Legit impresario Gordon Crowe dies
Producer, agent involved with numerous shows
Crowe was a producer or associate producer on numerous Broadway and Off-Broadway productions in the 1970s and 1980s. His other projects included "The Butler Did It," "And Miss Reardon Drinked a Little," and the musical production, "That's Entertainment!," based on the music of Dietz and Schwartz.
His company, Gordon Crowe Productions, pioneered national touring productions of well-known Broadway musicals. These national bus-and-truck productions typically featured a headline star who came out of retirement and a cast of talented unknowns. They included "Sugar Babes," starring Pinky Lee, "Bubbling Brown Sugar," starring Cab Calloway, and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," starring Jack Carter.
"Oh! Calcutta," a series of sexual sketches, most performed nude, was written by Samuel Beckett, Sam Shepard, Jules Pfeiffer, John Lennon and others. It opened Off Broadway in 1969 and on Broadway a few years later.
In the 1980s, Crowe met Dame Margot Fonteyn, whose decades-long business relationship with impresario, Sol Hurok had ended. He presented her in performances throughout the United States, South America and Europe.
Prior to theater, he produced industrial musical presentations for trade shows for companies including Ford, Nabisco, Coca-Cola and General Electric, featuring talent such as Bernadette Peters, Eddie Fisher, Phil Silvers and Ronald Reagan. He also produced events such as Time Magazine's 50th anniversary gala and the Carnegie Hall tribute to Paul Robeson.
Born in Memphis, Tenn., Crowe worked as a boxer and newspaper copy boy before winning a talent competition with the prize of a Hollywood screen audition. He won and spent the next year in Los Angeles. After serving in the army, he and his brother started Cooper and Crowe Advertising, and Crowe also started the first foreign film art cinema in Salt Lake City in 1949.
Crowe was asked by MCA, the talent and production company, to join their operation in New York, where he worked under Lou Wasserman and Jules Stein. He was with MCA until forming Gordon Crowe Productions in the late 1960s.
He is survived by two daughters and two granddaughters.
