Duncan Ross; Director and USC Drama Scholar

Duncan Ross, a director and theater veteran whose credits ranged from the Bristol Old Vic School in England to the campus stage of USC, is dead of cancer. He was 68 when he died Sunday at a Century City hospital.

Ross succeeded actor-director John Houseman as Drama Division chairman of the School of Performing Arts at USC in 1979. Houseman had been filling in on an interim basis since the death of Alex Segal in 1977. When the performing arts school was disbanded, Ross became director of the Division of Drama, a post he held at his death.

He was already a well-established authority in theater before leaving his native England in 1962. Ross was director of the Old Vic School from 1954 to 1961 and helped introduce the works of Harold Pinter, among others, to the British.

In a 1980 interview with The Times, Ross recalled that he had discovered by accident Pinter’s first play, “The Room.” A critic with the Sunday London Times saw the Old Vic production and wrote that “if the directors of the Royal Court and the Arts Theater have not signed Harold Pinter by lunchtime, they should resign.”

Ross came to the United States in 1962 and was offered posts at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis or at the University of Washington in Seattle. He opted for the latter and from that year until he came to USC he alternated as a visiting professor and full professor of drama at Washington with two years off in 1965-67 when he was artistic director of the National School of Canada.

He also became artistic director of the Seattle Repertory Theater which attracted such actors as Richard Chamberlain, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Christopher Walken and many others.

Houseman, who once called Ross “probably the most outstanding acting teacher in America today” prevailed on him to accept the USC position where in 1980 he staged an acclaimed version of George Bernard Shaw’s “You Never Can Tell,” among other productions.

Asked that year why he wanted to leave a successful theatrical career to return to teaching, he said he had grown tired of spending time casting an entire season’s production and then “spend hours on the telephone looking for substitutes.”

Ross is survived by his wife, Mariane, a daughter and two sons. Contributions are asked to the USC Division of Drama.