Broadway

Hollis Alpert was born in Herkimer, New York. His father left the family when he was still very young. His mother ran a bra and girdle factory. He joined the U.S. Army during World War II and worked as a combat historian, writing historical accounts of major World War II battles and articles about the war for American magazines. After the war, he became an assistant fiction editor at the New York Times in 1950. At the same time, he was working as a freelance film and book reviewer for several other publications. His first novel, For Immediate Release, was published in 1963. He became a film critic for the Saturday Review. In 1966, he founded the National Society of Film Critics with other critics who had been denied membership in the New York Film Critics Circle, which excluded magazine critics. In 1975 he left the Saturday Review to edit for the American Film Magazine. He wrote several books, both under his own name and using the pseudonym "Robert Carroll."