Weather 
Veteran journalist Harry Haun, who covered theater for more than 50 years, passed away on February 2. He had been admitted to the ICU last week with congestive heart failure. He was 85 and is survived by his husband, Charles Nelson.
It’s hard to express just how much of an impact Harry had. Born in Texas, he began in the industry as a paperboy there. After moving to New York, he spent 17 years at The Daily News covering entertainment. He wrote two books on cinema. But he will forever be best known for his stint at Playbill magazine, where he worked for 34 years. His long-running Playbill features “On the Aisle” and “Theatregoer’s Notebook” were extremely well known and widely read.
“Harry would bogart your star forever at opening night and you’d be tearing your hair out,” said press agent Judy Jacksina of The Jacksina Company. “He had only a little pencil and a pad in the middle of the opening-night chaos and kept asking for 10 more minutes. But then he’d write these brilliant stories, and they’d run for three pages in Playbill for a month, and everyone loved them. My stock went up because of Harry.”
For decades, he was an opening-night fixture. Everyone knew Harry. If a press agent wasn’t paying attention to him, he would occasionally grab actors in a way that at first seemed odd, but then you’d realize he’d known the person he grabbed for years—making it less weird (sometimes). At a certain point, he left his pad behind for a recording device, but he was still the same style of interviewer. He chatted with everyone as if they had been friends for years. Not everyone loved him, but he could pull out good quotes from them regardless.
Harry loved theater so much. He was never shy about offering negative opinions if he had them, or rolling his eyes, but his passion for the industry always came through.
“Harry was a Hollywood and Broadway superfan,” press agent Adrian Bryan-Brown of Boneau/Bryan-Brown stated. “Harry loved an opening-night party, a movie junket, and a premiere. He had an amazing sense of fun celebrating showbiz in the style of the most outrageous old-time entertainment newspaper reporting. He was totally in his element when he covered Liz Smith’s column when the Queen of Gossip was on vacation—fantastic speculation like Mick Jagger definitely taking over in the original Broadway production of the musical Nine. He knew everything. His knowledge of entertainment trivia and minutiae was unmatched.”
His love of the theater is how he lasted in the industry so long. He left Playbill a little over ten years ago and did a variety of things in the years since, in recent years providing regular features for The Observer. His last piece, an interview with Elizabeth Marvel, ran in October 2025. A longtime Outer Critics Circle board member, he received a Special Achievement Award from the organization in 2024.
“Harry lived many lives as a theatre journalist in this city, which is cause for appreciation itself,” veteran press agent Jim Byk of The Press Room explained. “He was a writer I always trusted—for his honesty, intelligence, and clear respect for theater makers at all points of their careers. He listened carefully, wrote thoughtfully, and showed up to countless nights at the theatre with a mix of genuine love and curiosity for what he was about to see. I will miss him greatly and send deepest condolences to his loving and devoted husband, Charles.”
In recent years, Harry had been in poor health. In early 2023, he suffered his third stroke, and walking, even with a cane, became more difficult. But he was still always at the theater. He had trouble hearing during noisy intermissions, but he still genuinely wanted to chat with people about the pieces he was working on and what he hoped to cover. He never wanted to retire, and he certainly didn’t want to be forced into retirement, as many were.
“He may well have been the longest-running Broadway reporter at the time of his passing,” Bryan-Brown said. “And he loved every second.”
