Background
Never finishing his college degree, he elected instead to work for the New York Herald Tribune from 1931 onward, following in his father’s path as a sports writer.
Never finishing his college degree, he elected instead to work for the New York Herald Tribune from 1931 onward, following in his father’s path as a sports writer.
Lardner attended Phillips Academy, graduating in 1929.
After one year at Harvard, he left for the Sorbonne in Paris for a year, where he wrote for the International Herald Tribune. Lardner wrote a weekly column for Newsweek called “Sport Week,” for 15 years beginning in 1933. He later became a war correspondent during World War II, dispatching from Europe and Africa.
He also deployed with the first American troops (Army and Navy) to Australia in 1942, and wrote the book "Southwest Passage", published in 1943, documenting that experience. Additionally, he wrote for the Saturday Evening Post, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and Woman's Home Companion. He died in March 1960, after years of fighting tuberculosis.
Some of Lardner's work was collected into a later book, The John Lardner Reader: A Press Box Legend's Classic Sportswriting, by sports writer John Schulian in 2010. Lardner’s papers are located at the Newberry Library in Chicago.