Brendan Gill

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Brendan Gill (October 4, 1914 – December 27, 1997) wrote for The New Yorker for more than 60 years. He also contributed film criticism for Film Comment and wrote a popular book about his time at the New Yorker magazine.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Gill was graduated in 1936 from Yale University, where he was a member of Skull & Bones. He was a long-time resident of Bronxville, New York.

A champion of architectural preservation and other visual arts, he chaired the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and authored 15 books, including Here at The New Yorker and the iconoclastic Frank Lloyd Wright biography Many Masks.

In September 1989, Gill wrote the controversial article "The faces of Joseph Campbell" for the New York Review of Books where he made a number of accusations against Campbell, including charging him with anti-Semitism. Gill was personally acquainted with Campbell through the Century Club. Defenders of Campbell emerged, as did more accusers. It is now widely accepted that Campbell was, in politics, an extreme reactionary.

Brendan Gill died of natural causes in 1997, at the age of 83 .

His son, Michael Gates Gill, is the author of a book (How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else).