Caffe Cino shows received little major press, a notable exception being the trade paper Show Business, where married critics Joyce and Gordon Tretick risked their jobs by promoting the Caffe Cino and other off-off-Broadway venues. Downtown, critic and playwright Michael Smith and other Village Voice writers were supportive. They awarded a shared Obie to Joe Cino and Ellen Stewart, founder of La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, in 1965. A number of short-lived downtown publications intermittently covered single shows. Most mainstream mentions were condescending, such as a famous 1965 New York Times Magazine article which basically seemed to be shocked by the poverty of the movement (the article was entitled "The Pass the Hat Theatre Circuit"). Playwright and actor Ruth Landshoff York persuaded Glamour magazine to publish an article on a group of playwrights. Life magazine took photographs around off-off-Broadway for weeks for a feature that was never published. Generally, the minimal international press that the movement got was more enthusiastic. The mainstream attitude is summarized in this anecdote: George Haimsohn, librettist and lyricist for Dames at Sea and Psychedelic Follies, said the reason the Caffe Cino was omitted from publicity when the musical moved was because, "We don't want to be associated with drugs and homosexuality." The Cino's reputation was improved in the late 1970s, when Ellen Stewart proclaimed, "It was Joseph Cino who started Off-Off Broadway." Leah D. Frank, founding editor of the first enduring Off-Off-Broadway publication, Other Stages, commissioned Cino artists to write about their experiences there. In recent years, several books about early Off-Off-Broadway and two specifically about the Caffe Cino have been published.
