Elliot Norton, longtime dean of American drama critics, died on July 20, 2003, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he had relocated a few months earlier after a lifetime in Boston. He was 100 years old.
 
Born in Boston on May 17, 1903, [William] Elliot Norton attended Boston Latin School and proceeded to Harvard College, where he received his A.B. as an English concentrator in 1926, having counted the renowned Shakespeare scholar George Lyman Kirtredge among his professors.

Already as a senior, he wrote occasional stories for the Boston Post, and joined its staff the next fall as a full-time general reporter. In 1934, having cherished the stage since boyhood, and having admired John Barrymore's Hamlet and Eleonora Duse in "Cosi Sia" when still an undergraduate, he was thrilled to be appointed Edward Harold Crosby's successor as the paper's drama critic.

His first review, in December of 1934, was of S.N. Behrman's "Rain From Heaven." Thus began a 48-year career as a theatrical journalist, during which he reviewed more than 6,000 shows. Though he stayed based in Boston, he covered many events in New York and elsewhere in the country, as well as traveling to Europe, Russia, and Israel.

When the Post folded in 1956, the Boston Globe offered to hire him, but said he would have to be in the office from 9 to 5. Having always set his own schedule, he bolted for the door. He then became drama critic of the Boston Daily Record and Boston Sunday Advertiser (1956-62), Boston Record American and Advertiser (1962-71) and Boston Herald American from 1971 until his retirement on June 1, 1982.

At one point he was offered the top critic's job at the New York Times, but turned it down in the belief that being a critic in Boston was more rewarding and useful. For this was the heyday of the out-of-town tryout, when almost all productions underwent two weeks of revising and polishing in Boston before heading to Broadway. There were often several Boston tryouts in one week. And Norton often reviewed the opening night and then returned to appraise the show at the end of the fortnight.

At the height of his reviewing career, Norton was regularly expected to provide six columns a week, though in later years he cut back to four. A fast writer, he relished writing 700-900 words when the experience was fresh, with a deadline of one hour (and occasionally less than thirty minutes.)
In 1958, with some trepidation, he branched out into television with a weekly half-hour program on WGBH (Boston's PBS affiliate) called "Elliot Norton Reviews." Here playwrights, performers and producers were inivited to confront Norton and discuss (often dispute) what he had said in print. Said Norton: "If we can't see eye to eye, we can see face to face." He felt this pioneering confrontation could be usefully emulated elsewhere. This program brought him a George Foster Peabody Award in 1962, and he would go on to tally nearly 1100 installments during the ensuing 24 years.

From 1950 to 1952 Norton was president of the Boston Press Club, which lasted about a decade. More significantly, in 1951 he founded and was first president of the New England Theatre Conference, an institution that still flourishes through a number of endeavors including a large-scale annual convention. From 1966 to 1972 he was vice-chairman of the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities.

He also served five terms on the drama jury for the Pulitzer Prizes and fifteen as a Tony Award nominator. He himself was given a special Tony Award in 1971 -- the only still-working critic to be so honored. Based on lectures delivered for the National Endowment for the Humanities, he in 1978 published Broadway Down East, a history of theater in Boston.

On November 21, 1988, Norton was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame at a ceremony in New York. In his acceptance, he stated that about half the shows he had covered "were inept," and that a third of the rest were good "only for their time."

Many other honors came his way. Among these were the Boston College Citation of Merit (1947), the Connor Memorial Award (1956), the Rodgers and Hammerstein Award (1962), the George Jean Nathan Award for the best dramatic criticism during 1963-64, the Humanties Award of the National Council of Teachers of English (1971), and the first William Homer Award (1986).

In 1977 the City of Boston designated Norton one of a group of Grand Bostonians. And in the same year an Elliot Norton Park was dedicated just south of the city's theater district. From 1956 to 1980 Norton received honorary doctorates from ten colleges and universities; on the last occasion, at Boston University (where he had taught as lecturer and adjunct professor since 1954), he delivered the commencement address. In 1975 he was also among the founders of the American Theatre Critics Association, a nationwide group.

The last play Norton reviewed (May 28, 1982) was the Boston Shakespeare Company's production of Athol Fugard's "A Lesson From Aloes." Two days later he followed with a farewell overview of Boston theater past and present.

Already in 1979 Norton had drawn up a roster of "treasured moments" in the theater: Bea Lillie in "At Home Abroad" (1935); Sir John Gielgud's Hamlet and Helen Hayes in "Victoria Regina" (both 1937); Mary Martin in "Leave It to Me" (1938), "South Pacific" (1949), and "The Sound of Music" (1959); Sara Allgood in "Juno and the Paycock" (1940); Gertrude Lawrence and Danny Kaye in "Lady in the Dark" (1941); Paul Robeson's Othello (1942); Frank Fay in "Harvey" (1944); Laurette Taylor in "The Glass Menagerie" (1945); Marion Brando in "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1947); Mildred Dunnock in "Death of a Salesman" and Bill Tabbert in "South Pacific" (both 1949); Alec Guinness and Irene Worth in "The Cocktail Party" (1950); Moms Carnovsky's Shylock (1957); Sir Laurence Olivier in "The Entertainer" (1958); Ethel Merman in "Gypsy" (1959); the Saint Joans of Katharine Cornell (1936), Julie Harris (1955), and Siobhan McKenna (1956); and Carol Charming in "Hello, Dolly!" (1964), along with Pearl Bailey in its all-black revival (1967).

Asked for another retrospective by the Boston Globe Magazine in 1984, he added some "Great First Nights in Boston": the aforementioned "Rain From Heaven" (1934); "Porgy and Bess" (1935); "Our Town" (1938); "Oklahoma!" (1943); "Annie Get Your Gun" with Ethel Merman (1946); "Long Day's Journey Into Night" (1956) [while acknowledging that most critics consider this the finest American play, Norton always staunchly maintained that "Our Town" was the supreme achievement]; "The Visit" (1958), the Lunts' final vehicle; "King Lear" with Paul Scofield (1964); "Dreamgirls" with Jennifer Holliday (1981); and "The King and I" revival in 1984 (Norton thought this Rodgers and Hammerstein's greatest work).

To honor Norton upon his retirement, the Elliot Norton Awards were inaugurated in 1983 to recognize outstanding achievement in Boston theater. These have grown over the years to recognize nearly twenty annual recipients (productions, performers, directors, designers, playwrights), along with a Prize for Sustained Excellence and periodic lifetime-achievement awards. Norton's final public appearance was at the awards ceremony on May 20, 2002, at which time he spoke briefly to the assembled throng. At last year's ceremony — held on May 19, two days after his hundredth birthday -- he provided a videotaped greeting and further remarks dictated over the telephone.

Norton is survived by three children — David, Elizabeth, and Jane. On July 25, 2003 he was buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge. --C.T.