Douglas Watt (critic) and Tennessee Williams. During his career at the Daily News, he was able to attend the 1949 debut of "Death of a Salesman" starring Lee J. Cobb in the title role of Willy Loman, as well as the 50th-anniversary production of the play with Brian Dennehy in the lead. One of the founders of the Drama Desk Awards, Watt served on the nominating committee for both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Awards. Watt died at age 95 on September 29, 2009, in Southampton, New York because of pneumonia. At the time of his death, he resided in
Dustin Hoffman and my brother, a high-school varsity football player, was Biff." Author Marie Brenner notes that Hoffman "has been obsessed with the play" throughout his career: "For years he has wanted to be Willy Loman; when he discovered that Arthur Miller was his neighbor in Connecticut, they began to talk about it in earnest." For Hoffman, the story also left a deep emotional impact from the time he first read it: Hoffman rehearsed for three weeks with the play's original star, Lee J. Cobb, and remembers seeing his stage performance: "I'll never forget that period in my life. It was so