Milestones, Sep. 22, 1980

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DIED. Harold Edgar Clurman, 78, ebullient, versatile catalyst of the American theater, who attained eminence as a director (Member of the Wedding, The Waltz of the Toreadors), producer, author, teacher and raconteur; of cancer; in New York City. After starting out as an actor, he founded the Group Theater in 1931 to serve as an alternative to Broadway's commercial offerings; for ten years it provided a forum for playwrights like Clifford Odets and William Saroyan, introduced to the American stage the Stanislavsky Method of acting, and nourished such actors as Lee Strasberg, John Garfield, Cheryl Crawford, Lee J. Cobb and Stella Adler (Clurman's first wife). As a drama critic since the late 1940s, mostly for the Nation, he drew on enormous theatrical erudition, a prodigious memory and an insatiable delight in the arts. "I disapprove of much," he once said, "but I enjoy almost everything."