Elliot Norton

Elliot Norton (17 May 1903 - 20 July 2003) was a Boston-based theater critic who was one of the most influential regional theater critics in his 48-year-long career, during which he who wrote 6,000 reviews and became known as "The Dean of American Theatre Critics". Norton practiced a style of criticism known as "play doctoring", where he made suggestions on how to improve a show. Boston was a major pre-Broadway tryout town, and Elliot's criticism was taken seriously by producers, directors and playwrights, including Joshua Logan, Mike Nichols, and Neil Simon.

Norton was called "the most valuable critic in America" by producer Alexander Cohen. According to Logan:

Elliot had an absolute dead eye for a play. He could see it once and form an opinion that struck at the very core. He was very helpful to me on every show I brought to Boston. He had a gentlemanly manner, and even if what he had to say was rough, he could tell you without breaking your heart.

Born William Elliot Norton in Boston to William L. Norton and Mary (Fitzgerald) Norton, he attended Harvard College (Class of 1926) after graduating from the Boston Latin School. At Harvard College, he took George Pierce Baker's class for dramatists. Baker's most famous student was Eugene O'Neill, whose plays were revolutionizing Broadway theater at the time Norton became a drama critic.

Norton began his career as a newspaperman with the Boston Post after graduating from Harvard in 1926. By 1934, he was promoted from reporter to the editor of the drama section, where he began to make his name as a critic. The Post went out of business in 1956, and Norton was hired by the Boston Record American, which evolved into the Boston Herald American, which eventually became the Boston Herald after he retired in 1982.

In addition to his newspaper reviews, he was a television critic on Boston television, including public TV station WGBH, where he hosted Elliot Norton Reviews. The show ran for 1,100 episodes from 1958 to 1982.

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