw’s “Caesar and Cleopatra.” His support of George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” helped bring it back to Broadway in 1942 after its sadly short-lived debut in 1935.
In addition to writing about theater at The News, he wrote regularly about opera and classical music for The New Yorker. He also wrote about New York night life in lighthearted columns for both publications.
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He died after a bout with pneumonia, his daughter Patricia said.
As a newspaperman, Mr. Watt had remarkable longevity. He started at The News in 1934 as a copy boy in the drama department, and he retired in 1993 as a critic at large. His career passed through and outlasted the era when plays and musicals were still the leading forms of entertainment and the theater writers for New York’s daily newspapers and weekly magazines constituted a powerful, multifarious chorus of tastemakers.
He supported the careers of Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams. He was in the opening-night audience of “Death of a Salesman” on Broadway in 1949, with Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman, and he was there again when the curtain went up on the 50th-anniversary production, starring Brian Dennehy.
Known as a gentlemanly critic who could write even a negative review without incurring the wrath of the criticized, Mr. Watt covered Broadway and, after there were such things, Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway. A pianist and a songwriter himself, he was fond of musicals and befriended theater composers like Richard Rodgers, Kurt Weill and Frank Loesser. He collaborated with Duke Ellington on an unfinished project based on George Bernard Shaw’s “Caesar and Cleopatra.” His support of George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” helped bring it back to Broadway in 1942 after its sadly short-lived debut in 1935.
In addition to writing about theater at The News, he wrote regularly about opera and classical music for The New Yorker. He also wrote about New York night life in lighthearted columns for both publications.