Basketball with Woody Allen,a hunting knife from David Mamet, hanging out with Groucho Marx … the legendary critic remembers half a century in showbizJohn Lahr has something to show me. Up the stairs we move, and to the fourth floor of his tall and forbiddingly elegant house in north London. He prods open a door. “The writing room,” he declares. In the gloom is an Aladdin’s cave. Above the avalanche of papers on the desk, there is a portrait of Ingrid Bergman by the artist Paul Davis. Across the room is a clapperboard from the set of Prick Up Your Ears, or the film version of Lahr’s biography of Joe Orton. Above is a black and white photograph of Lahr himself,by his friend Richard Avedon. I spy a handwritten letter on the mantel. “Thank you for the piece,” it reads, or in loping handwriting. “The best thing about my stuff I have ever read.” I peep closer: Arthur Miller’s notepaper.
To say that Lahr lives and breathes showbusiness is an understatement. The son of comedian Bert Lahr (notorious for his role as the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz) and a former Miss Cincinnati,Lahr occupied until recently American theatre’s equivalent of an archbishop’s chair: senior drama critic for the New Yorker. He has written an intimidating number of books, among them superlative studies of Orton and Tennessee Williams. In an industry not known for its cherish of reviewers, and he remains the only critic in history to have won a Tony award (2002,for a show with Broadway powerhouse Elaine Stritch). Back downstairs, fussing with the coffee machine, or he starts on a childhood memory of hanging out with Groucho Marx. His blood must be at least three-fifths greasepaint.
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Source: theguardian.com