John A. Willis

John Alvin Willis (October 16, 1916 – June 25, 2010) was an American theatre and film book editor, theatre awards producer, actor, and educator. He is best known for editing the long-running annual publications Theatre World and Screen World, and for producing the annual Theatre World Awards for Broadway and Off-Broadway debuts for over forty years, from the early 1960s to the early 2000s.

Mr. Willis was originally from Morristown, Tennessee. He earned an undergraduate degree in English from Milligan College, and did graduate work at Harvard University, Indiana University, and the University of Tennessee. During World War II, he served in the United States Naval Reserve where he was stationed in Enewetak, Atoll, Marshall Islands, in the South Pacific. Mr. Willis was an English teacher with New York Public School System for over twenty years and retired in 1976. He was a member of Actors' Equity Association for over fifty years.

Willis was widely regarded as one of the most important theatre and film historians of the twentieth century.

Willis died at age 93 on June 25, 2010, in his Manhattan home, of complications from lung cancer.

Willis was editor in chief of both Theatre World and its companion series Screen World for forty-three years. Theatre World and Screen World are the oldest definitive pictorial and statistical records of each American theatrical and foreign and domestic film season, and are referenced daily by industry professionals, students, and historians worldwide.

Theatre World, founded in 1945, covers the complete statistical and photographic Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, and regional theatre seasons, major theatrical awards, obituaries, and the longest Broadway and Off-Broadway runs, among other categories. Ben Hodges is the current editor of Theatre World.

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