CROWTHER, FRANCIS BOSLEY
In their lead on the death of Bosley Crowther (1905–1981),
the New York Times film critic for twenty-seven years, the
paper lauded him as long being “the most influential commentator in the country on the art and industry of motion
pictures.” The claim is not an exaggeration. Crowther was
a staunch advocate of the Hollywood’s socially conscious
film makers from 1940 through 1967, a strong opponent of
McCarthyism and the blacklisting of supposed Hollywood
communists, and a determined ally of the personal films of
post-World War II European cinema.
The year that Bosley Crowther was born to F. Bosley
and Eliza Leisenring Crowther in Lutherville, Maryland,
the village of six hundred, distinguished by large Victorian homes set in oak groves, surrounding the Maryland
College of Women, was in its fifty-third year. Many of the
community’s lawyers, doctors, and merchants would take
one of four stages that daily departed for Baltimore, ten
miles to the south. It was in this community of self-conscious respectability with its emphasis on moral responsibility that Crowther saw his first film. When he was five
he vividly remembered a traveling exhibition by Lyman B.
Howe, who supplemented his pictures with sound produced
from a gramophone behind a screen. Crowther’s seventyyear romance with the cinema had begun.
The family’s income allowed Crowther to develop his
skills as a writer, first at Woodberry Forest School in Woodbury, Virginia, and later at Princeton University. Crowther
served a twelve year apprentice at the New York Times as
general reporter, feature reporter and rewrite man before
realizing his dream of becoming the paper’s film critic. He would bring acute powers of observation, a genuine love
of movies and a highly developed skill as a writer to the
job, reviewing two to three movies a week and fifty longer
Sunday articles a year.
From his first reviews, Crowther showed himself a
champion of the serious-minded film maker. Crowther
anointed Charlie Chaplin’s parody on Adolph Hitler The
Great Dictator as “the most significant film ever produced.” Its devastating mimicry” of “the most hated man
alive” was of “transcendent significance” and made it the
best film of 1940. As chairman of the New York Film
Critics in 1940 he championed the cause of The Grapes
of Wrath, praising John Ford’s sympathetic depiction of
Dust Bowl “Okies” as “one of the few great sociological
pictures of all time.” When Orson Welles was viciously
attacked by the Hearst press over the making of Citizen
Kane, Crowther argued that “suppression of the film would
have been a crime.” He was among the first to praise it as
perhaps “the most sensational film ever made in Hollywood” (New York Times Directory of the Film, 72).
He celebrated Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend, a
bleak portrayal of alcoholism and delirium tremens, as
“motion picture art of unsurpassed honesty” (New York
Times, December 3, 1945). William Wellman’s The OxBow Incident’s depiction of mob violence offered “realism
as sharp and cold as a knife” (New York Times, May 10,
1943). The Best Years of Our Lives, William Wyler’s canvas
of beleaguered servicemen home from war, was “superlative entertainment” because of its “quiet and humanizing
thoughtfulness” (New York Times, November 22, 1946).
Crossfi re’s attack on anti-Semitism was “a frank and
immediate demonstration of the brutality of religious bigotry” (New York Times, July 23, 1947). John Huston’s The
Treasure of the Sierra Madre was “ruthlessly original and
realistic” in its depiction of human greed (New York Times,
January 24, 1948).
At a time in which Hollywood’s five major vertically
integrated studios dominated the production and exhibition of major motion pictures, Crowther diligently sought
out foreign films that he could promote. He praised Noel
Coward’s war-time drama In Which We Serve (1942) for
its “eloquence” (New York Times Directory of the Film,
76). Laurence Olivier’s Henry V was “rich in theatrical
inventiveness” (New York Times, June 18, 1946) .Watching Roberto Rossellini’s account of the Italian resistance
movement was “a real experience” because of its “elegant
arrogance” (New York Times, February 26, 1946). Marcel
Carne’s Children of Paradise captured “the melancholy
masquerade of life” (New York Times, February 2, 1947).
Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief (December 3, 1949)
was “an absolute triumph” in its depiction “of modern city
life” and the “almost unbearable compassion and candor”
of the director’s Umberto D demonstrated De Sica’s “genius
as a director of realistic films” (New York Times, November 8, 1955) .Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon was “striking in
its cinematic and architectural artistry” (New York Times,
December 27, 1951). Readers were encouraged to see Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, “a piercing and powerful
contemplation of man’s passage on the earth” (New York
Times, October 14, 1958). Frederico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita
was “a fertile and fierce” examination of “a society in sad
decay” (New York Times (New York Times, April 20, 1961).
Crowther criticized Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities
for their widely publicized work of purging Hollywood
from Communist influence. He saw the determination of a
Western sheriff in High Noon to stand against mob sentiment as “thrilling and inspiring” (New York Times, July 25,
1952). Crowther praised the rise of the auteur movement and
personal film making in the late fifties and sixties following the collapse of the Hollywood studio system. Francois
Truffant’s semi-autobiographical The 400 Blows was “a
small masterpiece” by a “fresh, creative talent.” Jean-Luc
Godard’s Breathless was a “pictorial cacophony” suggesting
“the tough underbelly of modern metropolitan life” (New
York Times, February 8, 1961). Michelangelo Antonioni’s
Blowup said “something savagely real about emotional
commitment” in a pop culture world.(New York Times,
December 19, 1966). Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove was
a “clever and incisive satire” of America’s military establishment, but in the end Crowther wondered “what this picture
proves” (New York Times, January 31, 1964). Of the widely
acclaimed Bonnie and Clyde he was even more disdainful,
ridiculing it as “sentimental claptrap” that was “pointless”
and “lacking in taste” (New York Times, April 14, 1967).
Critics charged that Crowther’s enthusiastic praise of
traditional Hollywood hits such as Gigi (1958), West Side
Story (1961), and My Fair Lady (1964) and distaste for
new work by counter-cultural film makers showed he was
increasingly out of step with modern movie goers. When he
was named critic emeritus of the New York Times in 1968
Crowther observed that across seven thousand films he
had sought to celebrate movies that “stimulate and expand
human experience” (The Great Films: Fifty Golden Years
of Motion Pictures, forward). It was the responsibility of
film lovers of his generation, he argued in his last book,
Reruns: Fifty Memorable Films (1978) to pass on the great
movies to the next generation as if one was handling a family treasure. That affection for films and respect for his craft
made Bosley Crowther one of the most significant critics in
film’s first century.
Further Reading
Beaver, Frank Eugene. Bosley Crowther: Social Critic of the
Film, 1940–1967. New York: Arno Press, 1974.
Bosley Crowther Papers. Brigham Young University.
Crowther, Bosley. The Great Films: Fifty Golden Years of Motion
Pictures. New York: Putnam, 1967.
Crowther, Bosley. Hollywood Rajah: The Life and Times of Louis
B. Mayer. New York: Henry Holt, 1960.
Crowther, Bosley. The Lion’s Share: The Story of an Entertainment Empire. New York: Dutton, 1957.
Crowther, Bosley. Movies and Censorship. New York: Public
Affairs Pamphlets, 1962.
Crowther, Bosley. Reruns: Fifty Memorable Films. New York:
Putnam, 1978.
Crowther, Bosley. Vintage Films: Fifty Enduring Motion Pictures. New York: Putnam, 1977.
Los Angeles Times, March 8, 1997.
New York Times, March 8, 1997.
The New York Times web site has 328 of Crowther’s movie
reviews online.
The New York Times Directory of Film. New York: New York
Times, 1971.
Bruce J. Evensen