- Film critic.
- In 1944 the children's play he wrote, entitled "Bobino,", was produced at Manhattan's New School for Social Research, before it moved on to Broadway. It has become notable because it featured a newcomer named Marlon Brando in his very first professional performance, playing a security guard.
- His father was a dentist. He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. He attended New York University, where he studied drama, planning to become an actor. He received a bachelor's degree in 1935.
- At NYU, he began writing dozens of one-act plays. He also became an actor and stage manager with the Washington Square Players, a repertory company affiliated with the university (not to be confused with the group that later became the Theater Guild). The company performed mostly Shakespeare and Shaw. Internal disputes and the outbreak of WWII led to the company's demise.
- He wrote novels and worked as an editor at Knopf. In the late 1950s he began writing film reviews, and sent one to The New Republic magazine, which offered him a permanent job. He was the film critic for The New Republic for 55 years, with a break in 1966, when he was briefly a theater critic for The New York Times.
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