Bosley Crowther - Life

Life

Born Francis Bosley Crowther Jr. in Lutherville, Maryland, Crowther moved as a child to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he published a neighborhood newspaper, The Evening Star. His family moved to Washington, D.C., and Crowther graduated from Western High School in 1922. After two years of prep school in Orange, Virginia at Woodberry Forest School, he entered Princeton University, where he majored in history. For his writing performance, Crowther was offered a job as a cub reporter for The New York Times at a salary of $30 a week. He declined the offer, made to him by the publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, hoping to find employment on a small Southern newspaper. When the salary offered by those papers wasn't half of the Times offer, he went to New York and took the job. He was the first night club reporter for the Times, and in 1933 was asked by Brooks Atkinson to join the drama department. He spent five years covering the theater scene in New York, and even dabbled in writing for the theater.

While at the Times in those early years, Crowther met Florence Marks, a fellow employee; the couple wed on January 20, 1933.