Mordaunt Hall (1 November 1878 – 2 July 1973)[1] was the first regularly assigned motion picture critic for The New York Times, working from October 1924 to September 1934.
[5] Hall immigrated to the United States, residing in New York, in 1902[6] and worked as an advance agent for Buffalo Bill's Wild West show from around 1907, by which time he was already referred to as "an old newspaper man.
"[7] In 1909 the theater impresario Oscar Hammerstein I accused Hall and another reporter of assaulting him outside New York's Knickerbocker Hotel.
[11] Hall was commissioned a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during World War I, and did intelligence work.
[12] In 1919, Hall returned to England,[13] where in the early 1920s he wrote movie intertitles, with young Alfred Hitchcock designing and lettering them, at the Famous Players–Lasky studio in the London borough of Islington.