Paul Gardner (1933-2000) grew up in Pasadena and Los Angeles. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, and graduated from the College of William & Mary in Virginia.
Gardner was on staff of The New York Times for seven years as a writer-critic and assistant editor of Sunday Arts & Leisure. In Paris, where he lived for over three years, he contributed theatre and film reviews to the Financial Times of London and worked on film projects with director Claude Chabrol, co-scripting Chabrol's Ten Days' Wonder (film) (La Décade prodigieuse), which starred Orson Welles and Anthony Perkins.
He published a William Faulkner portrait published in A Faulkner Perspective for the Franklin Library; Lynn, the memoirs of Royal Ballet star Lynn Seymour; Brooklyn: People and Places, Past and Present, a socio-cultural history of the famous borough; and Louise Bourgeois, a personal journey into the life of the acclaimed sculptor. Writing for a variety of periodicals, Gardner interviewed subjects as diverse as the Beatles (on their first visit to the U.S.A.), Howard Hawks in Palm Springs, and Leni Riefenstahl in Pöcking, Bayern.
A founding board member of the Delaware Theatre Company, Gardner helped launch the state's first regional theatre in Wilmington.
He co-produced the Art City series of three contemporary art documentaries featuring artists Brice Marden, Elizabeth Murray (artist), Agnes Martin, and Neil Jenney, among others; and the visual profile, Richard Tuttle: Never Not an Artist. The films have been shown at festivals in Toronto, Montréal, Paris, and Naples, as well as at art museums throughout the world.
