Lee Guber

Lee Guber (November 20, 1920 – March 27, 1988) was an American theater producer and impresario born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attended Central High School, where a seating assignment arranged alphabetically introduced him to Shelly Gross, who would become his longtime business partner. Guber went on to Temple University, where he studied sociology and earned both bachelor's and master's degrees.

Guber's career in entertainment began in the nightclub business before he joined Gross and Frank Ford in founding the Valley Forge Music Fair in Devon, Pennsylvania in 1955. The original tent structure was eventually replaced by a permanent building, which was later demolished and converted into a supermarket. The partnership subsequently expanded to Westbury, New York, establishing the Westbury Music Fair on the former site of a lime pit. That venue began as a tent before a $1 million permanent structure seating 3,000 was built in a theater-in-the-round configuration. Guber and Gross further extended their network of suburban entertainment venues to include the Painters Mill Music Fair near Baltimore and the Shady Grove Music Theater near Washington, D.C. The group also operated a wax museum and an advertising agency, both based in Philadelphia, and ran a theater inside the Deauville Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. Their venues hosted performers including Jack Benny, Maurice Chevalier, Perry Como, Sammy Davis Jr., Bobby Vinton, Dionne Warwick, Andy Williams, and Stevie Wonder, as well as traveling productions of Broadway shows such as Cabaret, Fiddler on the Roof, George M!, and Man of La Mancha.

On Broadway, Guber produced a number of notable productions across several decades. A 1965 production of Catch Me If You Can ran for 103 performances, and a 1967 musical adaptation of The Man Who Came to Dinner titled Sherry! ran for 71 performances. A production of Lorelei starring Carol Channing ran for approximately a year. In 1977, Guber and Gross produced a revival of The King and I featuring Yul Brynner in the lead role, which ran for 696 performances; investors recouped their money within 14 weeks, and weekly grosses surpassed $200,000. That production earned a Drama Desk Award Outstanding Musical nomination in 1977. Bring Back Birdie, a 1981 sequel to Bye Bye Birdie, closed after only four performances, though it earned Chita Rivera a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical. The 1986 musical Rags, about immigrants to the United States and produced at a cost exceeding $5 million, also ran for just four performances. That production received a Tony Award Best Musical nomination in 1987. Guber also appeared as a Broadway performer himself, with a credit in Jule's Friends at the Palace in 1974. In addition, Guber, Ford, and Gross Productions planned to revive the television series Dialing for Dollars with Canadian personality Peter Emmerson as host, but Guber's 1987 diagnosis of terminal brain cancer halted those plans.

Guber was married three times. His first wife was Edna Shanis, with whom he had two children, Zev and Carol. In December 1963 he married Barbara Walters, at that time a reporter for NBC; the marriage lasted 13 years. The couple adopted a daughter, Jacqueline Dena Guber, in 1968. His third marriage, in 1982, was to Lois Wyse, and the two remained married until his death. His stepchildren from that marriage were Robert Wyse and Katherine Goldman, and he had eight grandchildren, including journalist Noah Shachtman. Outside of his professional life, Guber played squash and tennis and was described by The New York Times as an accomplished cook who developed his culinary skills under the influence of James Beard. He was appointed to the New York State Council on the Arts in the mid-1970s and resided on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Guber died at his home on March 27, 1988, at the age of 67, from brain cancer.