Allan Carr

infobox actor
name = Allan Carr


caption = Allan Carr at the 1989 Academy Awards
birthname =
birthdate = birth date|1937|05|27
birthplace = Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
deathdate = death date and age|1999|06|29|1937|05|27
deathplace = Beverly Hills, California, U.S.A.
occupation = Film, TV and theatre producer
yearsactive = 1969—1998

Allan Carr (born Allan Solomon on May 27, 1937 in Chicago, Illinois, died June 29, 1999) was a American Broadway, television and film producer, and manager of actors and musicians. Carr was nominated for numerous awards, winning a Tony Award and two People's Choice Awards, and was named Producer of the Year by the National Association of Theatre Owners. [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1999_June_30/ai_55029330 Allan Carr, Producer, Impresario, Manager and Showman, Dies at 62 | Business Wire | Find Articles at BNET ] ]

Biography

Tallulah Bankhead and Early Career

He attended Lake Forest College and Northwestern University, but his interest was always in show business. While at Northwestern, he invested $750 in the Broadway musical "Ziegfeld Follies", starring Tallulah Bankhead. That show wasn't a hit but his $1,250 investment in "The Happiest Millionaire" (1957) gave him the success he needed to leave school and embark upon a career in entertainment. In Chicago in the 1960s he opened the Civic Theater and financed "The World of Carl Sandburg" starring Bette Davis and Gary Merrill, as well as Eva Le Gallienne in "Mary Stuart", directed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie, and Tennessee Williams' "Garden District" featuring Cathleen Nesbitt and Diana Barrymore. Carr worked behind the scenes at "Playboy Magazine" with Hugh Hefner and was a co-creator of the "Playboy Penthouse" television series, which in turn launched the Playboy Clubs.

Through the years, he became known as a great planner of promotional events and parties. One such event, a black-tie affair for Truman Capote, took place in an abandoned L.A. jail. Carr managed a number of major film and television stars and recording artists, and produced a string of television specials for his client Ann-Margret. [ [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0139591/ Allan Carr ] ]

"Grease" was the word—Film and Broadway theatre success

Producer Robert Stigwood hired him in 1975 as marketing and promotion consultant, with his first project being for the film version of the rock opera "Tommy" . The film was a hit and he expanded his involvement for his next film, re-editing and overdubbing a low-budget foreign film about a real-life disaster. The result was "Survival", and that film's surprise success in 1976 made him a wealthy man and gave him clout at Paramount Pictures.

In 1977, Stigwood asked him to produce the ad campaign for "Saturday Night Fever". He turned the film's premiere into a star-studded television special. It worked so well that Stigwood gave him "Grease" (1978). Carr not only helmed the ad campaign and produced the premiere party and television special for "Grease", he wrote the screen adaptation and produced the film for six million dollars, casting his client Olivia Newton-John. It became the highest grossing film of the year, the most popular movie musical of all time , and one of the highest grossing films in history at just under one hundred million dollars in its first release. (It has since gone on to make as much in rentals, and as much again in a 1998 re-release.) The film was nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and won two People's Choice Awards, for Best Picture and Best Musical Picture. That year he even appeared in a role on the final season of the Angie Dickinson television series "Police Woman". Stigwood and Carr would work on several other films, including 1978 Oscar-winner "The Deer Hunter".

The following year, 1979, he produced the Village People film musical "Can't Stop the Music", a production which, while campy, steered clear of addressing the band members' presumed homosexuality from the script. Again he orchestrated a lavish series of premieres and a television special co-starring his friends Hefner and Cher. Released in 1980 after the crash of the disco craze, the film was a major flop, and Carr won the first annual Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Film, in 1981. Undaunted, he went on to produce "Grease 2" (1982) which, while nowhere near the hit of its predecessor, was not a financial loss.

In Paris for the premiere of "Grease", a friend had dragged him to see a straight play about a gay couple, "La Cage aux Folles". Now, Carr was ready to face the gay theme head on. Returning to Broadway he produced a musical version of the 1973 play, which had since been made into a French film (and later an American film called "The Birdcage)". With a book by Harvey Fierstein and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, the show opened in 1983 and was a huge success, running for five years and 1,761 performances. Nominated in 1984 for eight Drama Desk Awards and eight Tony Awards, the show won three Drama Desks and an impressive six Tonys, including a "Best Musical" win for Carr.

now White and the Academy Awards

His reputation for hosting expensive and lavish parties and creating spectacular production numbers led the producers of the 61st Annual Academy Awards to hire him to create the show based on his promise that he would turn it around from the dry, dull show it had been in previous years. Promising "the antithesis of tacky" it turned out to be a disaster culminating in the infamous pairing of Snow White (played by Eileen Bowman) and Rob Lowe singing "Proud Mary".

The telecast also featured a production number featuring what was introduced as "the youth of Hollywood", with all the participants in their 20s or early 30s. The show became a laughing-stock and has gone down in history one of the worst moments in awards show and television history.

Adding to the misery, the Walt Disney Company sued for illegal use of Snow White's image. Carr's reputation in Hollywood never fully recovered, although his decision to change the award announcement from "And the winner is..." to "And the Oscar goes to..." has become the norm, not just for the Oscars, but for awards shows in general. Carr also first hired comedian Bruce Vilanch as head comedy writer of the show, a job he still holds.

Later work

That same year Carr helmed the project "Goya...A Life in Song" with Freddie Gershon and CBS Records, a concept album and, later, an off-Broadway musical theater production written by Maury Yeston ("Nine") and featuring Plácido Domingo as artist Francisco Goya. Still in development for a full Broadway production, the music has been recorded by Domingo with Dionne Warwick in English and Gloria Estefan in Spanish, and a version of the duet "Till I Loved You" was a top 40 single for Barbra Streisand and Don Johnson.

Carr continued his work in theater, sponsoring the 1995 Royal Shakespeare Company productions of "Cyrano de Bergerac" and "Much Ado About Nothing" at Washington's Kennedy Center and Broadway's Gershwin Theatre, earning 10 Tony nominations between them including one more for Carr.

Carr had returned to Paramount Pictures to handle the re-release of "Grease" in 1998, which included producing a VH1 television special of the twentieth anniversary Hollywood "premiere" screening and party, and special edition re-releases of the video, DVD, and soundtrack album.

Management career

In 1966, he founded the talent agency Allan Carr Enterprises, managing the actors Tony Curtis, Peter Sellers, Rosalind Russell, Dyan Cannon, Melina Mercouri and Marlo Thomas. Some of the other entertainment figures whose careers he managed were the previously mentioned Ann-Margret, Nancy Walker, Marvin Hamlisch, Joan Rivers, Peggy Lee, "Mama" Cass Elliot, Paul Anka, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. He is credited as having discovered numerous celebrities including clients Olivia Newton-John, Mark Hamill, Michelle Pfeiffer, [ [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/96824/Allan-Carr Allan Carr - Britannica Online Encyclopedia ] ] , Steve Guttenberg [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9503EEDF173DF932A35754C0A96F958260 Allan Carr, 62, the Producer Of 'Grease' and 'La Cage' - New York Times ] ] , and Lisa Hartman .

Production career

Allan was a film producer for numerous movies, including:
*"C.C. and Company" (1970)
*"Grease" (1978)
*"Can't Stop the Music" (1980)
*"Grease 2" (1982)
*"Where the Boys Are '84" (1984)
*"Cloak & Dagger" (1984)

Death

Allan Carr died on June 29, 1999 in Beverly Hills, California from liver cancer at the age of 62. At the time of his death, he split his time between his homes in Beverly Hills and Palm Springs, and was working on bringing Ken Ludwig's Tony-winning comedy "Lend Me a Tenor" to Australia and the UK, and was preparing a new Broadway show, "The New Musical Adventures of Tom Sawyer".

External links

*imdb name|id=0139591|name=Allan Carr