John Lahr is the senior drama critic of The New Yorker, where he has written about theatre and popular culture since 1992. Among his eighteen books are Notes on a Cowardly Lion: The Biography of Bert Lahr and Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton, which was made into a film.
He has twice won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. Lahr, whose stage adaptations have been performed around the world, received a Tony Award for co-writing Elaine Stritch at Liberty.
He divides his time between London and New York.
Books in order of publication:
Biographies and profiles
Notes on a Cowardly Lion (Knopf, 1970)
The Business of Rainbows: The Life and Lyrics of E.Y. Harburg (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1978)
Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton (Lane, 1978)
Coward the Playwright (University of California Press, 1983)
Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilization: Backstage with Barry Humphries (Bloomsbury, 1991)
Sinatra: The Artist and the Man (Random House, 1997)
Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles (Overlook Press, 2000)
Honky Tonk Parade: New Yorker Profiles of Show People (Overlook Press, 2005)
Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (W. W. Norton & Company, 2014)
Joy Ride: Show People and Their Shows (W. W. Norton & Company, 2015)
Arthur Miller: American Witness (Yale University Press, 2022)
Collected criticism.
Up Against the Fourth Wall (Grove Press, 1970)
A Casebook on Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming” (Grove Press, 1971)
Acting Out America: Essays on Modern Theater (Penguin, 1972)
Astonish Me: Adventures in Contemporary Theater (Viking 1973)
Life Show: How to See Theater in Life and Life in Theater (Viking, 1973, with Jonathan Price
Automatic Vaudeville: Essays on Star Turns (Knopf, 1984)
Light Fantastic: Adventures in Theatre (Bloomsbury, 1997)
Fiction
The Autograph Hound (Knopf, 1972) Hot to Trot (Knopf, 1974)
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