Mel Gussow

Melvyn (Mel) H. Gussow (pronounced GUSS-owe; December 19, 1933 – April 29, 2005)^[1] was an American theater critic, movie critic, and author who wrote for The New York Times for 35 years.

Biography

Gussow was born in New York City. He grew up in Rockville Centre, located in the Town of Hempstead, Long Island, New York.^[1] He attended South Side High School.^[2] and Middlebury College, where he served as editor of The Campus, and graduated in 1955 with a B.A. in American literature. He earned an M.A. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1956.

Gussow was a writer for the Army newspaper in Heidelberg, Germany, where he was stationed for two years.^[1] He was hired by Newsweek, where he became a movie and theater critic. His first Broadway play review was for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1962. This review began a life-long relationship with the play's author, Edward Albee, that included Gussow's 1999 biography of the playwright entitled Edward Albee: A Singular Journey.^[1]

Gussow joined the New York Times in 1969 and over his 35 year career wrote more than 4,000 of the newspaper's reviews and articles.^[1] He authored eight books^{[citation needed]}, including a series of four which were considered "conversations" with playwrights Arthur Miller, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Tom Stoppard. Times arts reporter Jesse McKinley notes that Gussow's interview collections became "staples of college drama curriculums and the libraries of gossip-loving theater fans".^[1]

In the late 1960s and in 1970 he and his wife Ann and son Ethan, actor Dustin Hoffman, and several other families lived in apartments in a townhouse at 16 West 11th Street. On March 6, 1970, the townhouse next door to theirs was destroyed by an explosion of dynamite that killed three and injured two members of the Weathermen organization. In an article written by Gussow on the 30th anniversary of the disaster,^[3] Gussow reported an FBI finding that "had all the explosives detonated, the explosion would have leveled everything on both sides of the street." Gussow and his family remained residents of Greenwich Village after the explosion, maintaining a home on West 10th Street.^[3]

Gussow died at New York-Presbyterian Hospital from bone cancer at the age of 71.^[1][4] He had kept working until just three weeks before his death, writing at that time an obituary along with New York Times colleague Charles McGrath of Canadian-born Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Saul Bellow.^[5]

In 2008, Gussow was inducted posthumously into the American Theater Hall of Fame at the same time as actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein, the actors John Cullum, Lois Smith and Dana Ivey, the director Jack O'Brien, the playwright Peter Shaffer, and the librettist Joseph Stein.^[6]

Family

Gussow was married to Ann, who survived him, along with their son Ethan, who married Susan Baldomar in 1998.^[1][7]

References