Howard Taubman

Hyman Howard Taubman (July 4, 1907 – January 8, 1996) was an American music critic, theater critic, and author.

Biography

Born in Manhattan, Taubman attended DeWitt Clinton High School and then won a four-year scholarship to Cornell University, from which he graduated, as a Phi Beta Kappa member, in 1929.

He then returned to New York and began working for The New York Times. He joined the Music Department there in 1930. In 1935, he was named Music Editor. For about a year, from 1944–1945, Taubman served in the Army and worked in Italy as a writer for Stars and Stripes.

In 1955, he became the Chief Music Critic at the Times, replacing Olin Downes upon Downes’ death. Also in the 1950s, Taubman acted as the ghostwriter for opera singer Marian Anderson’s autobiography My Lord, What a Morning.

In 1960, he took the post of Chief Drama Critic for the Times after Brooks Atkinson retired from that position. Taubman remained in that role until 1965.

In 1961, Taubman, along with six other theater critics, was the victim of a famous hoax when Broadway producer David Merrick placed a newspaper ad for his show Subways Are For Sleeping. The ad quoted Howard Taubman, Walter Kerr, and other prominent New York critics singing praises for Merrick's commercially faltering musical. The individuals quoted, however, were not the renowned theater critics themselves, but like-named New Yorkers hired by Merrick to provide positive quotes.