NEW YORK — Clive Barnes, longtime theater and dance critic for the New York Post, died Wednesday. He was 81.

Barnes died of cancer at Mount Sinai Hospital, the Post announced.

The London-born Barnes had a long run as a critic covering the arts scene in New York and abroad. He arrived in 1965 from England to write for The New York Times, where he was its dance critic until 1977. He was also the paper's daily drama critic for 10 years.

Barnes then moved to the Post, where he was the paper's chief theater and dance critic for more than three decades.

LOS ANGELES — Irving Brecher, who wrote vaudeville one-liners for Milton Berle and scripted Marx Brothers movies, the TV and radio hit "The Life of Riley," and the Oscar-nominated musical "Meet Me in St. Louis," died Monday. He was 94.He was a teenager in New York when he got his first comedy writing credits, as columnists Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan named him when they used jokes he sent them on postcards.At 19, he and a friend began a comedy-writing service for entertainers, promising jokes so bad even notorious gag-stealer Milton Berle wouldn't use them.