Broadway producer Roger Berlind, who won 25 Tony Awards working with Glenn Close, Bette Midler and Philip Seymour Hoffman, dies at 90
Roger Berlind, producer of more than 100 Broadway plays and musicals and winner of the 25 Tony Awards, died at the age of 90.
He passed away on December 18 at his home in Montana. His family said the cardiac arrest was to blame, The New York Times reported.
Brooklyn-born Berlind had a four-decade career that spurred the success of actors like Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons.
Sad loss: Roger Berlind, producer of over 100 Broadway plays and musicals and winner of the 25 Tony Awards, died at the age of 90. Seen in June
He worked with big names: David Hyde Pierce and Bette Midler on Hello Dolly’on Broadway in June 2017
He was not born for the theater, however.
Despite his youthful aspirations as a composer, he found work on Wall Street, becoming a broker partner before the death of his wife and three of four children in a plane crash in June 1975 in New York City that changed his trajectory.
He told the Times in 1998 that building a business and making money no longer made sense to him.
Eventually, he turned to Broadway, redefining himself through a new career.
Brook Berlind, his second wife, defined the change in terms of the stage.
“His life was totally forked by the accident,” she said. “There was Act I and Act II. I don’t think many other people could have been so successful after such a catastrophe.
His successful program: he worked with Linda Emond, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Andrew Garfield on Death Of A Salesman in 2012
His 1976 debut production of Rex, a Richard Rodgers musical about Henry VIII, was criticized by a Times theater critic. His last show, a Tony winner taken on stage by several producers, was the revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein in Oklahoma in 2019.
Other shows included the original 1980 production by Amadeus, which won a Tony for best play, and Sophistically Ladies, a 1981 musical with a two-year run with music by Duke Ellington.
The star-studded revivals included Death of a Salesman in 2012 with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Hello Dolly in 2017 with Bette Midler.
A man with a plan: he entered the theater after a career on Wall Street in NY; seen in may 2011
Throughout his career, Berlind has faced failures along with successes, finding value in some losing productions.
“I know it’s not worth it economically,” he told The Times in 1998. “But I love theater.”
Berlind exhibited his own talent for the dramatic after the 9/11 attacks, when he took the mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s encouragement to Broadway seriously and appeared on stage on 9/23 after the completion of what had been scheduled to be the last performance from ‘Kiss Me, Kate. ‘
“The show will continue,” he declared to an emotional audience, extending a two-year season for three months, despite falling sales.
Survivors include his wife and son, two granddaughters and a brother.