[1] He attended South Side High School,[2] and Middlebury College, where he served as editor of The Campus, and graduated in 1955 with a BA degree in American literature.

[1] He authored eight books,[3] including a series of four which were considered "conversations" with playwrights Arthur Miller, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Tom Stoppard.

Times arts reporter Jesse McKinley notes that Gussow's interview collections became "staples of college drama curriculums and the libraries of gossip-loving theater fans".

[1] In the late 1960s and in 1970, he and his wife Ann and son Ethan, actor Dustin Hoffman, and several other families lived in apartments in a townhouse at 16 West 11th Street.

The extensive collection of over 200 boxes consists of article and manuscript drafts, interview notes and transcripts, correspondence, scrapbooks, photographs, subject files, clippings, and published material.