Morton Gottlieb
Encyclopedia
Morton Edgar Gottlieb was an American
producer of Broadway theatre
whose play Sleuth
won the Tony Award for Best Play
in 1971, in addition to three of his other plays that were nominated for the same award.
on May 2, 1921, Gottlieb attended Erasmus Hall High School
and majored in drama at Yale University
. Gottlieb got a job with Columbia Pictures
after graduating from Yale in 1941. He later became a press agent
for actress Gertrude Lawrence
. She, in turn, introduced him to producer Gilbert Miller
, for whom he worked as a general manager. His initial stage-related work was as company manager or general manager, and his first production role was for a summer stock theatre
production of Arms and the Man
in 1953 that featured Marlon Brando
in his last stage role.
's comedy Enter Laughing
launched Alan Arkin
to fame and ran for 419 performances into the following year. The 1966 Broadway production of the play The Killing of Sister George
by Frank Marcus
and the 1969 comedy Lovers
by Brian Friel
and starring Art Carney
, were both nominated as Tony Award for Best Play
.
Gottlieb achieved theatrical success with the 1970 thriller Sleuth
by Anthony Shaffer that ran for three years, winning that year's Tony Award for Best Play. A film adaptation of the play, starring Laurence Olivier
and Michael Caine
and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
debuted in 1972, while the show was still running on Broadway.
Gottlieb's next production, Same Time, Next Year
, brought to the Broadway stage Bernard Slade
's story of two people, each married to someone else, who meet once a year for a romantic tryst. The play opened in March 1975 with Ellen Burstyn
and Charles Grodin
and ran on Broadway until September 1978 and was also nominated for a Tony as Best Play, losing to Peter Shaffer
's Equus
. The play was also adapted into a film of the same name
that opened in the play's final year on stage, with Alan Alda
playing the film role that Grodin had filled on stage.
Gottlieb was an "old-fashioned producer" who preferred to work with original scripts that he would take to the stage and on to film, focusing on "middlebrow
" material. His material had popular appeal, though critics weren't always as appreciative of his work. Brian Friel's 1979 Faith Healer
, one of the few exceptions to his middlebrow standards, ran for only 20 performances.
He was known, even considered "notorious" for what The New York Times
described as his "professional parsimony", which extended to having staff reuse envelopes. Gottlieb's concern for his investors was such that he was careful to pay his investors back as quickly as possible, extending to his production of the 1978 play Tribute starring Jack Lemmon
, for which he was able to distribute checks to investors at the party celebrating opening night, using the proceeds generated from tryouts before opening on Broadway. For the 1985 play ultimately named Dancing in the End Zone by Bill C. Davis, Gottlieb lined up 92 investors. While most producers preferred to have a very small number of large investors, allowing them to avoid Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure rules, Gottlieb felt that "[i]t's fun to have as many people as possible", with a diverse group of investors ranging from stagehands to millionaires, with whom he was happy to disclose details of his prior successes and failures.
Looking back on his career, Gottlieb analyzed Broadway theatre as a profession where it's easiest to start right at the top, noting that "You don't need experience, you don't need a license, you don't need money. All you need is chutzpah. You call all the agents and say, 'Here I am — a producer!'".
, parts of which dated back to 1769, which he called "Hodgepodge Farm". Many of the home's furnishings were items that had been used on the sets of his theatrical productions that had completed their runs. An upholstered chair was a gift from Gilbert Miller, and had appeared in Gigi
in a scene with Audrey Hepburn
. Chairs from The Killing of Sister George
and a table from Enter Laughing adorned the living room.
Gottlieb died at age 88 on June 25, 2009, in Englewood, New Jersey
, due to natural causes. He had never married, and was even honored by a men's toiletries firm as its Bachelor of the Year for 1968. He left no immediate survivors.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
producer of Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
whose play Sleuth
Sleuth (play)
Sleuth is a 1970 play written by Anthony Shaffer. The play is set in the Wiltshire, England manor house of Andrew Wyke, an immensely successful mystery writer. His home reflects Wyke's obsession with the inventions and deceptions of fiction and his fascination with games and game-playing...
won the Tony Award for Best Play
Tony Award for Best Play
The Tony Award for Best Play is an annual award celebrating achievements in live American theatre, including musical theatre, honoring productions on Broadway in New York. It currently takes place in mid-June each year.There was no award in the Tony's first year...
in 1971, in addition to three of his other plays that were nominated for the same award.
Early life and education
Born in BrooklynBrooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
on May 2, 1921, Gottlieb attended Erasmus Hall High School
Erasmus Hall High School
Erasmus Hall Campus High School is a four-year public high school in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, United States operated by the New York City Department of Education....
and majored in drama at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. Gottlieb got a job with Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
after graduating from Yale in 1941. He later became a press agent
Press agent
A press agent, or flack, is a professional publicist who acts on behalf of his or her client on all matters involving public relations. Press agents are typically employed by public personalities and organizations such as performers and businesses...
for actress Gertrude Lawrence
Gertrude Lawrence
Gertrude Lawrence was an English actress, singer and musical comedy performer known for her stage appearances in the West End theatre district of London and on Broadway.-Early life:...
. She, in turn, introduced him to producer Gilbert Miller
Gilbert Miller
Gilbert Heron Miller was an American theatrical producer.Born in New York City, he was the son of English-born theatrical producer Henry Miller and Bijou Heron, a former child actress. Raised and educated in Europe, he returned home to follow in his father's footsteps and became a highly...
, for whom he worked as a general manager. His initial stage-related work was as company manager or general manager, and his first production role was for a summer stock theatre
Summer stock theatre
Summer stock theatre is any theatre that presents stage productions only in the summer within the United States. The name combines both the seasonal time of year with the tradition of staging shows by a resident company, reusing stock scenery and costumes...
production of Arms and the Man
Arms and the Man
Arms and the Man is a comedy by George Bernard Shaw, whose title comes from the opening words of Virgil's Aeneid in Latin:"Arma virumque cano" ....
in 1953 that featured Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
in his last stage role.
Theatrical and film production
His 1963 production of Joseph SteinJoseph Stein
Joseph Stein was an American playwright best known for writing the books for such musicals as Fiddler on the Roof and Zorba.-Biography:...
's comedy Enter Laughing
Enter Laughing
Enter Laughing is a play by Joseph Stein.Based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Carl Reiner, it centers on the journey of young aspiring actor David Kolowitz as he tries to extricate himself from overly protective parents and two too many girlfriends, while struggling to meet the challenge of...
launched Alan Arkin
Alan Arkin
Alan Wolf Arkin is an American actor, director, musician and singer. He is known for starring in such films as Wait Until Dark, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Catch-22, The In-Laws, Edward Scissorhands, Glengarry Glen Ross, Marley & Me, and...
to fame and ran for 419 performances into the following year. The 1966 Broadway production of the play The Killing of Sister George
The Killing of Sister George
The Killing of Sister George is a 1964 play by Frank Marcus that was adapted as a 1968 film directed by Robert Aldrich.- Stage version :Sister George is a beloved character in the popular radio series Applehurst, a nurse who ministers to the medical needs and personal problems of the local villagers...
by Frank Marcus
Frank Marcus
Frank Marcus was a British playwright, best known for The Killing of Sister George.-Life:Frank Ulrich Marcus was born 30 June 1928 into a Jewish family in Breslau . They came to England as refugees in 1939...
and the 1969 comedy Lovers
Lovers (play)
Lovers is a 1967 play written by Northern Irish playwright Brian Friel.Lovers is a play broken in to two parts, Winners and Losers.-Winners:...
by Brian Friel
Brian Friel
Brian Friel is an Irish dramatist, author and director of the Field Day Theatre Company. He is considered to be the greatest living English-language dramatist, hailed by the English-speaking world as an "Irish Chekhov" and "the universally accented voice of Ireland"...
and starring Art Carney
Art Carney
Arthur William Matthew “Art” Carney was an American actor in film, stage, television and radio. He is best known for playing Ed Norton, opposite Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden in the situation comedy The Honeymooners....
, were both nominated as Tony Award for Best Play
Tony Award for Best Play
The Tony Award for Best Play is an annual award celebrating achievements in live American theatre, including musical theatre, honoring productions on Broadway in New York. It currently takes place in mid-June each year.There was no award in the Tony's first year...
.
Gottlieb achieved theatrical success with the 1970 thriller Sleuth
Sleuth (play)
Sleuth is a 1970 play written by Anthony Shaffer. The play is set in the Wiltshire, England manor house of Andrew Wyke, an immensely successful mystery writer. His home reflects Wyke's obsession with the inventions and deceptions of fiction and his fascination with games and game-playing...
by Anthony Shaffer that ran for three years, winning that year's Tony Award for Best Play. A film adaptation of the play, starring Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
and Michael Caine
Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine, CBE is an English actor. He won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in both Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules ....
and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career and is best known as the writer-director of All About Eve , which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six. He was brother to screenwriter and drama critic Herman J...
debuted in 1972, while the show was still running on Broadway.
Gottlieb's next production, Same Time, Next Year
Same Time, Next Year
Same Time, Next Year is 1975 comedy play by Bernard Slade. The plot focuses on two people, married to others, who meet for a romantic tryst once a year for two dozen years.-Plot:...
, brought to the Broadway stage Bernard Slade
Bernard Slade
Bernard Slade is a Canadian playwright and screenwriter.Born in St. Catharines, Ontario, Slade began his career as an actor with the Garden Center Theatre in Vineland, Ontario. In the mid-1960s, he relocated to Hollywood and began to work as a writer for television sitcoms, including Bewitched...
's story of two people, each married to someone else, who meet once a year for a romantic tryst. The play opened in March 1975 with Ellen Burstyn
Ellen Burstyn
Ellen Burstyn is a leading American actress of film, stage, and television. Burstyn's career began in theatre during the late 1950s, and over the next ten years she appeared in several films and television series before joining the Actors Studio in 1967...
and Charles Grodin
Charles Grodin
Charles Grodin is an American actor, comedian, author and former cable talk show host. Grodin began his acting career in the 1960s appearing in TV serials including The Virginian. He had a small part as an obstetrician in Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby in 1968...
and ran on Broadway until September 1978 and was also nominated for a Tony as Best Play, losing to Peter Shaffer
Peter Shaffer
Sir Peter Levin Shaffer is an English dramatist and playwright, screenwriter and author of numerous award-winning plays, several of which have been filmed.-Early life:...
's Equus
Equus (play)
Equus is a play by Peter Shaffer written in 1973, telling the story of a psychiatrist who attempts to treat a young man who has a pathological religious fascination with horses....
. The play was also adapted into a film of the same name
Same Time, Next Year (film)
Same Time, Next Year is a 1978 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Robert Mulligan. The screenplay by Bernard Slade is based on his 1975 play of the same title.-Plot synopsis:...
that opened in the play's final year on stage, with Alan Alda
Alan Alda
Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo , better known as Alan Alda, is an American actor, director, screenwriter, and author. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he is best known for his role as Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H...
playing the film role that Grodin had filled on stage.
Gottlieb was an "old-fashioned producer" who preferred to work with original scripts that he would take to the stage and on to film, focusing on "middlebrow
Middlebrow
The term middlebrow describes both a certain type of easily accessible art, often literature, as well as the population that uses art to acquire culture and class that is usually unattainable. First used by the British satire magazine Punch in 1925, middlebrow is derived as the intermediary between...
" material. His material had popular appeal, though critics weren't always as appreciative of his work. Brian Friel's 1979 Faith Healer
Faith Healer
Faith Healer is a play by Brian Friel about the life of faith healer Francis Hardy as monologued through the shifting memories of Hardy, his wife, Grace, and stage manager, Teddy.-Synopsis:...
, one of the few exceptions to his middlebrow standards, ran for only 20 performances.
He was known, even considered "notorious" for what The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
described as his "professional parsimony", which extended to having staff reuse envelopes. Gottlieb's concern for his investors was such that he was careful to pay his investors back as quickly as possible, extending to his production of the 1978 play Tribute starring Jack Lemmon
Jack Lemmon
John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts , Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925June...
, for which he was able to distribute checks to investors at the party celebrating opening night, using the proceeds generated from tryouts before opening on Broadway. For the 1985 play ultimately named Dancing in the End Zone by Bill C. Davis, Gottlieb lined up 92 investors. While most producers preferred to have a very small number of large investors, allowing them to avoid Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure rules, Gottlieb felt that "[i]t's fun to have as many people as possible", with a diverse group of investors ranging from stagehands to millionaires, with whom he was happy to disclose details of his prior successes and failures.
Looking back on his career, Gottlieb analyzed Broadway theatre as a profession where it's easiest to start right at the top, noting that "You don't need experience, you don't need a license, you don't need money. All you need is chutzpah. You call all the agents and say, 'Here I am — a producer!'".
Personal
In 1972, Gottlieb bought a set of four interconnected barns in Warren, ConnecticutWarren, Connecticut
Warren is a town in Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 1,254 at the 2000 census. The town was named for Revolutionary War General Joseph Warren....
, parts of which dated back to 1769, which he called "Hodgepodge Farm". Many of the home's furnishings were items that had been used on the sets of his theatrical productions that had completed their runs. An upholstered chair was a gift from Gilbert Miller, and had appeared in Gigi
Gigi (musical)
Gigi is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. It is based on the novella Gigi by Colette and 1958 hit musical film of the same name. The story concerns Gigi, a free-spirited teenaged girl living in Paris at the turn of the 20th century. She is being...
in a scene with Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time, remembered as a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century...
. Chairs from The Killing of Sister George
The Killing of Sister George
The Killing of Sister George is a 1964 play by Frank Marcus that was adapted as a 1968 film directed by Robert Aldrich.- Stage version :Sister George is a beloved character in the popular radio series Applehurst, a nurse who ministers to the medical needs and personal problems of the local villagers...
and a table from Enter Laughing adorned the living room.
Gottlieb died at age 88 on June 25, 2009, in Englewood, New Jersey
Englewood, New Jersey
Englewood is a city located in Bergen County, New Jersey. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city had a total population of 27,147.Englewood was incorporated as a city by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 17, 1899, from portions of Ridgefield Township and the remaining portions of...
, due to natural causes. He had never married, and was even honored by a men's toiletries firm as its Bachelor of the Year for 1968. He left no immediate survivors.