A New York Life: Of Friends and Others

by Brendan Gill

From the 1930s to the 1990s, from backstage Broadway to the Century Club, a long-time New York observer offers a tour through the heady ranks of New York's elite

Genres: History

348 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1990

About the author

Brendan Gill (October 4, 1914 – December 27, 1997) wrote for The New Yorker for more than 60 years. He also contributed film criticism for Film Comment and wrote a popular book about his time at the New Yorker magazine.
Biography[edit]
Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Gill attended the Kingswood-Oxford School before graduating in 1936 from Yale University, where he was a member of Skull and Bones.[1]:127 He was a long-time resident of Bronxville, New York, and Norfolk, Connecticut.

In 1936 The New Yorker editor St. Clair McKelway hired Gill as a writer.[2] One of the publication's few writers to serve under its first four editors, he wrote more than 1,200 pieces for the magazine. These included Profiles, Talk of the Town features, and scores of reviews of Broadway and Off-Broadway theater productions.[3] As The New Yorker's main architecture critic from 1987 to 1996, he wrote the long-running "Skyline" column before Paul Goldberger took his place.

A champion of architectural preservation and other visual arts, Gill joined Jacqueline Kennedy's coalition to preserve and restore New York's Grand Central Terminal. He also chaired the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and authored 15 books, including Here at The New Yorker and the iconoclastic Frank Lloyd Wright biography Many Masks.

Gill was a good friend of actor Sir Rex Harrison and was among the speakers who memorialized the legendary star of the musical My Fair Lady at his memorial service in New York City in 1990.

Death[edit]
Brendan Gill died of natural causes in 1997, at the age of 83. In a New Yorker "Postscript" following Gill's death, John Updike described him as “avidly alert to the power of art in general.”[3]

Legacy[edit]
Gill's son, Michael Gates Gill, is the author of How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else.[4] His youngest son, Charles Gill, is the author of the novel The Boozer Challenge.

Offices held[edit]
Chairman of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
Chairman of the Municipal Art Society
Chairman of the New York Landmarks Conservancy
Vice President of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Works[edit]
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Books[edit]
The Day the Money Stopped (1957)
The Trouble of One House (1951)
Fair Land to Build in: The Architecture of the Empire State (1984)
The Dream Come True: Great Houses of Los Angeles (1980)
Lindbergh Alone - May 21, 1927 (1980)
Summer Places (with Dudley Whitney Hill) (1978)
Ways of Loving (short stories) (1974).
Tallulah (Tallulah Bankhead biography) (1972)
Cole Porter (Cole Porter biography) (1972)
New York Life: Of Friends and Others
The introduction to Portable Dorothy Parker (Dorothy Parker collection of her stories & columns) (1972)
Late Bloomers
Here at The New Yorker (1975)
Many Masks: A Life of Frank Lloyd Wright (1987)
Articles[edit]
Gill, Brendan (15 January 1949). "The Talk of the Town: Runaway". The New Yorker. 24 (47): 22–23. I Can Hear it Now - album of speeches and news broadcasts, 1932-45 (with Spencer Klaw).
Gill, Brendan (4 February 1950). "The Talk of the Town: The Wildest People". The New Yorker. 25 (50): 21–22. Transit Radio, Inc.
Gill, Brendan (4 February 1950). "The Talk of the Town: Improvisation". The New Yorker. 25 (50): 25. Hiding telephone lines in the ivy at Princeton (with M. Galt).
Gill, Brendan (14 January 1985). "The Theatre: The Ignominy of Boyhood". The New Yorker. 60 (48): 108–110. Reviews Bill C. Davis' "Dancing in the End Zone", James Duff's "Home Front" and Rodgers and Hammerstein's "The King and I".
Gill, Brendan (28 January 1985). "The Talk of the Town: Notes and Comment". The New Yorker. 60 (50): 19–20. West 44th Street development.

Reviews

[Steve Gores · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book offers a series of biographical profiles of prominent New Yorkers of the early to middle 20th century. Gill was for many years the theatre and architecture critic for The New Yorker magazine and he also did pieces on literature, so that pretty much determines who he profiles here. Judging from a 21st-century perspective, many of these folks have long ago sunk into obscurity; there is also very little diversity amongst them. Most are wealthy men who belong to the same New York clubs as Gill--the Coffee House Club, the Knickerbocker, and the Century Club in particular. That said, Gill does make trenchant observations about a handful, including Joseph Campbell, Eleanor Roosevelt, André Kertesz, Brendan Behan, Dorothy Parker, Georges Simenon, and Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. Having now composed this list, I realize that none of these men and women belong to Gill's clubs! One final note: Gill repeatedly references his Irish roots and his departure from Catholicism, but he is clearly no immigrant outsider--his family have been in the U. S. for generations, he was a member of Skull and Bones at Yale, and he owned a summer house in Connecticut.

[Ray LaManna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good short descriptions of some iconic figures of the 20th century whom Gill has encountered in his work at the New Yorker.

[Rufussenex · Rating 5 out of 5]

In describing over forty people that he knew, met or was acquainted with since the thirties - when he began writing for the New Yorker - Gill creates a vast and touching portrait of New York cultural/intellectual life in the 20th century, and in the process ends up creating a portrait of himself. Reading this I couldn't help thinking of Beerbohm's Seven Men and Mitchell's Up in the Old House. Wonderful prose!

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Or, "Clubmen I Have Known"