Arthur Lithgow

Arthur Washington Lithgow III was born on September 9, 1915, in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, to Ina Berenice Robinson, an American nurse, and Arthur Washington Lithgow II, an American-Dominican entrepreneur whose own father had served as a vice consul and vice commercial agent in the country. Lithgow grew up to become an actor, director, and a foundational figure in the American regional theater movement, as well as the father of Emmy- and Tony-winning actor John Lithgow. He died on March 24, 2004, of heart failure in Amherst, Massachusetts, at the age of 88.

Lithgow's earliest stage appearance came in December 1920, when he was five years old, performing as a cherub in a Christmas pageant at the Unitarian Church in Melrose, Massachusetts. He later pursued theater at Antioch College, where he participated in student productions and founded the Antioch Summer Theater in 1935, receiving his BA from the institution in 1938. He subsequently earned an MA in playwriting from Cornell University in 1948 and served as assistant professor of dramatics at Antioch from 1947 to 1956.

His New York City stage debut came in November 1938, when he appeared as a soldier in Jacques Deval's anti-Nazi drama Lorelei. His Broadway work between 1938 and 1939 also included the plays Steel and Cure for Matrimony. During the years surrounding World War II, Lithgow appeared in amateur productions in Rochester, New York, including a Rochester Community Players production of the English comic melodrama Ladies in Retirement, in which he played a cockney scoundrel.

In the summer of 1951, Lithgow served as associate producer of the Shaw Festival at the Rice Playhouse on Martha's Vineyard, where he also performed in several plays by George Bernard Shaw. The following year, in 1952, he founded the Antioch Shakespeare Festival at Antioch College, also known as Shakespeare under the Stars, serving as its Founder and Artistic Director. The festival was staged on a multilevel outdoor set behind Antioch's Main Building and, over its five-year run, drew a total attendance of more than 135,000. Within six years, the festival produced the complete works of Shakespeare, earning recognition from the Queen of the United Kingdom. Lithgow both directed and performed in many of the productions, playing roles including Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew opposite Nancy Marchand as Kate, as well as Stephano, Peter Quince, Dr. Caius, and Henry IV. In 1956, the festival expanded through a partnership with the Toledo Zoo, with works presented at both Antioch and the zoo.

After departing Antioch, Lithgow moved through Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts; Waterville, Ohio; and Stockbridge, Massachusetts, before relocating in 1958 to Akron, Ohio, where he became Executive Director of Stan Hywet Hall. He produced a summer Shakespeare festival there in 1960 but was dismissed from the position in May 1961. Having already organized a second summer Shakespeare season for 1961, he moved that festival to the Ohio Theater in Cuyahoga Falls. In the summer of 1962, he founded the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in Lakewood, Ohio, an institution today known as the Great Lakes Theater.

In 1963, Lithgow became executive director of the McCarter Theatre at Princeton University, a role he held until 1972, when he and his family moved to Boston. There he served as a visiting professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston and as administrative director of the Brattleboro Center for the Performing Arts in Brattleboro, Vermont. In 1976, he joined the University of South Florida at Tampa as a Visiting Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, during which time he also began directing the Alice People Theatre. He returned to Antioch College in 1981 and 1982 to direct two additional summer Shakespeare festivals, including a 1981 production of the rarely staged complete versions of all three parts of Shakespeare's Henry VI, performed across three nights. From 1982 to 1984, he taught at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, and later co-founded the Ithaca Theater Guild in Ithaca, New York, alongside former Cornell classmate Edward Kamarck.

Lithgow married actress Sarah Jane Price in 1939. They had four children, including John Lithgow, whose career in film and theater earned him both Emmy and Tony recognition.