NEW YORK CITY, June 16 -- In a city where everyone has an opinion and they want you to know it, Vincent Canby '45 is one of the privileged few. He is able to share his opinion with all 6 million people in the bustling metropolis -- at the same time.
As The New York Times' movie critic for 29 years and currently its theater columnist, Canby is known for expressing his opinions, such as when he blasts a film for bad acting or praises a Broadway play for its costume design.
But Canby wasn't always so focused in his criticisms. When he arrived at Dartmouth in the fall of 1942, he had only one extremely general goal.
"As a 17-year-old student from a Virginia prep school I wasn't too prepared -- and boy did it show up," Canby said in an interview from his West Side apartment home. "I knew I wanted to write -- not about what -- but I knew from a very young age that I wanted to write."
Canby stopped reviewing movies last November after his editors offered him the Sunday drama column when he was thinking about retiring from The Times.
"After you've been on a daily paper for a while, it becomes a type of narcotic," Canby said gesturing with a cigarette in his right hand. "There are immediate results. Write and it's printed. Write and it's printed the next day."
Canby said he enjoys the theater. Initially, he said, he thought that writing a weekly column would be easy compared to daily film reviews. But when asked about how much time he has been spending on his job lately, Canby laughed and said he saw 14 shows in 12 days while in London and wrote two columns on them.
Off to war
Like many of his peers, Canby's college career was interrupted by World War II when he went off to war.
In the spring of 1944, he received a commission after joining the Navy's V-12 training program at Dartmouth.
Canby sailed to the South Pacific as an ensign on a 325-foot long Landing Ship Tank, which was used to transport troops, tanks and small armored vehicles.
Though his ship was not part of the initial Philippine landings, Canby participated in subsequent landings. He then joined the occupation force in Japan a few weeks after the surrender.
With a matter-of-fact tone, Canby described how the ship in back of him during a raid was blown up by the Japanese. During his tour of duty, the Japanese began using kamikaze tactics to destroy American ships in the Pacific, he added.
By the end of his service, the 22-year-old Canby had become skipper of his ship.
He returned to America in the spring of 1946 and re-enrolled at Dartmouth that fall. He finally received his degree in 1947.
"It was an interesting time. That recess in the middle was good for me," he said. "I knew much more clearly what I was all about."
French francs and journalism
The money earned from the war helped lift Canby out of financial difficulty.
"The war was a godsend because I had borrowed money to go to the College," he said. "I owed a lot of money and was able to pay that off. I took what money I had left and went to Paris for a couple of weeks."
With $900 dollars in hand (exchanged on the black market for seven-times the government exchange rate), Canby said he never made it to the Sorbonne in Paris, where he wanted to study.
"It was the first time in my life where I had been somewhere that I had made friends on my own," he said. "I also wanted to write a great novel. I never quite got to this."
He said he began working at 20th Century Fox reading novels and plays for films.
"That was a great time for me," he said. "Here were middle-class kids having a ball."
But money would once again determine Canby's fate. When his money finally ran out, he returned to America and began working for the Chicago Journal of Commerce -- which eventually became the Wall Street Journal's Chicago paper.
"Eventually I got to New York and got a job at a PR agency. It paid my way," he said. "I then got a job at the Motion Picture Herald and Variety Magazine, and my career was launched."
From Variety to The Times
Through his contacts with Variety and the ones he made in Paris, Canby landed a job in December, 1965 at The Times reviewing films.
"If you're going to be a newspaper man, where ever else are you going to go?" he asked rhetorically.
At the Times, he said he worked six to seven days a week and had 40 to 45 minutes to write a review of the film he had just seen. He called it a "hair raising" experience.
Canby said the pressure of a daily newspaper is exciting and exhausting, at the same time.
"I would have to do first night reviews," he said. "There was a seven o'clock curtain and the copy would have to be in by 9:30, 9:45. If I didn't have a heart attack then, I never shall ... Each one of those reviews I did took five years off my life."
Four years ago, Canby had a pacemaker installed after he collapsed in the newsroom.
"I was standing there talking to someone, and I said to myself, 'Gee, I feel funny,'" he said with the smile of someone who has lived to tell the story. "There were people all around me screaming."
"The newspaper and writing for The Times is addictive," he said. "It is a curious, anxious phenomenon -- a great deal of excitement."
For the love of it
Canby, like any journalist, is a storyteller. One story he related was how he and a half-dozen other reporters joined together to form the "Cabal" in the 1970s to protest The Times' editing.
He said the editors were so concerned about a liberal-slant on stories about the Vietnam war that they over-edited. Even Canby was subjected to what he felt was censorship.
Canby said he views movies as a "social phenomenon."
He said in the beginning of his career he was interested in the relationship between the final product and the finances of the studio, and he added that he still is intrigued by it.
But now Canby is happy with his new role at The Times writing the Sunday theater column.
"I love writing for The Times," he said as he leaned forward to extinguish his third cigarette, wrinkling his white button-down. "I am fascinated by the theater. It is far more interesting to me than movies ... it tastes more."
Though Canby did not get around to writing that "great novel" in Paris, he has since written two books and plays which were performed.
Styles
Canby said he wrote for The Dartmouth Log, the weekly paper published from 1943 to 1946 during World War II, when the College was turned into a veritable training camp.
Canby's Friday column was a mix of humor, real-life commentary and film reviews. He said he also wrote for the Jack O'Lantern, Dartmouth's humor publication.
"It was a bit depressing when someone showed me my old columns from The Log," he said. "I realized that my vocabulary and way of writing hadn't changed. I hadn't grown."
Though Canby has not returned to Dartmouth in a while -- he could not remember exactly when -- he said he still has fond memories. He said the liberal arts education he received was extremely helpful in writing.
"I got done what I set out to do," he said.
