Thursday, March 04, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Play director,
professor dies
Marlin-Jones set sights on theater at age 8
By RICHARD LAKE
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Davey Marlin-Jones
`Gentleman of the theater' and UNLV professor wrote nine plays
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On his business card, Davey Marlin-Jones had printed the phrase, "A gentleman of the theater."
"He was a dignified man," said his wife of 21 years, Maggie Winn-Jones. "But he was a little zany, too."
Marlin-Jones, an award-winning director and longtime professor at UNLV, died Tuesday of cancer. He was 71.
He was a man who loved life and who lived it to the fullest, his wife said.
"He never took it for granted," she said.
Marlin-Jones was a boy of the Midwest, born in Winchester, Ind., and a graduate of Antioch College in Ohio.
He took a liking to the stage at age 8, when his parents took him to a magic show.
"The magician made oranges appear, and he threw them into the audience," Winn-Jones said. "David decided he wanted to make these oranges appear himself and throw them out into the audience."
He began touring as a magician at age 13 and got into the theater as an actor in college. He discovered that acting was not his true calling.
"He decided he'd tell the actors what to do," Winn-Jones said, and he took up directing.
Through the years he was artistic director of the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and the Washington Theatre Club, managing director of Equity Library Theatre in New York, and a guest director at the Kennedy Center and the New York Shakespeare Festival at the Public Theater.
He directed the film adaptation of Lanford Wilson's "The Rimers of Eldritch" and the Emmy Award-winning series "The Greatest Earth on Show."
He was the arts critic for a Washington, D.C., television station from 1970 to 1987 and was the author of nine plays.
His awards include the Margo Jones Award for Advancing the American Playwright. He was named outstanding teacher of the year at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' College of Fine and Performing Arts.
He came to Las Vegas and UNLV in 1989, his wife said. He began with a temporary one-year job as a professor.
Marlin-Jones is survived by his wife, two sons, Andrew and Oliver, two grandchildren and a sister. He requested memorial donations be made to a local theater or arts organization.
