Lawrence Laurent, who became The Washington Post’s first television critic in 1953 and wrote about entertainment programming, news and industry developments for more than 20 years — including an uncomprehending critique of the Beatles — died Aug. 1 at a retirement facility in Alexandria, Va. He was 95.He had a history of cardiac ailments, said his son Arthur Halliday Laurent, but the exact cause was not immediately known.
Mr. Laurent joined The Post as a sportswriter in 1951 before being tapped by publisher Philip L. Graham to cover the emerging, experimental medium of television. Mr. Laurent took graduate courses at Harvard before embarking on his new beat as one of the country’s first full-time TV writers.At the time, television was an entertainment phenomenon, expanding quickly and in unpredictable ways. In 1950, fewer than 10 percent of U.S. households had a television set.
According to his family, he wrote more than 6,000 columns about broadcasting in almost a quarter-century as The Post’s lead TV critic. His office contained three television monitors — at a time when there were only three major networks — a typewriter, dirty coffee cups and an overflowing ashtray.Mr. Laurent traveled to Hollywood at least once a year to tour studios, preview new programs and interview stars.
“The television audience, which had sat in unblinking wonder for most of TV’s first decade,” Mr. Laurent wrote in 1961, “lost its innocence with the arrival of the quiz show scandals in 1959. Never again would the same people be quite so trusting in their vicarious appreciation of television performers and television productions.
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