Claudia Cassidy, 96, Arts Critic; Did Not Mince Words in Chicago

Claudia Cassidy, whose arts criticism for The Chicago Tribune made her a dominant figure in the city's cultural scene for decades, died on Sunday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. She was 96 and lived in Chicago.

Ms. Cassidy was born in Shawneetown, Ill., on the Ohio River, where she saw her first theatrical performances on showboats. She earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois, where she studied journalism. In 1925 she became the music and drama critic for The Journal of Commerce after pinch-hitting for the regular critic when he fell ill.

In late 1941 she went to the newly founded Sun to organize its theater and music department. Less than a year later she was hired by The Tribune as its theater, music and ballet critic, and her "On the Aisle" column soon became a Chicago institution.

Ms. Cassidy wrote an energetic, often florid prose, and she took no prisoners. Sometimes referred to as "acidy Cassidy," she hounded the conductors Desire Defauw, Rafael Kubelik and Jean Martinon off the podium of the Chicago Symphony and out of town, and her scathing denunciations of most visiting Broadway productions as sorry leftovers shipped out to the hinterlands made her the scourge of New York producers. Some artists left the city vowing never to return.

She could also praise. She was a fervent partisan of the Lyric Opera, for example, and of the conductors Fritz Reiner and Eugene Ormandy. Her one-woman campaign in support of "The Glass Menagerie," which had its premiere in Chicago in 1944, helped establish Tennessee Williams's career.

After 1965, Miss Cassidy did freelance work for The Tribune, Chicago magazine and, briefly, for Chicagoan magazine. She also did a weekly half-hour program of arts commentary on WFMT radio, from 1968 to 1983. The columns she wrote on her annual tour of European festivals were collected in "Europe on the Aisle" (1954).

No immediate family members survive.