Name Robert Whitehead | Role Theatre Producer | |
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Died June 15, 2002, Pound Ridge, New York, United States Spouse Zoe Caldwell (m. 1968–2002), Virginia Whitehead (m. 1948–1965) Children William "Sam" Whitehead, Charles Whitehead Parents William Whitehead, Selena Mary LaBatt Whitehead Awards Tony Award for Best Play Similar People Zoe Caldwell, Arthur Miller, Roger L Stevens, Terrence McNally, Harold Clurman | ||
Robert Whitehead (born Montreal, Quebec March 3, 1916; died Pound Ridge, New York June 15, 2002) was a Canadian theatre producer.
His first production was Medea, starring Judith Anderson and John Gielgud, and he won the Outer Critics Circle Award five times. He was nominated for 19 Tony and Drama Desk Awards, winning 4 Tony Awards and 5 Drama Desk Awards.
His father owned textile mills, and his mother, Selena Mary LaBatt Whitehead, was an opera singer. (The actor Hume Cronyn was Whitehead's cousin on the LaBatt side.)
He went to Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario, then worked as a commercial photographer before studying acting at the New York School of the Theatre.
He spent the Second World War years as an ambulance driver in North Africa and Italy.
Whitehead had a long term association with fellow producer Roger L. Stevens. In 1964 the Lincoln Center Repertory Theatre opened with Robert Whitehead and Elia Kazan as its heads and Harold Clurman as literary adviser.
In 1968 Whitehead married Zoe Caldwell, who starred in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. (His first wife Virginia, an antique dealer whom he married in 1948, died in 1965.) The couple bought property in Pound Ridge, a mountain area in New York State, and built a house there. Caldwell, who won a Tony as Brodie, later appeared for Whitehead in a revival of Medea (with Judith Anderson as the nurse), Lillian, a one-woman show about Lillian Hellman, and Terrence McNally's Master Class, in which she played Maria Callas.
Honours
2002 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. The Commercial Theater Institute gives an annual award for "Outstanding Achievement in Commercial Theater Producing" which is named for Robert Whitehead.