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29 Facts About John Lahr

1.

John Henry Lahr was born on July 12,1941 and is an American theater critic and writer.

2.

John Lahr has written more than twenty books related to theater.

3.

John Lahr was born in Los Angeles, California, to a Jewish family.

4.

John Lahr is the son of Mildred "Millie" Schroeder, a Ziegfeld girl, and Bert Lahr, an actor and comedian most famous for portraying the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.

5.

Until his father was on the cover of Time magazine when John Lahr was in grade school, he did not know what he did for a living.

6.

However, John Lahr did spend a lot of time with his father at theaters playing with props and costumes.

7.

John Lahr's childhood was filled with access to Hollywood and Vaudeville celebrities who were his father's friends, such as Eddie Foy Jr.

8.

John Lahr has a master's degree from Worcester College, Oxford University.

9.

John Lahr was an advisor to the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in Manhattan, New York from 1969 to 1971.

10.

John Lahr was a literary consultant for the Lincoln Center's Repertory Theater in the 1970s.

11.

John Lahr has adapted several books for the stage; these plays were performed at the Royal National Theatre in London, the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, the Royal Exchange in Manchester, and in the West End of London.

12.

However, John Lahr sued Strich, claiming she "cheated him of profits" from the play.

13.

John Lahr became a contributing editor to Evergreen Review in 1967.

14.

John Lahr has written for British Vogue, BroadwayWorld, the Daily Mail, Esquire, The Guardian, The Nation, The New Indian Express, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Slate, and The Telegraph.

15.

In 1992, when he was fifty years old, John Lahr became a staff writer and a senior drama critic at The New Yorker magazine.

16.

John Lahr began reviewing regional and international theater, expanding the magazine's coverage beyond Broadway for the first time.

17.

John Lahr's profiles are biographies consisting of 8,000 to 10,000 words.

18.

John Lahr's most recent book, Joy Ride: Show People and Their Shows in the US, is a collection of his New Yorker profiles on playwrights and directors, as well as some of his reviews of their work.

19.

In 2015, John Lahr admitted he got death threats for not liking a musical by Stephen Sondheim.

20.

John Lahr is currently a chief theater critic emeritus of The New Yorker and writes two profiles a year.

21.

In 1987, John Lahr co-produced Prick Up Your Ears, a film version of his 1978 book about a British playwright, Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton.

22.

John Lahr has written movie scripts, including the short film Sticky My Fingers.

23.

When John Lahr was 21 years old, he decided to connect to his father by writing a biography.

24.

John Lahr's biographies include the Australian comedian Barry Humphries, Joe Orton, and Frank Sinatra.

25.

In 1994, John Lahr published an expose in The New Yorker detailing the behavior of Lady Maria St Just, the literary executor of playwright Tennessee Williams's estate.

26.

John Lahr's profile helped Lyle Leverich publish Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams after "a five-year legal stranglehold" by St Just.

27.

In July 1965, John Lahr became engaged to Anthea Mander of Wightwick Manor in Wolverhampton whom he met while they both were attending Oxford University.

28.

John Lahr was the daughter of the Liberal politician, art patron and industrialist Sir Geoffrey Mander.

29.

John Lahr's sister is the editor and writer Jane Lahr.