[Dixielandjazz] R.I.P. Manheim Fox

[Robert Ringwald]

'Sophisticated Ladies' Producer Manheim Fox Dies at 77
by Mike Barnes
Hollywood Reporter, September 27, 2012
Manheim Fox, who produced the original Broadway production of "Sophisticated Ladies,"
the 1980s musical dance sensation starring Gregory Hines, died Sept. 23 in Phoenix
of complications from a heart condition. He was 77.
"Sophisticated Ladies," based on the music of jazz legend Duke Ellington, opened
at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in March 1981 and closed in January 1983 after 767 performances.
The show, which used tap, swing and jazz dance to tell its story through song, earned
eight Tony Award nominations, including one for best musical, and won two trophies.
Fox got the idea for the show after he produced a five-album retrospective of Ellington's
music. He went on to produce five companies of "Sophisticated Ladies" in Japan, Russia
and elsewhere.
In the early 1960s, Fox produced "A Happening With Salvador Dali" at the Philharmonic
Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) in Lincoln Center. The performance-art spectacle featured
the Spanish surrealist facing the audience and painting on a huge scrim onstage while
ballet dancers improvised to a live jazz band.
Fox also produced albums featuring Orson Welles' broadcast of "The War of the Worlds,"
which in 1938 panicked radio listeners who thought Martians were invading Earth;
"The Golden Age of Comedy," narrated by George Burns; and "Showstoppers," a collection
of 50 performances by the original casts in Broadway musicals that included Ethel
Merman, Rex Harrison, Barbra Streisand and Ezio Pinza.
For television, he produced "The Best of Broadway" for CBS and "Enchanted Evenings
With Rodgers and Hammerstein" for PBS. He also did the first video compilation of
"The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson."
The native New Yorker's first big gig came in 1959 when he presented a show called
The Roots of Jazz at the famed Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village. He followed
with jazz festivals starring Louis Armstrong and Sarah Vaughan and folk festivals
at Carnegie Hall featuring a theatricalization of Carl Sandburg's "The American Songbag"
featuring Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, Muddy Waters, Phil Ochs, Buffy Sainte-Marie and
the Staple Singers.
More recently, Fox produced the original children's musicals "On Our Own," "Relatively
Speaking" and "Questionable Quest" at the Beacon Theatre in New York to be filmed
live on stage.
When he lived in Puerto Rico, Fox hosted a weekly radio show called "From Here to
Broadway" and wrote a weekly newspaper column for The San Juan Star called "Diary
of a Producer."
Survivors include sons Stephen, Richard, Jon and William and three grandchildren.


-Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Amateur (ham) Radio Operator K6YBV
916/ 806-9551

The crime of taxation is not in the taking of it. It's in the way it's spent.
--Will Rogers March 20, 1932