Source: The Daily Times (Salisbury, MD)

Widow Of Famed Critic Dies On Shore
SEAFORD — Mrs. Lydia Sears Mantle, 89, Nanticoke Acres, died Wednesday at Fairhohne Nursing Home here after a long illness. She was a member of the Pilot Club of Wilmington and was the widow of R. Burns Mantle, for many years dean of New York's drama critics, and author of the Burns Mantle Yearbook of best plays which he inaugurated in 1919. Since his death on Feb. 9, 1948, the annual has been edited by several persons, the most recent of whom is Otis L. Guernsey Jr. The Mantles were married on Aug. 20, 1903, in Denver. After serving as drama editor of newspapers in Denver and Chicago, Mantle moved to New York in 1911. He was reviewer for the Evening Mail for 11 years and for the Daily News from 1922 until his death. Mrs. Mantle moved to Delaware In 1950 to be near her daughter. Mrs. Edward Gerard Jr., who lived in Wooddale and now lives in Seaford. "Variety," the show business publication, called Mrs. Mantle "the lady of 1,001 first nights." Among her friends in the theater world she numbered Alexander Woollcott, Brooks Atkinson, John Mason Brown and George Jean Nathan, all, like her husband, theater critics. Another close friend was Mrs. Joseph Patterson, wife of the owner of the New York Daily News. Mrs. Patterson was Mantle's first secretary. Except for her daughter, there are no immediate survivors. Services will be Monday afternoon at 1 in Silverbrook Cemetery Chapel, Wilmington, with interment in Riverside Cemetery, Denver. Service Schedules Mrs. Edwin C. Crosby. Saturday, 11 a.m. in Watson Funeral Home, Pocomoke City; burial in First Baptist Church Cemetery, Pocomoke. Friends may call ,at funeral home Saturday from 10 to 11 a.m."