Blowout for Brooks

"Who ever heard," exclaimed Playwright Moss Hart, "of theater folk giving a party for a critic?" Last week, nonetheless, Broadway's brightest luminaries took over Sardi's with the sole unprecedented aim of honoring one of the enemy: the New York Times's gentle, erudite Brooks Atkinson, 63, dean of U.S. drama critics. Said Co-Sponsor Paula Strasberg, wife of Actors' Studio Boss Lee Strasberg: "It was a party given with love, to let Brooks know what theater people think of him."

The lovefest came as a complete surprise to Atkinson, an inveterate party-dodger, who was lured to the restaurant by his author-wife, Oriana. The "sentimental works," as Variety called it, included a citation from Actors Equity, encomiums from such absent admirers as William Saroyan and Clifford Odets, and a letter in which choleric Irish Playwright Sean O'Casey grew moist-eyed over Critic Atkinson's "splendid defense" of the theater "throughout the times of many great events, alarums, sennets and disputes."

"On the Level." For Atkinson, Marilyn Monroe arrived on time. Helen Hayes gave the critic a huge silver tray inscribed with the names of all 130 guests, some of whom had not spoken to each other for years. Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz composed a song for the occasion ("A critic has a mother, Just like anybody else"). Mary Martin sang I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy with Composer Richard Rodgers at the piano. Oscar Hammerstein II was master of ceremonies. In their boss's honor, Times drama staffers replated the Sunday theater section for a limited edition with every story on the page about Atkinson and carrying his name in the headline. Shy Critic Atkinson was even moved to make the evening's shortest (two minutes) and only unrehearsed speech. Said he: "I have tried to be on the level."

Last week's blowout was all the more remarkable for the fact that, in a career of aisle-sitting that began 33 years ago, Justin Brooks Atkinson has made few acquaintances in the theater for fear of compromising his integrity. (He met Katharine Cornell and Thornton Wilder for the first time at his party.) A demanding but undogmatic critic, Massachusetts-born, Harvard-educated ('17) Atkinson writes his views in pencil in a neat hand on a ruled yellow pad. Against one of journalism's toughest deadlines--he usually has barely an hour to catch an edition after the first-night curtain falls--he sends his polished copy through in one-paragraph "takes." When a review is finished, he reads the proof but seldom changes a word.

Groundless Fears. Brooks Atkinson is also one of the few U.S. theater critics who earned a byline as a topnight newsman. After a ten-month tour as the Times's-Moscow correspondent in 1945, Atkinson won a Pulitzer Prize for his clear-focused reporting on conditions inside Russia. During World War II, he persuaded the Times to send him off as a war correspondent, spent two rugged years leapfrogging the war in China, Burma and India.

While most critics become crabbier with age, Veteran Atkinson seems to some theatergoers to have mellowed. After the Times covered the Sardi's party in its theater-review format under the headline FOR (NOT BY) BROOKS ATKINSON, some readers wondered how he could bring himself to rap another play. Their fears proved groundless. That night Critic Atkinson left the opening performance of Norman Krasna's Who Was That Lady I Saw You With? (see THEATER), strode two blocks to the Times and neatly scribbled a panning review.

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