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First and foremost, I'd say my father, Bert Lahr ... gave me a love of theatre--its kinetic and emotional potential and its raffish backstage fun--and also set an artistic example of the importance of corrupting an audience with pleasure.

John Lahr

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John Lahr
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 12
Biographer
Critic
Journalist
LA
California
John Henry Christopher Lahr
John Henry Lahr
Father
Potential
Also
Importance
Bert
Firsts
Gave
Kinetic
First
Emotional
Corrupting
Love
Example
Backstage
Fun
Foremost
Pleasure
Artistic
Audience
Theatre

More quotes by John Lahr

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I was the first critic ever to win a Tony - for co-authoring 'Elaine Stritch at Liberty.' Criticism is a life without risk the critic is risking his opinion, the maker is risking his life. It's a humbling thought but important for the critic to keep it in mind - a thought he can only know if he's made something himself.
John Lahr
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Criticism is a life without risk.
John Lahr
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Writers don't always know what they mean - that's why they write. Their work stands in for them. On the page, the reader meets the authoritative, perfected self in life, the writer is lumbered with the uncertain, imperfect one.
John Lahr
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I know in an existential sense that life can change on a dime ... something has instantly and inexorably changed in American life.
John Lahr
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Did you come of age in those sweet summers of the early nineteen-sixties, when the airwaves were full of rock and roll's doo-wop promise of joy and the nation was full of J.F.K.'s eloquent promise of a New Frontier? I did. Life seemed to be laid out before us like a banquet everything was for the taking, especially hearts.
John Lahr
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Tony Awards boost Broadway attendance and sell the shows on the road. They're the sugar to swat the fly. If you needed more explanation for the yearly ballyhoo, in the metropolitan areas where a Broadway show plays, the local economy is boosted by three and a half times the gross ticket sales. So when we're talking Tonys, we're talking moolah.
John Lahr
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We live in a time of terror, and contrary to what we see on television and allow ourselves to believe, the real goal of terror is not to kill people but to kill thought to so demoralize a society that it implodes from within.
John Lahr
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The pigeons are shitting on George M. Cohan. I shoo them off. They fly up and perch on his hat. Cohan would've never given his regards to Broadway if he saw how dirty they kept his statue in Duffy Square. New Yorkers walk right by. Nobody cares.
John Lahr
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Nobody has ever gone broke selling escape to the American public.
John Lahr
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Most of the people dishing out judgment have no working experience of the theatre, have not written a professional play, a sketch, or even a joke have never worked in a theatre, taken an acting class, or published any extended piece of work. They are creative virgins everything they know about theatre is book-learned and second-hand.
John Lahr
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Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.
John Lahr
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Although the 'New York Times' annually declares that Broadway is on its deathbed, news of its demise is greatly exaggerated. There's a lot of life yet in the old tart.
John Lahr
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When Elvis made his mass-media debut on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' - his notorious gyrations filmed only from the waist up - I fell off the family chaise longue with delight.
John Lahr
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A prose writer never sees a reader walk out of a book for a playwright, it's another matter. An audience is an invaluable education. In my experience, theatre artists don't know what they've made until they've made it.
John Lahr
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Broadway shows in New York draw two times the attendance of all New York sports teams put together.
John Lahr
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The history of theatre is the history of first nights.
John Lahr
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In Britain, the theatre has traditionally been where the public goes to think about its past and debate its future. The formation of the National Theatre, at the Old Vic, near the South Bank, in 1963, institutionalized the symbolic importance of drama by giving it both a building and state funding.
John Lahr
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I detest literature. I abominate the theatre. I have a horror of culture. I am only interested in magic!
John Lahr
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Accustomed to the veneer of noise, to the shibboleths of promotion, public relations, and market research, society is suspicious of those who value silence.
John Lahr
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The New Yorker's' drama critics have always had a comparable authority because, for the most part, the magazine made it a practice to employ critics who moonlighted in the arts. They worked both sides of the street, so to speak.
John Lahr