Milton Shulman (1913-2004) Biography

See index for SATA sketch: Born September 1, 1913, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; died May 21, 2004, in London, England. Critic and author. Shulman was best known as a longtime theater, film, and television critic for the London Evening Standard. Completing a B.A. at the University of Toronto in 1934 and studying law at Osgoode Hall from 1934 to 1937, Shulman first pursued a law career as a barrister in Toronto during the late 1930s. After service in the Canadian Army's Armoured Corps and the Intelligence division during World War II, he published his first book, Defeat in the West (1947), which is considered by some critics to be his best work. Giving up law to pursue his love for journalism, the next year he joined the Evening Standard staff as a film critic. He gained a reputation for being overly critical of movies—especially those originating in Hollywood—and his reviews were so resented by movie production companies that they began to pull their advertising. Shulman consequently focused on theater criticism, as well as, from 1964 to 1972, television reviews; he also contributed book reviews to the Sunday Express for a short time in the 1950s. But Shulman not only critiqued the media, he also worked the other side of the fence as a producer for Granada Television from 1958 to 1962 and as an assistant controller of programs for Rediffusion Television from 1962 to 1964. He continued to work for the Evening Standard until 1991, while also writing a political column for the Daily Express in the mid-1970s, contributing film criticism to Vogue from 1975 to 1988, and working as a BBC-Radio broadcaster on the show Stop the Week from 1976 to 1981. Among his other published works are How to Be a Celebrity (1950), The Least Worst Television in the World (1973), and The Ravenous Eye: The Impact of the Fifth Factor (1973), the novels Kill 3 (1967) and Every Home Should Have One; or, The Goldilocks Conspiracy (1970), written with Herbert Kretzmer, and the autobiography Marilyn, Hitler and Me: The Memoirs of Milton Shulman (1998). Shulman also penned children books, including Preep: The Little Pigeon of Trafalgar Square (1964) and Preep and the Queen (1970).