Mordaunt Hall (1 November 1878 – 2 July 1973) was the first regularly assigned motion picture critic for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', working from October 1924 to September 1934.Mordaunt Hall, Wrote of Screen
, ''New York Times'', July 4, 1973, p. 18. His writing style was described in his ''Times'' obituary as "chatty, irreverent, and not particularly analytical. ��The interest of other critics in analyzing cinematographic techniques was not for him."

Biography

Born Frederick William Mordaunt Hall in Guildford, Surrey, England, and known to his friends as "Freddie", he later claimed his full name was Frederick Wentworth Mordaunt Hall. His father was a school

headmaster A head master, head instructor, bureaucrat, headmistress, head, chancellor, principal or school director (sometimes another title is used) is the staff member of a school with the greatest responsibility for the management of the school. In som ...

Tottenham Tottenham () is a town in North London, England, within the London Borough of Haringey. It is located in the ceremonial county of Greater London. Tottenham is centred north-northeast of Charing Cross, bordering Edmonton to the north, Wal ...

. Hall immigrated to the United States, residing in New York, in 1902 and worked as an advance agent for Buffalo Bill's

Wild West show Wild West shows were traveling vaudeville performances in the United States and Europe that existed around 1870–1920. The shows began as theatrical stage productions and evolved into open-air shows that depicted romanticized stereotypes of ...

from around 1907, by which time he was already referred to as "an old newspaper man." In 1909 the theater impresario

Oscar Hammerstein I Oscar Hammerstein I (8 May 18461 August 1919) was a German-born businessman, theater impresario, and composer in New York City. His passion for opera led him to open several opera houses, and he rekindled opera's popularity in America. He was ...

accused Hall and another reporter of assaulting him outside New York's Knickerbocker Hotel. The case was suspended when Hammerstein left for Europe. He worked at the ''New York Press'' from 1909 to 1914, when he joined the '' New York Herald''. He married Helen Rowe, an American, in 1909. She died in 1972. Hall was commissioned a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, and did

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work. He wrote about the wartime experiences of others in the book ''Some Naval Yarns'' (1917). He returned from service in 1919. In 1919, Hall returned to England, where in the early 1920s he wrote movie

intertitle In films, an intertitle, also known as a title card, is a piece of filmed, printed text edited into the midst of (i.e., ''inter-'') the photographed action at various points. Intertitles used to convey character dialogue are referred to as "dialo ...

s, with young

Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...

designing and lettering them, at the

Famous Players-Lasky Famous Players-Lasky Corporation was an American motion picture and distribution company formed on June 28, 1916, from the merger of Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company—originally formed by Zukor as Famous Players in Famous Plays—and ...

studio in the London borough of Islington. The Halls returned to America in 1922, and his

byline The byline (or by-line in British English) on a newspaper or magazine article gives the name of the writer of the article. Bylines are commonly placed between the headline and the text of the article, although some magazines (notably ''Reader's ...

first appeared in the ''New York Times'' that year. After retiring from the ''Times'' in 1934, he hosted a New York radio program on movies and movie players in 1934–1935, and was a drama critic for the ''

Boston Transcript The ''Boston Evening Transcript'' was a daily afternoon newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts, published from July 24, 1830, to April 30, 1941. Beginnings ''The Transcript'' was founded in 1830 by Henry Dutton and James Wentworth of the firm of D ...

'' from 1936 to 1938. On December 10, 1941, two days after the United States entered World War II, Hall became a U.S. citizen. He was working for the

Columbia Broadcasting System CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

in New York in 1942. He later joined the

Bell Syndicate The Bell Syndicate, launched in 1916 by editor-publisher John Neville Wheeler, was an American syndicate that distributed columns, fiction, feature articles and comic strips to newspapers for decades. It was located in New York City at 247 West 4 ...

as a

copy editor Copy editing (also known as copyediting and manuscript editing) is the process of revising written material (copy) to improve readability and fitness, as well as ensuring that text is free of grammatical and factual errors. ''The Chicago Manual of ...

, and occasionally wrote articles.E.g., guest writing Ray Tucker's syndicated column "The National Whirligig" on Dec. 2, 1955. He died in New York City at age 94. His successor as chief film critic of the New York Times was

Andre Sennwald Andre David Sennwald (August 4, 1907 — Jan 12, 1936) was a motion picture critic for ''The New York Times''. Life After graduating from Columbia University School of Journalism, Sennwald was hired as a reporter for ''The New York Times'' in 193 ...

References

External links

* *
''Some Naval Yarns''
by Mordaunt Hall (Google Books online text).
All ''New York Times'' movie reviews
of Mordaunt Hall. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hall, Mordaunt American film critics Critics employed by The New York Times 1878 births 1973 deaths