Early career

Gottfried is a 1959 graduate of Columbia College

Columbia College of Columbia University

Columbia College is the oldest undergraduate college at Columbia University, situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1754 by the Church of England as King's College, receiving a Royal Charter from King George II...

 in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, and attended Columbia Law School

Columbia Law School

Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, is one of the oldest and most prestigious law schools in the United States. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University in New York City. It offers the J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in...

 for three semesters, next spending one year with U.S. Army Military Intelligence. Gottfried began his writing career as the classical music

Classical music

Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...

 critic for The Village Voice

The Village Voice

The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...

, doubling as an off-Broadway

Off-Broadway

Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...

 reviewer for Womens Wear Daily, a position that made him the youngest member of the New York Drama Critics Circle in the organization's history.

In 1968, Little, Brown and Company

Little, Brown and Company

Little, Brown and Company is a publishing house established by Charles Coffin Little and his partner, James Brown. Since 2006 it has been a constituent unit of Hachette Book Group USA.-19th century:...

 published his first book, A Theater Divided, a study of post-World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 American theater. The book won the highest honor in dramatic criticism, the George Jean Nathan

George Jean Nathan

George Jean Nathan was an American drama critic and editor.-Early life:Nathan was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana...

 Award. In 1970 Putnam published Opening Nights, a collection of his essays. By then, he had become a regular contributor to the Arts and Leisure section of The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

 Sunday edition.

Drama critic and educator

In 1974, he became the drama critic for the New York Post

New York Post

The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...

. Four years later, he "Americanized"

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 the West End

West End theatre

West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...

 musical

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 Bar Mitzvah Boy

Bar Mitzvah Boy (musical)

Bar Mitzvah Boy is a musical with a book by Jack Rosenthal, lyrics by Don Black, and music by Jule Styne.Based on Rosenthal's award-winning 1976 BBC1 teleplay of the same name, it focuses on young Eliot Green who, filled with apprehension, escapes from the synagogue where he is about to make his...

for an off-Broadway

Off-Broadway

Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...

 production.

In 1979, Gottfried began writing for the Saturday Review, the same year Harry N. Abrams, Inc. published his Broadway Musicals. In 1991, it was joined by a sequel, More Broadway Musicals. and "In Person," a tribute to performing artists.

Until recently the drama critic for the New York Law Journal

New York Law Journal

The New York Law Journal, founded in 1888, is a legal periodical covering the legal profession in New York, United States. The newspaper covers legal news, decisions, court calendars, and legislation, and provides analysis and insight in columns written by leading professionals...

, Gottfried has conducted a series of "Conversations" at the 92nd Street Y

92nd Street Y

92nd Street Y is a multifaceted cultural institution and community center located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, at the corner of E. 92nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Its full name is 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association...

 as well as at the New School of Social Research and the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

. Participants have included Stephen Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim

Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...

, Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...

, Harold Prince, Jane Alexander

Jane Alexander

Jane Alexander is an American actress, author, and former director of the National Endowment for the Arts. Although perhaps best known for playing the female lead in The Great White Hope on both stage and screen, Alexander has played a wide array of roles in both theater and film and has committed...

, Christopher Walken

Christopher Walken

Christopher Walken is an American stage and screen actor. He has appeared in more than 100 movies and television shows, including Joe Dirt, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, The Prophecy trilogy, The Dogs of War, Sleepy Hollow, Brainstorm, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, At Close Range, King of New...

 and Richard Dreyfuss

Richard Dreyfuss

Richard Stephen Dreyfuss is an American actor best known for starring in a number of film, television, and theater roles since the late 1960s, including the films American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Goodbye Girl, Whose Life Is It Anyway?, Stakeout, Always, What About...

. Gottfried also has been a contributor to he N.Y. Times] Sunday Magazine, Vogue

Vogue (magazine)

Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...

, the Yale Drama Review and Condé Nast Traveler

Condé Nast Traveler

Condé Nast Traveler is a US magazine published by Condé Nast. It has its origins in a mailing sent out by the Diners Club club beginning in 1953, listing locations that would take the card. It began taking advertising in 1955. In order to attract more advertisers, it became a full-fledged magazine,...

. He also writes regular articles on the performing arts for Stagebill, the program distributed in theaters and concert halls across America.

He has been a guest professor of theater at the Columbia University School of the Arts

Columbia University School of the Arts

The Columbia University School of the Arts , also known simply as the School of the Arts or as SoA, is the division of the university that offers Master of Fine Arts degrees in Film, Visual Arts, Theatre Arts, and Writing, as well as a Master of Arts degree in Film Studies...

, Carnegie-Mellon University, Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

 and the Colorado College

Colorado College

The Colorado College is a private liberal arts college in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It was founded in 1874 by Thomas Nelson Haskell...

, as well as a Visiting Artist/Professor at the College of Santa Fe

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...

.

Author

Gottfried's writings include biographies of Sondheim, Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller

Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...

, Jed Harris

Jed Harris

Jed Harris was a renowned Austrian-American theater producer and director, and writer of film.-Personal history:...

, Bob Fosse

Bob Fosse

Robert Louis “Bob” Fosse was an American actor, dancer, musical theater choreographer, director, screenwriter, film editor and film director. He won an unprecedented eight Tony Awards for choreography, as well as one for direction...

, Danny Kaye

Danny Kaye

Danny Kaye was a celebrated American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian...

, George Burns

George Burns

George Burns , born Nathan Birnbaum, was an American comedian, actor, and writer.He was one of the few entertainers whose career successfully spanned vaudeville, film, radio, television and movies, with and without his wife, Gracie Allen. His arched eyebrow and cigar smoke punctuation became...

, and Angela Lansbury

Angela Lansbury

Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...

. His latest book, co-written with Bill Condon

Bill Condon

William "Bill" Condon is an American screenwriter and director. Condon is best known for directing and writing the critically acclaimed films Gods and Monsters, Chicago, Kinsey, and Dreamgirls. In 1998, Condon debuted as a screenwriter in Gods and Monsters, which won him his first Academy Award....

 and Cheo Coker, is Dreamgirls

Dreamgirls (film)

Dreamgirls is a 2006 musical drama film, directed by Bill Condon and jointly produced and released by DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures. The film debuted in three special road show engagements beginning December 15, 2006 before its nationwide release on December 25, 2006...

The Movie Musical, published in April 2007.

A review of Arthur Miller: His Life and Work called the book a "thorough and revealing biography".

External links

• Gottfried Biography prenhall.com
• Bibliography
• Gottfried Biography faber.co.uk