The brains behind more than 100 Broadway plays and musicals, including 'Death of a Salesman' and 'Hello Dolly', passed away at his home in Montana after suffering cardiopulmonary arrest.
- Dec 28, 2020
AceShowbiz - Tony Award-winning Broadway producer Roger Berlind has died, aged 90.
Berlind was the brains behind more than 100 Broadway plays and musicals, picking up 25 Tonys over his career.
He died on 18 December at his home in Montana after suffering cardiopulmonary arrest.
A former Wall Street broker, he transformed his career following the death of his wife and three of four children in a 1975 plane crash in New York City, and made his debut with 1976's "Rex", a Richard Rodgers musical about Henry VIII. His final curtain call came last year (19) with the revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma", of which Berlind was one of several producers.
"The whole idea of building a business and making money didn't make sense anymore," he told The New York Times in 1998 about retiring as a Wall Street broker. "There was no more economic motivation."
His biggest hits included the original 1980 production of "Amadeus" and the revivals of "Death of a Salesman" in 2012 with Philip Seymour Hoffman and "Hello Dolly" in 2017 with Bette Midler. His career in the theater than spanned four decades helped generate top acting awards for Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close and Christine Baranski.
He became a Broadway hero in 2001 when he took the stage after the billed final performance of the long-running "Kiss Me, Kate" to announce the show would go on to help theater lovers deal with the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack. The show ran for another two years.
Berlind is survived by his second wife Brook Berlind, a son, two granddaughters and a brother, Alan. "The significant thing about Roger is that he made an incredible turnaround," Brook Berlind said in a phone interview after his passing.
She added, "His life was utterly bifurcated by the accident. There was Act I and Act II. I don’t think many other people could have gone on to such success after such catastrophe."
