Robert C. Schnitzer

Robert C. Schnitzer (September 8, 1906 – January 2, 2008) was an American actor, producer, educator, and theater administrator whose career spanned Broadway performance, federal arts administration, academic leadership, and international theatrical production.

Born in New York City, Schnitzer attended Horace Mann School and Columbia College. As a young actor in New York, he appeared in or helped manage productions including Caponsacchi, Cyrano de Bergerac, Hamlet, Richelieu, First Night, The Brothers Karamazov, An Enemy of the People, Henry V, Richard III, and Macbeth, with his Broadway activity documented between 1928 and 1936.

From 1936 to 1939, Schnitzer served as Delaware's State Director and deputy director of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Theatre Project. In 1960, he became general manager of the American Repertory Company, an organization established by the Theatre Guild at the request of the U.S. Government to present American theater abroad. Under his management, the company arranged for three productions — The Skin of Our Teeth, The Miracle Worker, and The Glass Menagerie — to tour 28 countries across Europe and South America in 1961, with actress Helen Hayes among the company's members.

Schnitzer held faculty positions at Vassar, Smith, Columbia, and the University of Michigan, where he chaired the theater department. During the 1970s he led the University of Michigan's Professional Theatre Program. He and his wife, actress Marcella Cisney — who appeared in films including Hard, Fast and Beautiful — conducted play readings and organized seminars through the 1980s. Cisney died in 1989.

A former resident of Weston, Connecticut, Schnitzer was active in the Westport-Weston Arts Council and the Westport Arts Center, and served as a longtime member of the board of directors of the Players Club. He died on January 2, 2008, at a nursing home in Stamford, Connecticut, at the age of 101. At the time of his death, he was the oldest surviving member of the Philolexian Society of Columbia University.